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

. . .

Wait, wait...I don't want to see anything I like because this is real. Everything is a complete illusion. Pink Floyd is a f-ing sellout, something I never thought possible. Everyone is looking for something and it's all meaningless. This blog is f-ing nothing-it's a speedbump-not even a speedbump in the flow of things...Everyone and everything is so sad I can't even believe it-why why why do we all buy into it??? I have no idea? I will likely die with no explanation to this phenomenon and that is the sad reality of life-that I am a westerner with too much opportunity plagued by the same reality as a non-westerner struggling to survive with a single reality. That/this is the tragedy-not that we can't reconnect, connect, establish ourselves...this world is destined to die and we will die along with it. That is the reality. I can already hear people saying "Oh , Ashley is depressed, someone help her..." Well, this is help-this is truth. There is no help. We are all "depressed" and we might as well fess up to it! There! I did it! In my tiny corner of the internet which is the only reality (seemingly)-I admit that the world is an illusion and I want nothing to do with it! Ahhh, I feel better already...

I wonder if in 2009, Barack Obama will be added to the proper names in predictive text of cell phones....

Processing return from Maine... Here are a few pictures of the trip:




A hotel on Rt. 9 between Calais and Bangor.




A small convenience store that sells ice, bait and mountain dew.



A blueberry factory-now owned by Wyman's (their logo is in the distance)

...so obviously it was snowy, but nice. Seemed much more desolate than other visits. Maybe that's just the dead of winter and the loneliness of the holidays...

At the airport...

Maine. Trying to keep up with the rest of the country, but still using scotch tape when it should be using glue.

yow-zaa! Now, there's an idea.



(source)

There is something that is strangely intimate about the 4-way stops here in Evanston.
Like seeing grown men eat.
Vulnerable and cautious.
Drivers communicate on an instinctual level, following an unwritten code.
And the right decisions are made.

If sidewalks were runways, I still wouldn't like this look

To veer away from more serious conversations, such as "will I be killed by a bomb in India in February?" I'd like to focus on seasonal fashion. Notably, the ski mask. I hadn't thought about the ski mask as anything more than something runners must wear during early morning jogs and of course a necessary accoutrement for any serious snowmobiler. But I have to draw the line at walking down city streets with this almost overly functional piece of winter gear.

Then I thought, "Hey if it's warm, who cares if it frightens me (and small children)?" Why can't we be comfortable and warm no matter what it looks like? My first thought to dispute my attempt at being diplomatic: high heels. I'll be the first to admit that the reason I don't own any high heels is because I can't walk in them, not because I don't like them. But they are the perfect example of how a small amount of pain is necessary to fit into social ideals of beauty, at least in this country. Maybe the rules are different once we're out of the office and onto the streets, but I still feel that the slight sting of cold air on a bare face is a small price to pay, not just for being presentable, but for not being scary.

Though I found a few acceptable forms of ski masks, this one is just plain scary, but also hilarious.



Photo credit: http://swapatorium.blogspot.com/2004/12/ski-masks.html

A slight kink in the plans

So here's the thing about going to Mumbai: It just got bombed. No, that's inaccurate. It's hotels, tourist destinations and train stations were taken over by terrorists who are targeting Westerners. There that's better. Except that for me it's not. At all.

My first response was to play the whole thing down. Like, "O.k., this type of thing happens all the time right? Isn't there an unspoken rule about things happening twice in the same spot?" These delusional statements were followed by anger that I'd let fear get in the way of taking an awesome trip. This was followed by more anger about spending and perhaps losing money because of terrorists. Later came sadness about the people whose lives were lost and a solid commitment not to lose my own.

It's not just about taking a trip. I mean, I had no assumptions about what I might learn from traveling to India. In signature form, I was naive about the implications of traveling to a developing country as an American. Sure, I heard that I would see extreme poverty, and I knew that religion was treated very differently, but I guess my own respect and admiration for other cultures clouded the fact that not everyone thinks like me. Some, not even close, as evidenced by recent events.

So, the task at hand for me is to weigh my options. Am I willing to risk being held hostage to prove that I'm not afraid... After September 11th, everyone was saying, "We can't let the terrorists win! Do not be afraid!" Of course, George Bush said to go shopping, but what I saw was increased discrimination in this country of Middle Eastern people. Should Americans stop going to India and countries where the U.S. is not held in high regard? Maybe we should all just go back to our own respective countries, vow to immerse ourselves exclusively in our own cultures and just call it a day.

Maybe it's because of the internet (or the million other reasons), but I would say that's likely never ever to happen. Not even close. There will always be extremists in every nation, culture, and representing every view point who wish the whole world, except for their own, would go away. I think it comes from fear-fear of assimilation, discrimination, and persecution-not to mention the belief that compromise would result in an eternity in hell.

That aside, I don't want to live in fear. I also don't want to die. So, it's sort of a toss-up at the moment. We'll see what happens....I'm open to suggestions.

Procrastination has gotten the better of me

I am a runaway blogger as of late. But I've been thinking...
1. That I'm tired of shows like 90210 featuring "high school students" that are actually in their early twenties celebrating their 16th birthday.
2. That I want 3 and 5 year olds, especially the ones I care for, to act like adults, except cuter.
3. That I'm considering giving box hair dyes another try...
4. After years of thinking that they would make good companions, turns out I really don't like squirrels.
5. That I can't believe I bought a ticket to India!