On the Road (You Who Are)

Today I set up my two-man tent, the one that my first husband and I used more than twenty years ago when we rode around Europe on his motorcycle. Our motorcycle, I should say, I guess, although I never in any way believed that it really belonged to me. That period must be weighing on my mind, because just the other day I drove all over town trying to find a bottle of Retsina, which I drank for the first time ever on that same trip, right after we and the bike had boarded the ferry for Corfu at Brindisi by the skin of our teeth, and we finally sat relaxing in the lounge along with some fellow-bikers whom we had picked up en route as we made a mad dash across the lower part of Italy’s boot in an attempt to catch the ferry that night. As Danny did not hesitate to remind me, we would never have even made it onto the ferry if we had been driving a VW bus (as I had wanted to do) instead of a motorcycle (his heart’s desire), because with the bike we were able to cut to the front of the line of waiting cars.

Now I want to go out and sit in the tent and get drunk on Retsina, an activity that never actually took place in the old days, although I remember in one campground on a plateau above the Aegean outside of Athens being awakened in the wee morning hours by some young American fellows who had just discovered ouzo. But I have a Proustian longing for the combination of taste and smell, for the pungent mildewed odor of the tent and the pine-y bite of the Retsina–as perceived in light filtered through the orange tent-flaps–to put me in touch with the me of those days.

Of course I have asked myself why I would want to become reacquainted with that shadow person of decades past. Is it because, as I sit here in solid middle age I long to recapture the hippie-dippie days of my youth? To revel in travel tales of yore, now that I am decidedly no longer still “on the road?” Or perhaps I feel a connection to that time because my relationship with Danny, my first husband, began to unravel as we made our way across Europe, and now my relationship with my second husband seems to be coming apart at the seams. And, given that, maybe I need to remind myself of who I am, and how far I’ve come since I was that powerless, frightened young woman so lost to herself, yet so desperately trying to be cool and “with it.”

The story of our trip, of the way in which we acquired the motorcycle on which we made most of it and the way in which the motorcycle figured in the saga, is basically one of dysfunctionality. At the very least, I can speak of my own pathological sense of worthlessness, my chronic lack of faith in myself as a person and its deleterious, and perhaps fatal, impact on the relationship, without even beginning to speculate as to what any of Danny’s inadequacies might have been or how they might have contributed to our sorry condition. And I guess part of the story is the contrast, perceived even at the time but never clearly articulated, between the gross dysfunctionality in our relationship–our incompatible needs, the unbridgeable chasm between us–and the ethos of the times. For the very premise for making the trip, a veritable pilgrimage, was to achieve the Woodstock generation’s journey towards self and enlightenment.

In its structure, our jaunt across Europe sounds idyllic, and seems perfectly congruent with the expectations associated with being a hippie on the road in the late sixties and early seventies. We did all the right things and made all the “in” scenes. We took a Yugoslavian freighter from New York which left two weeks late after three increasingly besotted bon voyage parties. After spending the entire ten-day transatlantic crossing getting stoned with the other American freaks on board, we docked in Casablanca and immediately, along with a handful of ship-friends, headed down to Marrakech on a third-class bus. A few weeks later we crossed the Mediterranean into Spain, made our way up the coast to hang out at the Cannes film festival, where, in fact, we expressed our generational unity by picking up free tickets to Woodstock (the movie that confirmed we were stardust we were golden), crossed the alps into Germany, bought the bike in Munich, and headed back south for the beaches of Greece via Italy. A couple of months later we drove back to Northern Europe via the Yugoslavian coast, hung out for awhile in Vienna and Amsterdam and finally flew home from London after about six months of traveling.

Although the structure sounds cosmic, the content, on the other hand, was pretty sordid. Some of the most picturesque places in that part of the world provided the backdrop for our ongoing squabble–the souks of Marrakech, a Munich bierstübe, the Roman Coliseum. Our most memorable fight took place in Crete, while we stood on the deck of the ferry to Thessaloniki, watching a boom hoist the bike on board. I can’t remember what, specifically, we were arguing about that time, but we were both convinced that our witness was none other than Joni Mitchell, whom, we later learned from her song Carey, like us, had just been hanging out at the caves at Matala. No matter where we were, what we were doing, or even who was watching, we could not escape from the toxicity between us. Although we had gone on the road with the intention of riding the Marrakech Express, we were really Edward Albee’s George and Martha in very thin disguise, a self-destructive couple, locked in a private war. The motorcycle belonged to the war.

