Different Slants

 Mwy o `straeon gan yr Ymwelydd Americanaidd dryslyd

    (More stories from the confused American tourist)

  (# 2 of 4 chapters)

After a difficult night, the little of it I had left after leaving that surreal fish n’ chips place in Cardiff, I lay there for a while in the big bed with its creaking wooden frame in someone else’s house, just staring up at the ceiling.

I was recovering from that 2 am fried fish meal, which was an early indicator that I was becoming unable to digest various oils, increasingly, and which would soon include olive oil and shaved Parmesan Cheese in Italian restaurants (to use on good crusty bread instead of butter) and house salads and eventually even popcorn in movie theaters, too.  Peanut butter was already taboo, after thousands of sandwiches I devoured as a little kid in Chicago.  .

One thing I didn’t want, was to discover a new surprise food allergy while alone on a foreign island.  This was new and I would have to mentally add it to my banned shopping list, now too long to easily remember.  I would adapt—I’ve always adapted—but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t morn some wonderful flavors that were now permanently off limits to me.  Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Welch’s Concord Grape Jelly and Silvercup White bread.  Good bye old friends, from the Fifties.

That other worldly-blond?  Ahhhh, I don’t want to think about her at all. Ever. Terror in the night, man.

But, I was ok enough to get up and out of my lonely room.  Long married and used to snuggling a very warm and attractive wife, for decades by then, sleeping alone was always cold when I traveled.  I missed the dogs that slept with us too.  Traveling alone can be a mixed blessing: I could do whatever I wanted with no negotiations, but I could also shiver at night. A very mixed blessing.

I suppose replacements could be rented, but not by me.  Perhaps a dog, but that would be as far as I would go.

So, slightly nauseous, lonely and with much to explore and no clue how to get there, I dressed and left my three-day home.  At least it was warm in Cardiff, and the natives were friendly.

I consulted my detailed road map covered with little pictures of big castles to lure the average tourist, and I decided to aim toward Swansea and see the southern coast of Wales.  Swansea was the next sizable town southwest of the capitol and fairly close, too.  I’d read about a place called Three Cliffs which was supposed to be especially beautiful and that was the kind of experience I wanted.  Castles would be later on.

I went back to the same small grocery and gathered up some supplies for breakfast.  Besides grapes, a crusty loaf of bread and cheese (that looks so romantic as I type those words on this page…) plump red tomatoes plus a little shaker of salt to sprinkle on them are very good road food, too.  Tomatoes are like juicy apples: both food and drink together.  Very practical and you can’t spill an apple or a tomato while driving.  European dark or bittersweet chocolate was always welcome, of course, as long as it wasn’t too hot outside and a small enough bar for me to knock off in a short time.  Dark chocolate always made me a little happier. 

Also, I always kept a plastic water bottle, with me wherever I went.

Always.

There is a big difference between having water and not having drinkable water, as I learned in 1969 when my van broke down twenty miles east of El Paso, Texas, about an hour before noon and the shimmering universe of heat was something, at nineteen years old, I had never encountered before.

                                                                                                                                                                  

I was just north of Chihuahua, Mexico and in the West Texas desert, stuck in the fine tan sand up to my old van’s axels.  I was far north of the Rio Grande River and any other source of water.  I was just out of sight off of the interstate, looking for whatever I was looking for, and I was trapped there, for hours, with no water.

 

That story–involving a grim pact with the friend I was traveling with to split up to see if we could save ourselves; major culture shock when I finally got a couple of Texas Rangers to stop for me when I frantically flagged them down from the side of a hot blacktop road, with my white T-shirt tied to a long stick, foolishly thinking they were Western versions of the Chicago cops I knew and liked; then being angrily accused of being a deserter from a Texas military base during the height of the Viet Nam War, when that was more likely a fact to the Rangers than not–is for another time. 

But it did give me a clear standard to judge the way policemen in different places will, or will not, help you when you really need it.  My gentle advice for Welsh travelers in the United States, if they think there is one chance in a million their car will break down while touring my giant country, please be certain you do NOT—repeat, do NOT—break down in Texas. 

Evidently, real men do not have their cars break down in Texas, because if it does, you must be, according to my one bad experience there: Fleeing someone or something, a foreigner (meaning not a Texan), or some god-damn liar because no Texan would ever be so dumb to have their car break down in the West Texas Desert. That situation implies that you are a person of suspicion and keep…away…from the Texas Ranger’s car, no matter how desperate you may look.

