Southern French Hot Yoga Life

Overeaters Anonymous

2011-07-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

December 2007, I attended a meeting in Manhattan of the OA, an organization of self diagnosed women participating that evening in order to work towards healing their illnesses. OA is not limited to women, but the problem is most often that of a woman. OA stands for Overeaters Anonymous, but of the 30 or so in the room that night, only one or two were over-weight. OA in Manhattan has little to do with obesity. It is about an obsession with food. Everyone in the room had disordered eating to varying extents, most people diagnosing themselves or having been diagnosed by a doctor with Anorexia or Bulimia.
The friend who had agreed to come with me and I arrived a little after 7pm. When we entered the large fluorescent-lit meeting room, a woman had already begun to recount her story. She was pale-skinned, in her late 20s with black shoulder length hair. She looked worn, but not unhealthy, thin but not skinny. I remember noticing that I liked her boots and the knee height striped socks she wore underneath them.
“Those days, I would spend days in my room, too ashamed to go out,” she said, “I would numb my emotional pain by eating. I would eat an entire tub of ice cream, than throw it up back into its tub. There were times when, after I had thrown it up, I would eat it again.”
Another girl who was there I recognized. She had been a yoga student of mine. I had been teaching yoga for just over a year and still thought I could maintain an image of super humanness with my students. Now I was embarrassed, belittled and flawed. But I had tried attending this meeting to fix that.
Traditionally, after the meetings, the attendees go out to eat together. I remember the anxiety I felt about having to order and eat in front of these people. What will they order? Most importantly, what will they think of what I order? I felt they were watching me and judging me. After having talked about and analyzed food compulsions and habits so closely, the idea of eating felt unnatural. Was I even hungry? I didn’t know. What I ended up ordering, I don’t remember. I do remember a feeling of abnormality that accompanied every bight.
The girls at the dinner table closest to me knew each other.
“ I didn’t see you on Tuesday night.”
“No, I couldn’t go to the NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting this week. But I went to the DA (Debtors Anonymous) meeting on Wednesday.”
“Oh yeah, I should start going to that one! I can’t stop buying new clothes I can’t afford.”
One of the girls turned to me and asked, “Do you go to meetings?”
“First time.” I said… Meetings? Some of the girls had compulsive behaviors besides their eating habits: The addiction to meetings, AA, OA, NA, DA, you name it, there’s a meeting for it.
I came to realize why my problem was even more complex than the complicated mess it had already seemed.
It is a problem of the Media, the skinny girls on television and in magazines, then wanting to… needing to… be thin like them. But not only.
It is a problem of Discomfort, turning to sugar and fat like drugs for momentary relief. But not only.
It is a problem of Control, eating hardly anything to watch the number on the scale descend and feel a complete and artificial control over something in our lives, and then experiencing the total loss of control when we become too afraid to eat at all, or eat everything we’ve been depriving ourselves of. But not only.
It is a problem of Attention, feeling no one, or the most important person doesn’t notice us, and wondering if they’d notice if we disappeared. But not only.
It is a problem of a PROBLEM; this way humans have, especially in the United States, of diagnosing everything. So, we take the first step. We say, “I have a problem.” We feel good because we are no longer living in denial. We say, “I’m bulimic/alcoholic/addict/insert your problem here!” and we feel better because we know what we are. We own it. It works its way into the marrow of our bones. So after a while, when we’ve had enough, redefining ourselves as someone without a problem is like not knowing who we are anymore.
“Hello, my name is Hilary and I… I…” The words escape me. I have to learn, instead of being something, to just be.

Coffee and yoga

2011-07-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

The two things that will undoubtedly make me feel happy regardless of what state I was in before are yoga and coffee. And listening to Frank Sinatra, but Frank's voice got me through high school, so these days when I listen, I feel happy but also think that maybe I should move on, as I kept thinking all four years between 1996 and 2000.

For most yoga teachers that I have had that strive to apply yoga to their daily lives, coffee is bad for your health and should be stopped. I respect these teachers, and perhaps one day I will be ready to test their theory, but I strongly believe at this time health is simply moderation. There is nothing that is purely evil or good in this world and mixing the two achieves a ballance.

One of my yoga influences, Mark Twain, suggested that even moderation should be taken in moderation. This means forgiving ourselves for eating an entire box of cookies if such a rare incident is to occur, and enjoying it, because what's the point of eating a box of cookies if not to enjoy? This means throwing yourself fully into yoga, try practicing every day for 30 days, then twice a day if you have the opportunity... But recognize when you've become obsessed. Take a break for a day, or two, or even three. But then get off your lazy butt and jump back into the regular yoga practice you found sustainable.

We are constantly drifting between circumstances in which we have a pattern and a sense of control over our lives, or in which our paths are irregular and not of our choosing or of our choosing by pure coincidence. Strive to be consistent when the world around you is haphazard but also to let in spontaneity when the grind of the day to day is numbing your senses.

How? In the summer of '95 before I discovered Frank, I was a miserable and maladjusted adolecent. With a group of girls from summer camp, I took to writing a "happiness list". Every day we would add an item or several to our own lists. Sometimes they were names of people at camp(though that was never consistent and I found the very person that made me happy one day made me miserable the next), sometimes descriptions of occurences. All in all, the happiness list, which counted about six-hundred items at the end of the summer, was a good idea, but I would get lost in fantasies of places I had never seen and people I was unlikely to meet, (#42, Johnny Depp). Today, I propose the idea of the happiness list to be aware of the present and remind ourselves what we appreciate in our lives.

Here's a very abreviated and spur of the moment list of what wakes me up, reminds me what I love about what I have:

Yoga (sometimes only after I've finished)
One cup of rich coffee
Frank Sinatra, "Fly Me to the Moon"
Fresh basil
Lying on the ground and gazing at the night sky
Jumping in freezing cold water (and climbing out again immediately)
Living with an artist
The constant existance of the moon (this might be a bit obtuse, so I'll blog about it next time)

How would you start your list?

One summer morning

2011-05-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

I've been getting telephone calls periodically from a certain Geneviève in Béziers, France, who once tried Bikram Yoga in New Zealand and wants to become a certified teacher, open a studio, get rich and live happily ever after. I gave her the straight deal. The only place to get certified is with Bikram, in LA or wherever he happens to feel like holding a certification. In order to get there, you have to practice his yoga regularly for a minimum of six month, dish out a bunch of cash you consider an investment for the future. I felt it best to hold on to the information that in addition to the two Bikram classes a day in a burning hot room full of some of the most intense people you've ever met, you have to not to fall asleep as Bikram talks about Peace, and Happiness, and Money, and Fame and Women until three in the morning. I told Geneviève to come and see me and we'd talk more in depth.

Two months later she called again. "Does it really have to be six months, or can I just practice a little less? If I go to the certification, am I guaranteed to get certified? Then can I open my own studio?" I haven't met her, so I re-state the six month requirement firmly. I tell her most people that finish the 9 week certification leave with a certificate. I ask her what her reasons are for choosing Bikram Yoga.

"Well, I did some research and the Bikram certification is the quickest one."

I realized she wasn't calling me for information regarding my certificate, but desperately seeking assurance that everything will be alright, and that it will be alright right now!

Goodness, I know how she feels. I know very little about her and I know nothing about her current situation, but I have been guilty several times in my life of reaching out to people I hardly knew because of their apparent success or experience or motivation, even sometimes good looks, seeking a reading of my future in which I am successful. It's what most of us would refer to as being lost; more consumed by the contemplation of the action than the action itself.

So what has brought me to this point, in which I hold the crystal ball? I suppose it is because I am being consumed by the action. But all Geneviève sees is the action, and not that I'm being consumed. I am the owner of a yoga school. After years of scattered pre-meditation, I opened it. Here, I teach Bikram yoga.

I'll cut to the chase. Though I was granted permission by Bikram to teach his very unique form yoga, I don't have permission to open a Bikram Yoga school because I don't have a lot of what's included in his brand name. Mainly, 300 square meters or 3,200 square feet of space all dedicated to nothing but Bikram Yoga. I was also pre-occupied up until recently applying for permission from France to teach any yoga at all (see previous entry).

