Owls and ladybugs...because they're lucky

Inglewood: Our nice little neighborhood in East Nashville

A door behind The Family Wash, a music venue in the area

Loretta's Bar or Nashville: Day Twelve

(names, including name of bar, have been changed. Except for Jonah, who took the above photo)

Well, I should actually say "Nashvulle" cause that's how all y'all say it down here. Anyhow, tonight took the cake in terms of gettin' to know the real music city. It all started around 6 pm which felt like around 2 cause see, we didn't wake up til about noon after staying up real late last night playing music-or pickin' and grinin' , I should say. So back to the story, well Jonah and I went out with his friend Jim who works with a woman, Sally and she frequents (3 nights this week) a little bar called Loretta's. Now, my first mistake was trying to find their website so we could get directions, cause see, they ain't got one. Well, anyway, we found our way over there after almost runnin' right into the river. I missed the turn-off but we got there all right and let me tell ya, this AINT a place you just walk into-I mean you got to have a membership or something for this place. It was the real deal-Now, it wasn't an underground bar or even spectacular to look at or nothin', but the folks in this place, well, let's just say they been there a while and they weren't quite ready to accept anyone who wasn't their own kind.

Luckily, we had an in-Jims friend Sally-who, as far as I can tell, survives off a diet of Bud Light, Menthol Pall Mall lights and shakes of salt that she licks of her hand every 10-15 minutes or so. Don't know what the salts was there for anyway-it aint for no tequila shots-I didn't see nothin' but Bud Light buckets floatin' round that place. Well anyway, Sally was real nice and she sat with us in between pool games-told me about the old days when Protestants married Protestants and Catholics married Catholics-and about how 'blacks' had to sit at the back of the bus, cause thats just the way they liked it, or so "Big-Mama" (her grandmother) said. But now things are a little bit more relaxed though not too much time went by before I heard every kind of racial joke in the book-well, that didn't stop us from talking religion at least-and about ex-wives [not mine] and drinkin' too much. There were some nice people there though-I just wish I could tell ya what half of 'em said, but truth is, I ain't got no idea. Now, I can read lips pretty well, but some kinds of accents and the lack of teeth coupled with a drunken slur and a jukebox playin' in the background-well, i didn't hear much of what come out of their mouths.

It was fun though till the second bucket of beer-by that time the air was so thick with smoke, you couldn't just cut it with a knife, you couldn't even see quite across the room-cause see they ain't got any ventilation in the place, so just sometimes they crack the door open (which thankfully was near us) but it was pretty darn cold and rainy out tonight. Supposed to be warmer by Monday, but anyway, didn't stop me from lookin' for the bathroom which I had been warned about-between avoiding contact with any surface and holding the door that didn't have no lock on it-well, it was alright-just the sign above the toilet said, "If theres no toilet paper, look in here [arrow pointed towards mirror/medicine cabinet] Thanks! mgmt " Underneath someone wrote "If there aint any, am I supposed to wipe my ass with my face" Which underneath that someone wrote "If you can, you go girl!"

So with relief that no one had walked in on me, and relief from relieving myself after a quarter a bucket of beer, I made my way back to our little table in the corner and my new friends, set my beer on the corner table/cardboard box covered in old coasters, packaged party lights, and a moldy gourd sittin' in a plastic dish.

Truth is, the people there, they was like a family and look at me here talkin' just like 'em-well, it's kind of charming and they are good people, even if half of 'em carry guns and only like white people. I am happy to see a side of Nashvulle that not everyone sees, specially us Northerners.

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, TN - down the st. from Sun Records (photo by Jonah)

Inside the front office (above, below) at Sun Records where Elvis first recorded

Beale St. - pedestrian-only block where drinking in the st. is A-o.k.

Painted window at Huey's Burgers

Near Parking Lot and Hotel (not ours)

Graceland Museum

The Lorraine Motel/Civil Rights Museum (above), across the st. (below)

On the way home to Nashville, Interstate 40

I'm tightly holding onto the smells and the clothes. My scarves, bangles and hair oil. I avoid eye contact with men and stay closely to those with whom I walk. I am an American but in so many ways I felt and wished that I was Indian. Landing in Mumbai was perhaps the most exciting moment of my life-once I started to breathe again after the flight attendants fumigated the plane with pesticides. Walking through the airport-seriously outdated, that sort of linoleum green that flooded middle schools across the country-our country, the U.S. which would have created a much easier system for navigating not only the airport and the missing luggage, but streets with no street signs, the traffic crossings with no lights, no stop signs or rear view mirrors for that matter. It would have been illegal here to allow cows to roam through city streets-social workers would be out collecting the children that sleep on those same streets when the cows retire and the stray dogs come out to play. The air was thick on that first night and I was in India.

Three weeks later, I've gotten used to the game. I know how to avoid the scam-complete avoidance-ignoring any person, voice or hand that taps you on the shoulder-any Indian who approaches you is not just trying to be nice-everyone stares-everyone-and then there are the real people who don't want anything just because I am white.

And I don't want to give up-I want to hate it so bad that I love it-because that feels so real. How sad to me that I have never experienced this before. To fight for space and work for food. To rub the layer of accumulated dirt off the arms that amazingly never got a sunburn-because it's winter-and it's still 80 degrees. The train gently rocking me to sleep-my first chai on the streets- a Bollywood star named Katrina, who I apparently bear a resemblance to (not that I'm complaining)- and the girl on the bus to Agra who asked me for a pen and when I gave it to her, thanked me and made it her own. The Taj Mahal, which despite my ability to have low expectations for architechtural feats, completely blew me away-as I stood barefoot at dawn with less than a hundred people and very very few tourists. It was the food and disregard for utensils-the liter bottles of water covered in dust selling for the equivalent of 20 cents. The drivers who used their own bodies to pedal you through the streets, willing to wait until you came out of the movies or dinner to take you home to the hotel where they only turn the hot water on from 8 to 12 and 5 to 8.

Where there is a wedding every night and where that means a white horse and trails of marigolds and a parade through the streets with 4 foot tall flourescent bulbs and a personal power generator. The craziness-the open space where someone had been, will be, or has lived their entire lives-the water with no dissolvable oxygen that houses dolphins while being fed a constant flow of the departed.

Being thankful for what you have because poverty is all around. Karma and the pursuit to change it-avoid being born again and again-marketing spirituality and putting red powder on my forehead with bits of rice while I am handed a coconut. "A coconut?" I ask, confused, reciting words that I think are Hindi, but cannot ask in English, except to say, "Donation? Sorry, I don't think I agreed to this. I'm not even a practicing Catholic, let alone a Hindu."

Dead puppies, piglets, fires in garbage pits, motor cycles, the flies, head bobbles, betel nut. English beer and liquor stores. Chapati. Madam, Sir. Nearly dying every day in traffic that defies all laws I once learned in a manual. No problem.

-"Where from?"
-"America"
-"Ah, the U.S. Very good country."
-"Yeah"
-"Mmm. Obama. Very good."

near the 'Gateway to India' in Mumbai

Churchgate Train Station, Mumbai

On the road to Varanasi

The Ganges River at dawn, Varanasi

A goat on the steps of Jama Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri

A dusty cafe in Fatehpur Sikri

The lovely girl who skillfully acquired my pen-but will surely need it for school

The Taj Mahal, so striking in person

My wonderful travel companion, my Mom

And my travel savvy brother, Nick

My last night in Mumbai, Chowpatty Beach a human-powered ferris wheel

. . .