Not Sure

Let me begin with a shout-out to the blog-reading faithful who have emailed me in the past nine days to express their annoyance that I haven't written here in awhile. It is nice to know that one is missed :) I guess I am just not sure what to say. The whole premise of this body of work was to document, in images as well as text, my going away. That, and an impulsive art project last June, is how this blog got its name in the first place. Now I am back, I am not going away anywhere anytime soon except maybe Providence to see Aaron or the Berkshires for Pesach (thanks to a *fabulous* suggestion from Rebecca's mom Dottie!), and this blog is not called "gone away somewhere but now I live in Berkeley" so I'm kind of at a loss about how to go forward with my writing here at all.

Don't get me wrong, I could tell you stories til the cows come home about all that's been going on the past week and a half. I don't know if I just have the good fortune of always being around when notable things take place, or if I for whatever combination of reasons find the world more engaging than other people do and am as a result struck with this rabid desire to tell people constantly, all the time, about what I've observed in this life...but maybe the things I see and the stories I want to tell about it all, when not about bartering for a kilo of broccoli in the shuk or being waved through a checkpoint because my documents are blue and others' are orange, are not about going away anymore. Maybe they are not about anything really interesting to anyone besides myself at all?

I do not question this openly, in this forum, so all the emailers can offer up reassuring rejoinders that Yes, It Is All Very Interesting, Keep Writing! I question it because really, my journey continues--it is not of the body, but of the mind and heart this time--and maybe none of my inner musings are as fascinating as things like my luggage being five kilos too heavy despite my and Ido's best efforts at packing my bags before I left and me arguing with the ticket agent, as if that could possibly make any difference, and then solving my own problem by unzipping all three of my bags right there in front of God and everyone at the British Airways desk in Tel Aviv at four in the morning and putting on like three sweaters and two coats to decrease the weight and digging my hiking boots out of the bottom of my huge REI backpack to shove them into my carry-on, asking previously-named ticket agent to please hold Pierre my stuffed pig while I was repacking my hand luggage because I would hope it goes without saying that clearly, Pierre does NOT get checked into the cargo, no matter what, ever, and I needed to be sure the hiking boots did not take up his alloted space or otherwise I would acquiesce and pay the overweight fee after all.

*sigh*

So what about apartment hunting and the search for a perfectly mindless, non-school-aged-children-related part time job and swimming at the pool in the Y every Sunday morning and making goodness-filled dinners for my housemates and all of us watching West Wing together every night and being the laundry princess and embarrassing myself by saying dumb stuff without thinking on Facebook and being the all-time pitcher in kickball again and trying to remember what Kelly taught me all those years ago about people like us not buying avocados at Trader Joe's and as a result semi-accidentally buying two dozen irises instead...is any of that blog-worthy? I need to think about it some more, I think.

For now, as a reward to you for having actually read this far through piles of my own self-reflective nonsense, I will share a very brief anecdote from Kindergarten today. We were sitting on the rug, having Shabbat with Miss Inbal, and one particular friend needed a few extra reminders for...the usual. I used the native language of teachers, a combination of sign language and various forms of the evil eye, to send him a number of messages without disrupting the actual lesson going on. I encouraged him to stop talking to his neighbors during the story, to stop playing with the hair of the person sitting in front of him, to stop getting up to get things out of his desk to play with, and finally just motioned to him that it was time to come and sit by me. Eyes downcast, he crawled across the rug disheartenedly but as soon as he got to me sat right down and stopped messing around and started paying attention to what was going on and participating appropriately by raising his hand instead of putting his hand into his neighbor's pocket. A moment or two later, without even realizing it, he leaned over against my shoulder and put his hand in mine in my lap, plucking absentmindedly at my bracelet. Ah, I thought to myself--so that is all you needed, little man, someone to tell you that they noticed you and to pay attention to you and for you to be close to right now? I looked down at the top of his head and he looked up at me, his long-lashed brown eyes very sincere. "I am trying very hard right now, Ms. Kotleba," he whispered into my ear from behind a cupped hand.

