Musings on Resilience

There is a ginkgo tree in my direct line of sight, taking up a fourth of the window pane, bristling at the tips against a moody, stagnant sky. The leaves don't sway gracefully in the breeze but rather quiver repeatedly in the same pattern, as if the tree isn't a natural organism but rather a manual mechanism built of tiny parts like a children's mobile.

I've abandoned this space for a long time and so much has changed since I last made an entry. I have chapters sitting in drafts that I left prematurely, perhaps lacking the confidence that what poured from my mind to the pen (or in this case, keyboard) was anything worth reading and thus anything worth sharing.

In 10 months I am getting married. Actually, I'm already married in the most wrote, legal sense of the word, choosing to leverage an institution and its systematically enshrined privileges to take the steps to secure my own happiness. This was a choice made, an application completed, a check signed, a manila envelope mailed into a bureaucratic abyss so expansive and so consuming, one feels that the gravity grounding one's life to beginnings and ends and the plans that span between simply dissipates into nothingness, leaving only a sense of untethered purgatory.

In the end it took eight months to reach the goal (a green card). And I think only now am I feeling the residual trauma of that untethered eight month sentence. The whole experience has me now meditating on the idea of resilience and what it means in this world of unrepentant weariness. How somehow at the same time, the forces of evil that seem to gain only more and more power day by day show marked resilience in their ability to withstand the most ardent and public criticism. Yet also the forces of resistance, both organized and microcosmic are still further resilient, standing firm at the gates of a universe of ideals that are worth protecting and fighting for. Is resilience inherent? It is built? Is it practiced, as mindfulness is? I am currently reading Toni Morrison's The Source of Self Regard and in one of her essays, remarks of the remarkable resilience of the artist/writer/journalist. Though I believe she was writing at a time that is not our own - perhaps ten or twenty years ago, there is a real contemporary resonance here. Perhaps there's something about committing one's life to an artistic pursuit that engenders resilience; after all, an average artist's life is filled with more criticism than praise, more failure than success. And this is maybe why resilience becomes a practice for them because it is necessary. Maybe there are other contexts that are conducive towards building resilience.

When we travelled to the USCIS processing center in Virginia for our interview, I thought about this practice as I observed all the other people in the waiting room. Elderly people, perhaps grandparents of citizens waiting alone or with their families. Students, perhaps attempting to renew their visas or hoping to change their status from student to employee. A few attorneys here and there. Couples like us. Whole families from aunts and uncles to children, the latter more engrossed by coloring books or iPads that had been brought along to distract from the numbing boredom of the waiting room. Because after waiting months for your summons, even when you arrive to the scene of your summons, what awaits you is...more waiting. This orderly scene seemed converse set against the backdrop of news reports and witness accounts of terror at America's southern border. But there was a quiet and insidious sense of similarity between one and the other; the indignity felt by the applicant. One needs to have built and practiced a strong sense of resilience to weather this kind of indignity.

Resilience to me seems different from its sisters, such as strength, or tenacity. I can't quite put my finger on why, though it may have something to do with the peacefulness of it. I am thinking of the dearest people in my life who I've observed exhibiting what I think is verified resilience and it appears meditative, almost routine. Making constancy out of the absurd, building consistency and respect out of the demeaning. I recently heard a radio story about a Dutch designer who uses air pollution to create synthetic diamonds. He built a tool, a vacuum of sorts, that in the process of sucking up the polluted smog to refine for the stone, also filters the air, separating dirty particles from fresh ones and re-releasing the clean and breathable air into the world. Perhaps that is what everyday resilience is - acknowledging and filtering evil and in the process creating something pure and essential.

As the days pass, I find myself clinging more and more to what little clean air I and my community can muster. I can only hope that we can collectively provide enough for all the lungs yearning to breathe clear air.

Solar Eclipse
Diane Glancy
Cherokee poet, author, playwright, professor

"Each morning
I wake invisible.

I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
life spine onto my thighs

I put on my rib and collarbone.

I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.

