The Novella of the Shelves, And Happy New Year, And--Fin.

Two weeks ago I signed a lease for my new apartment, the first place I have officially lived since I moved out of 1000 Judah in June, 2007. I got the keys and drove my new car to BART for my weekly Thursday night trip to the city and the first parking space I found was number 505 which, if you know me or you know gematria or you know both, is an interesting (un)coincidence.

Then over the weekend I paid the Strong Young Movers (yes that is the actual name of their company) of Oakland, California a big pile of cash to move all my stuff out of storage in Alameda and into my new home. Hence, the Novella of the Shelves...

Last year I moved out of a very well-furnished studio in the city and among other things had a whole set of silver IKEA furniture: bedframe, dresser, and bookcase. After the Strong Young Movers had come and gone last Saturday and I was left in my new apartment to dig through boxes and begin to reconstruct my life, I discovered many things--one of which was that my silver bookcase was missing all three of its shelves.

The mystery intensified after digging through box after box and realizing that the shelves had disappeared completely. What a weird thing to lose. Where might they have gone? I couldn't stop thinking about them! I was expressing my confusion about the shelves to a friend last night when a very interesting idea emerged. "You could write an entire novella about this year by just telling the story of the shelves," he mused. And so, I will:

After much reflection this is the only thing I can imagine that happened:
•The movers came to my apartment in the city and, in the process of taking everything away, discovered that the shelves were not attached to the bookcase so they slid them out and gave them to me to take separately, as they did with other loose items like lampshades and etc.
•Since I was not only moving out but also leaving to live in Yosemite for ten weeks all on the same day, I did not really have anywhere to put the shelves and so I stuck them in the back of the green Subaru (now of blessed memory, not the new silver Subaru) and left for camp.
•Then I probably forgot they were in there since the entire cargo area and backseat were filled with the belongings of the other owner of the Subaru since she had moved out of her house and sublet it for the summer as she would be touring in Israel, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and leading a safari in Tanzania therefore not needing a room in the Marina for the summer months.
•Three weeks later when the Subaru got rearended on the freeway and I left it in Berkeley when I went back to camp, I likely had no recollection at all about the shelves and so they just stayed in there parked in the lot at Subaru of Albany.
•When the other owner came back and reclaimed the Subaru, before it was eventually declared totalled from what I understand, she almost certainly found the shelves as she was taking all her stuff out and not knowing where they had come from or what they were doing in there, threw them away.

So--my shelves are no longer with me and there is nothing I can do. This year is also no longer with me, fortunately and unfortunately as Remy Charlip would say, and I have returned from my sixteen months of nomadic existence to begin building my life in--of all surprising places--Oakland, California. This year I have lost some shelves and found that suddenly somehow I have long hair, I have unexpectedly fallen out of touch with a few friends but made new ones along the way, I have found that in putting on some much-needed weight I now have boxes of pants that are too small--did I really wear that size before?! Found and lost, lost and found. The morning that I left Alameda two weeks ago Wes asked me, "So, Sarah--would you do it all over again?" "Ask me in a month," I said, but really my answer is yes, in a minute, of course, absolutely. It was a complicated amazing hard beautiful wild brave year and it was just what I needed, and I have learned much from it, and now I am home. I have a new home and new car and new job and I have to remind myself often that it is indeed still me, that I am the same in the midst of creating this new life. Or, am I?

Today is the second day of Rosh HaShanah, yesterday dawned the Jewish New Year and I feel curious about what lies ahead in the moon's new trip around the earth. At new years past I have felt very different from this, I have felt small and scared and like my life was living me instead of me living it. Last Rosh HaShanah, in the fall of 2007, was uniquely terrifying because only days remained before I was leaving the country with plans not to return for seven long months. But return I did, and then I went away again, now here I am. Some things were just as I thought and some things were completely different and I do not fear the new year as I have before--I am curious and confident and I feel more complete than I have in a long time.

So--the end. My work here is done. I have gone away not just somewhere but many places, I have returned, and I am taking what I learned while I was away and using it to write the next chapters in my life. This blog was begun for the purpose of chronicling my year's journey, and now it is a new year and I am home. Thank you for reading what I've been writing here, thank you to every one of you who helped me make this year all that it was and all that it could be. Good journeys to you wherever you may go.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

I know someone who recently asked this question, was told to stay, and ended up making a fly hula hoop and cuddling with a cute just-post-college girl under a carpet for three hours during a sandstorm.

My situation is not entirely similar, so I do not think the aforementioned chain of events will be one thing that might occur in my own life if I stay--I am not talking about whether or not to leave the playa after three underwhelming days at Burning Man. I am talking about whether to keep writing this blog or not.

This blog began more than a year ago to chronicle my adventures in what was meant to be everywhere from Yosemite to New Hampshire, Israel to Ghana, India and beyond. Now I am back and the final post has been written, yet I find that I keep not posting it. I keep feeling like there is more I have to say.

When I was traveling it was less of an ego-involved thing to write about what was going on in my life, because some of it was objectively unique and somewhat interesting: for example, the time I thought that the Friday afternoon air raid siren emanating from the open-air market in Jerusalem meant that we should get the gas masks and shelter in place in our apartment building's bomb shelter, when really it just meant that Shabbat had begun. Now that I am no longer halfway around the world, or even in Big Sur or the Midwest or the mountains, anything that I write is inherently all about me and my own observations and I just can't quite believe that anyone besides myself is interested enough in anything like that. I mean, I know, lots of people have blogs. But when it's (all about) yourself, it's different somehow.

My previous blog went on for years, is still going on even now from time to time (but not recently so if you read it don't go checking and getting all excited) but that blog was not written by me, it was written under a pseudonym which meant that while *someone* was busy having a colorful life I didn't have to concern myself with the potentially egomaniacal element of it because it wasn't me writing, anyway.

And in this case, the title certainly doesn't fit anymore at all. Gone away somewhere? The only place I go anymore is to Oakland. Not such a huge and elaborate, blog-worthy journey most days...

I need some time to think about this.

Earthquake!

