How do we accumulate so much stuff and why and why does it matter? What happens when we are stripped of everything –what then?

The things that they brought: Their cooking pots and tea kettles and plates, the pots with which to make the stew; something to hold onto, the belief that they were going into a normal life where these things would matter.

“With the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense camp became visible: long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; watch tower; search lights; and long columns of ragged human figures, grey in the greyness of dawn, trekking along the straight desolate roads, to what destination we did not know” (23).

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I take no pictures, save at the gate and even then I don’t capture the infamous words.  To do so somehow seems disrespectful, wrong.  There are some around me, snapping selfies, smiling awkwardly for the camera.  You wonder: what could be so wrong to not see how wrong that is.  This has to be a sacred place.

On some of the bunks in Birkenau people have placed flowers, now dried.  No one moves them.

Take a deep breath and you will die quickly.

Bright cool morning light shines through the window.

Today I go to Auschwitz, but first must walk the city blocks up to the square, passing shuttered houses along the way.  I know this before I see it.  This town is later, lazy.  In New York day or night the streets teem with people, except Sunday mornings at dawn, when the city finally sleeps, or just forgets.  Dawn comes early here, the sun up minutes after it has gone down.  At 9:30 it is still light, day changing slowly to dusk. Yesterday afternoon’s melancholy hangs on, fitting the day like a gray sweater.

Too much walking, too much sun, too much wine and vodka and Polish coffee.  Too much too much too much.  My life feels dizzy.

Auschwitz tomorrow.  Need to go, fear going.  Their lives heavy, incomprehensible.

Lindsay left today –back to wherever in Germany she came from, her life with the National Guard.  She’s beautiful, all angles and hard bones, hard-talking, hard-drinking, Adam, too.  The light summer drinks feel heavy –one after another.  There is no pretense of sobriety.  No question that we will all sit and bake in the sun, downing Polish vodka or rum (being drowned) whatever it takes; to do what I am not sure.

After touring Auschwitz yesterday, Lindsay won’t talk about it except to say America’s Trump will lead us to Hitler, an extermination of Muslims, a stifling of people, a harbinger of fear, evil, hatred.  Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Half the time I am afraid to say what I think and the other half I don’t know.

You choose.    I feel only a part of myself.  In Berlin, there was Carol.  Same age. Same profession. She was married, but travelled solo.  After our dinner I felt sad –she was leaving, she was leaving me,   I don’t want to be in a shell, staying in my house for hours, doing nothing,  passing the time by wasting it, in a fog,  watching TV, becoming distracted, looking at other people’s lives and wishing for a different one, posting  pictures that scream: Look at me, look at me, look at me.  Go to work, go home, do the same thing all over again, missing something.

If I keep going from place to place maybe the answers will come, walking along the Vistula, seeing beauty in standing pools of water.

I have met no one in this hostel who seems forthcoming. I did not see red-headed John that Lindsay talked about, likely he is gone by now.  Young people hop from place to place, like a skipping stone along the river.  The best people-atmosphere was Hostel Postel in Cesky Krumlov, smoking dope and looking at the bridge, feeling mellow with no judgment, young or old.  Never getting lost because traveling in circles was the whole point, arriving back where you started soon enough.

I walk along the street and try to capture a shot with my phone, only just missing it –every single time.  It was here.  I saw it.   If you hesitate it’s gone, the perfect moment disappeared.

Today I am disjointed, somewhere else and all the people I have met are talking to me.  I shout one-word answers.  It feels real although I know it is just a dream.

 

 

 

 

Your ears ring.  You feel the energy in your palms.  You should venture out, find something to sustain you.  You know when you leave in the morning, the buildings will be shuttered, closed off as you make your way to the city square.

“On a bicycle I traveled over the known world’s edge, and the ground held.”

–Annie Dillard, An American Childhood, pg. 42

 

You find yourself somewhere else far from home: Right here.

Even the muddy pool on the walkway from last night’s rain reflects the day, golden now in the sun of day.

You wind up where you are supposed to be.

I cross a bridge and a lady walking a muzzled dog, unleashed, stops to talk, hands drawing pictures in the air.  I stand still and listen.  She points to bottles on the ground, debris.  When she finishes I speak, giving myself away: I don’t belong here.  But we understand each other, know what is said and unsaid.  Bottles abandoned, carcasses of a night forgotten.