I almost know what it is to be seen.

My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.

My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.

All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin

I put on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.

My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.

Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.

I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.

I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance"

Life's Dialogue: Replete with Precious Pauses

Last year, around this time, if you had told me that I would be hopping across the Atlantic on a sweet sojourn to the UK, I not only would not have believed you, I probably would have laughed in your face.

Many things have materialized in the past months, a number of them weighty and determining for the future. In retrospect, perhaps the gravity of all that has transpired since I last wrote here is the best explanation for my (hypothetical) rebuke to the suggestion that I would be doing any traveling - and that too traveling for fun. But alas, life twists itself into unexpected forms in unexpected ways, shaping up eventually to send me all the way to England.

My dearest is studying for the year at Oxford, where we spent some blissful days together exploring uncharted streets and hidden corners, new cafes and old libraries. Oxford, is of course, home to the legendary and ancient university with its 38 constituent colleges, each an academic artifact in its own right. But strolling the city, it is quite difficult to tell where exactly the school ends and the town begins. The two are so intricately woven together, physically, but also intangibly. Colleges are flanked on either side by curiosity shops and coffeehouses - and flowing through, transcending these scholarly spaces and cityscapes, are so many people, and different people that too, from all walks of life representing a distinct creeds and heritages, hailing from all corners of the world. It is impossible to tell, at least from my perspective, who is a student and who isn't. But everyone puttering around town puttered with a unifying air about them, a dedication to learning that cannot be measured, only felt.

The stalwart landmarks of the school are indeed just as beautiful as in pictures, inspiring a quiet kind of awe. The Bodleian Library, famed cathedrals, gated colleges and lush quadrangles, the Radcliffe Camera. Their witnessed beauty is only enhanced by the realization that they've been around for literally hundreds of years. You would think that a place so old would sag from the weight of its history and responsibility of its legacy. But this is strangely not the case. There is incredible vitality here, perhaps due to the inhabitants of the city and school, as well as these inhabitants' quest for knowledge, their contemporary academic purpose. The vitality cohabits with antiquity, doing so in a way that produces a distinct kind of synthesis, that itself permeates through the old walls, perking up the stones, alighting along the cracks and withers of each building, edifice, and street path. Spirited, yet stately. This paradoxical temperament hovers over the city, casting a mysteriously seductive glow to every interaction. The old and new are woven together by the tenuous but hearty string of a common pursuit of education. Of course this could be a broad generalization based on my limited exposure. But it seems like this would be a difficult place to exist if one did not have that desire. The school has subsumed the city - one does not exist apart from the other. How has this pursuit remained so strong throughout thousands of years - strong enough to keep centuries old palaces of learning operating? I think, perhaps, that humanity must require education to survive, not just in a tangible sense, but a spiritual one. The passage of knowledge sustains, in us, a feeling of purpose - of meaning. And perhaps most importantly an acceptance of our own mortality. It provides sustenance for the soul in a world that sometimes feels intent on starving us. And this is comforting, if not liberating.

Oxford is a tad confounding for reasons I've been trying to articulate since I arrived. In some ways, it feels like a large city artfully stuffed, almost crammed, into a small town - bursting at the edges. It is tough to wander around for less than five minutes without encountering a sense of urgency, embodied best by the plethora of speeding cyclists whipping around and through lollygagging pedestrians, automobiles, and buses. Also indicative: a lack of free tables in any cafe, people and their jovial laughter spilling out onto the streets, very few inches of sidewalk left untrampled anywhere you go. But it is also difficult to meander about without sighing in delight at the sheer grandeur of the place - of something that not only still stands, but still functions. For example, I'm writing this in a third-floor cafe, leeching of the free wifi. One turn around to the window and across the street is the old library itself, a monolith, complete with gargoyles and parapets, its expansive form taking up the entire window's panorama. This is probably the tenth time I've seen it, the last four were unremarkable, but this time, I gave pause in contemplative appreciation. Such is the alluring ubiquity of history: after a while it loses novelty but can mysteriously win it all back at just the right moment, in a second.