All along Danny pictured making the trip on motorcycle. We even considered picking up a new bike from the BMW plant in Munich–I remember the shiny brochures spread out on the formica table in our Oakland kitchenette. For some reason we decided not to do it that way; instead, we would just go to Munich and try to find a used bike. It’s possible that at the very beginning, the fantasy of traveling through Europe on a motorcycle was a mutual one. Our courtship had taken place on a BMW R 27 and motorcycles belonged to the mystique of our early relationship. It might well be, or at least I think I can now recall, that in those days there had been some talk about how great it would be to tour Europe on a bigger bike. But by the time we were seriously planning the trip I had already forgotten why or how the motorcycle was to be an intrinsic part of the dream and instead, all I could think was how much more comfortable it would be to live out of a VW bus than off the back of a motorcycle.

Once we were en route, we obsessively discussed the pros and cons of each mode of transport both alone and with our fellow travelers. We weighed the various advantages of a microbus versus those of a motorcycle on the freighter crossing the Atlantic as we smoked up everyone’s stash of dope and watched the ship’s wake disappear into the sunset; in Marrakech on the roof of our hotel overlooking the Djemal’ Fna, as we felt the effects of the kif cookies purchased from the bakery lady in the middle stall; and in Gaudi’s Guell Park in Barcelona where we had driven in the wheels Bob (first encountered in Essaouira, Morocco) had already acquired, an old deux-chevaux Citroën, while guzzling the dynamite local, cask-cured sherry. Although within the counter-culture Volkswagen buses were perfectly acceptable means of transportation, they were clunky, and had neither the romance nor the machismo of a motorcycle. According to the ethos of the times, I was guilty of harboring bourgeois sentiments, in that I was willing sacrifice the lure of the open road to the illusory trappings of middle-class comfort. Because he wanted to divest himself of surface conveniences while I wanted to carry along my domestic environment, Danny gained more hippie-points, despite the fact that in most of our interactions, he was the voice of reason, while I was the incorrigible flake. The debate was also fraught with unspoken tensions around the relative status of the feminine nesting urge versus that of masculine adventuring, since traveling by motorcycle epitomized the macho dream, the mythology of Marlon Brando and more recently of Easy Rider. Every guy with whom we discussed our plans enthusiastically cheered Danny on.

When we finally arrived in Munich we were on our own in a drizzly Northern European city whose language we only barely understood, (and where only thirty years earlier we would have been rounded up and sent to extermination camps) faced with the reality of a very limited number of transportation options of any variety. Although for some reason we had decided that Munich, the city in which the BMW plant was located, would also be a good place to find a used bike, we were dead wrong. We walked and walked. We argued and bickered. But we only found one bike and one microbus, each priced at about 2500 deutsche marks. In our frustrated wanderings around town we also located a ‘61 VW bug with a sunroof for about 700 DMs less than either the bike or the bus. (The proprietor of the pension where we were supposedly getting a weekly, bargain rate, decided to give us a lesson in international economics that I have not yet forgotten. After the war, he explained, four marks had equaled one dollar, and now the mark had risen so that there were only a little more than two to a dollar, “but,” he said ominously brandishing a one-mark piece and a dollar bill, “in ten years one mark will equal one dollar.” Although by now the gap has lessened considerably, I have always taken perverse pleasure in the fact that, even after twenty years, his prediction has yet to come true. Suffice it to say, this was not a cheering message for two pecunious pseudo-hippies who had come to Munich for the purpose of spending a large percentage of their hard-earned and highly cherished stash of dollars.) (Two Jewish hippies may I add, one of whom was very uncomfortable in Germany and both of whom refused to make the 10 kilometer trip to Dachau because they didn’t want to get “more depressed.”)

Danny drooled over the bike. It was a sleek, black R 60, equipped with both a faring and a luggage rack. According to the dealer (who spoke the international language of used vehicle dealers everywhere), it allegedly had had only one previous owner. In short, it seemed to be the incarnation of Danny’s fondest dreams. I, on the other hand, failed to be moved by its external beauty. One only had to take a walk in the drizzle to experience the inevitability of other than sunny skies ahead. And I was appalled by the fact that the motorcycle cost as much as the bus and more than the car. It seemed that one was getting a lot less vehicle for one’s money. I guess, too, that the motorcycle fantasy was just less compelling from the point of view of the rear-seat occupant: rather than conquering the elements I saw myself as simply exposed to them, a perennially passive passenger. It was not I who was going to act out the image of Warren Beatty or Marlon Brando; being a passenger on the back of a motorcycle did not satisfy my fantasies of freedom and liberation.