We are sitting on the couch eating dinner and watching a movie. Suddenly, about ten minutes ago just as the Incredibly Deadly Viper was about to not bite Uncle Monty, there was an earthquake. It was the shaking kind, not the rolling kind or the slamming kind, and we looked right away on craigslist to find the quake map. It turns out the epicenter was 14 miles away just outside of Alamo, the source was ten miles below ground, and the magnitude was 4.0. As a family project we filed a report at the United States Geological Survey website and now our experiences will be added to the observations of other scientists all around Northern California.

Homecooked dinner, PG-rated movie, earthquake. Shabbat Shalom, kulam--have a great weekend, everybody. And if there are any aftershocks, just brace yourself in a doorway or duck and cover under a table (but don't forget to grab onto one of the legs of the table so it doesn't scoot away from you).

Why I Teach

My career as a blogger began five years ago now, when Matt first suggested I start taking some of the ridiculous hilarious heartwrenching amazing tales of my life in Third Grade and sharing them with the world. I spent considerable time after that telling a combination of school stories and life stories using a pseudonym for anonymity, yet even then didn't avoid exposure so I've been gunshy about blogging as a teacher ever since. But, sometimes the source material is too fabulous not to share. This photo documents today's journal entry from one of my students. This photo explains why I teach.

transcription due to poorly-lit PhotoBooth image (translation from Kid to English in parentheses):
Sarah Thak you Sarah.
Fr hapt (helped) me when I ferd (feeled)
Sad. Tha(n)k you agen (again) Sarah.

Of Course She's a Kotleba Girl

My cousin Anne is amazing. After college, which she attended on a basketball scholarship, she joined AmeriCorps and eventually ended up working for an organization called Hands On Gulf Coast. She has lived in and worked to rebuild Biloxi, Mississippi, for the past two years and runs a non-profit there where adolescent criminal offenders can attend art and community service classes in lieu of doing time in juvenile hall.

Or, that is what she usually does at least. Not right now. Right now she has been evacuated from her brand-new apartment on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, protected wetlands right outside her door and all. She is directing a shelter in Biloxi for family who are complying with the mandatory evacuation order, reporting directly to the executive director of the American Red Cross. In her most recent text message she not only sent me this image of Hurricane Gustav looming on the horizon this evening but also wanted me to know that based on donations from local businesses and organizations it looked like tomorrow's breakfast will be Pop Tarts.

Anne and I often joke that our brothers are Kotlebas in captivity and we are Kotlebas in the wild. Nathan and Steve have wives and homes and retirement funds and dogs. As for now, at least, neither Anne nor I even have health insurance. But while we respect our brothers' choices, we know that we are living what is to each of us a meaningful life doing righteous work.

The last I heard from her was just before dinner when she reported that the phones were out but text messaging was still working. Some places had power but some did not. A few of the gas stations were out of fuel, unable to continue to meet the demand of people filling their tanks to drive further inland. I asked her if she was afraid and she said no, that she had chosen to stay because if she didn't it would make her nuts to wonder what was going on at home, in the community she'd be leaving behind. She asked me to send this photo along to our family, and I thought I'd post it for all of you to see too. My phone is on and available for middle-of-the night SMS and my fingers are crossed. And, I know it's never as bad to be in an adventurous place as it is to be the person hearing about being in the adventurous place. I've lived in Israel, remember? But this time the tables are turned and even though she's not worried, I am. She's my partner in gone away somewhere-style crime. I hope you get some sleep and that whatever Pop Tarts you get for breakfast are your favorite flavor, girlfriend. Rock on. You will, you already do, have amazing and extreme stories to tell.

Almost Over

It's been weeks since I've written and I'm sure by now you're sick of stopping by to check and see if anything's new and once again, seeing a photo of me sitting in my office eating a peach. The reason for the pause in posts has been twofold: first, I've been working anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours a day every day for the past three weeks since I got back from camp. No really. Yesterday was my first day NOT at school since August 18th, and the only break the week before was a twenty four-hour relay up to the mountains and back for the last night of Session Four and for closing down camp. Getting ready for any new school year is busy, but a new school year at a new school with all new teachers and a new principal? Overwhelmingly time-consuming. I'm headed back over there today. Sigh...my carrot at the end of the stick is laps in the pool after I'm done (ha! done?) working: free access to the Mills College pool, aw yeah--one of the reasons I took the job.

So yes, this year's adventures are drawing to a close, slowly but surely. I now own a car and have firmly established my professional identity at my new job. The apartment hunt continues but is almost over, I can tell. The upcoming final post of this blog exists already in draft form, awaiting the addition of many recent photographs I've been taking in the process of documenting my new life.

For whom am I taking all these pictures? Me, to remind myself of how far I've come and to prove to myself that with incredible effort and energy, with the investment of a lot of time and strength, I am indeed pulling it off--for the past fifteen months I have been reinventing my entire life and while of course I will need to keep working, as we all do, at making it my own life and not other people's every single day the foundation has been laid and from here I just get to build it up into whatever I want.

What have I done, who have I met? Where all did I really go when I went away? These are questions I am asking myself now. In some ways it seems like I did everything I planned on and then some, in other ways it seems like I did nothing at all that I'd expected. I met wise teachers and strong families and new friends. I fell in love--who wouldn't on an adventure like this?--but like many other things about this year's journey, that connection did not sustain itself once I left the place it had been found.

So now it is almost Septemeber and I am almost home. I am seeing many ways to reflect on my travels: if I choose I can sit and think deeply, reflect upon the lessons learned and taught, the intention behind the trips I did or did not take throughout the course of the year. I can look through photographs and artifacts, I can send email or talk on Skype to people I've met and then left behind or who moved on themselves. I learn from all of that, from my thoughts and reflections and memories but also I see another way I can experience everything I've done since I first went away somewhere: I can take everything that is now history from this year gone by and put all I've learned into practice into my life going forward as I continue to make it just that: my life. No one else's. Terrifying. Liberating. I'm ready. Off I go, or perhaps onward is a better word, somewhere, to continue to grow into myself.

Coming soon: fin.

What I Look Like Today, What I'm Thinking About Now

I have been living at camp for eight and a half weeks. I am dirty and ready to go home. At the same time it is beautiful here and the community is like none other and I never want to leave.

