Bracelets
Present
Yesterday, one year deep into COVID-19 quarantine, after picking up Indian food in my thoroughly suburban hometown, I pulled up into my thoroughly suburban driveway and took off my meshed biking gloves. And I noticed something unfamiliar on my left wrist.
In the location where there would usually be a tattered string barely hanging on for dear life, adorned with what I would assume to be African colors–wooden beads of green, red, and yellow–there was nothing but pale skin.
I blinked, making sure my bearings of reality were still intact. Some percussive maintenance to my cheek to make sure my eyes weren’t malfunctioning. When I realized reality was reality, I took a small breath. Dismounted. Shut off my engine.
Then, a wave of emotions.
This was what Voldemort must have felt when he lost a horcrux.
It felt like through all the misadventures we had been through, the countless sweaty raves, the emotional turmoil of a rocky startup acquisition, the meager attempts at what people might call cardio, this small trinket somehow manifested a piece of my soul.
This bracelet was the last of its brethren; over the course of my romp across the world I had acquired three wrist-related types of jewelry, and due to the passage of time and the occurrence of events, one by one, they decided to free themselves from human captivity. And when this bracelet decided to join its brothers, presumably at 60mph cruising down a scenic highway, it managed to take with it a part of my personality.
Honestly, I was surprised it didn’t break earlier.
The waves kept on coming. I gathered my thoughts.
Why do people carry mementos?
I don’t think I’m a materialistic person, but this was the last material reminder of the collective sum of experiences accumulated over four and a half months: the multitude of interesting people met, the different perspectives offered by lives who weren’t born in the Silicon Valley – the Bedouin family that treated me to tea but only had tin cans as cups, the ballerina from Moscow theatre who came from a famous line of executioners, the analog synth documentarian in Prague; the deafening stillness of the corpse washed up on the coast of Koh Samui, the cafe con leche at 1.5euro served by a granny in Porto, the incessant kick drum of the raves of Berlin; the empty eyes of chemical love and the full eyes of something more real; the loneliness, the opposite of loneliness, the beautiful brilliant blue of the sea above me and the vast expanse below, the sunrises and the sunsets; the stories I deemed worthy to share on Instagram, the ones I didn’t, and the ones that were so personal I still haven’t dared to tell another soul.
Every time these bracelets would audibly scritch-scratch against the aluminum casing of my laptop, I was reminded that all of the above wasn’t an extended fever dream. And those lessons shouldn’t be forgotten.
At least my laptop would be scratch-free for the foreseeable future.
In this essay, I will try my best to stroll down memory lane and perform a wake: recounting the anecdotes of each bracelet into a medium other than my brain, before they are lost forever.
1
Jay was a fiendish smoker, long haired dude whose eyes told the story of someone who may have done a bit too much MDMA. He was also the only other dude fiending the free breakfast at 8am; it was quite empty, as it was offseason in Istanbul. Free coffee, eggs, olives, some veggies, and jam; this was practically the Ritz of hostels.
Some cheeky banter later, we bonded over our raiding of the hostel pantry. We checked out some sights; we saw a cat perched on some pillars in front of Ayasofia. Roman aquaducts. Fish sandwiches. Pomegranate juice and roasted chestnuts and midnight coffee.
We rallied the crowd and ended up in the Asian section of Istanbul. They then made plans to spontaneously embark on a road trip round Turkey for a grand sampling of kebabs and to check out the salt baths at Cappadocia.
I was tempted to go, but alas I had a flight to Tel Aviv tomorrow.
On the way out, we passed by a vendor. Jay said, “Yo we should get matching bracelets.” So we did.
Got one with “real stone,” which was 50 cents more expensive than its companions. Blue for 3 USD.
2
Scene: 6am in Petra to beat the crowd. Somehow there were still influencers trying to catch the perfect angle. Found a trail–a battle against gravity–to the temple.
There was a solitary lady. Hacking. Coughing. Wheezing as she dragged her aging self up the steps. I was following behind. No one else. Sunlight barely illuminating the sky.
When she stopped, she set up shop at the peak. She was a vendor. I bought a bracelet hoping she would afford some cough medicine.
4 Jordanian dollars. A serpentine, open-ended bracelet with teal-white beads, each one curiously oblong. The ends broke, but I managed to fashion the ends into a hook to prevent further beads from falling out.
A month later this bracelet managed to stick itself in 4 different people’s clothing in different clubs. Many drinks were shared, many threads entangled, clothes ripped.
3
I met a French girl in Koh Tao at the beginning of my trip. She said she’d be in Greece in 3 months; she was half Greek after all, and she’d show me around. Free housing? A tour from a local? Sign me up.
I landed. We met up.
Sintama square. Bought me food. Burnt cars and graffiti adorned the white walls and ancient statues. Parthenon in the distance, glowing redder by the minute.
The conversation was not as lively as I imagined it to be.
We went on a walk. African migrants (presumably Greece is the entry point to the EU) were giving out friendship bracelets. Supposed to be free, but this was a common hustle that preyed on nice tourists.Even though she was local, she was too nice to say no. 5 euro. She paid.
I held out my hand and she tied it on my wrist.
After the walk she looked me in the eyes and said she wanted to tell me something. “Sorry, I fell in love with another guy.” I nodded, everything made sense.
She told me to go to Paros, her hometown. So there I went.
Present
I am now naked; no bracelets, no tattoos, and soon to be no piercings. In some cruel twist of irony, it turns out my body has a rare condition that explicitly rejects foreign objects stuck in my body. ….I have nothing to carry the burden of this experience but myself.
I don’t really have a big overarching moral at the end of this treatise, I guess. This was more of an exercise of literary wit, motivated by my inclination to romanticize my life, exacerbated by the ennui of being stuck at home for over a year.
If I were to summarize, I hope those lessons, whatever they are, still manifest themselves in me somehow, although their mortal anchor is no more.
Who knows how long it’ll be before I get another bracelet again.
