Click below to see each completed day in the journey.
— First destination: Austin, Texas (USA)
6AM
I started at home: packing and cooking strategically all that I could take with me as a REAL dinner, before I’d have to knowingly manage on the same survival meals every single day for roughly the rest of the week. Since I was staying locally in Austin for my first night, there was no need for me to forego the facilities I still had at my disposal– at least until I’d be dropped off at the hotel, where naturally, I’d have no access to a kitchen.
On this trip where the only thing I would be collecting was food research, I didn’t pack much with me. Just appropriate clothes; phone, chargers, headphones, legal documents, and toiletry necessities; a single pocket sketchbook, a few writing utensils and… this time… my inherited guitar in its case for basic musical practice while on the go. (I didn’t feel safe risking my violin between customs. Didn’t even want to chance potential ‘banned materials’ possibly being a part of my violin’s structure without me knowing it.)
If, I did fold a few tote bags into my duffle bag, in case of possibly finding foods to bring back with me.
11AM
When my mom and I left, we went by the hotel first to check me in. I dropped off my things, including my meals. Then I asked her if we could go to Central Market to get lunch and some last supplies for me. We ended up taking the long route after dropping my stuff off at the hotel… looking a bit around downtown Austin at my mom’s desire. I didn’t like it… but I could *feel* it was correct to do, so I acquiesced.
At the moment, I could only spare so much nostalgia and sentiment, I realized. I knew I would feel some measure of homesickness, but equally, getting away from this all also felt to me as though I could breathe a bit more— be truer to me more, and to what I knew. After all, as I looked out my window— painfully reminded as ever of memories connected to certain places I’ve now been around for years… down to my mom mentioning places I could go to once I came back: local things being advertised that I could do if I wanted, what with my birthday coming up soon… I politely listened, but all the same, held my tongue about my truest thoughts in answer.
Because all the same, there my mom began to point out what I already knew was really, really wrong. No matter my memories and history in Austin.
No matter Stubb’s BBQ, where I’d first seen one of my favorite bands perform.
No matter any of Austin’s happier effects— my undergraduate alma mater in the University of Texas; live music as the city’s major motif and boasting point; the laid-back, “Keep Austin weird” setting overall… the places I could name where once upon a time, I visited *here…* I did *that* there… I even ate. Even wanted to eat.
I knew, both in Austin and outside of it, all of my circles’ sorrow. Those who’d lost loved ones that never could come back… thanks to suicide; to cancer; to everything in between. Those who’d been battered; those who’d been abused. No matter what happier things they might say publicly online, or answer with if asked a simple, “How are you doing?” Those whose miseries were beginning to parallel each other left and right— loss of a job, soulless working conditions, a desperate need for money, a desperate need to be even modestly respected, for how hard they each worked; this disease, that injury, that tragedy.
Down to what my mom began to point out right in front of us on Austin’s very streets…
And what she herself did not point out… but with my increasing proficiency in Spanish, could just as immediately disgust me as if I had read it in English as, “pretty girls for sale” instead.
Finally, my mom pointed out what really mattered, I recognized, as we slowly but surely made our way to Central Market… How wild sage does grow here, if inedible because of nearby traffic pollution.
Keep to your food collection, me, I thought. And, get some sage.
1:30 PM
Amongst other things I now would be taking on my trip with me were my old standby rations during this war-in-truth: water, dried fruits, and mixed roasted nuts, as well as equally a good deal of bottled dried herbs and spices that I would be carrying with me on the go. (Hello tote bags, and hello sage.) My mom and I equally shared some of the fresher things we got as well for lunch— Tiger Stripe figs, Brown Turkey figs, Black Mission figs, and Sierra figs.
We saved a portion of figs for my mom to take back to my dad and brother; another portion for me to have at the hotel, along with some nut milk that could last unrefrigerated.
2:30PM
My mom drove me once more back to my hotel to drop off the last of my supplies— including extra paper plates, bowls, napkins, and utensils she had recommended I bring as well. I was grateful for her help at tying my dinner in bags to keep it extra insulated, considering the time I’d need for what I’d have to do next.
3PM
Then, as I had requested, my mom took me from the hotel and dropped me off at the bus station a few miles away— the Pavilion Park-and-Ride near Jollyville Road.