My new job at Mills starts on Tuesday. I still have no apartment in the East Bay and I realize that I need to buy a car. Between now and when I leave I have to pack, clean my office, prepare an end-of-season report, debrief with the participants of a fellowship I've been mentoring, evaluate both my supervisor and my supervisee, lead services, run an all-camp program, and say farewell for now to people who won't be around when I get back. This is it: the nomadic life I've been living the past 15 months is really about to come to an end.

With that I am starting to think this blog's shelf life might be about to expire, too. It was created to tell the stories of my year away from what had become my life, of my adventures and exploits everywhere from the tall tall trees to the occupied territories and beyond. Soon I'm just plain going to live in Oakland and be a teacher again, before long I will eat off my plates and sleep in my bed and get dressed in clothes I've forgotten I even own. Is any of that still blogworthy? Not in the same way, that's for sure. Teaching is an adventure but there are already tons of blogs that talk about that--I've even had one, myself. Do I want to keep writing? Does anyone want to keep reading? What is the value to writing if all you have to tell are everyday stories, not global adventures?

These are all things to consider. In the meanwhile, as Debby would say, here is a photo of me from earlier today taken while I was eating a juicy late-summer peach and talking on Skype to one of the people who has been instrumental in not just my success this year but in my growing up as a whole: my younger brother Nathan. Love you, funk soul brotha, and I can't wait to see you again soon. Thank you for all you've done for me this year and always.

Coming Soon: Home Sweet Home?

Last week I got email from Jen with an incredibly warm and supportive reminder that I have been writing this blog for twelve whole months. It was July 14, Bastille Day, last summer that I began telling the story of this year and now--almost without me even realizing it--this experience of going away is almost over and soon it will be time to come home.

What does that mean, where is my next home? I am not sure. I spent three days last weekend looking at what felt like dozens of apartments everywhere from North Berkeley to Alameda and yet my goal to return to the mountains Sunday afternoon with a brand-new set of keys in my hand went unmet. My stuff still lives in a storage space on Webster Street and by the time I get to sleep in my own bed once again fifteen months will have passed since I last pulled up the covers and closed my eyes for one last night of sleep on Judah Street, two springs ago now.

I am trying not to be impatient, I am trying not to stress out about wanting to know where I will next cook my own dinner and scrub my own bathtub but it is hard at times. For now I relish the familiarity of drifting off to dream at night in my little camp house among the tall trees but at the same time I know soon the time will come for me to pack up and move once again, to leave this place for one last as-of-yet-unknown destination. Do I want to be settled? Yes. Will the time come, perhaps sooner than I could even imagine, that I will once again yearn for the nomadic life I've lived this past year? Yes. I am sure of it.

Back In Chicago

During my time in Chicago I rode the train downtown to meet up with my cousin Kristine. We hadn't seen each other in a ridiculously long time so it was great to eat piles of sushi and drink a few bottles of Ichiban beer and swap stories of our lives. On my way back to Union Station I walked by the Sears Tower. Whoa--tall.

Blog Silence

I just got back to camp tonight after being gone for a week. Last Sunday night I left at 8 p.m. and got to San Francisco at 1 a.m. The next morning at 10 I was on a plane to Chicago. My grandmother Florence, now of blessed memory, had passed away on Saturday morning and I went back to be with my family for everything from ordering sandwich trays at Jewel to weeping at the sound of my brother's bagpipes during her funeral Mass.

I have to say, she was quite an amazing lady. The last time I saw Grandma was in January, the most recent time I went to Chicago, when they first told us she was dying. Half a year later I returned to honor her life and her memory. I have many more stories to tell about her but right now I've been up since the local equivalent of 4 a.m. and after two flights and a 4.5 hour car ride back to Yosemite I am ready to get some sleep. So, more later.

But first I want to publicly thank my grandmother for having been part of our family, for having been a Kotleba and for helping to make me one too. May her memory be a blessing and may my father, who is her son, and his siblings be comforted with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

What I've Done So Far On My Day Off

Wednesday night my first official day off of the summer began--the break between sessions two weeks ago when I rode my bike to Hetch Hetchy didn't really count since there were no campers so everyone had time off and we all just laid around--but this time is a real, honest-to-goodness, "ha ha you are working but I am not because it is my day off" day off.

That night at the staff meeting during the "rides" section I raised my hand and said "I'm sure no one is going to the bay this close to session break but I am actually on my day off starting about half an hour ago and would love to go to the city tomorrow if anyone is going...?" And I was so sure no one would be until at the end of the meeting when Michael, one of the drivers, came up and told me that he was leaving at 9 the next morning, Thursday morning, to drive to Berkeley and pick up the new kiln that Arts and Crafts had ordered and did I want to come with him?

Um, YES PLEASE.

So I did laundry and packed my backpack and straightened my office and cleaned my house (all of which I thought I'd probably do on Thursday and Friday during my day off while I was still in camp, before anyone would have a chance to leave and take me back) and slept for a few hours and got up and threw my stuff into the huge camp vehicle and began the even-longer-than-usual trip back to Berkeley...the statewide speed limit is 55 miles an hour when towing a trailer, you see.

I got to the city yesterday afternoon around 4:30 and in a perfectly orchestrated ballet of time got Nalini's extra set of keys from Sara and let myself into the apartment I have been so generously lent for the weekend and promptly fell asleep on the couch. Dinner was a huge magnificent pile of sushi from Deep and I spent the evening catching up with friends and then took an Actual Bath--the first tubful of water was horrifyingly beige from my accumulated dirt so I got up, scrubbed out the tub, and took bath #2--before sleeping in a real, true, non-futon, non-fold out sofa, genuine bed for the first time since New Hampshire in October.

Since waking up at 8 I have been sitting in one place, right here, remembering that I love the fog of the city because it buffers time in a way that my overactive mind and overambitious to-do list find very calming. The light has not shifted, the view outside the window has not changed during the two hours I've been, very deservedly I might add, sitting here and reading and writing and watching a movie. Soon I will get up and get dressed, go hunt down some breakfast and start in on my task of running errands and collecting things I need to bring back to camp: flannel shirts and recycled jeans at Crossroads/Goodwill, wrap-around skirts from India via Haight Street, some random silver ring to fill up the weirdly empty space left on my finger when I lost my ring in the laundry room a week or so ago, cold medicine from Walgreens, coconut oil and the darkest of chocolate from Trader Joe's. Until then I will proudly say that I have spent what feels like the first two real hours of my day off doing just what the picture shows, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Yom Yisrael, Israel Day

The mishlachat, or delegation of Israeli counselors, stayed up until 3 in the morning on Sunday after an already-busy weekend to put the finishing touches on the "60 Years" museum they created in the dining hall for Israel Day yesterday. The two oldest groups of kids participated in a self-guided tour and filled out an opinion survey based on what they learned in the exhibits. Afterwards, they met in large groups to talk about the content presented at the various stations. It was impressive to say the least. The museum was too large to show all of it here, but below are a few photos to give you an idea.

