Aminalz! Aminalz! (Also: Fruitz!)

I'm itching to tell you about Hong Kong, but first I want to share some photos from our final day in Sydney. Because that was the day we went to the Taronga Zoo, and oh my goodness, Australian animals are the best! Isolation is truly the mother of weird and fascinating creatures.


Like this Spiny Echidna, whose tongue is as long as its body, whose males have four-headed penises, whose females are mammals but lay eggs and then carry their young around in a pouch for the first fifty days or so of life...


...and the Platypus, which Wikipedia describes pithily as an "egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal." That description left out the part where the platypus uses electroreception to stalk their prey. Like their brothers the echidnae, the platypus's egg-born young are called "puggles," which can only be a good thing in my book.

These wonderfully weird creatures so flummoxed European naturalists when they were "discovered" in the late 1700's that folks thought they were a hoax and tried to pry off their bills. Ow.

When I was a kid and everyone forced me to answer the question "What's your favorite animal?," my stock answer was the platypus. It was a delight to finally get to see one.


Of course, the star of the zoo, and needing no introduction, is the remarkable koala.


This guy's name is Irwin, and he seemed to take a particular interest in my husband.

We paid extra for a "koala encounter," which is why we're so close in these shots. Getting up close and personal with a koala was terrific, as was having the zoo-keeper nearby to answer all our questions.


Despite what that sign says, that's a kangaroo. Her name is Charlotte and her fur is very soft.

We also saw plenty of wallabys, one of whom was lying on her side when the white fur on her belly started gyrating like crazy. A zoo-keeper confirmed that she'd recently given birth and was carrying her young in her pouch. They were waiting for the little one to poke its head out, as none of the humans had seen it yet.


And to round out the Australian collection, an emu! It's not just a Scrabble word!

My goodness, that's a big bird...we saw it bullying the young kangaroos into giving up their food.


On the ride home at dusk, we finally saw the famous Sydney bats, thus completing our zoological tour of the continent down under.


And then these lovely people had us over to their home for a wonderful meal. Janet (woman farthest to the right) was our production manager at the Opera House, and she and her partner Adrian loaned us their very own table to use in our production!


I forget what this dish is called, but we'd had it the night before in a Chinese restaurant and loved it. Then we had Adrian's version, with finely diced apples and I-can't-remember-what-else, and his version was even better.


Dessert was an assortment of exotic fruits. Exotic to *me* at any rate. Of all the fruits pictured above, I'd only ever had one of them. TRAVELMONKEYS readers, I issue you this challenge: How many of these fruits can you name? And how many have you had the pleasure of trying yourself?

Sailors Thai

...unless you post it to your TRAVELMONKEYS blog. Then it's immortal.

If you are ever in Sydney, do not miss the opportunity to eat at Sailors Thai. There's a posh downstairs, a more relaxed "canteen" upstairs...the food at either is exquisite. Really one of the best meals I've ever had.

One More Story Before I Go

We fly to Hong Kong today, which I'm finding both thrilling and nerve-wracking.

I have visions of myself paralyzed on the side of the road while pedestrians stream by, not being able to find an entry point, like a new driver who's frozen and unable to merge.

Then I think, Really? You've lived in New York how long? Surely you will learn.

But before I go, a quick story from Sydney.

So, we go to this restaurant for breakfast one morning, and shortly after sitting down I notice there's what looks to me like a parrot hanging out next to the table of a dour German couple.

The waiter comes by to hand us our menus and I ask him if the parrot belongs to the restaurant. He looks up and says, "Oh, those? They just come here."

Shortly after that two more of these magnificent birds (which I will later learn are Rainbow Lorikeets, a sub-species of the parrot) appear, and I take this picture:


The busser in the background notices and comes over to our table shaking a sugar packet. He pours it into my open hand and the birds flock to us.


The non-tourists around us couldn't be less interested. In fact, they're probably a little disgusted. I'm trying to imagine how I would feel if I saw a tourist back in the States encourage a pigeon onto their tabletop before eating.

But as you can see from this photo, I'm way too delighted to be cool.


I will pay for this later, when one of the lorikeets returns mid-meal to swipe a sugar packet from me.

More and more of his brothers (sisters?) return, and I keep trying to shoo them away--but in a quiet-ish way, so as not to disturb the Aussies around us conducting business meetings. I am unsuccessful.


Until finally Michael puts both hands over his head and says

cawww! CAWWWW!!!

It is so loud that absolutely everyone in the restaurant stops what they're doing, startled.

But it works, and the lorikeets leave us in peace for the rest of our meal.

