Scrapbook

for a contest about travel -- i spent ten years bouncing around europe and it's still an adjustment sometimes

 

     I remember little things from each place, not neatly ordered or filed away with months and dates or times and places, but like a scrapbook kaleidoscope that twists and turns in my mind. Over the years it hasn't faded in its intensity, just become less predictable. The slightest thing can trigger a full on assault of my senses. Usually when I appear faraway, I am.

     I might glance at a bowl of fruit sitting on the counter and suddenly there is a laughing sunlit memory of prickly pear juice dripping down my chin in Corfu. Sunburns and barefeet, wind tangled hair, bitter olives, the constant stink of backed up sewage, and the sound of cowbells chiming in the breeze. Or someone jostles me on the street and I am transported back to a hurried grey day in London with dark coats and drizzling rain, pink-appled cheeks and scattered cherry blossoms falling on wet pavement. A sense of importance that comes soley from the fact that I'm tromping along through places that I have only read about in history books.

      Italy revisits me on humid, moony nights when my hair begins to curl around my neck and I am eighteen again, hanging off the side of the Ponte Vecchio and utterly confident that life will always be so free. Licking melting gelato, gabbing fearlessly in broken Italian, and sitting on cobbled stones outside nightclubs, painting henna tattoos on the beautiful, sweaty youths that drape themselves carelessly across the streets.

     A red morning sun places me on an island ferry with gritty eyes and mosquito bitten limbs, and fireworks over the ocean take me back to meditteranean rooftops and months of glorious wine drunkenness that is long before the realities of hangovers kick in. The smell of clove cigarettes return me to a cafe garden in Amsterdam, my legs swinging to the rythym of a toothless street-busquer playing an out of tune guitar.

     Ireland creeps in on curling mists, or the condensation on a window pane. Or sometimes even just in a particular shade of green. Peat smoke laced with laughter, feeding peanuts to sparrows, crumbling castle ruins, twisted hawthorne trees, wild garlic, rolling cigarettes one handed in the wind, and tattered jeans with puddle wet hems. And then the pungent smell of stale beer and vomit, and the debunking of all of my old childhood fairytale mythologies.

     The reflection of lights over dark waters brings me back to Lyonne, and so does the combination of crisp apples, infatuation, and cheese. Churchbells tolling or the scent of old books or curry sauce, and I am in Oxford trying to blend in with the heaps of intellectuals by wearing glasses that constantly fog up in the chilly air. Sausage frying, cold coffee, bleary exhaustion and tired looking waitresses are reminiscent of life in Skye

     There are hundreds more memories like this, quite literally. Swans, salt shakers, the sound of sea birds or screech owls, trains, baking bread, a certain way that light hits an object, a familiar song playing on the radio, or a foreign accent floating towards me. All of these things make me disappear. It happens at will and without warning. I used to love to share stories or travel anecdotes with anyone who would listen. But now I horde the fragmented remnants of my youth close to me the way that some people hold on to love affairs that are long gone.

Reviews

[Philip Spires]

Dear Kimberly

Thanks again for the review and thanks for this piece, Scrapbook. I find your descriptive writing highly evocative of place and experience. It sounds to me like several of those locations had events associated with them that might become stories in their own right. As you know, I have been doing stories based on a travel theme and I would look forward to reading one of yours. I like the style, which I think draws the reader in.

Regards

Philip Spires

[emmajoy]

What a wonderful p ost and I know exactly what you're saying, you only need to have a little nudge of mem ory and you're back in a special place. (for me, Italy means greedily eaten ripe peaches and a small tratt oria near the Uffizi, Florence).

I can't pick out special lines, phrases or places because i've been to most and feel so similar, just can't write in the same w onderful way you can... well, yes, I will:

' I am transported back to a hurried grey day in London with dark coats and drizzling rain, pink-appled cheeks and scattered cherry blossoms falling on wet pavement. A sense of importance that comes soley from the fact that I'm tropming along through places that I have only read about in history ' - that's wonderful.

Thank y ou for sharing such a great p ost, it's truly readable over and over. (Going in Favourites!)

[C.T. Bailey]

I read through this and find myself quite envious. I am a travel junkie...however, my travel has found me domestically centered here in the states. Only a single jaunt to Canada and the Islands. This is quite titalating and provocative. It smashes the senses with questions of time and place. I found myself hanging on each line, awaiting the next destination. Actually, I'm quite fond of this. I found the closing paragraphs to be just the tiniest bit hurried...as if you were sensing yourself near the end of the write and you perhaps hastened along. Also, second paragraph, last line, "tromping".

I wonderful piece. You know....you might consider writing a personal memoir of this time spent there. It would make for some fine reading.

Todd

[bailish]

I enjoyed this a lot. Vivid descriptions that touched on the different senses. Well done!

[Crystal Lynn]

Ah, yes. This is EXACTLY what I was looking for in my contest. The imagery is vivid, and I feel like I know exactly what you're talking about, though I've been anywhere outside of the U.S. That's the challenge for every writer: to make the reader see and feel what the narrator or character does. You rose above and beyond that challenge. Excellent job. This piece was beautiful. And oh, how you make me green with envy! I'm majoring in linguistics and I really, really, REALLY want to travel the world. At least now, I feel like I've had a little piece of it right here as I sit in my room with my laptop. Thank you.

[INSURGENT*76]

BEAUTIFUL � a very needed reminder of how life is supposed to be . thank you

[joshc]

This is geat in so many ways; the content, the imagry, the words...all of it is brilliant. Awesome piece

[ShadowWolf]

It has always amazed me how some tiny thing, a sight, a scent, a sound, some incidental event will incite a memory. If only we could have each and every one "stored" in a real scrapbook that when we chose we could just sit down and turn the pages to review each and every one.

Well done!