Back at home I once found a dirty diaper on the front lawn of the house next door.  The empty house forlorn, weeds like tree branches cling to the facade, holding on.

 

We gather around the hard white tables, the patio chairs angled and inviting, calling sit here, sit here.  The solo travelers sit apart, not engaging.  It reminds me of John’s mom so long ago setting a table, serving a meal–everything a presentation, forks and spoons and knives and napkins placed so precisely.  I felt uncomfortable, fork and knife in hand, not knowing where to place them standing in the cool blue of her kitchen, morning.  Or nighttime after dinner always a sweet.  Cold cool stainless cups kept in the freezer, thin frost forming, a layer of icing.  The ice cream a perfect single scoop in the small dish, savored with tiny little spoons, each tangy spoonful slipping on the tongue, a sliver of ice melting; holding it there like that, like it was something.  Not devoured standing at the freezer digging into a carton late at night.

My childhood home was raucous: each pushing and shoving trying to get at what they wanted.  Rushing down the stairs at Christmastime, the boxes waiting under the tree:  That’s mine! grabbing.  At the end of the night each handed a package: same size and shape and told to open at the same time; our father or mother shouting One, two, three–Go!  Those were always a disappointment: something she had sewn that you didn’t like: for the girls matching pinafore dresses complete with white bodices attached like Little House on the Prairie; for the boys, not matter what it was, left languishing.  Later we lined up in front of the built-in bookcases filled with my dad’s mysteries or a set of encyclopedias replaced periodically with new ones in their dark blue bindings.  He loved to read, mostly mysteries, sitting in the orange faded chair in the living room, smoking his pipe, beside him the glass ashtray overflowing where he tapped his pipe a clink against the glass; the muted-green drapes pulled closed blocking the light.  Waiting for what was to happen, or what could or might come next.

Christmastime at John’s everyone gathered in the living room the night before, Christmas Eve, in their best clothes, putting on their faces as each gift was passed one by one while the others watched; reflecting what they wanted to see.

At the breakfast counter on the patio in the hostel, two American boys march in, in their baggy shorts and oversized tees in their oversized lives.  One grabs at the cheeses with his fat fingers, taking half the plate disturbing the presentation so perfectly placed (I have taken care to leave what remained in careful formation).  They are talking about doing this or that, and bringing this odd breakfast back home.  I ask from my table: Where are you guys from?  They look at me, surprised that I am here, listening.  They didn’t realize they might be understood.  They gather their plates and sit apart from me, four small empty tables away.  They are silent now.  I look away.  The blond one looks down at his phone.

Years ago I stayed in Paris,  carrying coins late at night to a pay phone, dropping them in the slot, hearing their clink clink as they fell, to talk to Sam on the other side of the world, far from me.  Talking or crying, always missing something–him, me; while he admonished:  Don’t cry.  You’re in Paris, to model, to do things.

A year later he comes to see me and we are flying through the streets on a motorbike, my arms wrapped around him, holding on, free.  We turn the corner and there I am on a billboard, someone else.  Sam stops the bike and we take a picture: me in my oversized black-and-yellow-bumble-bee jacket bought at a Paris flea market that I wore everywhere.  Behind me, another girl.

On the patio at the hostel, I clear away my dirty dishes; I want to leave things as I found them: calm and neat, waiting.

I want to say to the boys still silent at their table Enjoy your stay! but I don’t, removed from them by years or gender or experience.  It doesn’t matter.  I’m gone.

 

Young girls sit on front porches.  Early evening.  The whole world aglow.  Boys off somewhere, or else grope at them, unwanted.  11 or 12.

You are the morning on a summer day, skipping down the street with the sun; a small girl toddling after the pigeons, arms outstretched, hands opening and closing, grabbing for something she wants but doesn’t want.  A mother’s admonition: Don’t.  

Playing in Marquette Pool. 13.  Parading new on hot concrete.  A pool so packed with people the flash of blue an afterthought.  Here and gone.  Bodies glisten with oil or sunscreen hopping on pavement.  Skin.  Boys taking what is theirs, owning it, you.  Their words a kiss in the air melting: you are so pretty.

My mother used to say: Those are your privates–as if somehow you had control over what you did or what was done.

There are always things you keep to yourself.  You don’t want to see.