I’m going back to green and friendly southern Wales now, to continue my considerably happier story there.  But for the record, the military installation in El Paso was Fort Bliss, which I was definitely not deserting, and it took a long while before those damn Texas cops believed a single word I said, in my unwelcome Yankee accent. 

Yeah, it’s been forty long years since that moment in time, but man, I sure remember Texas.

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I stopped my meandering in central Swansea to ask directions from a man standing by a bus stop.  I pulled over in the light traffic, rolled down my window and asked him how to find the place I was looking for.  It seemed very close by where I was, according to my map. 

 

The man smiled, leaned in my window and began answering me, or I thought he was answering me.  I had no clue what he was saying.  But I smiled back at him, and requested that he repeat the directions once more, please. He cheerfully did that, but it was the same.  He tried once more, and I thanked him, pretending I understood him and slowly pulled away.  It may possibly have been my first exposure to Welsh.  But he was sure a nice and friendly guy.

Better incomprehensible directions from a kind soul, than thunder and lightning from those Texas Rangers.

So I continued to wind my way through the town and just as I was leaving it, I saw an ancient-looking one-pump gas station and decided to try again.  The guy there was very helpful, spoke strongly accented English that was different from London, but otherwise no problem for me.  He showed me, on a larger scale local map, exactly where I was and where I wanted to be and then told me what road to take to get there.  I guess he knew I was from out of town.  I thanked him, bought some gas and followed his directions to the Three Cliffs area.

As I moved along the pretty green countryside, I was thinking that as the towns became smaller and more isolated, maybe Welsh was still in active use, instead of only now being revived in schools around the country.

I knew that was true for Israel, where I’d been exactly one year before. I was visiting there with a childhood friend, Rick Munden, who spoke about as much Hebrew as I did, meaning: Shalom.

At first in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, everyone we met spoke very fluent English, which was the same as I experienced in Hebrew school in 1958, forty years earlier.  So, I kinda assumed that while Hebrew was Israel’s “official” language, it was really English, so that the small country could communicate with the rest of the world. 

Cultural history aside, in 1948, when Israel became independent of the island I was coincidentally driving in at the moment, how many people in the world spoke conversational Hebrew, as compared to say, English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, Chinese or German, all world languages to one degree or another?

Maybe fifty thousand people, at most.

Even if Israel, whose steadily arriving post-war refugees spoke about seventy different languages (to make communication between its citizens even more complicated) chose to resurrect ancient Hebrew as a common emotional and national way to make all of its people bond together under a single flag, that would still not help it become a successful trading nation. 

So, English, the world’s most common language due to the enormous world empire of that same little island I was motoring on, and still considered to be the international language of business and trade even though that historic empire was now only history, was selected by Israel’s government as the best way to go, and coincidentally would make connecting with its very supportive American cousins, much easier.  It’s a whole lot easier to raise money if the people you’re asking can understand what you’re saying.

You don’t survive for four thousand years as a distinct culture/religion/people by not adapting to your surrounding realities.  So, I would assume that the exiled Jews sent to Babylonia (where the tragic Iraq War is now being waged, unfortunately) as captives pretty quickly learned how to speak their captor’s tongue.

The same way they learned Greek to speak to Athenians, then Latin to deal with the mighty Romans, and so on as they watched each successive empire rise and fall over the centuries.  I would not be surprised at all if the Jews in the next century were fluent in Chinese.  We already support their restaurants all over the world, so why not?

But I noticed, on my long drive down from Jerusalem thru the blistering Negev Desert, when I stopped for water or gas in some tiny town, everyone spoke Hebrew and nothing else.  That was when it first hit me that Hebrew really was the country’s first language.  While it made Israel more foreign to me, I still was proud of what the little country had accomplished as far as reviving ancient biblical Hebrew and transforming it into a modern sophisticated language in common use, every single day.

Perhaps that was the same situation in modern Wales, in terms of bringing spoken Welsh back from the dead.

That led to a series of other thoughts which I had been mulling over the years in my life-long hobby of absorbing, sorting and cross-referencing geographic, demographic and historical trivia. 

Israel?  Wales?  How much alike are they?

The answer is: A lot more than an average person might think.

You don’t believe it? 

Okay, try this out. 

1–Israel and Wales are almost exactly the same size: Wales, a bit over 8,000 square miles, Israel, a bit less.