Fiery Sunrise

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the sun rises very red outside my front door every morning from the smoke that now constantly fills the sky. Today I drove with Nora to Groveland to get pizza and we passed two fire camps alongside the road. One is much smaller and is a staging area for fire trucks and other vehicles where they can go to get refueled and repaired. The other is much larger and looks like something FEMA would set up, with everything from a large field kitchen and outdoor dining area to portable showers inside trailers to rows upon rows of individual tents where firefighters and other rescue personnel are living.

Okay Actually

I thought of three people who are neither married nor having a baby--not as far as I know of, at least. But three is still not that many compared to everyone else I know.

It Seems

...as if I am the absolutely very last person I know who is neither married, nor having a baby, nor some combination of the two.

Just an observation.

The fact that I am living in the woods for the summer with a bunch of unwashed hippies who are all ten years younger than me is probably not helping my situation very much, if at all.

Hmm.

Oh Right, Real Life

Today I was cleaning out a box that I brought with me to camp. It is filled with all kinds of paperwork that I did not have a chance to process before I left Berkeley, and contains everything from old mail that needs to be sorted, recycled, and shredded to far more pertinent things like...my teaching contract for the fall that I realized I'd never signed and returned. Oops.

Real life can be hard to keep up with here at camp, for two reasons: first, it (accurately) seems far away and second, it can be difficult to access what with the one phone line connecting us to the real world as well as the fact that the Internet comes via satellite. So tomorrow I am going to spend some of my time off addressing everything from my expiring health care coverage to my unpaid post office box fees to my recently-unearthed employment paperwork.

Next tasks: finding a new apartment in the East Bay, and considering the possibility that I might actually (gulp) need to become an automobile owner once again.

Fire

On Saturday after I got back to camp from riding into the park, the weather shifted and instead of being hot and sunny like in the picture of my bike and the Yosemite sign, there was a storm. It was very surreal because it never rains in the summer at camp. There was a short but fierce burst of rain, lots of thunder, and even lightning which started a pair of forest fires not far from camp.

The fire has grown and its smoke hangs over us much of the day, most noticeably in the morning when the sun rises red through the thick air. It always smells like a campfire, usually a fun and cozy fragrance in camp but now a reminder that nature is revitalizing itself in a powerful way not far from where we live. Yesterday our camp's director gave the local Department of Forestry office permission to send firefighters into our camp to use the showers and to rest. Four years ago during an even larger fire the firefighters lived in our camp for a short time. I wonder if that will happen again?

Day Off

Saturday was my first day off since arriving at camp almost three weeks ago. So, I was a little bit ready for time to myself. I woke up early, had breakfast, packed myself a big sack lunch, and got on my bicycle to ride into the park.

It took me an hour to ride the eight miles to Camp Mather which was discouraging until the woman at the General Store there--where I stopped for a strawberry milkshake--reminded me that the road from our camp to theirs is a 2% grade uphill the entire way and then I felt better. I rode to Hetch Hetchy, where much of California's water comes from, and then I rode home. The return trip, being mostly downhill, took only about half as long and required very little pedaling. I am glad the hard part was on the way there and not on the way back!

Stopping By For a Visit

Look who I found outside the door to my camp house! I neither screamed nor smashed her with a broom but instead just peacefully took this photograph. I must say, I have made a lot of progress as far as interacting with nature is concerned compared to when I first moved to camp last summer. I clearly recall my first and only trip into the Tuolumne River last June, where only moments after I bravely jumped off the dam at Pipeline a fish swam up to me and touched my leg and I had to get out. See? So co-habitating with a lizard is really not that big of a deal.

Now a lizard *in* my house? That would be a problem but fortunately is not one that has as of yet presented itself.

My Camp House

the view from the porch



looking out from my bedroom to the deck


Not too many exciting photos I know, but first of all my camp house is not that big and also--did I not tell you I connect to the Internet via satellite? This post took 15 minutes to publish! More later when the Earth turns far enough on its axis that I can get a faster connection...

Just A Satellite Away

A week and a half ago I moved to Yosemite for the summer. I live in a little house just up the hill from the Tuolumne River. It is cold at night and hot in the day and my feet are still relatively clean but I know that won't last for long. There are mosquitoes and lizards and I eat with hundreds of other people at every meal. Finally I have figured out when the showers actually have hot water. Perhaps most importantly of all, I passed the swim test and am now allowed to go unaccompanied into the pool.

I am living at a summer camp and working as an educator there for the next ten weeks. It is beautiful here but very remote so email that I get from my colleagues, educators at other camps, makes me laugh: "What's your mobile number? We should talk during rest hour some day and compare notes!" Maybe that works at a camp just outside Cleveland but here in the Sierra Nevada mountains the nearest cell service is an hour away if not more, as is any restaurant or store or movie theater or medical facility of any size. Being here can feel very isolating sometimes.

How then, with only one phone line into camp, am I writing this post? Our Internet access comes to us via satellite, I learned yesterday. Fascinating. So access is very slow and sometimes if too many people are checking their email or actually trying to get work done you can't get online at all...which is why I am writing this at 7:30 in the morning, not even having gotten out of my sleeping bag yet, while most other people are getting ready for breakfast and the Internet is available all for me. So while I feel very distant from the rest of my life, it is somehow reassuring that the outside world is just a satellite away.

And, a Special Note to my teaching colleagues and dear friends whose life is measured by the academic calendar: Happy summer vacation--you made it :)

Signs It's Almost Time For Camp

1. Song session with hundreds of other people reappears as a regular and predictable part of daily life.



2. Suddenly you start seeing more hippies with guitars.



3. You get a chance to meet up with friends you haven't seen since August.



4. There's lots of spontaneous embracing.



5. You start tying things to your body with hemp.



6. You trade your grown-up steel watch for your water-resistant, light-up rubber watch.



7. Instead of furniture in your bedroom you just have huge piles everywhere on top of what used to be your desk, your bookshelf, your chair...