The act of giving pause is a concept I have been thinking about more and more recently. It's true, I am the kind of traveller, the kind of explorer that needs to see everything there is to see. I like to make an agenda, get up and go, deriving a sweet satisfaction from ticking things off my to-do list as I do them. But walking through the Oxford Botanical Garden, arm in arm with my sweetheart, our stroll together eclipsed any to-do list I had stored in the cavities of my brain, each open box awaiting a check mark dissipating into the cold Oxford air. In truth, nothing was actually blooming to see (it was too cold). But it didn't matter. Giving pause to revel in a beloved's company, the simplicity of being in love under the soft gleam of wintery sunlight, such are the moments that propel meaning to our existence. One can feel almost an incandescent happiness in such pauses.

And so we sought out these pauses, not directly per say, but we certainly abandoned the agenda. We ambled through the Gloucester Green market where I rejected a taste of famous dumplings to much consternation. We wiled away hours in a board-game cafe where you pay to play, rather than consume. We snuck into closed colleges to marvel at the architecture and ambience (and sometimes, the sheer pompousness). We turned into alleys just for kicks and rummaged through every bookstore we happened upon. We drank a lot of coffee. I tasted the most divine Turkish delight I've had the fortune to try at the oldest coffeehouse in England, Queen's Lane. Strongly rose-flavored, for those who are curious. We lost ourselves in deep conversation over elderflower cocktails. Marched our way through museums, from art to natural history. We caught a play (Sense and Sensibility). We just walked. For hours, through serene neighborhoods and along the river and in the Christ Church meadows.

We were together. And that, maybe, was the most precious experience of all.

Through Your Eyes

Discovery is a wonderful thing. Rediscovery is a wondrous thing, I think because with redisocvery, there is this underlying sense of poignancy - a sweet reminder that you that you've found something you once lost.

I have been away from this space for a while, partly because I feel like I haven't been engaging in anything particularly interesting - or rather interesting enough to share here. But a sense of rediscovery has underlain the days leading up to this (these) moment(s), the moment I remembered the password to my blog account, the moment I logged in and opened a fresh post, the moment I rediscovered this space.

So where have I been? At home. And let me tell you, until this point I had operated under the assumption that a travel blog was alive as long as you were not at home - once you returned, it kind of passed away silently and recessively, slipping into the darkened caverns of the internet and the shadowy crooks of your own mind.

Hence, when I say that rediscovery has been quite a theme of my recent existence, I mean it has really become the lens with which I am seeing everything, like a permanent pair of rose-colored glasses have hijacked my standard pair. This rediscovery is happening in two main ways: seeing parts of the familiar world that I hadn't bothered to investigate before, and seeing all of the familiar world through another person's eyes. It is with these vantage points that I am documenting my home city, with these vantage points that I have returned to the "travel" space.

I'm rebranding.

First, and I know this drips of Pinterest-cliche-Hallmark wisdom, I've internalized the idea that life is an adventure itself that we are traveling through - and deserves to be met and described with the same amount of wonder as any new destination. So I'm resurrecting this space with that sense of optimism, about my city, my home, my life. None of these things is quite new, but I remember discussing the readjustment, the kaleidoscope of viewpoint that allows a fresh take on the familiar.

Once given the option to go around Chicago à la a fresh, Windy City tourist, I immediately took it. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I went through a phase where the city itself stopped being interesting. Seeing it became a chore, relegated to the rare times when family or friends visited from out of town and wanted to take in the sights. I always opted to stay home when trips downtown were planned. There could be nothing enthralling about a bunch of buildings and museums I'd seen a million times. And lakes don't really change much throughout the years, so it's not like that was a selling point.

Now though, I'm at a point in my life where I may be soon leaving Chicago and the greater area - and I don't know if I'll come back any time soon. With the fire of this urgency and the chance to show a Chicago virgin around, I embarked on a newly familiar journey.