In the seasonal town of Aix-en-Provence, where the population is small or twice as small depending on the time of year, I'm posing my own questions about success.

But what does this have to do with yoga? I'm interpreting what Geneviève needs, based on the unspoken, but I want to tell her that everything is going to be alright. Everything is always alright. Yoga comes into play when we don't know when.

Patience and perseverance. The progress taking place in our lives is, most of the time, invisible. But it's happening ever so subtly under the surface, even when we are suffering, or especially when we are suffering. And in one night it will bloom, like summer in Provence. In the morning you wake up and the Hawthorn tree has buried the cars parked outside in thick pink blossoms.

So, I got married

2011-05-25T01:27:00.000-07:00

I changed the title of this blog from "Changing, Never Ending" to something less subtile and philosophic. "Southern French Hot Yoga Life" is simply what I'm living now, and all the rest, Changes, Endings, Beginnings, Happiness, Loss, Loneliness, Love, Etc. Etc. are evidently a part of this experience. I also hoped that by putting "French" and "Hot" in the title, this blog might reach more people.
When I last wrote in June 2010, I was in Vienna, sitting on the floor finishing off a bottle of leftover Prosecco. Since then, I have returned to France, opened a yoga studio in Aix-en-Provence, moved to a bigger studio and gotten married.
I got married two months ago and though I grow happier about that decision daily, I still find it completely bizarre. When asked for my last name, I say "Gaubert" and then smirk. I cannot keep a straight face. I am by now able to fairly smoothly say "mon mari" when talking about "my husband" but have trouble saying it in English or writing it without the quotes.
We were engaged three and a half months ago. After months of living with me as I awaited an official decision regarding my application to stay in France to build my own business, my boyfriend at the time got sick of putting up with my stress. As I remember it, he backed me in to a corner one evening when I had barley stepped in the front door and said, "We're getting married." I took a breath and said, "Okay." I stood up straighter so I would feel more serious and adult, and said "okay" again. Then I called my mother and said, "We're getting married." We decided to get married in a hurry. I was able to lure my immediate family to the South of France a month and a half later with the excuse that I was getting married. So, at the end of March, we had a lovely small wedding, whipped up to perfection in an instant by my mother-in-law.
All the excitement and optimism that leads up to a wedding can only be followed by a down-turn. I was glad our wedding was so quickly planned and over with. I cannot imagine what kind of depression brides that plan their wedding for a year must feel when it's over. Both "my husband" and I were feeling a bit glum afterwards, but thankfully, we were stuck with each other to ride the wave back up again.
We recently went out to eat at a restaurant that we frequent with my mother-in-law. The chef came out of the kitchen to chat with us as he always does. When we told him that we had gotten married, he looked at us wrinkling his forehead for three quarters of a second and then said, " People are still doing that?"

"In America they do it all the time."

I was anti-marriage before I got married. That's why I moved to France. The rising current is vastly more anti-marriage here. Having kids is reasonable and expected, just don't get married to have them. I thought, Americans are so idealistic and naive, stuck in a tradition that no longer serves our society. In America, people of even my generation are getting married.
But under my certain circumstances, I found myself surprised to enjoy an optimism marriage brought my family, still, though they've witnessed the fall of such alliances. This incredible optimism that is deeply ingrained in my culture, that's what I miss the most about America. And if there is one thing I find deep within myself from my culture that I hold on to, I hope it is the optimism.

Prosecco

2010-06-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Someone has to finish the prosecco that has been sitting open in the refrigerator since the grand opening party, or else it will go to waste and that would be an awful shame. I despise seeing things go to waste.
I'm sitting on my bedroom floor in the widening check of the lamplight from outside beside a glass of very old artificially orange flavored Austrian sparkling wine. This is what cough syrup tastes like.
I'm getting used to my ground level room with expansive frosted windows that face the street. When the sun comes up at 4am, the street light outside shuts off. Due to this, I purchased a few days ago a black and pink flower patterned eye cover which I adore because it is not only pretty, but also practical.
In Vienna, the streets are wider and cleaner than I'd remembered them. It's the contrast between here and Marseille that makes the largeness and spotlessness of everything more evident. But I miss the chaos of Marseille, the tight streets ascending and descending sloaps that look out onto the savage sea, the garbage dancing in the Mistral wind and a gold light that is almost violent in tone that encompasses the cathedrals and squares at sundown. And I miss my rebel sweet heart who would probably be arguing with me at this moment for the intrigue of the conversation if I were with him.Cheers to you darling and to anyone anywhere whoever exchanged the new for the old, the clean for the dirty, twenty-eight for thirty... but I guess that's just living, isn't it.

Laundromat

2010-06-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

The laundromat at 133 Avenue de Toulon must have been the most broken down place on earth today. It's small and clean and white, just four washers and two driers, and a row of deep blue plastic seats against the empty wall. I brought a few articles of clothing there to dry this afternoon and it wasn't the place that was depressing but the people in it. Three of them, sitting along the wall, empty seats between them. They apparently didn't know each other but had coincidentally all been hit by a tragedy of equal weight. There was a small Asian boy of about 15 years, an older woman with stark white hair and unremarkable dress, and a slightly younger butch woman in jeans and plaid shirt. They all sat staring at the washing machines, but not looking at the washing machines. Their thoughts were elsewhere. At first I thought it was me. I have a washer at home and I just came for the driers. It seemed as though they were willing their machines to finish washing first so they could leap upon a drier before one of the other two does... And then I just strolled in with my already washed clothes and toss them nonchalantly in the drier. An unforeseen complication. I pretended not to notice as I put my money in and pressed start and I did not look at them on the way out. Their expressions caused me pain. When I came back several minutes later to get my things, they were still there, their expressions intensified... And I don't think it was me they were upset about.

the house in winter

2010-03-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

The wind knocks restlessly on the roof and through the courtyard the sound of the evening traffic reaches the house, the woosh of an occasional car and the put-put-put of a skooter sweeping off somewhere into the falling night. Today was mild and warm. The first day of spring perhaps, but each time we take that long, satisfying sigh of relief, another cold front leaps upon us. Winter was aggressive only because this house is poorly insulated and the electricity shorts out with the usage of very few appliances at once. We put on hats and gloves and wrapped our necks in scarves each night when we gathered around the dinner table and sat shivering as we ate. We created a system in which we kept the heaters in the big room turned up as high as the circuits would allow and tried to remember always to turn them off before using the vacuum cleaner, toaster-oven or coffee machine. We are fortunate enough to have both a toaster-oven and a coffee machine. They just cannot be used at the same time.
We were thankful that our electricity usage was so carefully regulated, keeping the electricity bills down and wearing less on our delicate environment. We also learned lessons in water conservation this winter. It began first with a clogged pipe, somewhere between the shower and the kitchen sink. We began to notice strange things surfacing in the shower. At first it was just chunks and flakes of unexpected colors. Over the following days, the unidentified blobs took form and it was clear that what went down the kitchen drain was coming up in the shower. While rinsing shampoo from my hair, I would look down to see capellini or rice vermicelli slithering slyly between my toes. In order to maximize our benefits, we discussed recycling what the shower provided. Adding some fresh onions, chili, tomato sauce, a nice parmesan, salt and pepper, always succeeds at refreshing leftovers. However, we decided against it for obvious reasons.
After about a week of this and several bottles of De-stop down the drain to no avail, we took a plunger to the shower aggressively for about a half an hour. What at first seemed a success turned into an equal, but different disaster. Somewhere in the elusive networking of pipes, there was a rupture. This we found out after exiting triumphant from the first shower free of breakfast, lunch and dinner, to find that all of the water that had seemed to so productively disappear down the drain had actually leaked out into the house forming little ponds in unexpected places, trickling away from the bathroom, beneath the tiled kitchen floor and into the office/bedroom sizzling pleasingly as it seeped into the computer placed on the floor beside the desk. How we might profit from this difficulty was less evident than the original problem but not impossible. During an especially harsh cold wave when we could see our breaths curling white against the air of the living-room, we discussed ice skating, but the ponds never froze over.
Perhaps we were all secretly having fun, or perhaps there were some of us that really believed the problem would fix itself, but for whatever reason, it took a good two weeks before a plumber was called in. Or the original construction company was called to send a plumber. I had already stopped looking for explanations when they sent instead an electrician. The electrician looked around, scratched his head and said what we’d expect him to say, “You’ll have to get a plumber for this one.” A week and a half later, a builder came who broke down the walls that hid the pipes, and two days after that, the plumber, to fix the pipes.
Today, as spring wakes slowly, our plumbing is in perfect working order and beside the toilet is a breathtaking view of the plumbing through a wall which was never repaired.
I don’t mind the wall as long as everything’s working.
I find I feel more at home than I’ve felt in years maybe. I bought a small Himalayan salt lamp for the bedroom that glows in soft amber. I'm not alone in the house anymore and in the next room JB is playing a soft melody in a major key on guitar that washes away the sound of the traffic and the wind has gone away. In wafts the sent of Marine’s cooking from the kitchen signaling that it’s time for us all to sit down and eat.