She bid me goodbye, almost just like the days back when she would drop me off each morning to go to my classes at UT and pick me up once I returned in the evening.
Nostalgic as it did feel to know I’d indeed be taking good ‘ole Bus 982 once again, here and now, I had neither the space nor the time for those memories. The Pavilion itself confirmed it to me.
I got to work, rosier-tinted glasses off.
There were two places I knew I’d distinctly wanted to research on my own while still in Austin: the first being this area around Jollyville. I’d walk around. See what I could really see about yes, a place I’d known for years— just never before while wearing these newer lenses of mine— and then return to the Pavilion to take a bus back to my hotel. (Not least to get in a little bus-riding practice before I’d be doing the real thing. Frankly, it had been a while for me.)
I had thought to go in one direction first, closer to the Bank of America and the Krispy Kreme I immediately knew was down the way… but the moment I turned around to go in that direction, the Universe immediately showed me all that I would see: donuts. Just more fried, oiled, starch-dough and sugar, literally sitting right there on the Pavilion’s corner pillar.
Best not to waste my time.
I turned then in the other direction… silently glancing at some of the people waiting for their buses… not looking any happier nor much better off than anyone else I’d seen earlier in the day– tired, weary. I tried not to appear vulnerable, nor linger too long, when I noticed a man across the street who might have been watching me as I passed by him.
As I walked closer towards Duval Road, I equally passed by other pedestrians that worried me far less: they nodded with a hello as I did with them, and we each carried on, kind and cordial as ever. If, and after all too… they weren’t homeless, I thought to myself, anymore than I was.
Finally, I turned back around. The Universe had given me one more sign right there in front of me on the pavement as I looked down… and once I saw it, I recognized I’d seen all that was really necessary for me to see on this day, even if it wasn’t yet food of any kind.
The sign: a Canadian 25-cent coin– with its moose on one side, and the now-deceased former Queen of the UK on the other.
For… it harkened me back to my memory, and the pitiful lesson I learned therein, when I most recently returned to Edinburgh. With over 30 GBP I had kept with me for years in coins that I hadn’t gotten to use during my first travels there, I’d brought them back with me, intending to finally use them up as I needed them. Yet, I’d been confusingly told by people at different points that these were the “old coins” and might be too late to be “taken in.” I had no idea why they were telling me this, until eventually I sought the answer from a currency exchange point worker who informed me of what was going on. Because the former queen herself had died, national law meant that the citizens of the UK had had a set amount of time to turn in all coinage bearing her face, in exchange for new currency bearing the now-King of the UK’s face instead.
Past the deadline, any money still with the deceased queen’s face would be deemed worthless and at best, turned into simply scrap-metal if donated. I had just so happened to return to Scotland a month or two after this deadline… with no better way of knowing. Certainly, no similar customs practiced in the U.S.: us gladly getting on with our centuries-dead former leaders, I dryly noted to myself.
Meanwhile… a homeless man in the exchange point as well, who had been listening to us, asked me if I had any money I could spare him… since I told him sadly, that if I could, I’d give him the money I now otherwise had to donate to just become scrap metal before leaving. In answer, I gave him what I’d simply found earlier on the street then, too: a ~recent~ 50p coin… and wished him with genuine sadness that things could get better for him. He thanked me in kind, with equal sadness, before we departed.
I wondered, after all, if the same rules applied in UK-ruled Canada with this moose-queen-quarter coin. And if people had decided there, too, that one person’s life was all the difference money even made, versus whether or not we used it to help everyone in need.
4:30PM
I’d successfully caught my bus on time, and without issue. Noting that if nothing else, I did still love watching Austin’s skies as I rode.
Getting off the bus, I went to my hotel room and ate my Veggie Scrap Soup with portobello mushrooms, which was still warm thanks to my mom’s insulation help. I called her and briefly let her know… if then, to balance all the sugar from the figs I’d eaten earlier… I decided to quickly walk to Target and come back before dark, as it was just around the corner. Equally uneventful: Austin rush-hour traffic was being its normal levels of congested as I walked past it, and Target predictably and thankfully had the kale, spinach, parsley, celery, lemon, and cucumber cold-pressed bottled green juice that I couId rely upon.