In travel circles, people often bemoan the "tourist traps," the big, old landmarks and cultural centers teeming with out-of-towners. I was (am) one of them. But in all honesty, these sights are tried and true, and together form the fulcrum of any city, either withstanding the test of time and remaining relevant, or integrating themselves seamlessly into the pattern of city life. There is most certainly a beauty in that. Millennium Park is as functional as it is pretty, bustling with both strangers and natives dropping in for a free concert or to take a selfie in the reflective surface of the Bean. The Art Institute is a world-class museum that houses its own share of masterpieces, even a whole gallery dedicated to Monet, and yet maintains an aura of individualized art appreciation. Never will you fight someone else to catch a five-second glimpse of a painting or sculpture. The ritual of slow, conscious starting and reflection is still very much alive. For many visitors, it's the rare opportunity to see a favorite composition in the flesh for the first time.

Across the way from the museum is a gorgeous, blooming prairie garden filled with walkthroughs and pools to dip your feet in. The juxtaposition of the imposing Chicago skyline, with its buildings scraping the clouds, against the soft, billowing loveliness of prairie grasses and flowers is one to almost bring you to tears. Yes, that sounds dramatic. But think about it, we live in a world where this is possible, where we almost inhabit the sky, but can still lie in the grass and listen to the earth's cooing breeze.

Through all of this touristing, I realized something important about traveling - and perhaps also about existing. It doesn't really matter if you're seeing something for the first or fiftieth time. Who is with you, how you choose to inhabit the place together, what you share, these are the moments in time that make up experiences and add to them the lasting quality that makes them memories.

And that is the philosophy behind my new brand.

The World is my Backyard

One of my favorite shows when I was growing up (actually still one of my favorite shows thanks to the entire series now on Netflix), is Gilmore Girls. One of the early running gags of the show was lead protagonist Rory Gilmore's penchant for world travel. A frequently highlighted dream destination was the city of Fez - and when she casually mentions this to her grandfather, all his gifts from then on are envelopes of cash intended for her "Fez Fund."

Such is the ubiquitous, pervasive allure of one of the oldest cities in the entire world. I could list all of the solitary tidbits that distinguish it so singularly, make it so emblematic of any visit to Morocco. "Mecca of the West," "Athens of Africa," "largest car-free urban area in the world," "site of the oldest continuously functioning madrasa (Islamic school) in the world," "site of the oldest continually operating university in the world,"  and so on and so forth. It is a historic, culturally rich metropolis, but also a bold statement on the endurance of the manmade against the relentless passage of time.

If you'll remember in a previous post, I spoke briefly about my man Moulay Idris I, the first real "king" of Morocco. After establishing a small namesake town in the mountains, converting and rousing enough support from the numerous Amazigh tribes in the area, Idris I was elected their leader and founded Fes as his capital in 789. The city grew immensely after the Arab expulsion from Cordoba in 817 and in the 781 years of Catholic Reconquista that followed, as Muslim refugees from Andalusia in Spain poured into the Maghreb and settled in Fes. It changed hands multiple times, from family to family, dynasty to dynasty, each sultanate overseeing expansions and suffering destruction of the city's walls and fortifications. Under the Malvoravids and the Marinids however, Fes entered its golden age of both cultural and economic development. It became an important center of trade between Ottoman merchants in the east and the Portuguese and Spanish on the North African Barbary Coast. It built a reputation for Maliki legal scholarship and jurisprudence, flowering in its multicultural and interfaith heritage. Fes was also the capital of Morocco until 1925, when it was replaced by Rabat.