2–Both have a large body of water as their western border: Wales, the Atlantic and Israel, the Mediterranean Sea.

3–Both have resurrected an almost extinct national language in modern times to define their cultural identity, to varying degrees of success.  I have read that the Welsh schools have revived their original language to the point that it is not only no longer declining, but in fact flourishing.  Just look at the internet where there seem to be more Welsh organizations than Welsh people.  But I am very happy for them, because I understand their pride. 

Hebrew? Now spoken by millions, worldwide.  To me, an incredible feat of resurrection for the Holy land, though not involving Jesus.

4–By some very interesting coincidence, both nations were or still are under the control of Great Britain.

5–Both small but valiant nations are surrounded by much larger hostile neighbors.

Israel? Over a billion Arabs on their north, east and south.

Wales?  Well, Wales knows exactly where it is and who lives nearby, so I’ll leave it at that.

6–Finally, Israel had King David who is revered today as a virtual Jewish saint, and the Welsh have St. David, their country’s patron saint.

After I assembled this, I checked and found out that Wales has about 3,000 Jews in their fine country, out of a population of about 2,900,000 or .01%.  Both the Welsh and the Jews have dark hair, dark eyes and are not very tall, so how can anyone tell who is who? 

Perhaps the Welsh are actually descendents of the Ten lost Tribes of Israel?  What a nice thought.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But first, this incident happened and I got all riled up on behalf of Wales.  See if you agree with me.

I asked a good friend of mine to read my story about Wales to see what he thought about it.  He is a very well-educated man, far more than I am, multi-lingual and widely traveled.  He likes most of what I write, but he had a technical correction for me this time, explaining that what I keep referring to as “Welsh” in my story is incorrect and that the proper name for the language the Welsh people speak is Gaelic.  

Well, I know that is true.  I used to sell language systems in my former foreign language and world-travel bookstore, where I carried Irish, Scots and Welsh Gaelic tapes and one hundred other languages, including three types of Arabic and seven Native American languages as well.

So, I already knew what he pointed out was correct.  I just don’t agree with it.

I see it this way.  

(The Welsh words in my story are in bold print, beneath the paragraph it refers to.  All English to Welsh translation was done by the totally charming Gwen Jones, linkline@welsh-language-board.org.uk   Thanks, Gwen!) 

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The Greeks speak Greek. The French speak French. The English speak English.  The Danes speak Danish.  The Swedes speak Swedish.  The Italians speak Italian.  The Navahos speak Navaho and even the “Hebrews” speak Hebrew.

Mae’r Groegwyr yn siarad Groeg. Mae’r Ffrancwyr yn siarad Ffrangeg. Mae’r Saeson yn siarad Saesneg. Mae’r Daniaid yn siarad Daneg. Mae’r Swediad yn siarad Swedeg. Mae’r Eidalwyr yn siarad Eidaleg. Mae’r Nafachos yn siarad Nafacho ac mae’r “Hebreaid” yn siarad Hebraeg.                                                     

Why can’t the Welsh speak “Welsh”?  Why can’t that brave little country name what they speak after themselves?   Are not the Welsh worthy?  Must they split their language with their cousins the Scots and the Irish?   Must the outside world be allowed to choose what to call the language the Welsh speak between themselves? 

Pam na all y Cymry siarad “Cymraeg”? Pam na all y wlad fechan ddewr honno enwi’r hyn a siaradent ar ôl eu hunain? A ydynt ddim digon teilwng? A oes raid iddynt rannu eu hiaith gyda’u cefndryd, yr Albanwyr a’r Gwyddelod? A oes raid i’r byd tu allan ddewis beth i alw’r iaith mae’r Cymry’n ei siarad ymysg ei gilydd?

Who has this undemocratic right to interfere with the Welsh people? 

Pwy sydd â’r hawl annemocrataidd hon i ymyrryd â’r Cymry?

I say NO! 

Rwy’n dweud NA!

It’s their damn country, their damn language and they can call it whatever they want to call it!  I say call it Welsh, if it pleases them, and the rest of the world can go soak its head.   This Jew votes for the Welsh to speak for themselves, as they see fit.  Amen.  