We're alright

2010-01-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

I went out last night to join some friends I rarely see for a round of drinks, which of course always becomes several rounds until eventually I announce I have to head home (because I'm the type that turns in early) and I'm reminded, "But it's only eleven o'clock!" And I have a few second conversation in my head, yes, eleven o'clock is early, but not so early as ten o'clock and if I wait untill twelve o'clock it will certainly be late... And then I insist on going home.
What often happens when we go out in groups is that we get to know certain members of the group very well while for some reason or another other members of the group become familiar faces we say hello to if we should pass them on the street, while they remain a satisfactory mystery. Last night, moving in a group of about eight, we drifted into a simple bar next to La Plaine. The bar is full of smoke (there's a pay-off to the authorities, I hear, to allow for the smoking of cigarettes indoors) tinting the low lights a little yellowish, and on the far-side wall is a copy of Divinci's "Last Supper" in which people of the quartier are depicted in the place of Jesus and his disciples. By accident, I found myself sitting next to Emilie, a member of the group I have seen at gatherings like this but have practically never talked to. Somewhere in the trail of meandering conversations, I caught that Emilie, like me, used to be a ballet dancer. Immediately, we perfectly understood each other on a certain level. Over a few glasses of red wine I discover Emilie quit dancing four years ago. Me too... And for the same reasons, at the core.
Why is it that for a moment we liked to get lost in our past pain? For me it was certainly because elements of it are laughably rediculous, and even more humourous because we both experienced the same irrational ideas, and finally because we both suddenly feel alright.
The grocery store to me, for many years was a museum. Where I would go alone to ooh and ah at the endless shelves of beautiful sauces and snacks and ideas of ingredients I could mix together to create something I should never eat. When I wasn't lost in the fantasy of these stunning works of art, my head was full of numbers, 70 calories in an egg but only 17 if I just eat the white, 70 calories in an apple and 80 calories in an orange. Eat the apple obviously... Then there was the question, am I hungry? I think I'm hungry because my stomach is making these sort of loud rumbling noises and because I feel a bit dizzy and shakey, but I ought not to be hungry because I ate an orange an hour ago. At night sometimes I could not sleep with the knowledge that there was leftover birthday cake in the kitchen. I will not, I will not, I will not... Useless... 1am, 2am, 3am I'm up again... 3:30 am the cake is mostly gone (except for the small part I left in hopes that the rest of the household won't notice there is less cake in the morning than when they went to bed), my hands are sticky and I weigh an extra .25 lbs on the bathroom scale.
Why is this funny? It's funny and sad that I spent years wondering how people around me appeared to be eating and enjoying it, or not thinking about it. Eating because they were hungry or forgetting to eat because they were busy.
So last night in conversation with Emilie, we shared how we never imagined we could eat like normal people... But now we are... Foie gras and pumpkin soup and champagne... And I enjoyed it too. It's not that now I think I am perfect, it's just that now it doesn't matter so much. I can be happy for a variety of reasons not involving having dropped a few decimals on a scale, and I can be horribly sad, but I can now clearly see why I'm sad instead of getting those heavey feelings all tangled up in self-hatred because I see myself as fat.
So last night, I drank two glasses of red wine and had dinner too.

BURNING MAN

2009-08-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

What is it? At this stage in my association with the Burning Man Festival in The-Middle-Of-The-Desert, Nevada, it is what people talk about, write about, try to explain. It is: a week long art festival, an experiment in self-expression, self-reliance, anarchy, karma-economy. It is a drug fest, sex fest, love fest. It is either for those modern hippies that rub your arm when they talk to you and pry into your soul with their glossy, blissed out eyes, or for absolutely anyone and everyone (and I hear you could find even your grandfather there). It is a reason to brain storm without limitation, think of the craziest, strangest, most irrelevant ideas, surprising yet never shocking because I was expecting you to say something extremely unexpected, like that you're offering wine tastings from your belly-button.
What isn't clear to me is how this self-expressionism can truly exist as a part of a Group of people, a general Genre that we become a part of... Or how it can exist in a place where the pattern of thinking is more commonly shaped by the same illegal drugs(as opposed to the legal ones that shape thinking in the rest of America). Or maybe a lot of different drugs, but still, when we surrender our minds for a moment, we surrender our selves... Don't we?
I also can't quite wrap my head around how necessary materials for self-reliance in the desert include faux fur and glitter, along with a whole slew of unnecessary, burdensome things, a photo booth (apparently actually written, in this case, "photo boof"), 3 brightly colored wigs, 50-plus bottles of 20 year old wines... But I suppose this is an art festival, and what is art if not unnecessary... And at the same time, when I take a moment to examine myself, in many situations, hasn't art been necessary, in fact, for my survival?
One fact that doesn't need to be interpretted in order to be defined is that Burning Man is... The Desert. I can only base my images of the desert on deserts I have already experienced. The re-creation of Dubai, UAE couldn't hide the dust, dryness, wavering heat creating mirages dancing in the distance. Then there was the outdoor concert at the desert university in Beer Sheva, Israel where rain floated rather than fell and each droplet encased a globule of dust. Or camping with the nomads of the Israeli desert where the stars were so bright and numerous they inspired a couple insecure and bratty post-teenagers to recite poetry while waiting to fall asleep in sleeping bags laid out upon the dust.
I suppose for me, what embodies most concretely the only expectation I can form about Burning Man is a comedy sketch performed by a tasteless comedy duo from Great Brittain about a support group for people who want to lose weight. The woman (actually a man) leading the meating lists different foods for participants to determine their fat content. Chips... Lettuce... Dust.
"Dust, anyone? High in fat, low in fat?"
Silence... Very long silence.
"Dust is very low in fat. You can eat as much dust as you like."
So off I go in a few days time, maybe to express myself or someone else, maybe to learn to rely on myself in the elements, maybe to be inspired, to fall in love, to try something new... But definetly to eat lots and lots of dust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcVZg2tVswk

Forever locked to the parking meter

2009-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

I was on my way out last night and went to unlock my bicycle from the parking meter outside my apartment. There was another bicycle locked to the parking meter adjacent to mine and a man fiddling with it's lock. Though his hair was a bit shaggy and his beard was long, it was clear the look was intentional. He wore thick white-framed glasses, fitted dark jeans, a colored shirt and a jacket. As is the custom in San Francisco, I turned and acknowledged him with a smiling "hello". "Hi", he said, "How are you?"
"Fine, thanks."
Then he said, "Can I ask you a question?" which is a rhetorical, relatively pointless question, but effective in getting the attention of someone who isn't expecting a conversation.
"Yes," I said.
"Did you see me in this neighborhood last night?"
"In this neighborhood?," I asked trying to remember if I'd been out in this neighborhood last night, though I was sure I'd never seen him before. "No."
"Thanks," he said, "You see, I've lost my keys, so I'm trying to find people who saw me last night, so i can figure out where I was."
"Sorry," I laughed. "Good luck." I got on my bike and rode away.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing out, because I remember everything. San Francisco is like the 60s. If you remember it, you never lived here. I like to think I just have a different way of experiencing it. But maybe I am too uptight. I was accused once in Marseille of having "un balai dans le cul." In fact, a whole song was written about it on a rare night that I hardly remember.

