Espresso After Midnight: flightless goes euro-trash!

"Did I go mad in my mother's womb

Waiting

To get out..."

-- Elise Cowen

I'm the stir-crazy type. I'm into vagabondage. All my money goes for planes, trains, buses and boat rides. So, yeah, I've been away on vacation...didja miss me? Or is the only sign that I've been away my email inbox jammed with spam?

When a snake needs to shed, her skin gets dull and her vision clouded (hence that line from "The Bible" about the scales falling from one's eyes). After the old snakeskin cracks and peels off, she is vibrant, flexible, clear-eyed. And much less cranky.

For those watching the sobriety meter -- I did not drink while I was away. But I did have some lovely Orange Bud and a vanilla Space Cake while in Amsterdam. I'm allowed to admit that in print because marijuana is legal there. Whee! However, I realize that to many AA'ers and others, this does not count as staying sober. So by some accounts, I just had a sobriety vacation.

A sobriety vacation is when a recovering alcoholic decides to drink again, but only for that one week in Rio. It's like going off your diet but only at Grandma's. Or just shrooming one last time, during that long weekend at the cabin... My support group (at unhooked.com) is staunchly opposed to any such notion, knowing that too many of us have said "Ok, I'll only drink while I'm in Greece -- um, and the week I get back, cuz I'll be jetlagged. Um, and then the following week is the boss's party, so I'll drink then too, but after that I'll quit again... yeah...or maybe February..." Those of us who have quit doing something, and have managed to stay quit for a while, tend to remember the first weeks of quittitude as absolutely sucking dried dog dirt. A sobriety vacation means starting all over on Day One, our least favorite day.

Well, maybe. I had several relapses (hell, I had extended-dance-mix relapses) before I went sober, and I do think I learned and grew and benefited from each of them. Each slip taught me something, so I didn't make the exact same mistakes again. I also lost more brain cells every time, so it was not the best trade I have ever made. And honestly I have read so much newage at this point that my little inner voice has taken to saying very sarcastically, "Oh, growth. Thanks so much." Anyway, I don't think a vacation from sobriety means all the time you spent sober is completely wasted (unlike, say, the time you spent wasted), but it is definitely harder to quit again than to stay quit. Newton's First Law of Inebriation.

Anyway, I didn't drink. I'm back in town. Already planning the next 2 or 3 escapes... those are geographical escapes, not chemical ones.

Travel is a chance to reinvent yourself. You can try on new styles, attitudes, personae. Or drop the act for a while. You can fill your suitcase with any version of yourself you like. Or almost any version... I don't recommend trying to get a tulle skirt into a carry-on bag.

Really it's two opportunities: When you leave home, you can face the strangers with any persona you like, and when you return home, you have the option of coming back changed.

One thing to think about when you plan a vacation/retreat/relapse/reinvention or other bold move: This is a Buddhist saying -- "When you walk in the mist, you get wet." What environment are you immersing yourself in, and what will you soak up?

I have been in strange countries, non-English-speaking, weird-food-eating, funny-hat-wearing, places where the money is all different colors, and hit these pockets that felt more like home than home. One of my favorite feelings is when my sweetie and I have been exploring a strange city for several days and we find ourselves going back to the same café a second or third time and they remember us and it's like being regulars just for a little while. I like learning a town well enough to find the post office, to take the subway. (The Athens subway, incidentally, contains exhibits of the archaeological discoveries that were made while they were excavating the train tunnels. Commuters walk past ancient skeletons under glass.)

A vacation shows you other places, but it can also alert you to the otherness at home. For one thing, the intellectuals of other countries tend to view the US with much the same bafflement and distaste as I do. I've had great conversations about the lunacy of this nation's foreign and domestic policy (about which foreigners seem to be better informed than Americans).

It is partly an urban thing -- I felt more "at home" in Florence and Athens than in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where boy scouts wanted to take pictures of my hair. (Admittedly, it was blue and purple at the time.) I wished I had a foreign tongue to answer in; now I've learned just enough Greek to say "no thank you" (ohi eferisto!) in a hopefully incomprehensible and intimidating way.

Other countries may have repression and religion and crazy leaders too, but they don't have Puritanism. Just being out from under that particular tangle of hang-ups makes me breathe easier. You know how other people's parents can never get you as riled up as your own?

And oh my, the espresso. When it comes to coffee, Western Europe just kicks our asses so hard. You can go to some cheesy highway truck-stop rest area in Italy or Greece and get a thoroughly fabulous espresso in a little china cup with a cookie on the saucer. (At the Athens airport, they did serve the espresso in a paper cup. But there wasn't any nonsense with styrofoam, or with pots of coffee that have been sitting on the warmer since June.) I've become insufferable. I have to leave the office and go to Scarbutts of all joints, and when I get back with my double espresso and raw sugar, I have to add a blast of hot water because their industrial coffee always tastes scorched to me. I'm sure I will lapse back into my straight black watery American coffee habits soon out of pure cheapness and sloth, but for now I'm enjoying this Eurotrash ritual.

So I highly recommend going away. (Writing this after the Nov. 5 election, I'm even thinking "expatriate" is a lovely word.) I don't recommend a sobriety vacation, a cheat-on-your-life escape, just the real kind.

If you can't afford to go anywhere, put on an ugly print shirt, hang a camera around your neck, and try looking at D.C. with alien eyes. Whenever I get back to town, I marvel at the beautiful jumble of architectures, the free art museums, the lively ethnic mix, the sci-fi arches of the Metro. (Everything but the coffee, really...)

Flightless, aka Dorothy Hickson, lives in Columbia Heights, where she is sorting through old magazines and writing zero-gravity murder mysteries. She is the creator of the zine dodo and can be found online at www.mwmw.com/dodo. Black velvet gloves are the best thing about winter.