MeliGoesRogue

Exploring the world is an undertaking. So much planning goes into a few days in a different city where the rest of the people are simply living their lives. You leave so much behind in the hopes of finding something new. There is nothing left to colonize but new corners of our mind, and so we set out on these adventures in the hopes that there is more left to discover. This proves a larger undertaking for those of us who are constantly “thinking” and exploring the parts of the psyche better left unexplored…usually.

I’ve always been a thinker, I’m pretty sure its why my father and I never saw eye to eye. I always questioned, I always thought things thru.He would have much preferred a daughter who would pour him another whisky and allow the deafening silence of nothingness to be their soundtrack. That would never be me. I’m the woman that looks out on a living vibrant city and retreats inward.

This journey has taken me back to somewhere I know and yet somewhere I have never been before. La Ciudad Amurallada….Amurallada is such a fantastic word in Spanish, it commands such respect even without knowing its meaning. For my non native Spanish speakers (do better please) amurallada means walled or fortified. The wall that protects the contents of this city reminds me much of …well me. There is no active enemy to ward off and yet we remain walled off. There are the occasional vulnerabilities but these walls are meant to keep the enemy at bay indefinitely. Each of these journeys I undertake oddly enough I allow more of myself to become exposed. I am chipping at the walls in the hopes that one day I will warrant visitors who come to see a walled city unwalled. I wonder who of those that walk beside me now will be there then.

As I walked the streets of the city this evening so many of my childhood memories came back to me, most of them featured my father. I could see his face in the crowds and in the sounds of the voices echoing off the crumbling pavement that lead each uncertain step. “It could have been worse” I whisper to the naked little girl still sitting on the cold tiled floor, “This could have been all we knew”. I try not to live in those memories and yet the air here reminds me of that girl while also reminding me that she is no longer naked, trapped and alone. She walks these streets free, dressed in clothing of her own, free to decide and make mistakes. Yet that girl is never far from me she reminds me more times than not of that vulnerability I desperately fear yet desperately wish to reveal. I don’t think I’ve ever been addicted to something, although life has shown me plenty of addiction. I have heard so many times how heavy those chains are yet no matter what they seem unable to unchain themselves. I know that feeling, I remain chained to this wall to walking it with my rifle assuring that no one will scale these walls. They wouldn’t like what they see, its better that they see me from a distance where the walls don’t seem so high, these lies I’ve told myself for years never seem to lose their sting. Just like this blog, this is another lie I have talked myself into. Who’s going to read this I say while boasting it as a travel blog…yeah thats cute and ridiculous. This travel blog is about the roads within…

The truth is your actually reading my diary, or at least my very explicit version of one. Somehow knowing I’m writing for someone who may never read this makes it so liberating. As though I have taken a lockbox of my secrets and left the key in the lock, all it takes is a turn and click and there I lie before you.

I’ve always loved Jazz, it just suits me. It allows me to fill in with my heart between the notes that play. The lull of the jazz and the backs who have borne its pain to allow me to feel my own. Some years ago a gentleman took me thru a door that transported me in time to smoke, dim lights over piano players and a trumpet player. Something happened to me  in that room in that velvet wingback chair.

Chet Baker became a regular favorite, he was a perfect point of entry for me, the carefully placed trumpet notes and devastatingly calm yet painful whispers. As I saw Born to be Blue the struggle came into focus and the blood that dripped from his broken embouchure was only reflective of the broken pieces of his soul that could only be shown by the blowing of his trumpet. Where would we be if he had not pushed thru that extraordinary pain to bring us some of the most hypnotizing sounds. Billie and Chet fill my mind with Sunday kinds of love that should be heard Monday and thru. I leave them here within the safe confines of these words. I can no longer take them with me. That rabbit hole leads off the second floor of the building and the disintegration of a beaten but beating heart.

I leave you, these words and the noises which have been the soundtrack of my time. I retreat to those sheets that will barely cover me and the dreams that I hope will soothe me. I look to tomorrow and to hopefully another painful memory confronted and a piece of the wall chipped away. It won’t be easy but damn if it won’t be worth it.

Will I see you tomorrow?