Diawl! Eu gwlad nhw ydi hi, eu hiaith nhw ac fe allent  ei alw beth bynnag y dymunent ei alw! Rwy’n dweud i’w alw’n Gymraeg, os ydyw hynny’n eu bodloni, a gall gweddill y byd fynd i ganu. Mae’r Iddew hwn yn pleidleisio bod y Cymry yn siarad dros eu hunain, fel y gwelent yn briodol. Amen.

Long Live Wales!

Cymru am byth!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I finally came to the area the man in that old gas station described for me, but there seemed to be no place to park.  From what I read about it, this place was a real gem in different ways, and in America there would brass bands roaming around the streets drumming up attention and selling tickets to it.  There’d be T-shirt and souvenir stands, saying dumb things like:

 

                “My parents went to Three Cliffs in Wales and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

 

 

I was swiftly discovering that, just like in the 1930’s Depression-era gangster movie by writer David Mamet The Untouchables where the famous Scots actor, Sean Connery playing a tough old Irish Chicago cop (and a straight one, too) declares to the young and inexperienced in-the-ways-of-the-world Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner, that there might be various ways of dealing with a difficult or dangerous situation, but to that old cop, there was only one way:—The Chicago Way!—there was also a certain and quite subtle Wales Way, too.  

 

I finally passed a spot near a high stone wall covered with vines that seemed to be recessed sufficiently to allow my little car to park there and still allow other cars to pass by with no problem.  But there no other cars in sight.  It was so quiet.Then, as I attempted to parallel park the car while sitting on the wrong side (to me) and get it as close to that wall as possible, I discovered that I couldn’t fathom how to do something which in the States I was very skilled at doing.  Like a left-handed person (which I am) trying to sew or paint right-handed, if that gets my problem across to you. 

 

On my fifth or sixth effort, I thought I finally had it, until I heard this unmistakable sound of metal scrapping again stone.  Not a good moment for me.  I sat there, in my little metal sardine can of a car, and thought about inspecting the damage.  Deciding that seeing it wouldn’t change anything, I squeezed out of the car on the passenger side and didn’t look back at the damage.

 

I searched for an entrance to the natural wonder gently poking into the sky above me, which I could see from the street.  But after about thirty minutes I gave that idea up in favor of some American ingenuity and gumption.  There was this other high wall, about eight feet, on the other side of the street going some way to my left or right and I walked along it looking for a gap in the defenses until about two blocks later, I found it.  The wall was broken like some vehicle had smashed into it (No, no, no, I didn’t do it. Really) and the top of the wall had crumbled inwards leaving a lower spot only about five feet off the ground.

 

Being still reasonably fit at my advanced age of six hundred and twelve months, I decided to give it a shot and lifted myself up and over the wall, falling onto the dirt on the other side.  The only things that audibly cracked were the dry branches beneath me, fortunately, so I got up, brushed myself off and just kept going, like the Energizer Tourist.  

 

I believe someone told me or I may have read, that the name Three Cliffs wasn’t based on any Christian story but on three fairly low black hills that might be called mountains in Wales.  Little mountains.  I could see them clearly now, ahead of me, with the beautiful blue ocean stretching behind them into the horizon.  I kept moving, curious to see what was over the bluff in front of me.  There was no one else anywhere, but that may have been because I was somewhere that no one was supposed to be in the first place.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

 

When I reached the top of the bluff, there was a trail and a sea of green, green grass stretching out in front of me, sort of bending in the soft, warm and continuously blowing breeze.  The sun was high and the cloudless sky too blue to be real.  I was inside of a painting.  I will describe what I saw next exactly as it was, no more, no less.  It is no effort for me to remember such natural beauty.

 

As I walked down the little trail worn in the grass by other feet, I passed a small stone ruin, about the size of a log cabin.  It was not very architecturally distinctive, just sort of square and crumbling.  I walked over to it to look closer, since there was no fence or anything else around it to prevent that.  I know what you’re thinking, but no, I don’t normally climb over every wall I see. Then I saw the small brass plaque screwed into one of the higher walls.  I read it and smiled to myself.  It was a thirteenth century structure.

 

In America, anything over one hundred years old is celebrated as… Historic! Amazing! A Time-Defying Wonder!  That includes people, buildings, companies and possibly political machines.  Usually, to see one of these non-human phenomena, one must buy a ticket so one can marvel up close.  A buck is a buck.

 

Here was a small and unheralded ruin about four hundred years older than the 1776 founding of the United States and I could touch it, smell it, go inside of it and no one gave a damn.  It makes one think about values and time. 