Sydney Psalm

It’s a constant embarrassment, this living.
The gloves come off and so do the panties,
the eyes widen but the feet march forward
--meanwhile the waves continue their assault
on the shore, boats carrying screaming
children and waggling businessmen rock
from side to side but no one is lullabied.

It’s a joke, this life. And also, a song.
A rude intimation, a whisper before
passing out. Everyone knows the ending,
yet we struggle to leave with our hats on
and our dignity intact. Fat luck, that.

--meanwhile the best bedtime story is yet
to be found. Climb that hill, scratch that old man’s
back. Ask the weatherman to speak, if he would,
on politics. Or maybe try spitting watermelon
seeds from a great height, then scuttle below
to see the pattern you’ve made, ooh and ahh
at their form, say, Yes, I was here.

You can summon lorikeets with sugar,
watch their rainbow heads bob in your palm
while you survey the harbor, belly full
of noodles, wallet full of cash.
What is there to do now, but sing?

The Path to the Opera House

Notes from Down Under

Well here I am, at the start of a two-month tour that will take me around the world, from Australia to Hong Kong to mainland China to Ireland, from performances at the mighty Sydney Opera House to a humble parish hall in rural Ireland. If ever there was a time for TRAVELMONKEYS, this is undoubtedly it.

And yet.

I'm having trouble because I can't quite see the point of it. Which wouldn't be trouble at all, except that three different dear friends of mine have recently been tugging/prodding/encouraging me to update TRAVELMONKEYS, and it's got me thinking about what it's all for.

I started this blog because I wanted a way to connect with my family and friends while I was on the road. Then along came Facebook, and goodness, it's been a blessing for me, allowing me to feel much more connected and far less isolated. It's also ridiculously easy to upload photos and post updates.

Of course, it lacks depth and persistence. Looking back at these TRAVELMONKEYS entries, I enjoy their scrapbook quality. I enjoy that I can flip back to my trip to Istanbul and see the photos I've arranged, the little narrative I created, and remember that time.

Facebook is like writing on the wind. Here it is and there it goes, and if it's been more than a week, it's already gone.

But creating good TRAVELMONKEYS posts is time consuming, and the process of uploading the photos is kind of cumbersome, and in the end it reaches far fewer of my friends than my posts to Facebook do, and honestly, I don't think the time it takes is worth it to me now that I have this other path to achieving that feeling of connection I seek.

So it's not looking good for ol' TRAVELMONKEYS, which might make about five people out there sad, myself included.

Because when I read the entries, I really enjoy them.

This is what I've been thinking about.

But maybe I'm going about it all wrong. Maybe the problem is that I'm trying to be too completist. Maybe I need to change my lens so that I'm not telling the story at the end of it all but right from the middle. Maybe I need to make a sketch of the place en media res, and whatever I capture, I capture, and at the end of that day, that is better than nothing. Maybe.

Like, if I were to write about Sydney right now, I might say something about how fun the differences in the English we speak are. Instead of a cinnamon bun it's a "sultana scroll" for "breaky." Coffee with steamed milk is a "flat white," without milk a "long black." Two things that don't belong together aren't apples and oranges or oil and water, but "chalk and cheese." In the theater, strip lights are known as "zip strips," bulbs as "bubbles," the cherry picker is a Cougar, and nobody says "break a leg," they say "Chookas," which has something to do with chicken, like if you do a really good job, you'll get fed chicken after the show instead of the usual scraps.

I might also talk about how every day I walk along the famous Circular Quay (which is pronounced like something that opens a locked door), dodging around tourists taking photos of themselves with all those iconic sights behind them: the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which tourists in chain-gang suits pay to climb to the top of; the glowing eyes and rides of Luna Park beckoning from across the water; the ferries and sailboats and catamarans zipping back and forth from the Taronga Zoo, Manly Beach, and points beyond; and of course, the Sydney Opera House itself, probably the most iconic piece of architecture the world has yet known, and the very reason we are here at all.

From the moment we leave our hotel to walk the half mile to the theater, the Opera House beckons us from across the harbor. All eyes are on its majestic sails, which I'd expected to be a sun-bleached white, smooth like actual sails, but which in fact, in person, possess a reptilian texture, causing the whole thing to look rather like a great lizard. Make that a majestic great lizard, but a lizard nonetheless.

That's what I'd write about.

I might be tempted to mention the wild parrots who ate sugar out of my hand this morning, or the girls who fill the streets on the weekend with impossibly short skirts and ridiculously high heels, or how the other day the northern foyer of the Opera House was occupied by a man named Hari Das who was busy summoning a Hindu deity and allowing himself to become possessed by Him. The remarkable thing is that this man is an ordinary well-digger in southern India nine months of the year, and then is worshipped as a god for the other three months. Not a bad balance, I'd say.