I've been thinking about a tatoo. I've been admiring tatoos for years. I've been brain storming and sketching what mine would look like for just as long. Here, tatoos are practically a requirement. At times, because I don't have a tatoo, I feel a bit like I've forgotten to put my pants on and realized after I've already left the house. I keep wondering if I would get more work with at least one visible tatoo. However, this societal expectation also makes me proud not to have one yet and gives me strenght to stubornly stick to the viewpoint that I will stay this way.
I'll admit, as I was practicing yoga today, I was thinking about things that were not yoga... Thinking quite a lot about tatoos. I suddenly had this odd feeling that we don't realize the magnitude of the impermanence of our lives. We (I use "we" here because tatoo or no tatoo, I am a victim of the same condition) have beautiful artwork etched in our bodies that we imagine will last forever, not really understanding what Forever means. We also imagine this artwork represents ourselves as we are and always will be, or at least represents a part of ourselves we won't be embarassed to remember when it has changed. There's something in this continual dichotomy between permanence and impermanence that makes me feel the profound smallness of my existance. With this thought in mind, I am still committed to a tatoo-free state.
I do have one scar from an eye-brow piercing in college that will do for now, that I like and embrace because it was accidental... The scar, not the piercing.
I hope I have not discouraged anyone from getting a tatoo. I would love you all to get a tatoo and I will admire yours. You worry about the permanence of your own state if you want and forget all I've said... Or don't worry about it because life will keep happening anyway, making it's mark on our bodies and in our expressions whether we want it to or not.

whew!

2009-05-12T16:48:00.001-07:00

All of a sudden I realized, I really was alright again. Almost everything that I had resolved to do in my weakest moment, I had done. And it had worked as I hypothesized it would. I left Europe to face the USA and my family, secretly my biggest fears, and I am no longer afraid of where I'm from. I swear it's true what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... For a time I feared that was just to make those of us suffering feel better momentarily, like a morphine pill or a cortisone injection. But really, I came to San Francisco, a new city to me, and I think it has been easier for me than many new arrivals to be at home here. After Manila, Madrid, Marseille and the many stops in between, some simpler than others, being back on my home soil, anywhere, is refreshingly simple... And though in some ways, I guess you could say I've become an awful snob, I get it... Even the things I don't agree with. They are in my blood (even if I don't want them to be) because I was born in this country.

the voyage in reverse/le voyage à l'envers

2009-03-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

English version at the bottom:

Alors, j'essaie maintenant de vous écrire en français car j'ai parlé français pour six mois et des fois, mes pensés m'ont semblé être des peintures et de belles images...
C'est le matin à San Francisco, Californie et pour la première fois depuis que je suis arrivée, le soleil a brillé par ma fenêtre quand je me suis reveillée. Je me sens bien et je crois que je vais me prommener sur la plage, seulement à deux blocs de mon appartement.
C'est rare pour moi je crois, ce sentiment de tranquilité. C'est pas bon pour quelqu'une qui cherche inconsciemment l'aventure, tout ces changements plus nombreux et rapides que l'éclair et de vouloir autant retrouver le contrôle sur sa vie. On peut avoir l'un ou l'autre l'aventure ou le contrôle, mais jamais les deux. Je me sens presque toujours en conflit. Mais pas maintenant, pas ce matin.
Cela fait aujourd'hui un mois que j'étais en France, à Marseille ou j'ai imaginé que je pouvais rester... En fin, je me suis dit que ce n'était pas de ma faute, que je devais bouger encore.
Assis sur le bord du quai du vieux port, on a regardé les poissons qui ont formé des cerlcles dans l'eau à trois heure du matin, en attendant le moment oú je devais prendre le bus pour l'aeroport au plus noir de la nuit. À l'aeroport, ils ont pesé ma valise qui faisait 10 kilos de trop. J'ai commencé a enlever des trucs sans reflechir a ce que j'allais jeter. Car si l'on y pense, on devient attaché. J'ai laissé des vêtements, des chaussures, des livres, sur un siège de l'aeroport, et j'ai essayé de les oublier. Je voulais me sentir legère et libre. Je voulais vivre uniquement dans le présent et lâcher prise, comme je le dis aux élèves de yoga encore et encore parce que c'est la leçon que je dois appliquer aussi. Alors, j'ai abandonné ces choses materielles, mais pas les idées. Quand je voyage et quand j'essaie de m'instaler ailleur, je le fais toujours en rêvant à Marseille. Je ne suis presque jamais là ou je suis.
Je suis arrivée à Londres vers sept heures du matin et j'avais des nuages dans la tête ☁✈. J'avais besoin de sommeil et au dela du sommeil je ne me souviens plus trop de Londres. Une bière dans un pub, une prommenade le long de la Tamise avec un vieil ami. Il a un peu neigé, un peu plut aussi. Et je me souviens des scéances de yoga comme toujours.
De Londres, j'ai pris un avion pour New York. Le New York d'une autre vie quand j'avais des rêves différents... Mais c'est une ville qui est toujours aussi vivante et je l'avait oublié. J'ai plusieurs amis là-bas mais c'est une communité qui a encore évolué même pendant mon absence. Ils avaient leurs propres blagues que je n'ai pas compris et leurs propres amours que je n'ai pas rencontré. Je parlais moins leur langue que celles d'oú je revenais. Les rues semblaient tellement grandes et les couleurs grises... C'est d'une beauté différente dont je n'ai plus les yeux.
Je ne suis restée qu'une semaine. De New York je me suis envolée encore. Cette fois j'ai atteri au Colorado, l'état ou je suis née. C'était bizarre de retourner dans mon pays, tellement différent et comme inconnu. Le ciel était mille fois plus grand que dans mes souvenirs, dessous lequel je me sentais tel un caillou. Le reste du monde qui vivait dans cet état semblait ne pas remarquer qu'ils étaient sur le point d'être avaler par leur propre ciel☠. Ils étaient tous souriants, tous concentrés sur l'exercise et la nouriture sainne pensant vivre pour toujours. Le ciel délavé et les pelouses marrons et mortes dans ce climat sec.
Heureusement, après quelques jours dessous le soleil du Colorado, et quelques temps passés au prés de ma famille, j'ai vu les choses plus clairement. J'ai redécouvert les endroits qui ont évolué et maintenant ils sont plus vivant avec des restaurants et des bars branchés où avant il n'y avait rien. J'ai pensé de rester... Mais mon addiction au voyage m'a encore entrainé vers de nouvelles sensations. Un jour je dois essayer l'hypnotisme ou l'acupuncture pour arrêter ma manie de bouger.
Maintenant je suis à San Francisco, dans un appartement à deux blocs de l'Océan Pacifique et très loin de toutes les autres choses. Je m'habitue au bus ou je passe des heures en montant et décendant les collines. Cette ville est tellement belle, avec l'herbe verte élecrtique et les arbres plein des fleurs, la ville dans la nature et la nature dans la ville. Il pleut souvent et une seconde plus tard il y a du soleil☀.
Toujours je rêve de Marseille et toujours j'attends le moment où je me sentirai à l'aise quelque part.
***************************************

