Inspiring Women: Roxanne Krystalli: Open Hearted Traveller

Roxanne says in a video response to the question “who are you,” that she is “foreign everywhere and mispronounces everything.” Her honesty and self-effacement and joy are apparent throughout all that she shares. She was born in Greece, went to school in America, describes herself professionally as “a conflict management professional who specializes in the effects of war and conflict on women,” and in the same space as someone who is a “fervent believer in the power of storytelling.” Roxanne’s travels and work have taken her to Egypt, Jerusalem, Latin America and the Balkans, among other locales. On her site Stories of Conflict and Love and in her photo journal she documents these journeys, portraying not only “conflict and grief” but also human “resilience.”

Roxanne’s two posts on non-violent conflict here and here demonstrate both scholarship and lived experience. The first cites reports showing the relative success of strategically organized non-violent movements compared with violent confrontations. The second looks at violence itself and how it may backfire for both those in power and those who resist. While she expresses sympathy for protestors in her native land she does not agree with violent expression and points to a source where 198 alternatives to violent conflict are identified.

Roxanne has a wonderful eye for beauty in the landscapes she travels. See her post on light in Jerusalem during Hanukkah. From a walk in Greece, she shows us spiritual messages interspersed with violent and defiant graffiti. Or check out this variety from the fish on the bicycle in Cuba to the tree reflected in the soup bowl to the children playing in the street. Remarking of herself, Roxanne says she “preaches mindfulness” but frequently dwells in memory or worries about the future and that behind the camera “time stops, ” and that “photography makes me more mindful because it reminds me to really look... to search for beauty (or for surprise, incongruence, contradiction and conflict).” See also a tender post on waiting for someone special, the zenith of which is “I stare at the lily till all I see is a blushing world,” and the extraordinary pictures that follow.

Elsewhere, in her video introduction, Roxanne says, “the power of kindness to ourselves and others is one of the currencies I must believe in.” She exemplifies it through her work, her travel, her writing, her art and her joy.

Questions of Travel

Today's #Trust30 prompt from Chris Guillebeau is about travel. Where would I go and what would I do to get there?

I'm not much of a traveller. Throughout my life I've experienced free floating anxiety whenever the prospect of going anywhere is on the horizon. "Airport stomach," my first wife and I used to call it, and she claimed she never had it until she met me. I suspect because I made a lifetime of putting things off for tomorrow, a travel date represented the most anxiety-provoking thing for me, namely, right now, today, I have to do the thing that was planned, not just put it off for the future.

I've relaxed a little since then, feeling life's hold a little more loosely. Just starting a new job I don't feel I can take time off in the future. I have traveled little. My favorite city is Paris. I love the historic buildings, the art, the gardens, the Seine. However, I would like to visit Strasbourg, where my brother has lived for years. He has a new family and a baby on the way. Many times in the past he has asked me to come visit him in France. We connected twice in Paris (on each of my visits with former wife and current wife,) but I've never seen his French city on the Rhine where evidently the streets still have German names.

And this not visiting my brother, saving money, making arrangements, making a commitment, is part of a larger picture, hiding from my brother, hiding from fear of being judged unworthy by him and feeling the lash of his criticism. We've both grown and I've relaxed over many years and we see each other differently. He has never not been supportive. Whereas I would be influenced by his opinion, I can follow my own influences, and we can disagree and I can not take it personally and assume I'm wrong or that even being wrong is the question. So engaging with this man to whom I am closest genetically and biologically and yet there is such a gulf between us, not just geographically, carries meaning for me to make this a priority with time and money. And it would be great to take the kiddos, though I am not sure how David will react to the French, he's probably watched too much South Park.

"Where does that highway lead to?"

Much has been written about the American love affair with the car and the road. Driving today in the blazing sun I thought of the continuous highway that stretches beyond anything I might imagine. For it is all connected, every part of the landscape, trees, dirt, rocks, creatures within, and as it stretches on it is all simultaneously present from one moment to the next.

I cannot imagine what a discovery it may have been to someone how the automobile gave instant access to a continuous stream of high speed simultaneously present images stretching as far as the horizon and constantly unfolding.

This is the dream and the freedom of the car and the highway, thanks to the Eisenhower Interstate System of the 1950s. But what of the reality? I counted my blessings with a clear roadway ahead while traffic was backed up for countless miles in the other direction and thought sometime that will be my situation. There are many ways of dealing with it, here is one.

I'll be doing this every day driving to work. I would like not to be asleep to it, indifferent to it, hostile to it, but my mind has other ideas and obsessions. The highway is traffic, commerce, inconvenient construction, consumption of finite fossil fuels, discarded trash, slow decay, impact of weather, tolls, human conflict, silence, eternity, now.

Travels

Riding south with Cassie to visit her family on Tuesday and thinking of the houses and towns we passed, incomprehensible numbers of lives and activities. Long, stalled lines of cars on the opposite side, was there any way any of them could have bailed, taken an alternative route over land and off the highway, or was there nothing but to soldier on and say " it must be?"

How rarely I am in another's presence. Mostly the other is in my imagination, or at the other end of a telephone wire or computer screen. I think of others often but am rarely with them.

And the days pass, it is already Thursday, halfway through our stay, we have been well taken care of by my sister-in-law and her family. There is still sunlight and a few red Japansese maple leaves here. And news. And uncertainty.