SEARCHING FOR BRAS IN THE FAR EAST

Sixteen years ago I sailed around the world with a single bra. If you don't wear a bra, try to imagine leaving for a 3 1/2 month voyage without something you need, that you wear everyday, particularly when traveling & hiking.

We embarked on the ship in Vancouver. Two hours before we set sail across the Pacific Ocean to Japan, I searched my suitcase for a bra. What the  ... Where were they? I emptied the suitcase & stared at the mound of clothes. No bras. Not a single one.

I shut my eyes & pictured my bedroom so far away. My bras were tucked inside a satin pouch on my dresser. Why, why had I set them aside? What madness had possessed me? There they were-- my lovely rainbow of bras in cotton, silk & satin-- & there they'd stay, serenely awaiting my return.

I had 2 hours to find more bras. With my 12 year-old son in tow, I raced to a downtown street, but for some reason, I found only 1 lingerie store that carried a handful of bras as an afterthought. Strange, sturdy little bras with a red, white & blue insignia in the middle that looked like a tiny Canadian Mountie. I bought 1. I'll buy more in Japan (I told myself).

Ten days & 3 typhoons later, we arrived in Osaka. I'd washed & changed my 2 bras everyday, but the harsh ship water had already faded the Mountie. As soon as I stepped on land, I went in search of a bra.

I can't explain the scarcity of bras in Osaka. Or Saigon. Or Penang. With my son at my side (sorry, Avi, hope I didn't scar you with this quest), I searched for what was apparently the most elusive item in Southeast Asia: a bra, size 36B.

Not huge, not tiny, but medium-- right? Average.

Not in Southeast Asia. Not 16 years ago, before Victoria whispered her Secret to the rest of the world. Back then, one of these stores would have seemed like a mirage:

A grim realization soon emerged. There were so few bras because the need didn't exist. By the time we arrived in Hong Kong, my 2 bras had lost their shape, the straps were fraying, & the Mountie looked like a grizzled old man. At this port, if no other, I'd find a bra. We docked at a shopping mall, for God's sake! And I had a handwritten note in Chinese: "Bra Store".

We made our way through colorful narrow streets crammed with people to a shop that indeed displayed lingerie in the window. I handed the saleslady my note. Behind a curtain, she & another woman examined me with a tape measure. After many fervent gestures & loud exclamations, one cried, "Ah! You need Queen Mama size!"

Me? Queen Mama?

With another Chinese note, & clutching my son's hand, I ventured down the chaotic streets, including one filled with birdcages & singing birds, to a tiny shop next to a man who sold squirming eels & squid.

An ancient woman read the note & nodded. She went into a back room & eventually returned with what appeared to be a small white knapsack, crisscrossed with bands & wires. "Queen Mama," she said proudly.

It gave me an odd shape, weirdly flat yet pointed, & was so tight she stretched it with a tool that reminded me of a dentist's probe.

Friends, I bought it. I'd have bought 2, but there was only the one, waiting in storage for Queen Mama to arrive.

I had many adventures during that voyage-- I crawled through the Cu Chi Tunnels, entered a Temple in Penang where the Priest threw a basket of live snakes at me, & dined in Saigon with a French woman who had spied during the war & whose young lover serenaded us with a mournful rendition of "Love Me Tender" on his guitar.

By the time we arrived in Italy, months had passed & I'd grown accustomed to my faithful 3 companions. We'd been through a lot together.

Ten minutes in Rome & I found a lingerie shop. Another 10 minutes, & I emerged with 2 shiny new bras. No Queen Mama, no Mountie. No giggling saleslady.

Almost too easy.

On my next voyage, I forgot to bring ... well, that's another story.

In a few hours I'll leave the US for 4 months. I stare down at my open suitcase.

I wonder what I'll be in search of this time.

 

Layers of Human History

 Guest post by Joyce Hinnefeld. Joyce is a a dear friend, a wonderful writer, & the director of last month's inspiring & amamzing Moravian Writers' Conference-- about which I've written on this blog. Take it away, Joyce!

My husband, twelve-year-old daughter, and I took a fabulous trip last summer, to Greece and Rome. In Greece we spent time in Athens, took day trips to Arachova and Delphi, then spent time on the island of Naxos and took more day trips, to Delos and Mykonos.

And let me tell you, I have got some photos! The iPhone makes it all too easy. But instead of the freshly whitened buildings with blue trim and Byzantine churches and countless cats, instead of the glorious statues of lions and gods and goddesses and the fragments of temples to Apollo, I want to show you this single photo from Greece, which I took outside the archaeological museum on the island of Delos. It’s of a rusted and clearly long-unused pay phone. Years of sun and wind and blowing sand have done their work on it. It’s a different kind of Greek ruin.

Ruth has been my inspiration and guide through the many years of our friendship in all kinds of ways, but maybe most keenly in her deep appreciation of travel--particularly the ways in which travel inspires her writing. Travel inspires my writing too, but I think the form that takes, for me, is different. Instead of imagining ancient worlds, charms and curses, mermaids and sultans and captive girls, I find myself--in the midst of all that beauty and history--looking at the two women (were they sisters? were they as sad as they seemed to me?) serving us breakfast in the hotel in Rome. The young man who sold ice cream and snacks on the small ferry boat, pedaling his bike furiously from the port, carrying a bucket for more ice during our stop on Mykonos. The beautiful French mother, with her two shy pre-teen daughters, at the pool on Naxos. Wondering what they had for breakfast, who was causing them pain or giving them joy, what they remembered fondly, what they wished they’d never done.