It’s morning in San Francisco and for the first time since I arrived, the sun was shining in the window when I woke. I feel good and I think I’ll take a walk along the beach only two blocks from my apartment.
It’s rare for me I think, this feeling of calm. It’s not good for someone who unconsciously seeks adventure, more numerous and fast changes than the natural speed of change, to want so seriously to re-establish the semblance of control in her life. We can have one or the other, adventure or control, but never both. I almost always feel in conflict. But not at this moment. Not this morning.
Only a month ago I was in France, in Marseille, where I imagine I could have stayed... In the end, I told myself that it wasn’t my fault I had to move again.
Sitting on the old port, we watched the fish circling in the water at three o’clock in the morning, waiting for the moment I had to catch my bus to the airport in the dark of night. At the airport they weighed my suitcase. 10 kilos over-weight. I began to remove things without thinking. The moment one thinks, one becomes attached. I left clothes, shoes, books, on a seat in the airport, and I tried to let go. I wanted to feel light and free. I wanted to live only in the present and let everything else go, like I tell my yoga students over and over again because it’s the lesson I have to learn over all. So, I let go of the material things, but not my ideas and as I travel trying to settle elsewhere, I do it always dreaming of Marseille. I am almost never where I am.
I arrived in London around 7 o’clock in the morning and I had clouds in my head. I needed sleep and outside of sleep I don’t remember too much of London. A beer in a pub and a walk along the Thames with an old friend. A bit of snow, a bit of rain. And yoga class as always.
From London, I took a plane to New York. The New York from another life that was mine when I had different dreams... But it’s a city that continues to exist in the present and I forget that from time to time. I have several friends there but it’s a community that was evolving the same when I was absent. They had their own jokes that I didn’t understand and their own loves whom I had never met. I spoke less their language than the languages of the countries that I traveled to. The streets seemed so wide and the colors grey... It’s a beauty of a different standard for which I no longer have eyes.
I only stayed a week. From New York again I flew. This time I landed in Colorado, the state where I was born. It was stranger to return than it was to land in countries completely different and unknown. The sky was a million times larger than I remembered, and beneath it I felt like a pebble. The rest of the people living in this state seemed as though they hadn’t notice that they were about to be swallowed by the sky. They were smiling and concentrated on exercise and healthy food in order to live forever. Not the sense of mortality that I had beneath a sky so big. The sky and the lawns, brown and dead in the dry climat.
Happily, after a few days beneath the Colorado sun, and some time with my family, I saw things more clearly. I discovered the neighborhoods that had evolved while I was away and now were alive with trendy restaurants and bars where before there was nothing. I thought about staying... But my addiction is to move. I tried to stop several times, but I always start up again. One day I have to try hypnotism or acupunture.
Now I’m in San Francisco, in this apartment two blocks from the Pacific Ocean and very far from everything else. I’m getting used to the bus on which I spend hours climbing and descending the hills. But this city is beautiful, with electric green grass and trees full of flowers. It rains often and then it’s sunny in a half a second.
Still I dream of Marseille and still I await the day when I will feel well installed somewhere, when I’ll stop writing so much about me and start writing other people’s stories because mine would bore you.

free fall

2008-12-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
Henry Miller

Twenty minutes running along the port and up the hill and I slowed to a walk. That same pain in my knee, subtle, persistent, consistent, taking over. I just wanted to run and all I needed was my own two legs, but sometimes, I don’t have control over even them. It was still dark outside, but morning rush-hour was already beginning, head-lights shining in the darkness. I stopped and waited for a stream of cars to pass before crossing the street. In the early morning grey, it’s especially difficult to trust one’s own eyes and I thought of the hypothetical speeding car I would not see and certainly if I did not see it, it would not see me. And there was the hypothetical collision and hypothetical end…
But as luck would have it, I’m still conscious, alive, aware of the fact that anything could happen at any moment- Making plans, even short-term, provides us merely with a comfortable illusion. In spite of this, I have been trying to come up with my own plan in order to find comfort in the illusion that life is not free-fall. But each time I try to act, I’m suddenly seized by a sensation, “NO! I am not ready! I don’t know enough. I’m not strong enough, not grown-up enough.” Little by little, I’m learning how to respond to myself,
“You will never be ready!” Get over it. Either take a giant leap in the dark, or go home, get married to a nice Jewish boy, have children, convince yourself of a five-year-plan, a ten-year-plan and forget all the rest, forget changing the world and get comfortable… But what I know with more certainty than anything is the alternative to the leap without benefit of experience offers no greater comfort. Unpremeditated knee injuries, accidents, natural disasters, “La Crise”, will have the final say.
I turned around and walked down the hill back to my apartment and the sky had turned from grey to pink, framing the multi-leveled backdrop of Marseille. Blue and white Christmas lights glittered cold and lonely against the sky reminding me of how holiday season felt when I was not alone, though I couldn’t think of what I was being reminded of specifically. When are we truly not alone? Perhaps not so much when we are surrounded by people, but rather, when we have faith in our illusions. Or faith in even less than our illusions… Believing in something we cannot see. Believing in our own ability to persist in the absence of certainty and preparation for what we are about to take on.

turning in a new direction

2008-11-16T07:49:00.000-08:00

The sun hangs low in the sky for most of the late fall days, just about at eye level, forming pedestrians in the narrow street into silhouettes, obscuring everything. Walking forward into brightness, unable to see the sidewalk ahead, I wonder how much the late autumn sun is a symbol for my emotions. A friend recently pointed out to me, that when you settle into your life in one city, to find adventure in that city, you have to seek it out. However, when you’re always moving transiently from place to place, in each city, it’s adventure that seeks you out. The adventure is always welcome… But there comes a point when I long for tranquility and these experiences seem to be on the verge of short-circuiting my ability to feel.
I’ve felt rather aware of my mortality lately, I suppose because I’ve been raging from day to day in cities by the sea that revitalize my conscience but fail to provide me with a proper income or any certain future plans. I’m burning away my savings and to distract me from the reason in my head softly whispering “responsibility”, I’ve been breathing the air of the present so thick my lungs will almost burst. On trains, in motor-cars on busses, zooming back and forth from the French Alps to Barcelona and back home again to Marseille, the kind of jet-set lifestyle one would expect of the wealthy, and in exchange I can’t afford to buy myself a decent sweater, deodorant, a light-bulb to replace the dark corner in my room.
What it all comes down to is I think that I’m happy. Fundamentally so, though rationality or society tells me I ought not to be. I’m working almost for free but I think I love my job… If I don’t think too much, I love it. In the end, what is it all for? Nothing I suppose. In the end, “this too shall pass,” says the ring on my finger in Hebrew I’ve been wearing continuously for the past five years. I wonder about this phrase and this concept and wonder if I’ve only come to embody it so much because I carried it around with me everywhere. When I lose my thoughts or sense, I look down and there it is. “This too shall pass.” If I’m sad, I try to have patience. If I’m happy, I try to soak up the day to day fully and not lose this precious now by planning the future… But I don’t know now… I think it’s time I got a new phrase… Something less existential and more inspiring… Something like, "What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! / Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (Goethe) I don’t regret a moment of my life and my experiences, but now I think I ought to make a shift from the passively absorbing my surroundings to actively creating them.
And here I am writing anyway. Writers are such slackers… Sitting back, observing, then thinking we’re being active by writing about what we witness.

what is a smile?