If we had obsessed about it before, now that we knew our options, however limited they were, we really dug in. After many rounds of gin rummy, several concerts (mostly Mozart), lots of wurst, and hours and hours of perseveration, we finally made what we considered to be the ultimate compromise. Instead of getting either the bike or the bus, we decided to spend less money and buy the car. We even signed a purchase agreement and made a downpayment. We told the motorcycle dealer that we were no longer interested in the bike. And if I hadn’t been such a twit and had been able to stick to my guns, my desire for enclosed transportation would have prevailed. But neither of us were happy; in fact, we were both pissed off. Neither of us had gotten what we wanted.

As the night wore on, I could not stand the guilt at having thwarted Danny’s dream, his fantasy of footloose and fancy free in Europe. I was also uncomfortable with the onus of being the spokesperson for the bourgeois way of life. And perhaps more than anything else, I felt guilty at being the killjoy wife, whose clearly inferior feminine timidity repressed her husband’s masculine potency, his macho. So once more we stayed up all night talking, and after reversing the process of the previous twenty-four hours, at eight o’clock the next morning we were back at the car dealer’s door, where, by forfeiting our downpayment (which despite our impecuniousness we were able to blithely rationalize), we undid the decision that had been so hard to make the day before and cancelled the car. We then hot-footed it over to the bike shop, where we got the guy (who thought we were crazy and who, in character, swore up and down that come the summer he could sell it for more) to knock a symbolic 100 DMs off the bike, and we quickly closed on that deal.

While in retrospect I no longer think that our decision to buy the bike was crazy in itself–after all, motorcycle fantasies are a common, if gender-based function of youthful folly–our entire modus operandi was, in the least, devoid of good-sense and certainly indicative of the decadence of our joint mental state. Our decision-making process, fraught as it was with indecision and endlessly obsessive discussion, was pointless and unproductive. And our ability to cope together once we bought the bike was also blighted and benighted, for we ended up making the trip in a scattered and ill-conceived manner. I was not able to say, OK, if we are going to be on motorcycle, then let’s make it as comfortable as possible. In fact, I was incapable of even having such a thought. So for four months, we drove around Europe like two little ninnies, too ignorant and cheap to acquire the proper equipment. We did not have gear that was properly designed for carrying on a motorcycle–our things were packed in a suitcase, our sleeping bags were too bulky, and we never invested in raingear. We had not brought our helmets from the states because we were unsure if we would buy a bike or not, so we ended up driving over the Alps without helmets. And this lack of self-preservation extended beyond the motorcycle. For weeks we camped out before finally procuring the shelter of a tent. We never bought bedrolls or cooking gear. They were too expensive. They would load down the bike. We could not really even discuss these things. My inability to have faith in my better judgment, or to even think that I possessed such a thing, kept me silent and passive

And really, the entire question of the bike itself was a red herring that both embodied the real issue and distracted us from considering it. I wrote in the journal that I kept on behalf of both of us that “my prime reasons for opposing the motorcycle were not the highest.” Surely I could not have been referring to guilt over wanting to be shielded from the elements. I don’t think, either, that I begrudged Danny his toy, although I was quite skeptical about its desirability. More likely, it was the painful awareness that what had begun as a mutual dream, a shared romantic fantasy had shifted and changed, and that we no longer, if ever, shared the same dreams. Because the real issue, to which I’ve alluded, but whose I content I keep skirting to revel in surface narrative, is that our very mode of being was antithetical to the ethos that we claimed to espouse and personify. We crippled each other and held each other back. No matter what trappings of coolness we assumed, or to what “in” spots we traveled, as long as we stayed together neither of us could ever hope to become the super-mellow, stonegroove, enlightened individual toward which we each aspired. On some level, not very far from the surface, I even knew all that then. Yet when we made our peregrinations around Europe I also tried very hard not to see it.