I don’t think my preoccupation with the present-day people around me when I travel comes from my being stuck in the present; I’m actually a very nostalgic person. That nostalgia keeps showing up in things I write lately. In fiction, it emerges in the mother-daughter relationships I keep including, with mothers remembering their own younger lives, and sort of understanding their daughters’ lives, but sort of not. That’s me thinking about my own daughter, I suppose. But I think it’s also me missing my own younger self.

In the piece I’m working on now, a mother and her college-age daughter take a trip much like the one we took last summer. Only in this case, they’re going to revisit scenes from a semester, and a follow-up summer, that the mother spent abroad thirty years before. She wants her daughter to consider studying in Rome; the daughter says she isn’t really interested in living in a dorm with other American students and studying that particular form of imperialism. On the island of Delos, while her mother tries to get her interested in the row of massive lion statues, glowing in the midday sun, the daughter snaps photos of a museum card that refers to the Athenians’ “overtly imperialist policy in the Aegean,” then the rusted pay phone. Later she posts both online with the caption, “Layers of human history . . . .”

The young man pedaling his bike away from the port will show up too, as will two middle-aged sisters serving breakfast in the little birreria next to a hotel called the Hotel Cinecittá in Rome (in reality, it was called the Hotel Fellini--but there really was a little birreria where we had breakfast, and it was filled with music stands and posters and books about Italian neo-realist cinema).

For a long time I haven’t wanted to admit how much the fiction I write has to do with me. My life, my preoccupations, my unanswered questions. But of course that’s what I’m doing, even when I try to imagine my way into the life of a sad and lonely Italian woman, or two Greek brothers who grew up on a farm on Naxos, or the American college girl who, one magical summer after a semester abroad in Rome, fell for the older brother.

But sometimes you need to leave home--to travel, observe, and take lots of photos--to recognize those preoccupations, those unanswered questions. And the people who will bring them to life.

Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of two novels, Stranger Here Below and In Hovering Flight, and a collection of short stories, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories. She is the Cohen Chair for English and Literature at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. Learn more about her work at www.joycehinnefeld.com.

ENTERING YOUR STORY BY SEA

Entering a story is very similar to entering a country by sea.

I imagine it first. Maybe read what other travelers have written about it. But nothing compares to seeing it for the first time with my own eyes. I may be traveling on a large ship, but this is how I imagine myself:

An ancient voyager after months at sea, not sure what country I'm approaching, friendly or dangerous, & what mythic monsters await me.

It's a voyage of discovery that begins before I set foot on land. But now I'm here, and I must navigate from the dock to the city street. Each port has its own unique character that reveals more than you can learn at a generic airport. Even when the landing area is modernized with new buildings and uniformed officials, glimpses of the ancient port emerge, along with smells and sounds, and instantly I'm thrust into another world.

In Alexandria, Egypt, an enormous new port authority complex stands abandoned. The instant you pass through, you are confronted with vendors hawking Cleopatra and King Tut wares, pungent spices, dazzling colors. Not far away, archaeologists dig for fragments from Cleopatra's palace in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea.

Istanbul, with its skyline of the Hagia Sofia, may be the greatest paradox. Leave the long port authority buildings, again with much empty space and unused rooms. Turn right: you move toward the modern city with every convenience, franchise, etc, you could desire. Turn left: you move toward the old city, the Grand Socco-- the greatest covered market in the world-- and the Hagia Sofia, narrow winding streets, a city you can explore by traveling across rooftops or through underground caverns and cisterns.

Would you turn left or right?

My instinct is always to turn left and venture deeper into the unknown depths of the country. Once I've gotten lost in its labyrinth, dug my fingers into sacks of spices, tasted the local food, listened to the voices, and sat at a cafe just watching my people interact-- yeah, by now they've become my people, almost ready to walk across the page -- then I can explore the modern overlay.

This is where I am now. In port, on the deck of the ship. Waiting to disembark and feel land under my feet again. Pen and notebook in hand. The scents of the new world already drawing me in.

God, I love this moment.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN!

I'm going on the road again!

Well, actually on the sea!

In late August I'll set sail on my third Semester at Sea voyage--a university on a ship. We leave from Southampton, England & return to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in December. This voyage will be an entire semester, & its theme is "Atlantic Exploration."

I'll teach 3 courses: 2 sections of Travel Writing, & 1 section of Creative Writing: Fiction. The courses are supplemented by field trips & experiences at the ports where we dock along the way, usually for 3-4 days.

Here's our itinerary, in order of ports:

Southampton, England (depart August 23rd)
St. Petersburg, Russia
Gdansk, Poland
Rostok, Germany
Antwerp, Belgium
Le Havre, France
Dublin, Ireland
Lisbon, Portugal
Cadiz, Spain
Casablanca, Morocco
Dakar, Senegal
Ghana: Takoradi & Tema
Brazil: Rio & Salvador
Bridgetown, Barbados
Havana, Cuba
Fort Lauderdale, Florida (arrive December 8th)

As you can imagine, I'm very excited about this voyage. We'll travel places I've never been & have longed to see-- like St. Petersburg, Salvador, & Havana! And life at sea is an amazing experience of its own, with its own rhythm.



Nothing quite matches teaching a class on the deck of a ship during sunset ... or trying to teach during a typhoon while books fly & waves hit the windows ... or watching the sunrise from the top deck.

I'm wearing the Captain's cap, but don't worry, I am not steering the ship. However, I'll keep a travel blog right here, posting news, observations, photos, updates all through the voyage.
I hope you'll follow my blog & travel with me so we can share the voyage.

And if you have any suggestions about places to go or things to see, please comment & let me know!

Meanwhile this spring/summer I'll continue posting observations about writing & life, updates on my novel, & guest posts from fellow creative artists.  And reflections on what the writer & artist can learn about craft & art from travel. So come with me!