"Monks, everything is on fire"

The Decemberist Vespers at Trinity Cathedral tonight was a beautiful idea.

Holy one, you reveal yourself in the water of life that flows from a distant, unseen source; in the campfire that brings comfort in the dark; and in the first light, shining through the smoke, cutting through the void, bringing us the dawn.  Your love burns so bright it consumes us completely.  Help us to come out the the rain and welcome the light, and walk in it always.

Goal #3: With a litte help from my friends

`

It's a place!  It's a place I'm going to!

Oh lord, guys, it's really happening.  I'm going to Greece!

My dear and talented friend Sarah is creating genius with her bare hands at a writer's colony on a Greek island (I know, doesn't it just smack of romance?) and I will go and meet her when her time there is up.  WHAT!  I'm sorry, I have to shake my head a little after every sentence and realization that yes, this is indeed going to happen.

A vacation to Greece has been such a pipe dream of mine for so long - something I've done little more than ponder and picture when I can't fall asleep at night.   But months ago Sarah announced she'd be going, and I declared I'd be coming too.  Even then, it was unlikely - the same level of conviction with which my childhood friends and I declared when we grew up we'd all buy houses on the same street so our kids could play together.  Yes, let's.  What a beautiful dream.

But Sarah was really doing it - and me?  What did I have to lose?  Egg money burning a hole in my savings account, it was possible.  And more probable now than it had ever been.  And so, with much delay and anxiety (No, I have to concentrate on moving first.  Oh, but I have to do my taxes before. I just won't feel right until my art supplies are organized and...  Okay, okay, I'll do it now!) I bought a plane ticket.  I nearly bit my credit card in half while pushing the PURCHASE NOW button, but dammit, there's no going back.  Forward only!

So I've built my castles in the sky.  Now I need to make foundations under them.  Foundations made of sturdy backpacks, up-to-date immunizations, travel books and language CDs.  And a million other things I haven't even thought of yet.  I'm green.  I'm new.  I've never been off the continent.  So...

Help me?  Please?  I don't really know what I'm doing.

 You might.  All you people out there, with your international backpacking language-speaking jet-setting experience.  Any tips for a fresh-out-of-the-gate world traveler?  I've got the loan of a backpack already I think will work nicely (thank you Sue and Natalie), but I have so far to go.  Any of you know anything about Greece?  Or possibly Italy or Istanbul? (Secondary destinations.  The conversation went like this: "Any chance we'll be political prisoners?" "No, I don't think so."  "Oh hold on, we can see whirling dervishes!  And Turkish baths!  Okay, let's go.")  What should I pack?  What shouldn't I pack?  Do I need to buy more comfortable walking shoes?  Do I need to learn how to say more than Thank you, What am I eating, and American Embassy in three separate languages?  What's a hostel like?  Teach me, world!
 

 Passport, tickets, money.  Passport, tickets money.  Those travel sickness pills mustn't be working.  I still feel sick and I've taken four already.  And I've only traveled up and down the stairs.

"and hide the wish that we were where you are"

.

 

American Sonnet by Billy Collins

 

We do not speak like Petrarch or wear a hat like Spenser
and it is not fourteen lines
like furrows in a small, carefully plowed field

but the picture postcard, a poem on vacation,
that forces us to sing our songs in little rooms
or pour our sentiments into measuring cups.

We write on the back of a waterfall or lake,
adding to the view a caption as conventional
as an Elizabethan woman’s heliocentric eyes.

We locate an adjective for the weather.
We announce that we are having a wonderful time.
We express the wish that you were here

and hide the wish that we were where you are,
walking back from the mailbox, your head lowered
as you read and turn the thin message in your hands.

A slice of this place, a length of white beach,
a piazza or carved spires of a cathedral
will pierce the familiar place where you remain,

and you will toss on the table this reversible display:
a few square inches of where we have strayed
and a compression of what we feel.

I can hardly contain myself

What've you been up to?