2008-11-03T05:00:00.000-08:00

My neighbor across the street is at the piano again. His window is closed and the sound of a melody in a minor key only faintly mingles in the air with the leftover rain dripping from drainage pipes. Clean white balloon clouds are moving quickly over a clean deep sky, and I like to stand at my window and watch the clouds mobilize until I think I can feel the motion of the earth. Until I feel like my apartment building, my street and I are moving and the clouds are standing still. The same way I like to stand and watch the luggage belt at the airport until I am dizzy.
One of those empty, beautiful nights in which I feel nothing, but think that I ought to. What is it? Saturday? Sunday? It really makes no difference to me. Either way, I feel like staying in tonight. Maybe with a glass of wine.
Standing outside my friend’s vintage clothing store before returning home earlier this evening, I struck up a conversation with another loiterer. Or he struck one up with me. He was tall and handsome, well dressed with a sort of unfocussed energy that gave him away to be quite young. Twenty or so. Women, he wanted to know about women. How are women in the States? Are there a lot of them and are they sexy? Then his next question was about balloons. “Are there a lot of balloons in New York?” I looked at him, puzzled and so I suppose he thought I didn’t understand the word ballon. So he took out his cell phone, where he had several photos stored and showed me. He scrolled through multiple pictures of balloon arrangements. Balloons for birthdays, weddings, openings… bar mitzvahs?... balloons that look like flowers, like people, like clouds and telephones.
“You see this is what I do.” He said, “And I want to go to New York. Do you think I can?” I told him I didn’t see why not. “New York est dur,” I warned.
“Do you want to study in the States?” I asked.
“No, I don’t need to study for my job. You see, I just make balloons.” Again he showed me his cell phone and scrolled through more photos, balloons in swimming pools, on rooftops, tied to motorbikes. “I see.” I said.
A woman standing near us on the sidewalk, whom I knew from having encountered her many times in the neighborhood interrupted, “Do you have a cigarette?” She held open an empty cigarette packet waiting. “No, I’m sorry.” I said, “I only have rolling papers,” said the balloon youth. The woman’s voice changed to a sort of high-pitched whining, “S’il vou plaît s’il vous plaît s’il vous plaît…” We turned our backs and headed into the vintage shop where we tried on some giant sunglasses and winter hats with fur earflaps. A few minutes later, I drifted out of the store and headed home, pulling my regular French exit without saying goodbye. Saying goodbye can be such a hassle, especially when you have to kiss everyone on the cheek two times. A French exit is much easier than a French goodbye.
On the street, a man asked me for some change, which I didn’t have. Reflected to myself that I do however currently have a roof over my head at night and life could be much harder than mine. Another street bum passing turned to me and said, “Tu dois sourrir. A smile is much nicer.” What is a smile anyway? Is it something we do when we are happy, or the greatest way to cope with pain?

Honest Bull Sh**

2008-10-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

Pelting rain in Marseille turns the sidewalks dark and reflective, forms lakes in the holes where the workmen are drilling, makes a whole city of people fond of the sun sleepy and listless. Bundled up in my room with chills running down my spine and the sound of the rain on the window pains wishing I could figure out how to work the heater... Marveling at the tremendous extent to which life seems to imitate art and still fails to be as meaningful.
I've been killing time on Youtube and came across a trailor for the the television show "Dr. House" to a song by Zazie, "Je suis un homme". The strangest things put me in a philosophical state or move me to tears. The deeply effected expression in Dr. House's eyes along with the music make me understand how much I have in common with Dr. House... Our lives are dramatic and we are in the spotlight playing the dramatic role... The whole world is watching us and waiting with baited breath to see how we will eventually win each of our battles, each victory bringing us closer to immortality and ultimate meaning.
Of course I don't really believe any of this. The return to reality from this three minute illusion lasting almost the length of the trailor gives me a sudden need to let go of the temporary belief that the past has a meaning and the future is going somewhere. So I have a good cry on a rainy day in Marseille, alone in my room in front of a televsion trailor.
The fact is, at this time in the ever fluctuating progression of my life, the only thing I believe in fully is the present. I don't believe in faith anymore so I believe what I think i can see, hear, touch, taste, breath.
And yet, I still have a sense of time, at this time, I only believe in the present, I said... Yet I feel somehow there is some sense beyond the five principle senses. There is a definite sixth sense that is more than marks humanity put on a clock... That is time. I don't so much fear it's passing now, as have a subtle faith (though I don't base anything on faith) that time will continuously make life better. Even when it's worse, I will be stronger, more durable, more resilient with each passing hardship... Or should I say, with each passing challenge... I don't believe in hardship either. There are only challenges to be overcome... In the meantime, due to unflickering faith in the present I must remember to be aware of the journey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGV0PvAnUjA

avec la musique vien l'espoire

2008-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

At the present moment, the scene is too sweet to be real and the elation I feel due to it’s beauty is only vaguely hampered by the fact that it’s surreal nature is reminding me of neon bright moments in a David Lynch film that cause the audience to feel disconcerted and question how quickly the situation will decline, like the yellow tulips in “Blue Velvet”. It’s just after three o’clock on an early fall Sunday afternoon in Marseille. The weekend was rainy, mocking the sunny weather citizens of the city with coat-and-jacket temperatures and wind. But today the sun has come out and all that remains of the rain is a refreshing cool. The sky is clear and bright, but for a few white puffy clouds. I’ve just finished hanging my laundry to dry in the floor-to-ceiling window of my antique fourth story apartment. Standing in the window, I can hear birds chirping, and in the apartment just across the street someone is practicing classical piano with the windows open. The sound is clear and flawless. So flawless that after several minutes listening, I establish that it is actually a recording… Wait a moment… No, in fact it is not a recording. The pianist has switched styles to something more along the lines of jazz and is now joined by a female vocalist. She has a clean, flawless, alto voice carrying with it the passion in the song she’s singing. Whatever is going on over there, I wish I were a part of it.
I am still searching to make music a bigger part of me, to play an instrument, to sing, to be the music and not just stand by and listen to it. Thus far I have only succeeded in becoming a groupie to every solid musician I hear.
I’ve had moments where I felt the honored guest, but still I was nothing but a groupie. I went out for some beers a couple of weeks ago with two of the members of the Clair de Lune Trio at a bar near Place Jean Jaurès. In a somewhat secluded corner of the bar I sat between the guitarist and the violinist as they played a mad rendition of a Django Reinhardt song. This was the conclusion of an anxious day. I was sick with a head cold or an allergy and I was frustrated with flakey restaurant managers who lead me on and never gave me a job. I was just on the border of a decision to leave Marseille and go somewhere more secure when these musicians called me at midnight to join them for a drink. Avec la musique vien l’espoire… And due to the hope that accompanied the music that night, I assertively decided to stay. When I express my desire to be more of a musician, every good musician I meet reminds me what kind of hard work that will take…
I suppose the problem is, it’s difficult to pursue a new activity with the kind of gusto I’d like to dive into music when other necessities of living are not yet in place… Such as job… But over the past week, I’ve failed to be extraordinarily stressed about my tragic financial situation. I’m a young American woman profiting from the present with the Marseille sun and the Mediterranean Sea… In a few days, I’m sure I’ll be hit by another wave of anxiety but for now ça va.
Last night more music. Electronic night at Marsatac, the big out door music festival for the young and hip held each year in Marseille. After two hours of handing out fliers advertising another concert in front of the venue, I went in with a small group of people I’d been working with. I promptly lost them all and walking alone, took in the energy of the evening. When I started to get cold, I went to a tent where musicians were playing, and though I’d never heard of them, I pushed my way to front center and danced.
As late afternoon turns to early evening, the sound of a tap dancer has joined the pianist and the singer. The sun is slowly withdrawing from my window and I’m beginning to feel chilly… Fragments of momentary loneliness, wishing for someone closer to keep me warm, but for now I’ll put on a sweater and keep listening to the music being wrung out of the city through the early autumn night.

chapt 1 in the quest for a visa

2008-09-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

First try, I walked to the Castellane neighborhood, big and clean and wealthy, from my apartment near Noaille, wild and dirty and dangerous, in search of the U.S. consulate. There, a security guard behind a huge metal gate told me I had to call for an appointment. He gave me the phone number, and I called from a pay phone around the corner. No answer, so I left a voice message though the recording told me I shouldn’t expect a call back for calls regarding visas. I stopped for a coffee and to read the paper in this new neighborhood before returning home. Second try, I called the Marseille consulate from home, where a woman answered and played dumb. She said they didn’t deal with visas there and that I’d have to call the consulate in Paris. Third try, I called Paris, where another woman played dumb and told me that because I am in Marseille, I should call the consulate in Marseille. Fourth try, I called the consulate in Marseille again with the news that the Paris consulate sent me back to them. After much questioning, the woman on the line told me that in fact, the U.S. consulates in France know nothing about the laws for obtaining a French work visa and that I should go to the Prefecteur. I hung up the phone and put the Prefecteur off for another day. I’d been warned this would be a painful process.
My love for this country is unrequited. My heart has attached itself to memories of moments recently passed, gazing at the cerulean blue of the ocean and jagged mountains in the distance, blending in with the untamed landscape bordering a wild, lazy city. But today I feel this country doesn’t particularly want me here, or simply doesn’t care enough to clarify itself. Rotten really, and typical.
Of all days the weather could choose to be nasty, of course it’s chosen this one. The sky is swollen with the intention of rain and the need to detoxify itself on us below or explode, causing the common question of the faceless dreary day pedestrians concerning when the clouds will shatter under the increasing water pressure to linger in the air.
After reflecting for a while, I’ve changed my mind. This city loves me immensely, the way a teacher loves a student enough to test him and challenge him and push him to the limit to confirm the conviction that he will not quit so easily. But this is far from my limit. I can endure so much more (and will have to if I’m going to pursue this obnoxious quest for a work visa) as long as I abandon that quirk I have of fleeing the moment things get uncomfortable.