As it is winter in Morocco, our constant companion is rain. Fes was no different. It sits between two mountain ranges, the Rif and the Atlas. The medina itself is sunken deep in the valley, and exploring the massive old city was like descending into a dark, cavernous, labyrinth, especially with the cloudiness of the day darkening what little light we did have. The networks of secret passageways had me almost convinced that I would run into members of a secret revolutionary society passing clandestine messages through the narrow, streets. But then at times we would pass a neighborhood barber shop, alight with masculine laughter, hidden only by a curtain. Or hear that always familiar Meditel ad jingle from a not so distant television, hidden away in some dwelling. Or suddenly run into a schoolgirl emerge from the door of her house - a door we had no idea was even there. The idea that the medina was inhabited by conspiring revolutionaries melted away, replaced by the realization that it is itself a large, primarily residential town, with its own ecosystem of shops and schools and cafes. And unlike the other, more contained of Marrakech and Rabat, Fes's medina has separate communities within its walls - the mellah, a historically Jewish quarter, an Andalusian neighborhood separated from the Arab neighborhood by a river, all artifacts hearkening of Fes's multicultural and multiethnic past.

There is evidence like this everywhere, the oldest operating madrasa, the Bou Inania Madarasa, in the world is casually tucked away on a bustling shopping avenue - if you didn't know where to turn, you'd miss it. A guide is a necessity to navigate through all these living, breathing, relics. Similarly hidden in plain sight are the stairs to the famed leather tanneries of Fes - the sight that covers all the guidebooks and travel magazines advertising Fes. Climbing up three narrow flights of steep stairs, you're greeted by men with bunches of mint for your nose to mask the pungent odor of the dye and leather.

This is symptomatic of Morocco, the seamlessness of historical relic and modern, daily life. We encountered a similar fluidity in Marrakech, but of a less appealing variety. Perhaps because unlike Marrakech, almost all of Fes seems untouched, while its modernization seems organic, happening and yet leaving the history undisturbed. I actually loved Fes, a lot. After Rabat, it may just be my favorite city in all of Morocco. The craftwork capital of the country, it boasts of artisans of all kinds - weavers, metalworkers, and of course leatherworkers. Fes, to me, has everything one would want in a home - a fashionable ville nouvelle, or new city, with shopping malls and cafes. It is a cultural hub and positively dripping with legacy as an ancient capital. And it is stunning, particularly from the geographic vantage point of the forts overlooking the valley from the north and south.

I travelled to Fes with my family, which really was a completely different dynamic in relation to how I was used to exploring Morocco. A luxurious lifestyle of riad living, constant and reliable shower pressure, driving in a car, these were all things afforded to me by my family's presence. I'm quite lucky to have experienced Morocco in such a myriad of ways. Once again I was reevaluating my privilege and all the ways in which it is expressed and plays out.

Full disclosure, I am actually in the United States. I've been home for almost a week now, so these posts are coming from a place of distance and reflection. I wonder if that will change my quality or tone, whether imperceptibly or obviously. I'm also currently mulling over the question of whether to continue this blog once my travels (and reflections of said travels) are complete.

For now, Merry Christmas Eve, from North Africa and Naperville.

Midnight (4:00) at the Oasis (Volubilis)

I am queen. I am queen of the medina, queen of the travelogue, queen of the independent study.

Okay maybe not. But I sure feel like it. After a few days of living alone in Rabat, a weekend in Marrakech on our own, a few days of showing around my family, I am pretty impressed with myself.

So let's track back a little and chronicle my Moroccan caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation from day one.

We moved out of our home-stay into our apartment on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. The apartment is a little ways from the medina in a quiet residential neighborhood called Les Orangers. It was a fabulous little traditional house with a salon that seemed to stretch back into a black hole it was so large, a kitchen with probably every pan, pot, and utility you could dream of using, and of a shower chamber. This was really one of the main selling points for us, the fact that you could easily fit ten people in the shower chamber that had it's own little hobbit door in a corner of the house. The five nights we were there feel like a blur now, early mornings with makeshift cereal and milk (dry cereal with yogurt), days spent researching in the medina, running to the vegetable man down the street to pick up a whole meal's worth of vegetables for just fourteen dirham (less than two dollars!). We came up with innovative ways to cook things - plates as cutting boards, strainers as steamers, and burned the tips of our fingers each time we had to light the gas stove with the lighter. And of course sitting together working on our ISPs with only the plucking of our fingers on keyboards and the interesting musical accompaniment of the man who lived upstairs and his stereo.