I have a lot of loved ones in distant places; and though I am an entertaining communicant (if I do say so), I've never been consistent.  At the end of long intervals of quiet, I find myself answering the above question, which tends to follow on the heels of Man, it's been too long!

Lately I've been answering this question with, "Oh, I'm packing."  "Not much, still in the process of moving."  etc.  But I'm here to tell you: it's all lies.

Food, clothes and bedding have been in moved in for awhile.  A place for everything, and everything in its place - I'm even at the level of detail where I'm buying an over-the-door-shoe-holder (which fits perfectly.  Win!).  So I'm hardly still schlepping back and forth waiting until I can actually inhabit this new place.  I'm here.  Habiting.  It's good.

So... what have you really been up to, then?

Excellent question.  I believe I would call it sorting. Winnowing.  Editing.  Spelunking through cavernous boxes, unearthing 27 years of historical artifacts.  And putting them in a big pile to get rid of.

Horrors!  My scrimp-and-save upbringing + my career in museums drooling over authentic artifacts + my love of stories = a fear of getting rid of ANYTHING lest it become that much more useful and beloved and necessary the moment you drive away from the Goodwill donation box (and you can't reach back into those big metal boxes - your arm would get stuck and people would stare).  But.  A few things have happened to me over the past couple of years to wean me from that cemented way of thinking.

Once upon a time...  I moved to Arizona.  It was temporary, and I knew that going into it.  I also knew that I'd be in a place that itself would keep me busy, doing interesting work and sharing housing that felt like summer-camp.  Thinking ahead, I packed light.  Which for me means one very full carload.  In four months, there were few things I'd left behind that I truly missed, and some things I brought with me (volleyball, knitting supplies) that I never even used.  And I survived - nay, I thrived!  So the idea of what I "need" to live shrunk three sizes that day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...  Then I moved back.  Back to Oregon, to Portland, back to the same house I grew up in, three blocks from the hospital in which I was born.  There's a lot of history there. And though it's all meaningful to who and how I am today, these things and locations and mementos are also snapshots of how things used to be - and aren't always relevant to how I want my life to be now.  More than anything else, I think, that grated on me for those many months living back at home.  It's hard to live differently when everything around you is the same.  The fact that I was home during Dad's second bout with cancer (tko, btw) made it completely necessary that things be different from the last time I lived at home.  We were all ready to put this thing to bed and move on; maybe in a different direction, but most important is to move.

When suddenly...  So I did.  Move.  Hooray!  The sense of accomplishment I still feel about that is far out of proportion for the act itself.  Finding a place to live is a normal, adult thing to do; and pretty low on Maslow's hierarchy to boot.  It's not something I should have to crow about.  Anyway, then came furnishing a house - which I hadn't had to do in quite a while (temporary, well-stocked SCA digs didn't need my housewares).  So I began a process that basement spiders will remember forever as The Great Upheaval.  Boxes of flatware, wine glasses, salad spinners and the like were moved out of my parents' basement - a place they'd been since arriving from Massachusetts and my own Great Upheaval.  Standing in a new and empty kitchen, pulling items out of carefully-wrapped newsprint (thanks, Dad) and repeatedly muttering, "Huh.  I didn't know I had that," made me wonder if I really needed to have it at all. 

When I was packing all this up  - a long time and many miles ago - it seemed important to keep these things.  Holding onto the items that furnished my life was a kind of sea-wall between me and the vast unpredictable change I was facing.  But relatively quickly I learned to love that change.  It's never stopped being big and unpredictable, but I'm enjoying the ride.  And in doing so, it's best to travel light.

