“…A Trip Takes Us.” May 21, 2013
Posted by Jen Pappas in B-Sides, Poems and Misc..Tags: book, journey, Steinbeck, travel, Travels with Charley
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“A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck
The other day, I finished reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley – In Search of America for the first time. I must admit, its left me itchy to travel again and slightly irritated that I have no pending travel plans. Hell, I’ve been married nine months and still haven’t taken a honeymoon. My passport is morose.
As I neared the end of the book, I realized something rather obvious – about reading and traveling. It’s not the immense beauty of Montana skylines and roadside diners that make me want to pack up and go, it’s the endless monologue that goes on in one’s head – that’s what I truly want. On a true journey, one can’t help but feel like a newborn baby, seeing the world and people and signage in archaic fonts for the first time. Everything is a miracle. Wonder, patience, confusion… you feel it all like so many refractions of conflicting light all day, every day. It’s exhausting, but it changes you. Indelibly.
Idle days. Chance conversations. Human connection. Heartbreaking interactions that have nothing to do with you – yet do. This is what Steinbeck’s book makes me yearn for. “I fear the disease is incurable.”
2012 in review December 30, 2012
Posted by Jen Pappas in Uncategorized.add a comment
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 11,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 18 years to get that many views.
The Kiss April 5, 2012
Posted by Jen Pappas in Costa Rica Posts, Poems and Misc..Tags: butterfly, Costa Rica
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from August 6, 2009 Journal Entry
Today after our run, we sat down on the lounge chairs by the pool to stretch and finish sweating. A yellow butterfly kept circling my shoulders as I stretched, finally landing on the back of my shirt – mistaking the bright emblem for a flower. It perched for a moment before flying away. I took the shirt off and handed it to Steve who bunched it up so only the flower-like logo was showing. We waited. After a moment, the butterfly again landed on what it took to be a flower. Slowly, Steve brought the shirt closer and closer to his face until he was nose-to-wing with the creature. I held my breath, watching as he bent ever closer, rubbing the tip of his nose against one yellow wing, giving it an eskimo kiss.
It was as intimate as writing a letter.
Ode to Rosario April 5, 2012
Posted by Jen Pappas in Poems and Misc., Rosario.Tags: Argentina, Rosario
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journal entry
Slices of Bogotá June 8, 2011
Posted by Jen Pappas in Bogota, Poems and Misc..Tags: Bogota, Colombia
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from December 19, 2009 Journal Entry
Bogotá smells delicious: fresh sliced pinapple and mango intermingle with grilled corn, hot coffee, melted cheese rellenas, and other unnameable foodstuffs wafting out of open doorways. The cobblestone streets even let off a cool, earthy smell unlike the sewer stench and general decay of any other big city in the world.
The air is thin. The clouds barely budge an inch until evening when the chill disperses their languor, revealing a calm, deep night. Teenagers gather in the plazoleta and narrow alleyways of Calle 2, sipping boxed wine out of colorful straws, laughing between blots of conversation. We pass by slowly, as if they’d ask us to join them if only they could decipher the childlike curiosity – the desire to belong on our faces in the dark.
Crowds shuffle slowly down Carrera 7, elbowing one another without malice to get a better look at the various goods laid out on the street’s parade of plastic tarps. Everywhere people are shouting their wares: “Tamales!” “Llamas!” “Fruta!” It’s a maddening collision of sight, sound, smell and incidental brushes with humanity. Which brings me back to my original point, Bogotá smells delicious.
Passing Time May 25, 2011
Posted by Jen Pappas in Poems and Misc..add a comment
As many long-term travelers know, there’s a lot of downtime on the road, and not just in train stations or on overnight buses. One can’t spend their entire day sight-stumbling, drinking and meeting people. As much as I’d like to challenge the notion, one can’t spend their whole day reading and writing either. So when we weren’t out exploring, people-watching or eating, Steve and I played a lot of games – namely Travel Scrabble and Cribbage. Those who know us well know that Steve has the obvious advantage when it comes to numbers, while I have the upper hand on words. From the day we left the United States in July to when we returned in mid-January, here are our final tallies for killing time.
Jen: 27 Steve: 24
Steve: 91 Jen: 67
Las Muralles May 19, 2011
Posted by Jen Pappas in Cartagena, Poems and Misc..add a comment
Once impenetrable,
once the cache of pilfered
jewels and money,
where the Spanish came
to bathe in gold ducats
and pull women’s hair.