I went to Marrakech for the second time (and will be going for the third this Friday). The visit was characteristically different from the last time I bestowed the Red City with my illustrious presence, proving to me that Marrakech is a truly a city with which you can make much of depending on what kind of time you'd like to have. If you'd like memories defined by how much you learned and the historical beauty of the city, you can do that. If you'd like to be pampered, sit by the pool, and wine and dine, you can do that. If you'd like to remember nothing about the nights you spent in Marrakech, only know that they happened and were awesome, you can do that too. Oh Marrakech, you sly dog. When I leave Morocco, I will have spent collectively almost a week there. But it feels like I've flitted just barely in and out of it like a shy kid who thinks the pool is too cold and only dips in toes before running back.

Almost a full day in Marrakech was spent on the terrace of our hostel as we worked on our papers with only the long, aggressive (unique to Marrakech!) call to prayer accompanying us. I've mentioned time and time again on this blog that the call to prayer is my favorite sound in the world. But let me be more specific - Rabat's call to prayer is my favorite sound in the world. As I've toured Morocco, it's become clearer and clearer to me that the call to prayer of each city really reflects its personality. By clearer, I mean this is something I've conjured up in my own head and really think is worth sharing. Rabat's is calm, soothing, content with itself. Marrakech's is aggressive and chaotic - all the mosques are singing different parts of the prayer at the same time.

Driving through through Meknes on the way to Fez gave me a serious case of deja vu to our southern excursion. The same expanses of olive groves, rocky mountainsides, with the Rif range one side and the Middle Atlas on the other.

We had a program director at the CCCL who was from Meknes, and as an addendum when he was introducing himself, would always say that it was the best city in all of Morocco. Even now, after visiting Meknes, dining in Meknes, passing through on the train twice, I still can't decide whether I like it or not. Meknes is the marriage between the urban noise and the hinterlands, kind of like an oversize small town that doesn't really boast of it's history at all as the imperial capital of Moulay Idriss, first Muslim king of Morocco.

I heard a lot about Moulay Idriss and his dynasty between Meknes and Volubilis. For example how he trekked across North Africa from the Arabian peninsula as an agent for the kings there to access new territories, but ended up assuming kingship in his own right. Essentially our good man Idriss I was pretty much responsible for the early Islamization of Morocco. Grandson of Prophet Mohammed, Idriss arrived first in the old Roman city of Volubilis (at this point abandoned). He founded his namesake town nearby in the mountains and proceeded to win the support of neighboring Amazigh tribes, who converted to Islam and eventually voted him as their leader. He founded the city of Fes soon after.

Volubilis (Latin)

n. morning glory*

وليلي‎ - Walīlī (Arabic)
n. morning glory*

*the actual latin root word volubilis apparently means "mutable," however this is not what our friendly guide told us and I rather like the idea of a bustling, proud Roman outpost in North Africa being named after a flower.

Like most Roman ruins, the old city of Volubilis was pretty...crumbly. But crumbly in a really impressive way, a very artistic crumbly that is a mere suggestion of the grandeur these structures were in their time, of the heights they reached with ease and the wealth they both supported and boasted of. In 25 BCE, King Juba II of Numidia and his wife, Cleopatra Selene II (daughter of Cleopatra I and Marc Antony) set to developing the city as a royal capital, which it was for almost 200 years. But then it was abandoned after falling to surrounding Amazigh tribes and remained half inhabited for the next 700 years. 

Walking through thousand(s) year-old ruins really gets you thinking about the passage of time. How empires have risen and fallen, how invincible and unmutable the great civilizations are until they're so unceremoniously destroyed in the name of religion, love, human ego, take your pick. The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Mughals, the Romans, just a small selection of ancient empires who did their fair share of vile, yet also innovative, enough things to constitute a large part of our history books. And all victims of humanity's greed for its own glorification whether it be military, architectural, or spiritual. 

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid."

-Frederick Buechner

Yes, I think that about says it all.