So here I am, parting with what is long-overdue to be parted with.  I'm still the conscientious eco-citizen with a 'mending is better than ending' mentality, so don't haul out the dumpsters yet.  There's friends with similar interests to be gifted, donations to be made, books to be sold (hopefully).  I'm hoping to get some photos of some of the noteworthy items up here, or get word of it out in the ether for those who want them - if y'all can forgive a Pollyanna kind of moment - I've found such joy in passing things along to people who I know will love and use the things I've been neglecting.  It rivals the joy I get from finding a really good Free Box.  We'll see which impulse wins out in the end (or if they come to a healthy understanding), but for now, Cinderella mice and I are sweeping out the corners, letting the light in.  It's tough, and there are hurdles: saying goodbye to things that have been friends.  But worth it. 

From here on out, we travel light.

Goal #1: Home

Close on the heels of the last post, I believe I have a solution to Goal #1.  And don't you dare accuse me of only reporting my hypothesis once I have a satisfactory result.  Because I've already accused and forgiven myself, so there.

But the important part.  Guys, I have a place to live!

After many a month Craigstlist emailing (getting duly spammed in return), driving to possibilities that were really too far away to be feasible, procrastinating, making excuses and procrastinating some more.  After making lists and reading through checklist-filled books of Oregon Landlord and Tenant Law.  After crying to the powers that be, "Why can't I just find a cozy carriage house somewhere?  Some earthen hobbit-home?  Is there nowhere in all of Portlandom that has a tree fort for rent?  And what is that Welcome sign doing in those Pullman train cars over by OMSI?"

Really, is this too much to ask?

But patience and luck (and a number of reality checks) prevailed.  Ta-Da!

Mine!

Isn't it pretty?  It's the upstairs half of this duplex, shared with a couple peeps.  One of those windows way up there will be mine, probably by the middle of the month.  Oh boy.  It's insulated, gots new windows, and a programmable thermostat.  The solar-powered lizard that regulates my body temperature purrs at the thought.  It's a short bike ride, or even a walk(!) from OMSI.  As well as some pubs (at least one of which has regular trivia, and another that has a fire pit and free jukebox), the Hawthorne food cart pod, Burgerville, a liquor store, oh man, this'll be awesome.  Please come visit.  I need to navigate my way to the closest public library, cheap gas, and WinCo, and then I will be Totally Set. 
'S really all I need in life.

Now on, on to the more measurable to-do lists!  The Tetris-brain of packing!  The many milk crates slowly transformed from transportation to furniture!  The LONG overdue and emotionally fraught process of Getting Rid Of.  But I think I'm ready.  I got nothin' but time, and the motivation to build a life I want to live in for awhile.  Surround myself with the useful and beautiful, and pass along the rest of the Things (vivid sense memories and all) to someone who could get use out of them.  I have this plan to force myself to cohabit with all my Things - whatever I'm left with after giving some away.  Through that process, I figure I'll be better able to determine what I really and truly need.  My hunch is "very little."

By happy coincidence, I just recently finished The Amber Spyglass on CD, and have been saving the last HP for just such a hands-busy, mind-occupied occasion.  Purr, purr.

EDIT:  It's done.  We did it.  We have it now.

Tonight my roommates and housing manager watched skeptically as every doorknob was jiggled and every switch got flicked.  All the windows opened and securely re-latched.  Shower turned on and toilet flushed - at the same time!  Armed with tape measure, digital camera and WD-40, Butchie here put on her no-nonsense face, amended some legalese and when she finally walked out that door, silver keys jangling in her back pocket, she was reasonably assured of the stability and security of her cozy new nest.  Boom.

Let's Go.

At first I thought, "Let's ease back into this.  Like into a really hot jacuzzi (invented by the Greeks, as Shirley informs us, but let's not give too much away just yet...) or taking a small bite of the soup you know you put too much cayenne in, but you're going to eat it all anyway."

Then I thought, "Nah.  Punch it."

So here's the short version:


January
New Year's drunk and dancing with the family.  Dreams of punching a rhino in the face.  Restarting ropes and silks class having lost untold muscle strength.  House-sitting in leopard-print, pool-tabled, sunken-tub Mid-Century Modern finery.  (Only locking myself out once.)  Birthday brunch for a woman I deeply admire.  Opening a new exhibit - Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science -  media, fancy-pants Gala, mummies needing security.  Only slightly losing my mind.


