An Untold Return

I suppose the short of it is that I'm home.

The long of it covers a week of fretful wandering and the answer to the question so frequently asked me: why didn't you write for a full week? 

Well...Cyprus was expensive. Everything was in euros, which - after 1,500 Lebanese lira or francs or pounds or whatever European currency name they called them, equaling a dollar...it was too much. But the traveling part was intense in its own way. I spent two days in Limassol, a beachside tourtrap and then i hitchhiked 70 kilometers to the airport and tried to change my ticket to get home 5 days earlier, get to see friends and family, get ready for school, all that. Didn't work. They wouldn't let me change it, so I was stuck in Cyprus for 5 more days. Brutally hot there. It was like the Sinai Desert...underwater! The humidity seeped into your clothes and skin and brain and stirred you up crazy, made me unable to sleep, I sweat sitting in the shade. So I had to escape. I ran to the mountain - more like hitchhiked gradually up there (but the effect was the same). I did a big loop through the country, sleeping in the streets on the doorsteps of churches. Why churches? Because I realized really quickly, they have the smoothest, cleanest stones and something about them makes me feel like they should (hypothetically) strike fear in the hearts of potential robbers. 

So I summited Cyprus, finding the most beautiful, wealthiest monastery at the peaktop where they let me sleep in a bed with a shower and a big fan for free. Mountain views just pretty enough to make me homesick for Colorado. Then i worked my way back to the shore and swam in the sea, slept in saltsweat back on the steps of churches, or once on the beach on top of a stack of stacked beachbeds, running away at dawn when the owners came to set them up for lounging purchase. 

But it was all so strange - amidst the Greeks and their complaints of the Turkish occupation and the history bounding backwards full of occupation after occupation and now the EU occupation that my host in Limassol, a Dutchman describes as "fascist" I found myself drifting off to the recesses of apathy and monomania. Counting the hours until my flight, taking my memorization of the Tao Te Ching into second gear (I've now got 43 out of 81 verses down), reading Tristram Shandy with renewed vigor. I thought about the past, what i'd felt in the Arab world - how I feel about poverty and globalization, what's to be done or understood with regards to each and every human being's relationship to the "situation" that is - the vast majority of people alive are suffering. Middle class in Syria means essentially begging tourists to enter your shop that sells the same crap as the guy right next to you. I reflected on Zach and his mission to build schools in Afghanistan like the guy from Three Cups of Tea. I thought about work and purpose, measured up to certain verses from the Tao like, "Other people have a purpose/I alone don't know" "I alone drift about like a man without a home/I'm like an idiot my mind is so empty." How can we understand these descriptions of the master along with those that say life is about doing your work and letting go. What's my work? What are we all cut out for and what, oh what, can we possible do with that information? 

I thought about the prospect of returning to a whole world of people i know, and deadlines to reach, grades, and the possibility of grad school or apply for a Fulbright to study Joyce in Ireland, or moving to Hawaii to work as a fisherman alongside my brother. I thought and thought and thought. And I was hungry because food was too expensive. And I thought about how badly I smelled. The sweat and the mosquito and ant bites all over my arms and toes. And the flies like Sartre's flies of remorse, or guilty conscience, that wouldn't leave me alone - picking me alone out of a crowd of drunken British tourists to swarm and hustle. 

I thought about how much money people spend to enjoy a week in Cyprus and how I would have spent that same amount just to rest easily at home with more time before I returned to New York. "More time!" the pilgrims call, "More time!" 

I floated alone in the Sea, which was so hot it made the hot day cold when I stepped out dripping, and wondered - exactly what am I supposed to do with all of this information. Experience, sound bites, images, rough chunks of language and the suffering of others. Simply put, to help or not to help, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortunes of the poor while sticking to one's own dreams, goals, "ambitions" or to take on the world's problems on one's own shoulders, understand that with privilege comes great responsibility. Zach wants build schools in Afghanistan, I want to study James Joyce in Ireland. The aura reader in Cairo told Zach he had a wonderfully gentle and generous heart. She told me I was clever and calculating, destined for "achievements". So he's a good person and I'm...But this isn't about that. This is about the decisions, the work, that each and every human being engages in - it's about how we choose to spend our time and with what aim in mind. What motivates us? Why? What can we do with circumstance, situation, opportunity? Boiling questions. 

In Cyprus, I met more non-Cypriots than Cypriots. Russians, Greeks, Arabs, Romanians - the whole gambit, but few Cypriots. Those that I did meet were either furious at the influx of outsiders, or were expatriots only temporarily visiting home. I was surprised at how many opportunities i got to speak Arabic. I met more Lebanese there than Syria, Jordan, and Egypt combined. But it was lovely - the figs and dates, dried apricots and candle-wax candy things. I carried a bottle of brandy around with me to keep away the hunger and repetitive thoughts, and spent most of the five days walking mile after mile and then nursing my bloody feet at night time. 

But eventually it ended and I got to the air conditioned airport. And eventually I boarded the plane and found myself in Germany. And eventually they let me on the next plane which took me all the way to Denver. And homeland security let me through without issue and the next thing I knew I was in Boulder. That was yesterday. Tomorrow we'll celebrate my uncle Gary's birthday and the following day i return to New York where a super heavy load of classes awaits me. And that's that. No rest for the weary. But so it goes. I suspect it has something to do with work. We all make our choices in this life - assuming of course we come from a place that avails us choices. 

One final note - I intend to update this blog in the future whenever it feels relevant, so feel free to continue checking it in the weeks and years to come. I feel as though I've gotten a certain travel bug out of my system (which should probably be next week's entry) for the time being, but living in New York is a trip in its own way, and who knows, I could take off again someday and fully plan to continue presenting my reflections to anyone and everyone who has any vested interest in them. 

I send my love from my heart and from my home and wish you all all the best,

tcm