8. Your bed itself looks like this and you're forced to pack because otherwise you can't go to sleep.


Sing it with me:
Take me home down country roads
To the place I belong--
Camp Tawonga, California!
Take me home down country roads...

Make New Friends (But Keep The Old...)

I am writing this on a Southwest flight from BWI to Oakland (the People’s Airport, as Nalini calls it, and I couldn’t agree more—sigh—SFO, I miss you…), heading home after a week at Capital Camps in Pennsylvania for the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s pre-season Cornerstone Fellowship conference.

On Thursday I woke up and packed half of what I have kept out of my storage space for the summer into my massive REI backpack. After working in Berkeley for a few hours I took the BART to OAK where I boarded a flight to Denver and then on to Baltimore, arriving at 12:30 a.m. I took a taxi to the hotel where I stayed up even later, having my very own bathtub and queen-sized bed all to myself after months of getting clean in stand-up shower stalls and sleeping on everything from a variety of futonim to a sofa permanently folded out into an extra-wide cot. I woke up and repacked, had breakfast, and took the hotel’s shuttle back to the airport with two people who I quickly learned were headed to the same conference I was. Back at BWI my airport shuttlemates Saul and Reuven (no hint there that they work for Jewish agencies) and I met up with the rest of the folks who had arrived just that morning from destinations much closer than the West Coast, and all of us together boarded a mini-bus headed for Pennsylvania.

Two hours later I disembarked on the grounds of a very beautiful camp and got registered for the week’s events. One of the staff handed me a key and a map, pointing out the dining hall’s doors at the building that would be my home for the next five nights. Lodge Alef, room 9 was my housing assignment and I shlepped my bags across the parking lot and up the stairs into the building where I found my room empty of people but filled with signs of life that my roommate had already arrived.

At the opening session I met Mara and our third roommate, Julie, who had been accidentally assigned to an upper bunk in another room and wanted to sleep closer to the ground so was moving in with us. After a few false starts in which I stole Mara’s conference materials without meaning to and boldly unpacked a week’s worth of Ziploc bags filled with pre-matched top-and-bottom combos for the next days (once again, I’m down with OCD—yeah you know me) into one entire dresser leaving Julie with nowhere to put her clothes we all fell promptly in love with one another.

I have gotten very little sleep this past week because of all the late-night pillow talk--with Julie participating fully until she would suddenly and completely without warning fall asleep, leaving Mara and I to visit until all hours of the early morning. We shared meals and acrostics and pre-presentation jitters and a bathroom, we learned about each other’s camps and professional backgrounds and love lives and plans for the summer. Yesterday morning when it was time to pack up our bags and unmake our beds, to say our farewells and go our separate ways I was surprisingly really sad. Never having been a camper myself, I hadn’t understood the overwhelming emotions I observed last summer at the end of every session as weepy campers would spend what seemed like hours hugging absolutely everyone from their own bunkmates and counselors to the kitchen staff goodbye before getting on the bus to go back home, but saying goodbye to Mara and Julie felt a lot like that had looked all those months ago in Yosemite. Now we’re Facebook friends and I’ve already sent them both mail for when they get back to their own camps next week, but it is just not the same as telling stories until two a.m. I’ll see Mara at CAJE in August and we’ve already made plans to be roommates again, and Julie offered to be my hostess anytime I am in DC, but the bittersweetness of saying farewell lingers and I will just need to console myself as the Tawongan campers do, by saying “There’s always next summer, there’s always next year…”

Messages Everywhere, Reprise

Tonight I was walking home from work, something I never do because I always ride my bike, but in this case I'd left my bike at my office since I will be out of town at this conference the next few days. This graffiti on 4th Street caught my eye and just as I was capturing the image with the use of my phone's camera, the phone rang and it was my dear, dear friend Jason whom I've known since 1999---almost a decade, practically an eternity. He had spotted my boarding pass here on my blog and he wanted to know if during my time in Baltimore I'd be able to make a 50-minute detour to see him and his family in Silver Spring, Maryland. YES, please. We were in grad school together for two years and taught together for three more after that and when he said it's been two and a half years since we said farewell to one another at the Ferry Building in San Francisco during their last trip here, about eighteen months after they moved away, I could not believe it.

The lesson: Making what might seem at the time like a random, self-indulgent blog posts such as the image of one's boarding pass for a business trip can sometimes be the catalyst for an amazing bi-coastal reunion. See you next week, Mr. O!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

This weekend I am going to teach at the Foundation for Jewish Camp (formerly, and much more sensibly I think, called the Foundation for Jewish CampING) conference in Pennsylvania.

One bad thing about this is that the sessions I am presenting are not yet fully prepared. Best to get on that. Another bad thing is that since I now live in Berkeley, my local airport is Oakland--the People's Airport, as Nalini calls it--and I just can't help but long for the off-on-an-adventure, world-traveler feel that seems so signature at SFO.

One GREAT thing is that when I get back I will be staying alone, peacefully and quietly alone, in the city for about a week before I move to the woods to live with hundreds of hippies all summer long. Such a huge gift. I cannot wait. But until then, I was the 20th person to check in online and print my boarding pass and I am leaving tomorrow and if the nineteen people who board before me somehow take up all the aisle seats in the plane before I get on, I will kick someone. You think I'm kidding? Oh, but I'm not.

In Storage

This weekend I borrowed Rebecca's car and put all the things I am not taking with me to camp back in storage. It has now been almost an entire year since I put it all there in the first place and I had a weird moment yesterday while I was standing on what used to be my desk reaching over the wall of boxes that divides the 10' x 15' space into the furniture section and the everything else section--something caught my eye that I did not recognize.

