Monday, July 28, 2025

Monks in Saffron Robes

One night, while reading, I encounter the word “saffron.” Immediately, my brain flags my attention, so I set the book aside and let myself get sent me off in thought to try to remember the details to an odd, fragmented memory. Maybe my dad talking about monks in saffron robes going around beating people with sticks?

Who else but my dad would say something like that?

There wouldn’t have had to have been a sensible reason why—my dad could talk sense and nonsense as adroitly as Lewis Carroll and rhyme as well as Ogden Nash.

But one “appropriate” time might have occurred during the period when several of us went off to ten-day, silent Vipassana meditation retreats for the first time and my dad was joking about what to expect.

In the same context, he probably would have also quoted this poem of Nash’s:

The one-l lama,

 He's a priest.

 The two-l llama,

 He's a beast.

 And I will bet

 A silk pajama

 There isn't any

 Three-l lllama.*

Abandoning my book, I ask my mom if she remembers my dad saying something about monks in saffron robes. But she doesn’t.

Then, because I depend on what’s been put in writing as a memory crutch, I do an email search for “saffron.”

Nothing from my dad comes up. But a lovely thread between me and my grandmother does.

It’s a string of emails peppered with some of her responses that I sent to her in 2012, during my first European trip.

It’s a string of emails peppered with some of her responses that I sent to her in 2012, during my first European trip.

The string starts with me in Rijeka, Croatia where I tell her: “Josko [a good friend of mine who I met on the freighter I took from Houston, Texas to Hamburg, Germany where he was the chief engineer, who was also the one to invite me to Croatia on my way to Italy] and I were having coffee at a fancy place overlooking the water and with the rich town of Opatija right behind us and I kept thinking ‘I must be living a dream. What an amazing thing life is! And my life at that!!” and ends in Spain with “Had a good and brief time in Barcelona – figured out the metro system and found my bus and made it the 8 hour trip through beautiful countryside to Bilbao.”

In addition to the book I’ve just set aside to ponder the past and the nature of monks who might or might not wear saffron robes (or at least the nature of them according to the silliness of my dad), I’ve been reading through a book called the Great Gallivanting by Jack Rogers. The book is Rogers’ recounting of the year he spent traveling the world, and talks, among other things, about how being a long-term traveler changed his life.

There is something special and very different about being a long-term traveler rather than a vacationer on a weekend trip or even one a few weeks long (though those are nice).  

At various times and in various places, I have been lucky enough to be a long-term traveler. In fact, for many years, I thought of home as being the place where I was; for a day, a week, two months, or until my tourist visa expired. 

Long-term traveling and living in places across the globe expanded my worldview, put me in the path of new friends, and allowed me to see and experience strange and wonderful places and things.

Because Rogers and his traveling partner visited many of the same places I also went, reading his book puts me on the cobblestone path of memory lane, not just back to my 2012 three-month European trip but also to the 6-week trip my older sister and I took in 2015 after spending the summer working together at a ranch in Wyoming, and the year-long trip I took again to Europe in 2018.

As Rogers talks about not being able to take pictures of the Nefertiti bust at the Neues Museum in Berlin, I remember that too. I remember standing in front of the encased bust and trying to appreciate it as best I could. As well as I remember another museum patron taking a picture of my sister’s Harriet Tubman tattoo and how, as she did, I was thinking with amusement “Keine fotos bitte” (no photos please) as so many of the signs in the museum commanded/requested/said.

When he and his partner are in Prague, I also remember crossing the Charles Bridge, watching a street artist paint a bridge scene and avoiding being too shuffled by the numerous tourists.

As well as I remember the thousands of stairs, endless steps up and down, my sister and I climbed as we walked the city.

As well as the joy of going multiple times on the top of the hour to watch the Astronomical Clock chime and attending a puppet show of Don Giovanni where language didn’t matter at all—we laughed as much as anyone else in the audience.

As well as I remember buying tickets for a Bach concert and handing the woman too many Czech korunas (CZK) and her handing me back a bill or two and chiding me to be more careful.

When Rogers and his partner are in Poland visiting Auschwitz, I am suddenly back staring at the track at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany where prisoners were forced to walk for hours upon hours wearing shoes that didn’t fit so that the shoe company would know if the materials were durable or not. A torture that was one of the lesser horrors perpetrated by those who ran the concentration camps. 

Never again, please, never again.

But still, we don’t seem to learn. Still we kill and hurt and harm each other.

Please, never again.

Better to have monks in saffron robes hitting us with sticks to keep us from participating in, sanctioning, or turning a blind eye to genocide. Better that than crimes against humanity and the abandoning of human rights for all, for any.

Please. Where are the stick-carrying monks in their saffron robes?

Saffron, saffron.

And then I’m back to skimming through the emails I sent so long ago to my grandmother when I was living as a long-term traveler and marveling at my luck and my life.

From Rome, my words read like a poem:

 

hey just a quick note from an internet cafe.

the place I am staying doesnt have wifi

internet access as i had hoped.

 

having a nice time.

saw the Trevi fountain the first day I was in.

went and walked along the old roman road in

the rain today.

 

tomorrow I will do more exploring

then Tuesday at the Vatican.

Wednesday the colosseum.

 

Glad Grandaddy had a nice celebration!

I was sorry I wasn’t able to talk with him in

voice. Next year!

 

Okay,

Will catch up with you soon

love you lots,

Amanda    

 

What a gift old emails, photographs from trips, lessons learned, and memories are.

What a gift old emails, photographs from trips, lessons learned, and memories are.

The gift of having my words and my grandmother’s written out to see. The gift of having a vague and unreliable memory (as so often now my memories seem to be) of my dad intertwined with what I knew about his personality and sense of humor sending me along a path of remembrance. The gift of the brain itself and its capacity to adapt, change, and experience this thing we call life.

Near the end of the email string, my grandmother writes:

“Didn't hear from the meditation kids today. I hope they are not being held captive by monks in saffron robes.”

And there it. Those monks in saffron robes.

Though there is no written proof of it, I bet my dad made his comment, the original one about monks, robes, and sticks—for I’m sure he was involved somehow—in the presence of my grandmother and me. And she, who was quick and witty, carried the joke on. My grandmother with her prodigious recall and her skill at telling stories with all their little details intact.

My dad, if he were here now, would probably tell me to sign off with wise words and an offering of good advice from both himself and Ogden Nash. With that in mind—as I go away to remember even more things from the past and travel on to create more memories to remember at some future time—I’ll leave you with this:

Whether out traveling long-term, short-term, or not at all, remember as my dad always said, “Life is short, eat dessert first” and as Ogden Nash said, never “engage the wombat/In any form of mortal combat.”*

While I say: don’t forget to remember where you’ve been and what you’ve done. 

And, if you get the chance to go experience the world for any amount of time at all, then go.

 

 

*Ogden Nash’s The Lama

*The ending lines of “Wombat” by Ogden Nash