All along our relationship had been fraught with ambivalence. Although I lost my virginity to Danny, I can’t actually remember ever having had any kind of orgasm with him. Right after we were married I promised myself one new lover every year, and even while we were in Europe I kept that promise by screwing his best friend’s brother in a farmhouse in Italy the night before our anniversary. Although we were drawn to each other when we first met at the Student Help tutoring center for disadvantaged kids, ultimately we ended up together because he had pursued me, or his vision of who I was, until I finally capitulated. I allowed myself to become involved with him because I had broken up with my previous boyfriend and Danny was the only guy I subsequently met with any personal magnetism whatsoever, the only one who was more than just a boring clod. I slept with him because he was persistent and I had gotten tired of being a virgin. I married him because I needed to get out of my parents’ house but I didn’t have the fortitude to just up and leave. During the ceremony, as I made the traditional promises, I crossed my fingers behind my back.

“What do you mean you have to find yourself as a person,” he had written to me, in response to my suggestion that maybe we should wait to get married because I had some growing to do. What I meant was that I was insecure, self-destructive, and jealous of his freedom and self-possession. I wanted more than anything else to be as powerful a person as he seemed to be. But of course I couldn’t articulate that to him–or to my conscious self for that matter.

From long before we met until well after we finally broke up, I felt like an incompetent wimp in terms of dealing with “the world,” and he both countered and supported my feelings of inadequacy. They were countered by the fact that he felt superior to almost everyone else and since I was attached to him, some of his superiority could rub off on me. His implication was, furthermore, that since he had picked me, by definition I, too, must have been better than most people. On the other hand, he clearly felt superior to me, too, and to my ineptitude at mundane material world functioning. My alleged spaciness, my so-called ditzy friends, my infamous irresponsibility, were constantly being held up for mutual ridicule. I put up with his derision because at heart, I felt that there was something very wrong with me and that I did need him to get along, to manage in dealing with the world. Yet I also resented him because he was responsible and efficient, just as he resented me because I was irresponsible and inefficient. Nonetheless, as witnessed by our travelogue, we each colluded with the other to maintain the status quo.

So we bought the motorcycle and left Munich as soon as possible, winging back over the Alps, heading for Italy as fast as we could, gradually picking up those essentials for the rest of the trip that we could just not ignore–a tent, helmets, a poncho for him (the logic here was that as the driver, he was more exposed to the rain). In retrospect, I’ve always found it amazing that we crossed the Alps without helmets, and I have interpreted it as an example of how people in their early twenties feel immortal. But maybe it was a sort of death wish. How competent and responsible could he have been if he allowed us to do that? At the Brenner Pass we were unprotected from the light snow that fell as we slept. We never did acquire cooking gear throughout the entire trip. And ultimately the motorcycle threw a piston, which I viewed as completely his fault since the bike was his responsibility and he was the one who was supposed to be so responsible and competent, anyway.

There were really only two months between the time we bought the bike and its self-destruction, but they were the most memorable of the whole trip–Italy and Greece, beaches, wine, and art. We kept meeting with and separating from an ever-changing group of fellow-travelers on a similar pilgrimage. Bob from Essaouira with whom we had driven from Barcelona to Cannes, resurfaced in Venice and was overjoyed to see that the motorcycle had prevailed. He had hooked up with a loosely-defined group centered around Mark and Beate and their VW microbus. We camped out with them supping on mashed potato and sardine croquettes (which somehow never tasted the same when I tried to recreate them at home), outside of Venice before we bought our own two-man tent, and then again about a month later on the beach at Mallia in Crete, just down the road from a famous Minoan archaeological site, the best place really, with its little cafe that served us omelets and cheap wine, and a little island replete with a tiny Byzantine chapel an easy swim away, through warm, clear water and gentle surf. It was there on a cheap and tinny tape-recorder (no cassettes yet) that one of our group, Sally, first played for us what could have been our theme song, Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Teach Your Children Well,” dedicated to all of us “who were on the road.” When Sally (perhaps somewhat self-consciously) told us to hush and listen to the words, I felt a regretful tug, engendered by my knowledge of how our groovy exterior barely masked a destructive relationship between two people who stayed together out of dependency and insecurity. We were doing all the right things but we were doomed to not “becoming ourselves” as long as we stayed locked together. The songs were all about freedom, but I couldn’t leave that relationship even though it stifled my soul, because I felt so basically worthless and helpless. And yet I knew somewhere inside that unless I took that leap of faith in myself I would never grow beyond my psychically stunted state, I would never fulfill the purpose of the very quest on which I found myself.