What is that big silver flower-shaped thing, I wondered as I reached over the box wall and probed it gently with my fingers, spinning it slowly around as I tried to understand what it was...oh! the rolling bottom of my IKEA desk chair, the seat pointing down towards the ground and the legs sticking straight up to the ceiling. Right. I have a desk chair, I have a desk. I have a kitchen table and an entire set of kitchen stuff including various appliances and some very nice knives that were a housewarming gift when I moved out of the House of Flowers into my own place on Judah Street. I have a bed that Renee found me on the street one thrift-shop field trip day, a brushed steel delight with a sign that said FREE but which she edited with Sharpie to say "$90!" because she thought that would prevent anyone from taking it until we came back from lunch and could summon the Subaru to come pick it up and take it to my house. I have a heinous eggplant-colored couch which is drenched in bad karma and needs to be burned at midnight on Ocean Beach once and for all. Clothes and books and fire extinguishers, lamps and towels and somewhere in there is a Swiffer.

As my plans for the fall are beginning to come together it is almost guaranteed that unless I want to subject myself to a completely nightmarish commute I will be living not in the city but here, in the East Bay. As I was walking up the stairs to Ben's apartment recently I thought about what it might be like to someday walk up the stairs to my own apartment again and I just can't even conceive of it right now but I know when it does happen, when I am seated on the floor of my own house again for the very first time surrounded by dozens of boxes of I don't even know what, clothes and books and fire extinguishers I suppose, I will be both stunned and grateful. It's been an amazing year and in some ways I don't want it to be over, I feel like there is so much more to see and do and learn but in other ways I just want to have a set of keys again that open my very own door...and not the door to a 10' x 15' storage space, either.

Bike To Work Day 2008!

Notice my new Chaco sandals, hipster canvas messenger bag, and super-fast ankle wings.





Yesterday Ben was making fun of how much I like stickers but I did not care. Today at BART I got this cool sticker. It's like the "I voted" sticker, but more sporty and eco-minded.




Yay! I bike to work every day, but today it felt like a party when I stopped by the North Berkeley BART on the way to the office. Dozens of cyclists were pulling up and grabbing muffins (mine was pumpkin) and coffee (I did not take any because hard to ride the bike with travel cup in hand) and canvas messenger bags emblazoned with a funky-modern image of people cycling past an urban landscape. I wore my special silver ankle wings that Kristine sent me--meant to clip your pants while riding to keep them from catching in your chain, but worn by me today with my skirt not for functionality but as a stylish accessory--and got a cool sticker and generally started my morning out right with my fellow cyclists.

Viva Bicycle!

New Swimsuit

This is not me in my new swimsuit. This is Marilyn Monroe.


Last year when shopping for camp I needed EVERYTHING: sleeping bag, hiking boots, bug spray, sunblock, wool socks, tent, biodegradable soap, backpack, lantern, knife, emergency whistle, you name it. This year I still have almost everything, or maybe if I've run out I just need to go buy more...but still I wanted one or two new things to take to Yosemite for the summer. It is, as Rebecca always says so rightly, all about the accessories.

So yesterday I rode my bike to Sports Basement in Walnut Creek (VERY different than the ones in the city, yes) and wandered from department to department stocking up on things I did need (socks, soap) and hoping to find just a little something new and fun to take along this summer too. In the TriYourBest! area of the store--they are so cheesy with the slogans, those folks at Sports Basement--I found a whole rack of swimsuits that caught my attention. Not in love with my orange lap suit from last spring and not in love with the reactions I get from campers when clad in my bikini I decided to poke around a bit to see what I could find. I unearthed about a half dozen in my size and headed for the fitting room.

I only learned how to really swim four years ago and since that time was, until very recently, allegiant to a full-coverage suit called the SuperFly made by Speedo. Unlike Todd or Sarah I am not a butterflyer myself, but who can argue with the name? I've done laps in three different versions since I graduated from the Starfish class at the USF swim school: the black, the blue, and the purple. Last spring, though, I was at Sports Basement's store in the Presidio and needed a swimsuit right that day since the spin dryer at the Koret Center had recently eaten my blue SuperFly alive after a particularly vigorous workout with the Masters team. I had grabbed a sale-priced suit without trying it, erroneously thinking it was my usual model, only to get home and find out it was no SuperFly at all but rather the TYR Diamondback. Since then I've been hooked and so my cardboard shopping box overflowed with various flavors of Diamondback as I found an empty "room" in the the mixed-gender try-on area.

"Whoa!" the woman trying on bike shorts in the stall next to me said in reaction to my first choice as I stepped out from behind the curtain and into the almost completely public fitting room to scope out the view in the mirror. "That is one of the best swimsuits I have ever seen! You look like a total movie star."

Really? I wasn't sure at first but upon closer inspection decided it was indeed quite an accessory and well worth the investment. My new identity as a supposed movie star might be a bit of a stretch but I feel it is definitely an impactful look since my new swimsuit is a fully-lined white TYR Diamondback that makes my truly milky skin appear mocha instead and in its double-layered-ness does wonders for, you know, those parts of one's body that sometimes look less than wonderful in a swimsuit.

Rest Hour Staff Lap Swim, here I come!

Me at Esalen

One interesting piece of feedback that I've gotten over the past months that I've been writing this blog: "Sarah! There are never any pictures of you! We've seen the images-only dials on the washer in your apartment in Jerusalem, we've seen the delicious treats your French housemate used to leave you for bedtime snack after you got back from Hebrew class, but we never get to see any pictures of YOU!" True, because I do not find photos of myself particularly interesting and this is my blog after all so I get to decide what I publish and what I do not, but also because many of the pictures I have taken do not have me in them since I am there seeing it for myself and do not need to record my presence for posterity.

However, the perfect combination of newly-repaired camera and newly-acquired laptop come together to make it possible to publish photos in a way that was nothing short of agonizing before, so now I offer you some recent pictures of me from my adventures in Big Sur.


The first day of our cooking class, everyone got aprons and mine and Heidi's just happened to be fancy while everyone else's were plain. Needless to say, that apron now hangs in my closet in Berkeley.






Adrianne and I made a delicious cake for dessert one day!






Can you see me? One night I went to the Art Barn to watch the sun set, then stayed and painted for an hour or so. I am wearing a different apron in this picture, but it is not nearly as cool as my black one so it got left behind in the Art Barn where it belonged so other people could use it too.






One of my favorite memories of my first trip to Esalen was standing on this random platform in the middle of the yard between the dining hall and the sea, hula hooping with one of the many that are lying about for anyone's pleasure. I loved it so much that the huge bruise I got on my hip was not souvenir enough and upon returning to San Francisco last spring ordered my own custom-made one and could be seen on many an occasion last May and early June hula hooping in Golden Gate Park. Alas, my hula hoop got left behind in my office at camp at the end of last summer and so I have been without one...until my return to Big Sur and the platform by the sea.