And then, dear TRAVELMONKEYS reader, I might stop right there. Without even mentioning the Sydney Writers' Festival, or how I've been reading "Moby Dick" for the first time and am startled with its loveliness and relevance to my life. I might save that for later or maybe even just save it for myself.

I reserve the right to be incomplete and absent. I reserve the right to be overly detailed and loquacious. I reserve the right to bore you. I especially reserve the right to be imperfect and quickly post. This is not my life's work, these are simply a series of sketches, a loose affiliation of notes, and I thank you for sharing in the journey with me.

Onwards!
JM

Movie: The Mists of Juneau

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain.
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds.

--Han-shan, "Cold Mountain Poems," translated by Gary Snyder

The Great Northern Tour, Part I: The Last Frontier

M and I are back in New York now, still sorting through the many great photos and memories from our Great Northern Tour. We gave it that name out of an eagerness to inject a little dramatic narrative into our trip, and it turned out our journey more than lived up to the implied drama of its title.

The trip began in Juneau, moved on to Whitehorse, and ended in Banff, with pit stops in Seattle on either end. Each step of the way it was like God was hitting us over the head with the beauty of nature until we city people cried out in awe-struck submission.

I'm going to divide the tour into three parts, one for each of the three cities we visited, starting with...

J U N E A U

From the moment we landed, Juneau blew us away with its wild beauty.


Actually, the magic began even before we'd touched down. See that big, shiny, blue-white, waterfall-like thing behind us? That's Mendenhall Glacier, and you can see it from way up in the air, like a gorgeous mirror inviting you to land and have a look.


Here's a closer shot of the glacier. That bright blue spot that looks like it was crayoned by a child wasn't photo-enhanced by me--that's really how blue the fresh ice is. You're looking at an area where ice has recently calved off.


All of Juneau is located within a national state park, and you can feel that wildness without straying far from the paved roads. For example, all the street lights have a T-shaped bar on top that turned out to be eagle rests.


As soon as we landed, Jeff, gracious host and managing director from the theater who was presenting us, took us to the glacier. He said we wouldn't actually stop, but that since it was so close to the airport he always likes to bring folks by there before heading into town.

Now, some of you may already know this about M and me, but it's important I make this clear before we proceed. The husband and I are wild about bears. And never having seen one in the wild before, only in zoos, and never having set foot in Alaska before, it was my deepest wish that I might be granted even the slightest glimpse of a bear during our time in the Great North.

But given that we'd arrived in late September, I wasn't sure if the bears would already be off getting their winter dens ready. I was shyly asking Jeff about our chances of an ursine encounter as we were pulling into the parking lot for the glacier's visitor center, and lo and behold--what do we see but a beautiful black bear with two little cubs right on her heel, one black, one cinnamon?


These particular bears were very used to the presence of humans. A harried park ranger stood by the side, warning us and the rest of the gawking, paparazzi-like tourists to STAND BACK! SHE'S BEEN IN A BAD MOOD ALL WEEK AND YOU DO NOT WANT TO STEP CLOSER, SIR!


But what a stirring sight! And what a spectacular omen of good things to come, that we saw three bears within fifteen minutes of landing.


A few days later we'd see a convocation of bald eagles--which, it turns out, is the name for a grouping of eagles, much more dignified than a murder or a gaggle, and befitting of a national emblem. There were at least twenty-five of them, young and old, feasting on salmon that were trying to make their way through a channel to the river. (The ones with darker heads in the photo above are still young; as they mature their heads and tails turn to that distinctive white.)

Growing up in Seattle, I'd seen bald eagles before--but never so many of them all together, and never so close. They are big. Like, imagine my pug dog, but with wings.

Did you know that eagles mate for life? Did you also know that the leading cause of death for young eagles is having a jealous sibling push you out of the nest to your death so that he or she can keep all of your parents' attention for themselves?


Juneau is full of landscapes ideal for contemplating the harsh mysteries of nature.




And for feasting on it. One of the theater's board members had us to her home and served us two types of smoked salmon that she and her husband had caught and smoked themselves. I'd had smoked salmon before, but never smoked salmon belly. Wow. It's good stuff.


Locals sometimes apologized for the weather, which was unrelentingly rainy while we were there. "You should see this place in May," they said, when the views of the encircling mountains are clear.

But I loved the clouds. They weave among the trees in rapid, graceful swirls. They are unlike clouds or fog I've seen anywhere else, and for me are the most breathtaking and dynamic aspect of Juneau's beauty.


Our final night in Juneau, after our performance, we were heading back to our hotel around midnight. The hotel was downtown, in the most populated part of the city.