Despite the good times and mellow vibes of making the scene, the bike presented us with a continual assortment of hassles from the start. For one thing, it was a real physical drain on Danny, a big bike, loaded with two passengers and lots of gear, traveling on some pretty poor mountain roads. And then, although it looked great, we learned that, indeed, appearances could be deceiving, as my misgivings were borne out. Our very first afternoon out of Munich we discovered that it would fishtail whenever we went over forty kilometres per hour, although we attempted to resolve the problem by redistributing the load. It also seemed to be geared funny, or so Danny told me, unusually short. That night we met a fellow at a campsite, another biker, who took one look at the bike and saw that it had been set up for a sidecar, a diagnosis that was corroborated by all who looked at it subsequently. And many did, as there was always some little–or big–thing that needed adjustment. One could say that I was less than sympathetic. In fact, I was downright hostile. If Danny was in a state of physical depletion, that was his problem; it was he who had wanted the bike in the first place and what had he expected? And the fact that we encountered a big surprise so soon after our purchase, that the bike was not what it had seemed, why that was his problem too. He was the one who had wanted it so badly, he was the one who thought it was so beautiful and perfect, and if he was so much smarter than everyone else, how could everyone, including a fellow from India whom we just happened to chat with outside the Catacomb of Domitilla in Rome, see that it had been set up for a sidecar and therefore was improperly geared and balanced–and he couldn’t?

But the real denouement to the bike story occurred after we left our beach days behind, had taken the ferry from Crete to Thessaloniki, and were heading towards Northern Europe via the Yugoslavian coast, which we planned to reach by crossing the mountains between Yugoslavia and Albania. We were no more than twenty kilometres beyond the Yugoslavian border (the only border that had been a hassle to cross) when there was an awful clanking and grinding after which the bike sputtered to a halt. Danny managed to pull it over to the side of the road, and when he unscrewed the bottom of the crank case, out spilled pieces of ground-up metal. A friendly middle-aged (at the time he seemed rather elderly) Briton soon stopped his forest-green MGB behind us and confirmed what I think Danny realized from the moment he bent over to check out the noise. The left piston was crushed to smithereens, and there was not even a drop of oil in the crankcase. Yes folks–the motorcycle had been driven from Munich across the Alps to Venice, down on to Florence and then to Rome, to Naples, across Italy, through torturous mountains in mainland Greece, to Athens and all over Crete, without once having had its oil level checked. 6000 kilometres without the addition of even a pint of oil! And that is not very good for an engine. And that was certainly not a way for Mr. Responsible to take care of his most prized, and difficultly-achieved possession.

We did have a little booklet that listed BMW repair stations in Europe, and of course, there was not a single one in all of Yugoslavia. Along with the British gentleman, we decided that our best bet was to return to Greece where there was facility listed in Polycastron, about thirty kilometres south of the border. We were towed back to the Yugoslavian-Greek border where we camped out over night, with only our emergency stash of chocolate and oranges to eat. Could it be that we discussed the Civil War, as I seem to recall? The next morning we were towed back to Polycastron, a town with very little to offer, where we hung out for a couple of days, passing the time by playing gin rummy, while we waited for the bike to be fixed. I wrote in a kind of code that only skimmed the surface, “It was, of course quite a drag and engendered many harsh feelings and incriminations as to the cause of our woe . . .” but really, there was not much to be said. What could one say? Danny had fucked up. I knew it. He knew it. And somehow, the fuck-up was associated with the tension between us, with the bickering and distrust, and with the over-all dysfunctionality of our relationship.

Although we stayed abroad for almost three more months, and at the time would have said that our week in Amsterdam had been the highlight of our jaunt, in some ways the trip was over after that. The fellows in Polycastron were able to fix the problem and send us on our merry way in only a few days, but the bike was in awful shape. The engine sounded sick and Danny was afraid to take it up over 80 Ks, and a new problem developed — the bearings in the front wheel squeaked and scrunched as if they were being ground up. The trip through the mountains and up the supposedly spectacular Dalmation coast was stressful and nerve-wracking. Driving through those mountains, so close to Albania, was one more impractical and thoughtless move –at times the road was no more than a dirt path. We were too strung out to really appreciate its charm– gypsies camping by the side of the road, a shepherd seated on a rock piping to his flock, and then, down on the coast, the pristine beauty of the Bay of Kotor where I would have loved to linger, even for a night. But we wanted to get out of Yugoslavia fast, to a place where the bike could really be fixed. That did not occur until we found our second repair person in Vienna (in Klagenfurt, just over the border, the person we took it to laughed at us, and at our first stop in Vienna a dealer offered to buy the bike as a junker) who told us that our problem was really quite simple — the Greek mechanics had put the ring connecting the piston to the crank shaft on backwards. But whatever joy we might have had, whatever trust and confidence had remained between us, had been shattered along with the piston. And although, amazingly enough, the bike ended up not being a total financial loss (before flying home we shipped it from London to California, where Danny later sold it for $800), it had become a lost cause, a very tangible symbol of the breakdown between us.