One day at rest hour I hiked down the cliffs to the beach, laid down on a big flat rock that was hot from the sun, and took a nap. Before hiking back up to class I took this picture.

Messages Everywhere

Elizabeth Gilbert describes one lesson that she learned from her year of travels: clues are all around us, and there are messages everywhere. During my time at Esalen I discovered a number of different messages tucked about, and share them here now. What clues do they reveal to you?

Taking the Long View

(standing in the garden at Esalen, looking out towards the sea)


The other night I was at dinner at Julie and Jhos' beautiful house up in the Berkeley hills. After saying my hellos and being introduced to their three kids and Tiger, the cat, Julie took me on the tour and our first stop was the sweeping deck that runs along the entire back of their first floor. Since the house is built into the hill one actually goes in at ground level in the front and then walks out onto the deck in the back and is about twenty-five feet off the ground with the slope of the hill unfolding below into an urban orchard with fruit trees and raised vegetable beds. Raising one's gaze from the intense, detailed beauty of the mini-farm below to the vastness of the Bay Area poured out across the horizon really helps to explain how the expression "as far as the eye can see" was coined.

To the far left, or south, I could see the San Mateo Bridge and to the far right, or north I could see Sonoma. Past the skyscrapers and hills and encroaching evening fog of the city I could see the Terrific Pacific, as we've called it in Third Grade. "Isn't it amazing?" Julie asked. Um, yes...

She told me a story of how she goes out there for her fifteen minutes of Sunset Therapy every evening, how she first learned when visiting her sister who lives nestled among the tall trees of Ukiah how profoundly restorative it is to allow your eye to be drawn so far away from your own location, how when taking the long view of things your lungs can't help but breathe more deeply and your heart will begin to beat more slowly. So I tried it. I looked out past the sharp rising beauty of Sutro Tower, a mere eight blocks from my old apartment in the city, and imagined myself standing on Ocean Beach looking out over the waves of the sea. I gazed at the ocean, not from close up with my feet in the sand but from high up in the air miles away on Julie's deck and I felt it in my lungs and heart, my mind and my spirit. The long view came to rest upon and within me in a way I had not expected at all.

So what does this mean, taking the long view? It can been done from high peaks and smooth beaches, it can be done from within one's self. It is not easy, for me at least. I am nearsighted both in body and in soul but unfortunately there are no contacts for my psyche, no way to bring into focus the things off in the distance and expand my sights beyond what is literally right in front of me. Lately as I have been thinking about the summer and weighing options for next year I've been considering everything from where to live and work, what kind of community in which I want to participate and whom I want in that community with me, and I have been overwhelmed. The short view of the present is crowded with images that compete for my attention, is hectic in design and difficult to interpret at times.

As an antidote to that chaos I have begun in the last few days to try and bring Julie's Sunset Therapy into practice in my own life, to see the long view from within my soul and, when all else fails, to lift my eyes from my computer or my studies or my dishes that I'm washing and look up, out the window, at the tops of the trees, towards the sea.

Going Back To Camp

Last summer I lived for eleven weeks in the mountains just west of Yosemite National Park. I moved everything out of my fabulous studio apartment in the city, shoved two huge bags of worn-out hot weather clothes into a borrowed-for-the-summer Subaru, and made a new home for myself in a tiny cabin next to the Tuolumne River on the grounds of the largest Jewish residential camp on the West Coast. While there I got two terrible infections, one thorn stuck in my foot, and a fabulous tan including some adorable freckles. I read from the Torah, ate food that had fallen on the ground, perfected my hora and even got touched on the leg by a (not very) large and (only somewhat) ominous-looking fish on the one and only brave trip I made down to the river to go swimming.

Last summer, showering in public and with hair as dry as hay from the wind and heat and high-altitude sun I swore there was no way I would go back again. No sirree Bob, not me. I am a grown-up and I am a city kid and I like to live INdoors. With a bathroom in the same building where I sleep at night. And consistent wireless. Is that too much to ask? I mean, I know there's all-you-can-drink Peet's, but still. A girl's gotta have standards, you know?

And now it is May, and here I find myself once again preparing to pack for camp. To say a lot has happened between then and now would be an understatement of the most epic proportion. It is a much easier task this time, with most of my things still in storage and only a few decisions to make about how many pairs of jeans to take with me and how many to leave behind here in Berkeley at Rebecca's house--as opposed to last year when I was putting my entire life away, locked in an Alameda warehouse, for the next fifteen months. I have learned a lot about myself, about what I need and what is extra, about what to take and what to leave behind.

Looking forward to another three months at camp this summer I looked back through my old journal to find a list I remember making one hot afternoon last August, sitting on the Dining Hall porch with Allie as she did hemp macrame and I chronicled my memories, as always, in not pixels and megabytes but pen and ink. Things I Wish I'd Had At Camp This Summer, the list was titled (excerpted here for length and for content):

•clothespins, since the staff clothesline by Arts and Crafts had none and just when I'd finally do my laundry and drape it over the cord strung between sagging metal supports that looked like tired aluminum trees drooping in the sun, the wind would blow and all my socks and my two pairs of jeans and my thirty versions of the exact same tank top from H&M that I wore every single day would fall down into the dust and get dirty again

•dryer sheets for the times I did laundry in the coolness of the night or when the clothesline was full and I actually needed to put my wash in the machine instead of out in the sunshine to dry, since the faux-floral industrial scent of the institutional-strength laundry detergent would always linger and make my clothes smell like they belonged to someone else

and...
•iron-on name tapes, since I cannot even tell you how many garments that I brought into the mountains in early June went home with other people at the end of August....seen my Stanford sweatshirt, anyone? Anyone? It's still missing :(

So this evening, with Kristine's encouragement, I got online and found a wide range of colors, styles, prices, and levels of cuteness in the realm of laundry identification. It didn't take long before I settled on the selection above, from the Pretty Colours collection (the website is Canadian, what can I say?) instead of the red and blue and yellow of the Cool Colours collection, heaven forbid. Now you would think the problem would be solved, since six dozen heat transfer nametags are headed my way to be pressed into my garments big and small, top and bottom and neither, and I should return with just as many if not more items of clothing than last year. But now a new problem remains: how will I know which of the color selections to match with each garment?!