And what do we see, about a block away from our hotel, in front of the Subway sandwich shop? A huge grizzly bear. We stopped the car and watched him through our rear view mirror. We could hear the laughter of a large group of humans who had just exited a nearby bar.

The bear appeared unfazed. And then another car approached and strafed him with their headlights. At this, the bear began to ran. He dashed across the street and into a nearby construction site.

It is really something, to see so huge and lumbering a creature suddenly break into a run. He must have been going 35 mph, and he went from zero to gone, just like that. Having seen it with our own eyes, Mike and I finally understand why everyone tells you you can't outrun a bear.


Next up: Our ferry from Juneau to Skagway, and our drive to Whitehorse through the scenic Canadian Rockies. Highlights will include . . . another bear! We'll get even closer. And survive to tell the tale.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

How Did It Get To Be September?

When I read other blogs my least favorite posts are the ones that begin with an apology for why the blogger has failed to update.

So when I started TRAVELMONKEYS, I vowed never to make such a post myself, and I swear to you now, this is not an apology. Even though I have not posted since late July, I mean it, this is not an apology. The very idea of an apology is ridiculous anyhow! As if I've somehow left you all bereft, with a dark TRAVELMONKEYS-shaped hole in your heart as you wonder where I and Mike and the dog might be now, what exciting things we might be up to. Why, it's the heart of narcissism to believe that anyone else might actually notice my long silence. So I promise you: not an apology.

And yet.

There were a few of you who quietly left some notes on my Facebook page suggesting that you might like to read some new posts from me. And I will admit that I enjoyed hearing I was missed. (It's always wonderful to be missed, isn't it? Wonderful to sneak away, to escape, to hide, but right after that, even better to hear someone calling your name...)

So though I am behind, let me tell you a little bit about what we've been up to.


First of all, we spent the first week of August in Portland, Oregon, that hipper-than-thou city of the west filled with well-read hipsters and eccentric (also well-read) homeless people. We were there to workshop our newest monologue which I shall not list by name, as I like to keep this blog semi-private, but I will tell you that the principal theme of the new piece revolves around money and our relationship to it, and I'm finding it quite a provocative and intriguing piece of work.


Then we headed up to Seattle for three weeks, during which time we continued to develop the same monologue. And we relaxed. Oh, how we relaxed.

I ate oysters with my siblings, played tennis with my father, shopped for wedding dresses with Mary, went for long leash-less walks in the park with Baci, watched rows of fishermen pluck one salmon after another from Puget Sound like it was the easiest thing in the world, went dancing with all our people late into the night, ate amazing meals with my parents and played cards nightly...








I tell you, folks, I had such a wonderful time back in Seattle that I started to feel like the character of Emily from Our Town when she gets to go back after death and visit a day when she was still alive. You know that scene? I cry like a baby every time.

But it's one thing to feel that when you're in a theater, quite another to feel it when you're actually just trying to live your life. As the trip neared to a close I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. Surely this meant that someone was about to die. That some terrible news was imminent. That I was paying in advance for something that would counterbalance all this happiness.

Michael begged me to stop being so Polish.


Back in New York, we had a little less than a week to pack for the trip that lay ahead, a five-city tour that would take us to Philadelphia, Chapel Hill, Juneau, Whitehorse, and Banff. I am, in fact, writing this entry to you now from the first city, having just completed stage one of the tour.

Originally, I'd imagined that I would use TRAVELMONKEYS as a kind of tour diary. Less long entries like this one, and more short daily updates. Something like this:

Day 1 in Philly. Met our crew. That's Jacob, and he's awesome. Not pictured: Sam, burping.

But you know what happened? Ohhh, a bundle of troubles. Lots of tiny other shoes, dropping.

I want to tell you all about it. I really do. But my alarm just went off reminding me that we leave for Chapel Hill early tomorrow morning, and of course, we've yet to pack.

So let me sign off now with the promise that I'll return sooner than I did last time. (Again, the narcissism!) Maybe I'll even be able to update with the kinds of posts I'd hoped to make from Philly. Let me also say that no one has died, that the dog is ok, and that Michael and I are still married.

Also, Philadelphia is pretty wonderful, from what I can tell. We're going to come back in a few months to see our friend Kyra in a show here, and we're hoping to check out some of the stuff we couldn't see this week during our non-stop freak-out, including this.

Mazel Tov!

Big congratulations to Mary and John, who got engaged last week!

I had a feeling this was in the works, so I've been sitting on some very special footage of the two of them for just this occasion.

Mary and John, you've done your time, you've taken your chances, and clearly you've got the skill to survive...