February
Lots more OMSI.  Nessun Dorma live!  Keeping the flu at bay.  Giving up three dozen eggs, having a very cute (though skeptical) ride home.  First time snowboarding.  White girl facilitating semi-awkward diversity training.  Suddenly moonlighting for the Grants department?  OMSI Educator Death Match. 


March
Who can tell?

Now and now and now
Here's what I did want to tell you.  I've had these goals, you see.  Since mid-January, sure, but they aren't resolutions.  I'm not going to call out parts of myself to say 'Stop' to.  At the least, I won't do that here.  Instead, I've got these things I want in my life.  And I'm going to get them.

1.  Get a place of my own to live in.
2.  Hike in the Grand Canyon.
3.  Go to Greece.

Oh yes, it will be done.  This year, because why wait?

Another world, another day, another dawn.  The early morning's thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.  Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.  There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic.  Creation holds its breath. - Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe and Everything.

Dateline: Cabo - SJD Aeropuerto

I know, I know, my Spanish isn’t actually that good.  But I’ve become rather attached to it.  I noticed this when I passed a pale, plump (German?) couple walking up towards the lobby as I was passing them downhill to go run on the beach.  “¡Hola!” I said, by habit.  They started and mumbled something reflexively.  And when the tour guide quizzed all his passengers at the end of the “desert safari” Mom and I went on, telling them (not asking, no – telling) that they had to speak seven (siete) words of Spanish, I cheerfully (tipsily) offered: pueblo, fiesta, pequeño, chicas, playa, cholla, tortugas! (Nouns – the linguistic domain of toddlers and tourists.)  Ha ha! And when a man in a shop asked me (en Español) where I was from, I actually understood his question… the second time.  However, my brain/mouth connection was still at half-speed, and by the time my face assumed an “I’m thinking really hard,” expression to buy myself time, he had asked again in English.  So I gave up and answered in English too.  But masquerading as bilingual in a tourist town where not everyone makes an effort beyond “Dos mas,” felt pretty good.  I think I like this Learning thing.  Maybe I’ll keep going.  Then I’ll annoy Everyone with my butchered accent!

Other highlights

Food:  The posole at the very touristy Fiesta was delicious.  I also had a Caesar salad with the dressing made tableside for the first time, fancy fancy.  And ohh so good.  I would change my life for that salad; and I do enjoy it when dinner is the show.  Let’s see… there were an uncountable number of tasty fruity drinks – I’m pretty sure I consumed a small island’s worth of coconut milk this past week.  I also was able to identify nopales in a salsa that was infinitely better than anything I’ve ever made nopales into.  I handmade a warm, happy tortilla (Mom handmade a warm, enormous pizza-sized tortilla) in a press, on a big skillet and munch munch munch.  I had fried cheese sushi (weird).  All manner of sea life that used to be happily floating along kindly graced my plate, then my stomach.  All in all, the lack of turkey and dressing didn’t seem so bad.

Flags:  The fiesta we went to reminded me a lot of the luau (man that took me a lot of trial-and-error to spell) from the Maui family vacation when I graduated high school: a good show, put on by a hotel, for people who don’t know better, but like a spectacle.  And it was fun.  Traditional costumes from many Mexican states, crazy abuelita characters and dancing with machetes.  Games, a burro (for some reason), then a mock Carnivale, so we all abandoned our tables and followed a parade around YMCA-ing.  And hey – remember the Macarena?  Mom does!  It is a cross-generational dance for sure, because P. Lily was not too shabby herself. 