I'm down with OCD, yeah you know me...but at least I'll have all my clothes when I come back in September.

Q

Just when I was at my most fog-chilled, cold-nosed, low-spirited, and ill-tempered today Rachel agreed to go to Q with me for dinner and I ordered the Vegan Grill, my total favorite...okay second favorite...because as an appetizer I had my ALL-TIME favorite Q menu item: tater tots!

"How did you ever find out about this place?" Rachel marvelled, trying to spell her name in magnetic letters on the wall while taking in the twinkle-bright holiday lights, the glitter-red vinyl booths, and the industrial-steel everything.

"I came on a really bad first date here one Valentine's Day," I replied by way of explanation. "SO bad, in the end. I had no way of even beginning to guess how bad it would become."

"Ah," she said, perhaps a little bit wishing she hadn't even asked in the first place. "I see..."

And with that we shared the last of the tater tots and were off to hear Mary Pipher lecture at the JCC.

Yum!

May First

Tomorrow, actually today almost by now since it is long past my bedtime this Wednesday night, is May First. In 1999, nine years ago, I met someone on this day who would change me forever although I was too busy chopping wood to know it at the time. That person, while no longer a part of my life, still influences my thoughts and actions daily and I wish I had a way to be more articulate about the gratitude I feel towards them both now and likely always.

So May First is already a big day in my life, you see.

This year May First has yet another layer of meaning laid over it as well, one I did not realize until I was interviewing someone for work today and, just after introducing myself and just before asking them intimate questions about one of their most triumphant experiences, was typing the date in my fly new FileMaker Pro database: 04.30.08, the last day of April--the day before the first of May. Earlier this spring, not long ago at all, I had an airline ticket for May First from Accra, Ghana to San Francisco via Heathrow because tomorrow is the day I was scheduled to return from Africa, from three months of building a new school in a refugee camp there. It is a trip on which I did not go as part of this year of traveling, for a wide range of complex reasons, but that decision to stay home did not erase the ache I've felt for the righteous work I would have done there and all the ways I would have grown in the process.

Who would I have been on May First this year if I had gone to Ghana? Not having ever left on that journey I have no way to know for sure; I can only guess. I assume my hair would have been longer by now, and my skin darker, and my waist slimmer. I predict I would have eaten new foods and met amazing people and probably have gotten sick somehow, somewhere along the way--likely from the snails that carry worms that carry death--have you heard about them?! And, I know that while I would have learned a million other incredible things both personally and professionally I would not have learned the lessons I did by staying home. I'd have used the trip, and the work it would have necessarily entailed, to learn and grow and try new things but also to distract myself from another kind of work, the kind done not with hammer and nails, paper and pencils that is necessary when building a school but the work of one's own heart. That is what I have been doing while I was supposed to have been in Africa, and that is how I have ended up where I find myself this May First, right where I am meant to be.

So in honor of May 1, 1999, I am going to put on some Beastie Boys and maybe eat some popcorn and remember the days spent living and learning on Fell Street and I will express my gratitude in the silent way I know how. Maybe if I'm really brave I'll try to tell that person how much they have meant to me all along, even in the confusing times that came later and despite how mean I was in the end because I didn't know any other way to live with such a deep, hot anger at myself for not being able to try harder and with such a huge heartache. Or maybe I will just iron my clothes for tomorrow and go to sleep--that would be a tribute to May First too, in its own way. I guess May First, like any day in this life, can be honored and celebrated by abandoning every should and supposed to about observing the passage of time and instead just by living the time in this very moment. Very uncharacteristically Buddhist of me, I know. I guess that's what all this traveling can do to a person...

New!

Sitting on my bed in my new house in North Berkeley I am writing this post on my new computer, the one that I ordered four days ago and that was made just for me according to my specifications (okay in China yes but still...) and that came across the Terrific Pacific via Anchorage, Alaska and that I picked up at the UPS store today and that I started up tonight and that will allow me to blog with speed and watch movies and talk on Skype and all the things I have never been able to do on a computer before.

New new new...I am so excited! It will be hard not to stay up all night trying to discover every fun feature. Photo Booth? Garage Band? Oh wow. Who needs to sleep when there is YouTube to be investigated for the first time, ever?!

My new MacBook is a-MAZE-ing, as Kelli would say from all those hours watching Little Einstein. Now I just have to name it. Yes, I am that silly quasi-animist girl who personifies lifeless objects--some of them, anyway--have any of you met Pierre? Yes, exactly. My first Mac that I bought in 1995 when I graduated from college was named Abdul. Then in 1999 along came Elliot, just in time for my second round of graduate school. Now, eight years and one pirated laptop later, the latest addition to my Mac family has been long in coming and so I am going to have to think of a very good name to welcome him/her to the community. It might take awhile but I will report back once I figure something out.

Of Blessed Memory

(This is not actually my own iBook and you can tell because first of all mine was the total base model, not even the G4, and also because I would never have a pink comforter on my bed.)


My computer has breathed its last. Just as I was settling into my new home and had finally gotten my hands on the wireless password, a software update pushed my vintage 2001 iBook over the edge and now no matter how hard it tries it can't even find the Internet.

So much for blogging more consistently, for now. But I must take this moment to offer my sincerest thanks to Aubrie for coaching me on the ins and outs of MacBook purchasing using the educators' discount, to Ben for answering my million questions about *everything* Mac-related, and to Kevin at the Apple Store for Educators who hooked me up with my new machine, currently being custom-assembled in China and then headed this way. I even paid for the expedited trans-Pacific shipping. Yeah, baby--I cannot WAIT until it gets here!

It may be difficult to understand why this new purchase is so exciting, unless of course you have ever seen me burn through 10% of my battery just trying to check my email. I have never watched a video on my machine (oh, except for on my purple iMac, bought in 1999 when I went back to graduate school and even on there I could only watch DVDs--nothing online) and my one attempt at Skype failed miserably. This is going to be a whole new laptop world for me! Now I just have to get on timbuk2.com and order a case worthy of its new contents and I'll be all set.