I walked back to my hotel as I drank my juice. Then I practiced what I’ll admit was GREAT self-restraint— before immediately digging into the other portion of my meal I’d made for myself, I knew still had my second space to research first.
This time, a virtual space: a website I had found for traditional Persian recipes, as shared by an Iranian American chef. I figured that the best place to pay homage to the other half of my roots, i.e. the Iranian half, was while I was technically still at home overall.
7PM
I reviewed the research notes I had taken on my phone’s memo pad:
“Golpar, i.e. Persian Hogweed.” —Airy prime. Fiery-secondary. Carrot related. I think I begin to see. This next guidebook volume must introduce… More… more… more than one element to us.
“Dried figs, barberries, poppyseeds… orange blossom petals, rose petals. Persian golden plums (aloo zard), Persian sour plums (Gojeh sabz).”
(Of course, pomegranate too— but, I’m PRETTY SURE it’s fiery-prime, end of story.)
Tiger-stripe figs (versus black mission figs, sierra figs, and brown turkey figs.) Good candidates for studying further elemental variations in the same fruit.
Bottom line, that’s what I could feel truth to as I highlighted it on my phone. Whatever the case of everything else I honestly could not take from my combined roots— (regardless of whether it was Austinian with everything around me in person, or traditionally Iranian online with, if yes, lots of produce, but just the same, so much oil and copious starch and sugar as ever)— what I could take was what the Universe affirmed to me in linking, that was quite delicious. Figs.
These four fig varieties in particular would be great to next demonstrate produce indeed having more than just one element to its makeup.
And otherwise, I just chose three meals from the website that felt right to learn on a technical scale— meals that are traditionally delicious when you do them right, I knew— if, wanting now to remake them without traditional starch, sugar, excess fat, or dairy.
Ruling out what I otherwise knew to be either beyond my scope at this time (e.g. the likes of baklava-puff-pastry), already familiar to me (i.e. grinding, marinading, and then cooking meat over a skewer for kebabs), or else a little too fiery-prime-heavy for me to personally handle, (i.e. roasting tomatoes and eggplants over open flames for extra smokiness), I felt truth to studying the techniques of using fresh orange peels as an edible garnish; making kufteh pesteh, dolmeh, and zereshk polo. (With cauliflower rice in place of starch-rice, after all.) Golpar seeds were very interesting to learn about, but thinking practically, I knew I would not conveniently be able to go out of my way to find them immediately. Figs, on the other hand, I could count on.
(And by the by, once I’d finished my research, my lavender-blueberry-almond flour cake was delicious too.)
8 PM
After brushing my teeth and checking in with everyone back home briefly, I practiced music before it got too late, and then recorded the thoughts and reflections I had from above. As ever, I had much to bear with what I just couldn’t spare space to think about or reflect upon— instead, solely push through.
At that moment…
Pushing through being on the latter end of my period with extra itchiness, because I had little choice but to use disposable, dye-filled pads if I was on the go like this.
Pushing through having to measure how much fiery-fruit-sugar and nutty-fat I could take in one day at a time, no matter my care nowadays: because of the damage done to me with my dietary habits in the past, I am especially sensitive to too much sugar and saturated fat intake, and likely will be for the rest of my life.
And… as ever… pushing through equally having to hang in there with a lot of my interactions now with people close to me. If, for however much I loved them and knew they loved me, their simultaneous lack of regard for, curiosity about, and genuine sight of me and what I was doing here was ever-present.
Keep holding on and receiving, even through the sorrow, I reminded myself.
After all, it was through being determined to stay linked with one of the people close to me indeed, that I had been able to plan where I’d be headed to next, first thing in the morning. I recalled with them the conversation we had had earlier, as I *felt* I was to have it with them.
Me to my friend: “Question.”
My friend: “Yeah?”
“What’s the first word that comes to your mind when you hear ‘Idaho?’”
“Potatoes.” (And then:) “…Actually, my dad used to work in Pocatello.”
Pocatello, Idaho, it was. Hopefully avoiding the potatoes… and hopefully, continuing to see through the storms.
-Day 1: End-