Once the grand fortress,
once the unconquerable
treasure trove
of the 17th century.
Now anyone can scale your walls.
Cartagena,
even your name sounds romantic.
Who could blame the lights
or cobbled streets –
the balconies adorned in wild bougainvilleas
for drawing the tourists in droves?
Who could have foreseen
the thousands of people
who would pose by your cannons
and enter your dungeons
before ordering overpriced cocktails
on the cusp of your northern walls,
overlooking the sea?
Everywhere we see
the disappointing decay
of Calle Media Luna…
which we have come to learn
means
half moon
and other times, croissant.
Oh, how the walls must wail
some nights,
deep in their mortar.
For the splendor lost,
the secrets untold,
the magnificent duty…
How they must wail too
for all the facades
that have risen up instead,
silencing the past.
1/8/10
It Won’t Always be Like This April 18, 2011
Posted by Jen Pappas in Costa Rica Posts, Poems and Misc..Tags: Costa Rica, Tamarindo
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from August 9, 2009 Journal Entry
Part of me knows it won’t always be like this. Waking whenever we please, pulling out a book to read until we’re finally ready to get out of bed. Flipping channels on an old, 25-inch Sankey TV using a big toe because we can’t find the remote – stumbling across our favorite programs at odd times, in different languages.
We won’t always have the luxury of playing three consecutive games of cribbage during happy hour, waiting for the sun to set, smirking to one another about the underage American girls four seats over, ordering shots (with a chaser!) for themselves and strangers.
No, it won’t always be like this. Preparing a cocktail in our trusty blue water bottle to bring to you down at the beach in between surf sessions. Running errands in town before finishing another book underneath the horrifically loud ceiling fan. Shopping for cheap bags of rice and eggs for that evening’s dinner. Tickling our psuedo pet cat between the ears, dodging piles of trash on the road outside our condo complex. Where later you will return, shower, dress into a different pair of shorts and plop back onto the ramshackle sofa declaring, “What a hard day of work.”
It won’t always be like this but maybe somewhere down the line, something else – equally wonderful will step in and take its place so I can write about it. Just as I’ve done here.
Vicariously Living Through Ourselves April 8, 2011
Posted by Jen Pappas in Poems and Misc..add a comment
Woe. I look back on the time Steve and I spent in Latin America with longing. As with any place one spends extended time in, I’m lonely for the dusty towns, wide-eyed children, Spanish lilt and endless busrides. Simultaneously, strangely, it all feels very close and very far away. Yet, 14 months back in the States, and I’ve only just finished putting the photo albums together. We finally built and hung the photo collage we’d been imagining since we first started this blog, a daily trigger for vicariously living through ourselves.
Our hallway photo collage
Unfortunately, our bank accounts are still suffering from our spontaneous, impractical, one-hundred percent amazing trip, so the hallway must suffice for whatever wanderlust lingers. Which in my case, never really goes away, but is sated here and there every couple of years or so.
In lieu of having no new places to document, I’ve been going back and improving the existing blog: adding titles and tags, cleaning up categories, etc. It’s a poor substitute for actually digging in and exploring the world, but I know the next trip is never far away. Luckily, I have notebooks full of things we never published and never shared. Private moments, poems, drawings, conversations… So, until that next passport stamp or visa application, I give you the unreleased b-sides of our trip: the good, the bad, the strange, and the ugly. Enjoy.
The Fab Five February 22, 2010
Posted by Jen Pappas in Top 5.Tags: Argentina, Atacama Desert, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Chile, Cusco, Ilha de Santa Catarina, Peru, San Pedro de Atacama, Valparaiso
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We’ve been back in the United States just over four weeks now, and rare is the day that goes by without some sort of reference to the time we spent in Latin America. Luckily, this blog is a useful place to return to each time we start to murmur, “Remember when…?” We’ll continue to update this blog whenever we get the opportunity to travel, which judging from our bank accounts, won’t be for a awhile.
Until then, we give you a list of our top five destinations from the six months we spent in Central and South America. Big, rural, majestic, gritty… These are places that caught our attention, prolonged our stay and kept us wishing for a teleportation device.
We'd like to award an honorable mention to the city of Mendoza, Argentina. Although it didn't make our list, it was awful close and we'd return to wine country in a heartbeat. They also had the best looking girls there, but that really only benefits Steve.
Not a Vacation's Blog 