looking for my marsian voice

2008-09-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

At first it was a place to sit and look at the stars and now it’s come alive with the energy of the people who breath the air that smells of lavender soap, and baking bread, and piss, who sit at the bar next door from morning to night drinking pastis, singing to themselves and avoiding work. For some reason, I feel something for them. They love this city even more than I do and don’t notice they are unemployed but only that they are free. Is it strange that I fell in love… With a city? In truth, I’ve fallen in love before with other cities, but not like this. And for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is about Marseille that’s captured me. Maybe the deep turquoise of the ocean, rocky beaches, the way the ancient forts and cathedrals, houses with red tiled roofs ascend from the ocean creating uneven steps that turn a shade of gold at sundown. Sure it’s beautiful, but I’ve seen so many extraordinary cities, and in truth, this one lives up to its reputation for being filthy… But maybe that’s in part what I love about it. Similar to when we fall in love with a person their quirks, their flaws, imperfections, become our favorite details.

running on rioja wine

2008-08-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

Walked into my apartment and felt my way through the dark to the light-switch in the kitchen. A wind blew the curtains of the open window filling the space with it's temporary coolness and as I stood in the dim living room, I could still feel my heart pumping and the twitch of blood surging to my muscles after running.
Walking back from the English bar after two glasses of rioja and an embarassing loss at trivia, I suddenly had this desire just to run. It has been ages since I last ran but there was something in an unexpected breeze interrupting the August heat that made me want to run. So I took off down the street, passing bars with people still spilling onto the sidewalk. I don't know if they noticed me or not. I meditated on the flip-flopping sound of my sandals clapping on the pavement, flying from the lively nocturnal streets of Malasana to the peaceful, pijo, posh neighborhood of barrio Salamanca, where the streets are wide and perfectly perpendicular and there's hardly a soul out after mid-night. This was not my city. Than what was? I reflected on the streets of Manila, remembering how the tangled roots of the trees along the sidewalk had grown and cracked the pavement creating deep, black crevices. The heat there was heavier than this, with breezes far sparser and stillness more complete. That wasn't my home either, but more than this, and I guess what I'm trying to realize is that home is only inside of me... But I keep on running.
I came to the intersection of a big street and though the light said, "don't walk" the on-coming traffic seemed far enough away for me to make it across, maybe. Oh well, I thought and broke into a sprint. The cars came much faster than I'd expected and just reaching the otherside, I felt a quick rush of adrenaline as the driver of the car closest to me laid his hand on the horn.
Then, on one corner of my quiet neighborhood, stand two benches, and no matter what day of the week I pass them or how vacant the rest of the city seems in summer, there are always people sitting there, sisters having a chat heart-to-heart or lovers exchanging saliva. Tonight there were three men seated on each, each with a laptop in his lap, looking like a mid-night office with no over-head. I smiled at the oddity of the scene as I passed and one of them shouted after, "Hola! Thanks for similing!"
I reached my door, heart pumping, blood rushing to my finger-tips and toes. Farewell, Madrid. Until another time. Yet another city I have to make peace with (but really just have to make peace with myself).

I took me dancing

2008-06-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

I took myself Tango dancing last night, once again disproving a common misconception. Here’s to the solitary observer, breathing the life of the city night, well connected without any friends. I took the Metro to Chueca, walked ten minutes down Fuencaral and road the elevator up to a third-story dive.
At mid-night the place was still fairly empty and only a few dancers took the floor. None of them caught my eye. I stood in the doorway watching for a while, not sure if I would pay the entrance fee and stay. My attention was drawn to a woman on a sofa in the corner, attentively and perfectly applying eye-makeup with one hand while the other held a compact mirror to her face. She wore immense dangling earrings, setting off her long neck. She was almost completely bald, with a few soft patches of hair remaining. It struck me that despite the baldness due to some apparent illness or deficiency, she looked exquisitely healthy and well composed. Her posture was that of a born dancer and her bare shoulders were muscular and dramatic. A man approached her and asked her to dance. She stood with grace and accepted with an inviting smile. She took his hand and pressed her cheek to his and they set off. Whether they were both good at dancing or her composure made him look good as well I wasn’t sure. The woman’s expression was grave and her eyes were deep and black. The man’s showed absolute delight to be dancing with her. When their dances were over, in Tango you dance at least three, she settled back softly on the sofa and started where she had left off with her make-up.
A man passing through the doorway turned to me and said several words in Spanish and caught unaware, I did not understand a one. I instinctively replied, “No hablo español.”
And so I’ve been like this a lot lately, observing but not participating, soaking up, taking in, storing up for one day when I can finally speak again.
***
A few weeks back I went to the courtyard sale of Trash and Treasures at a new friends old apartment. The complex where she once lived, a rustic white building and former inquisition prison, was being shutdown and renovated for one purpose or another, forcing out all the gypsies and artists who had been living there for years. The courtyard was filled with clothing racks and furniture, old junk and valuables, pieces with a once sentimental value. There were jewelry and plants, sports equipment, hula-hoops. You name it, they’ve got it. Come on in and take your pick for a low low price, plus fresh juices made by Nacho and vegan chocolate cake by Alison, a Scottish recipe I think.
A group of us lounged away the afternoon on cushions and hammocks, watching the customers pass, pick through the stuff and find their soul mate of a pair of boots. The Spanish conversations bubbled, the day grew hot, the heat got heavy then the evening came and cooled us comfortably. The flow of customers slowed, someone turned up the music, an eclectic mix of Latin and Spanish and whatever else. Broke out the wine and rolling papers, the drums, maracas and bells, played music and danced until someone had the idea to play dress up. We ran for the clothing racks and threw on some costumes. Anything went but was best if you made it something it wasn’t. I wore an Indian sari and a kneepad for a hat at a stylish tilt. The men went for the women’s clothes, pants with a lace up fly and mini-sweater vests in colored heart patterns, enormous sunglasses and long beaded necklaces. Wearing funny outfits, we beat out a rhythm on a bongo drum and some women in summer dresses tied bells around their ankles and danced.
Eventually I drifted away from the party unnoticed, climbed the old staircase to the third story where I could look down on the courtyard and take in the evening from afar. Sometimes more easily digested that way. Then I looked up to the opposite rooftop silhouetted black against the pale grey sky, and the sliver of a silver-blue moon half hidden by a single translucent cloud.
***
“Bailas tú?” I think that’s what he had said. That must have been what he had said. The Tango dance was beginning to get crowded with more young people. I just sat near the dance floor, observing the dancers… Observing, always observing now… Another man came up and asked me to dance. “Hablas ingles?” I asked because I couldn’t really explain in Spanish why I wasn’t very good at Tango but I was alright enough to try. He turned out to be from Australia. The dance was quite nice and after it was over, I returned to my chair feeling more confidant and belonging than before. The man who had spoken to me in the doorway earlier turned to me and said, “Por fin, tú bailas.” And finally, you dance.

And by the way,

2008-06-07T08:18:00.001-07:00

how are you?