When I think of the selves we were each to become long after the trip –and for that matter our marriage– was over, some very intriguing contradictions are highlighted by the roles we each played during our travels across Europe. Despite our stands on the motorcycle controversy, at the time, all our friends and associates would probably have agreed that within the marriage I was the liberated “free-spirit,” the one less bound by convention or obligation, the one with less of a sense of responsibility. Danny, on the other hand, was known as Mr. Work-habits, Ebenezer (as in Scrooge), a man who would drive to every supermarket in town to take advantage of their loss-leaders, who viewed overdue library books as anathema. In the who-is-hipper-than-whom debate, in some ways, with my less goal-oriented approach to life and living, in my vagueness regarding the fulfillment of obligations, it would have seemed as if my way of being in the world was far more consistent with the ethos of the age than was Danny’s. Actually, my objections to the motorcycle, to its impracticality, to its extravagance, were quite out of character, at least as I perceived myself then. Such concerns were usually Danny’s province.

On the other hand, quite the opposite is true about our later lives. Despite the fact that we have each pursued stable, professional careers, and as a result, we each live in a certain amount of material comfort, in many ways Danny has maintained a lifestyle characterized by habits and allegiances that are far more consistent with the values that we held then and the goals that we thought we were pursuing. He has continued to lead the life of an aging hippie, emotionally involved with his various cats–hosting a radio program on Public Radio, playing on a slow-pitch softball team, participating in a gamelan, “getting into” sailing. Although he confessed that a few years ago he broke down and bought a roll-top desk, his kitchen is still stocked with an odd assortment of unmatched china, silverware and jelly-glasses. I, on the other hand, seem to have completely bought into the trappings of a stable middle class life-style: married for fourteen years (albeit shakily for the past several), with three children, and a kitchen filled with new appliances and matching silverware and dishes. The contrast in our current modus operandi’s was really brought home to me six years ago when I received a postcard from him from Indonesia, shortly after the birth of my third child. Although he had a research appointment at a major university, Danny was in Indonesia not because of his scholarly pursuits, but because of his involvement with gamelan music. The postcard he sent me, written just ten days after my son’s birth pictured the Temple of Borobodur which, he wrote, he had visited that week on LSD and “all the little carvings became my friends.” I was overwhelmed by the differences in whom we had each become, and enormously relieved that I had stopped trying to live my life alongside his.

Yet the irony of how we have seemingly exchanged positions was not lost on me, and now I see how the trip twenty years ago could have resulted in real compromise. If we had each been able to allow the other to switch roles comfortably, perhaps we could have grown together, after all. For a change, I was the one opting for the more “responsible” option in wanting to have a more convenient mode of travel, he was advocating a less practical, more ”liberated” option. The course of action we pursued, however, served to entrench us even more deeply in our opposite positions. Although buying the motorcycle fulfilled Danny’s charmed fantasy of the open road, the act of acquiescing allowed me to completely abdicate any responsibility–for driving, for taking care of it, even for considering how our operation could have been more comfortable and efficient, which ultimately polarized us even more and drove us further apart. I didn’t have ownership of the bike, I didn’t have ownership of the trip, and I didn’t have ownership of my life.

But, of course, only the person whom I have become can see that there might have been another option. At the time, I had only the most inchoate intuition that buried beneath the insecure, helpless, essentially paralyzed person I presented was a powerful, gutsy, practical survivor with an indomitable will and a great ability to cope. And I suppose that the real story–or at least another one–is how I was finally able to claim that power, to move closer to my goal of enlightenment, of self-realization, long after I returned from my journey across Europe.

Although we each might have wanted the other, and ourselves, to change, we were both invested in maintaining the status quo — I, for one, was too frightened to depart from its rigid security. And yet it was only by taking that leap into the unknown that I was ultimately able to grow according to the vision we were pursuing on our quest.

Mara Witzling

August 1991