You know what else Mom does well?  Tequila tasting.  Which was a part (initially not a big part, but a part) of the desert safari she and I went on.  I have recognized in myself that I feel disconnected from a place unless I can name its parts.  So I walk through a landscape going, “What’s that bug?  What kinds of animals live here?  How is that plant different from the ones I know?” endlessly until someone can answer my questions or I find out for my own self.  Only then do I start to feel at home in a place.  This is my third trip to Cabo, and each time has been marked with a kind of surrealism – it’s fun and all, a vacation, a break from my life – but it doesn’t seem like any kind of real life here.  Not just not mine, not anyone’s.  People don't really live like this – manicured lawns in the desert that are never walked on except by armies of gardeners.  Flamingos, swim-up bars, infinity pools.  Candles constantly lit and maintained, ashtrays raked and stamped with logos.  Toilet paper made into intricate flowers.  I ask you!  

So, this time – in an attempt to get a taste for Mexico outside of a gated “community,” I signed up (and Mom kindly agreed to come with) for an afternoon of hiking, plant identification, handmade tortilla-making, possible baby-turtle watching, and tequila tasting.  Our guide was affable and couldn’t pronounce my name.  He settled on Kristine, which I was fine with, and he said it a lot, because it was obvious I was paying attention when he talked about September 16^th being more important in Mexico than Cinco de Mayo, or how pouring one out for your homies is kind of an extension of Dia de los Muertos traditions, or what made the cactus in this area different from the Saguaros I’ve seen.  If he was amused by how enthusiastic a student I was, he was a bit shocked by how enthusiastic a drinker I was.  We tried the tequila blanco (distilled then bottled – no waiting! – my favorite) next to the reposado (aged at least 2 months – tastes smokier, like whiskey) and the mescal (made from green agave instead of blue agave – tastes like gasoline) for good measure.  None tried more than me and Mom, except for maybe our guide, who kept “sacrificing himself” on the blanco, the limes, the salt.  He, Mom and I were the only ones to “sacrifice ourselves” on the worm at the bottom of the mescal bottle, though thankfully we didn’t have to drain the bottle to get there.  Even so, it was a buzzed and blurry Jeep ride back to the hotel.  And for all the pep talk our guide gave us at the beginning of the safari (how we “weren’t like other tourists” because we were choosing to get up early and go away from the cantinas and t-shirt shops, I did while away my last full day in Mexico in a stupor, getting baked by the pool.  God bless the USA.

Fun: I’ve made a decision to spend the rest of my life barefoot in a bikini.  I might have to make some lifestyle choices (and some strategic negotiating of the OMSI dress code) but I think it’ll be worth it.  For serious, though: Running barefoot on the beach is my new crush.  Oh sure, it helps that the water is warm and the sand is mostly free of rocks and the sun is always out.  But it’s certainly something I’m going to try again at home… maybe in the spring.  Because I’m pretty sure a necessary part of running without shoes is being able to feel your feet.  And the ocean here is quite a bit more temperate than the one I grew up with.  Swimming in it was similarly amazing.  It’s like that part in Alice in Wonderland where she cries so many tears that she is buffeted about in a great salty sea and washed away to the next part of her adventure.  Being tossed and pulled here and there by water that tastes on my lips like the most comforting part of a childhood tantrum is a humbling experience.  A big, warm, wet hug. 

And speaking of wet hugs and tantrums, dear sweet Pea.  I love this child.  Pulling her through the water (assisting, really – she’s a dang good swimmer); spinning her around and upside down; dancing in the grocery store; answering her questions and then the questions that come from those answers.  I don’t know if the opposite is true, but she is such a good influence on me.  Reminds me to be patient, point out all the cool things around, to welcome the simultaneous terror and excitement of trying new things (Shrimp cocktail! Stewed pork!  White wines! – This last one was me, not her).  And when we were leaving the hotel, taking our final views of the pool, and the beaches beyond, she listed the things she was saying good-bye to: “Bye boats.  Bye flowers.  Bye sand.  Bye ocean.”  “Bye happy hour,” I chimed in.  And she turned to me with her Serious Face under a flouncy red hat and said, “No.  Happy hour is always with us.”  Out of the mouths of chiquitas!