Madrid month blues

2008-06-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

And then there are times when I’m afraid of being alone, afraid to stop moving for even a moment. The world is moving around me and I feel like a walking shadow surrounded by human life that I am not a part of. I walk in the streets at a pace that’s hardly transporting me just so I look like a person walking down the street. People pass with their groceries and their friends and lovers and their strange habits. I watch a man produce a jar that most definitely looks like mustard out of a shopping bag, unscrew the lid and take a sip.
I unlock the door of my apartment that’s dimmed with the light of the day and I want to fall asleep forever, disappear because there’s nowhere on earth I can escape this sensation that creeps up from the depths and paralyzes my ability to be or scream or feel. I could absently drink a jar of mustard too or walk around with one shoe on and the refrigerator door still open and my laundry piling up for weeks. The trash needs to be emptied and the dishes need to be washed but all I can do is sit with my legs crossed on the sofa and my eyes focusing unintentionally on a crumb that must have fallen yesterday on the floor, or the day before, or the day before that.
All the dirt seems to be accumulating at a faster pace than I can move to collect it and throw it out the window in a storm of dust and memories and emotional baggage from years and years of regrets I continue to deny I have.
When I sleep at night, my sleep is filled with the hubbub of dreams and the dreams are filled with images of friends whose friendships were deep rooted and solid as steel once. And an unrequited love, which is the best kind really. And I’m longing for a place across the sea that I couldn’t wait to leave because this part of me was a part of me there too and I thought I could leave it behind.

Tricks of the Brain

2008-05-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

Et le monde devien plus et plus petit...
I'm on the sidewalk now, giving Javier a kiss on the cheek, then Fernando. The last time, and first time, I saw them we were in Nepal... The beginning of the last time I saw Fernando I was walking alone through the mad maze of Kathmandu rush hour, the day after returning to the city from the trek to the Everest base camp. A bit of a low after the high of the hike... The thrill of reaching the destination, then back to the city and I was thinking, "Now what?" and contemplating eating all the junk food I'd seen in the bakeries of Kathmandu over the day and half since I'd returned from the mountains all at once... Just for the temporary endorphin release caused by chocolate that makes everything feel all right for a moment.
It was as I was considering my chocolate downfall that I started hearing things... Hearing my name carried by the hot and crowded air, the noisy streets of the city. "Hilary," at first startled me and then in doubt, I shrugged my shoulders and theorized all the sounds of the city must have coincidentally shaped my name because as much as I wished it was a friend calling, I was in a foreign country in a foreign city at a foreign time... But there it was again, "Hilary." So I turned subtly so as not to let the tricks my mind was playing on me know that I was falling for them. Just to my right, crammed at the edge of the traffic was a man on a motorcycle with a face mask to protect his lungs from fumes of the traffic. "It's Fernando," he said and then I recognized the way his short black hair stood off the top of his forehead. My friend from Madrid that I met on the small airplane out of Kathmandu to the start-point for the Everest base-camp hike. "Hop on," he said, or something like it, so I did and we rode very slowly, hardly moving any, if at all, with the chaos of traffic, cars and bicycles, people and cows, at a stand-still. Eventually we found it was faster to park the motorcycle and scramble on hands and feet, climbing over bumpers of trucks. Somehow we found Javier, who Fernando had lost before accidentally finding me, and the three of us spent the rest of the day exploring the city and closing the evening with pizza at a popular ex-pat Italian restaurant and a bottle of red wine.
It's the warmth of people like Fernando, Javier and their friends that lead me to Madrid in the first place, and it's thanks to them that I'm living in the apartment I'm living in. Fernando grew up with Ines outside of Madrid and I'm living in Ines's bedroom while she escapes Madrid for the summer.
Ines came back this evening to pick up some of her stuff, and I helped her carry it down to the street where Fernando and Javier were waiting in their truck. Out of the truck they bounced and gave me a kiss. They look smaller than I remember. In Nepal they were the size of the mountains and the monuments... Or maybe it's just memories that play the tricks of the movie screen and render it's subjects larger than life.

2008-05-22T07:59:00.001-07:00

Actually feeling quite at peace with myself, more than usual, more often than usual... I think I’m having much less trouble adjusting to life in Madrid than I’ve had adjusting to cities in the past, and I’m not sure it has anything to do with Madrid. I think it’s me. I’ve faced this adjustment period so often before and every time, no matter how weird, how alienated, lonely, scrambled, bizarre and misshaped I feel, time creates a level of comfort. This knowledge forms a new level of patience with myself not to be perfect and loved, not to have friends for now. Thus, I feel more secure, sure of who I am... Though I couldn’t describe who I am or realize it on any tangible level...

Himalayan Pizza

2008-05-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

I logged onto blogger.com to post a new blog tonight and instead of seeing my blog from yesterday, there was a notice that my blog has been removed temporarily for review and is suspected of violating the terms of blogger.com. At first, I was shocked, annoyed and frustrated, but within a few seconds, a curiosity and satisfaction settled in and I wondered how I managed to offend someone so much, and who. I felt that under the circumstances, my very own blog would become as provocative and popular as previously banned books. However, after a little investigation, I discovered my blog was being reviewed due to the possibility of it’s containing spam, which is apparently an inconvenient mistake made with anyone’s blog quite often. To expose a little secret, I haven’t really any idea what spam is, except for the mysterious canned meat by the same name invented in America sometime in the late 1930s due to limited resources, and still made today for God knows what reason.
I tasted Spam only once, and felt it wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but I probably wouldn’t give it a second try. It was back in November en route to the Everest base camp when I joined a group of six other Americans and eleven Nepali staff who cooked our meals. Our meals were usually very good and once or twice, I went to help out in the kitchen, which was a large tent with some camping stoves, to try to get some of the credit for the wonderful food though I was always asked just to cut the vegetables. One night, after a longer day of hiking than usual, the kitchen staff rewarded us by making a pizza for dinner. Himalayan yak cheese and Spam pizza. After six hours of hiking mostly uphill, over 14,000 feet above sea level, turning down some pizza isn’t done, so I tried the Spam. As I said, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, and I was so cozy in the big tent huddled next to my fellow mountaineers at a small fold-up table by the light of lanterns and candlelight.
I am sure that within the next few days, my first entry will be found Spam free and re-posted. This entry, however, is all about Spam.

Madrid, and then?

2008-05-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

That's the curse of being human isn't it? Never really satisfied and never fulfilled fully in a present state? Tomorrow, quit smoking, less drinking, start running, stop eating five pints of ice-cream then throwing them up. Tomorrow, when I'm 20, 30, 40, when I leave this town that's gotten boring. When I live somewhere long enough to feel at home. Or am I the only one?
Monday night, beginning of my third week in Madrid and the thrill of getting to my destination is wearing off. I'd been traveling since October. Well, depending how I choose to look at it, traveling since August 2006. Then, a few months back I found myself stranded in Copenhagen with zero visibility to the path ahead and dead burnt out on travel. Returning to the place I grew up wasn't an option because that feels farther from home than anywhere in the world, so all I had to do was choose a place and commit. That place I eventually settled on was Madrid, Spain.
Six cities, two and a half months, 1650 miles or 2650 km later I am finally in this city I'd been dreaming of. The first moment of my arrival I felt I had come home. Through a series of coincidences or fate, I landed a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town and as soon as I arrived in Madrid, I headed to a place I could call my own more than any other place in the last seven months. There's a door here I can close when I want to be alone, and my own bed, or mattress on the floor. Regardless, it feels like mine.
Now, just over two weeks after my arrival, already getting restless in a settled state minus the benefits of real friends, connections, traditions, already wanting to look forward to future travel. I wanted to settle and now I want to be on the move. I thought I could be a more whole, complete, self-accepting person once I gave myself the chance to settle in. But so much for that. The only consistent state I've found is the state of procrastination. Tomorrow, I'll be a better person. Tomorrow, I'll feel comfortable in my own skin no matter where I go. "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" and no matter how many adventures I have, the petty pace of life finds me, commuting in the metro, cooking dinner every night at home, in my sleep on my mattress on the floor.