 

There was no graffiti on its walls, and it wasn’t mentioned in any of the guide books as anything especially notable. But what lay just past the ruin, as I kept on moving toward the sea, absolutely was.

 

The trail on the bluff stopped and there was a steep drop off to a completely enclosed, very wide and deep meadow, far below where I stood.  I can’t find a way to say approximately how wide it was except to say it was like a canyon in the American southwest, except green, everywhere.  Down the center of it ran a thin serpentine stream bending this way and that, like a shimmering blue python winding its way into the sea.  The color of the stream was the same as the sky, so perfectly did the water reflect that same ethereal blue.

 

Were that it, I would have been stunned by the tableau spread below my feet and happy to experience such exquisite natural beauty.  But it was the herd of wild horses running free across the meadow that made me sink down in wonder and stare at them from my perch high above them.  Different shades of black, tawny, white, grey, the herd meandered, then stopped.  Some of the horses nibbled at the plentiful grass and then all of them suddenly began running again.  It was an Eden.  It was more than anyone could reasonably ever expect to witness, and to me, evidence of God, it was so perfect.

 

I was also completely alone and couldn’t believe that simple fact, either.

 

I watched all of it a while longer…the sea, the three little mountains, the meadow, the slinky silvery ribbon of a stream and those stunning horses, like some visible prayer.  Do my words do it justice?  Not even close.

 

After a while, I got up and walked along the rim of the bluff, looking for a way down.  I decided that there must be one.  Who could resist becoming part of this canvas?  Not me.  I didn’t need a souvenir, I just wanted to be closer to all of it. 

 

Eventually, I found the path, a steep one without rails or anything like that.  No steps cut into the earth, just dirt bending lower toward the meadow.  I carefully worked my way down, keeping an eye on all the horses, and conscious that they were surely keeping an eye on me, as well.  After a bit, I made it down to the flat meadow.

 

I started walking towards the horses, feeling the cooler air wafting over me that always seems to happen when I walked closer to a lake or ocean.  A mystery to me, that large bodies of water seem to make their own weather.  I moved slowly, watching them drink water from the stream.  Watching them group closer together in the farther part of the meadow.  Watching them, watching me.

 

After a time, I was close enough to touch a skinny shivering colt standing next to its substantial mother.  The horses didn’t move.  Not sure what to do at first—I didn’t want to spook them and ruin this magical moment—I remembered the advice I gave to my four children when they first discovered dogs:

 

Always put you hands out, palms up, so they can see that you’re not holding something that can hurt them.  Stand still and let them sniff your hands.  Be patient. Dogs know who they can trust.  They can sense it.

 

I followed my own advice, but chose to let the mother horse do the sniffing.  I don’t think it would have pleased her to have me approach the colt first.  We were all standing by the stream while this happened—the movie of it is running in my mind now—The mother kept her large black eyes on me every second.  I stood there like a statue seeking her approval.  Then she moved closer and pushed her nose gently against my chest., something I didn’t expect, but very much like an accepting dog would do.  It was fascinating, the similarity of it.

 

I slowly lifted one of my hands and stroked her long wheat-colored nose.  She let me.  I ran a hand, just one, lightly over her long flowing mane and the side of her thickly muscled neck.  She stood there, letting me, blowing air out of her nose.  The other horses were watching us.  Nobody moved.  Then I slowly moved my hand to the colt standing right up against her, like they were joined.  I was careful.  The colt allowed me to run my finger tips over its side, its neck, watching me tremulously all the time.

 

Then the mother horse lifted her beautiful head and turned toward the rest of the horses, slowly moving away from me.  I stayed where I was.  It was their meadow.  I would not overstay my welcome. The herd moved as one, away from me and closer to the mouth of the stream where it flowed into the sea.  I was a witness, I didn’t need any more than to be just that.

   

 

What happened next, the rest of that unique day in my life in fairy-tale Wales?

 

I don’t remember. 

 

It doesn’t matter.

 

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About the writer and his other life in Skokie, Illinois:

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Poetry? For me, writing poetry is not an option.
It’s a response to emotion. Like cigarette smoke,
it’s fast-flowing, shapeless and with little time to capture it.
Writing poetry in an imperative. I say what I feel compelled to say.

 

I sell my five published books via mail order and accept major credit cards.
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Fast, reliable service. Read my stories and see what you think.
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Feel free to call me at the number above.