I hear you, sir. You and me both.

Time to Rest

Last weekend, on an unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday, I went for a stroll from my neighborhood up into the Berkeley Hills. My initial destination was Tilden Park but it is really! far! up! the! HILL! (huff...puff...) and so once I arrived at Cragmont School, wowed by the panoramic view of the entire bay from Tiburon to San Mateo and soothed as I always, strangely, am by the presence of playgrounds and pogo sticks and kids playing a Saturday afternoon away, I sat down on the soccer field. Africa, Africa, I thought...I am leaving Berkeley a week from tonight. I wrote in my journal and I closed my eyes to daydream and I felt a renewed sense of connection to all I could see apread out before me in the late afternoon sun, this slice of California that has become my home over the past ten years. I felt fully grounded here and ready to leave and go there.

On the way back down the hill I saw this graffiti, Sharpied onto the sidewalk not far from the intersection of Marin and Regal where the hill turns towards the north and continues up in the direction of the park. I stopped and looked at it for a long time, photographed it with my fly new phone, and decided it would make a good blog post...something about a sunny East Bay afternoon and exploring a new part of this, my temporary neighborhood, the place I have for now been calling home.

Until Sunday morning when I awoke feeling as if I had been smacked in the head by a board...well, not really the head. Actually more the heart, and the soul. I realized with newfound, profound, nauseating awareness: I did not want to go to Africa. I wanted to be there, but not to go. I wanted to want to go, but not to actually leave. I wanted to stop living this nomadic life and to find what I am really looking for: not a savory blend of tarragon and sage with cashews and raisins from the spice dealer in Jerusalem's shuk, not a piece of handmade local art by a craftsperson I would get to know in equatorial west Africa, but what to do next in this life.

I have been a teacher for twelve years. I have taught at my current school for half that time. I am an excellent, accomplished educator and I know I am very good and very well-regarded for what I do. I use the positive feedback and the empowering feelings I have about work to distract me from the yucky stuff in my life where I feel less successful. We all do, I think. So for that reason I am actually doing something perhaps more courageous than getting on a plane to a place where there are water systems that are home to snails that harbor worms that carry death (schistosomiasis, also known as 'snail death'--read about it online, or...don't). I am facing something more daunting than ten weeks of life in a community without running water. I am ready to stop and actually admit I don't know what I want to do next.

You see in my world, there is What We Do. What We Do Next, of course, is a mere extension of that, and this year's sabbatical was meant to facilitate What I Was Going To Do Next: use the research I was conducting on teacher training in global educational settings to write my application to a joint Masters in Jewish Studies/PhD in Teacher Education program at Stanford. Because what do people who are excellent educators, who have already done extensive work in teacher training, do? Go back and become professors and do it for real, marry theory to practice, prepare and instruct and inspire the next generation of constructivist, multi-lingual, urban educators in our own images--in my own image, because I am all those things. Except you know what? It is hard to see my image, that picture of What I Was Going To Do Next, because I am not sure it is really what I want to have happen.

I lived in Jerusalem and taught English and did research and learned Hebrew for three months. Hmm. Sounds like school. Then I came back and was preparing to go live in Ghana for three months and teach people from the community how to be more effective educators in their own classrooms. A-ha! Also sounds like school. But as Judy said, "You know the word shabbaton (the Hebrew word for sabbatical) has the word shabbat in it, right? I don't hear that you are doing a lot of resting this year, Sarah..." Someone I hadn't seen in a long time was listening to my story of this year, just the other day, and said "Here's the thing: It sounds like you know very well who Ms. Kotleba is, and it sounds like you are just about ready to learn a lot more about who Sarah is." Damn if they weren't right.

So that is what I am doing, and it is hard to write about it because I feel awkward or embarrassed or even a little ashamed: I was going to go to Africa! I was going to save the world! Everyone was going to think it was so cool! Think of all the people who encouraged me (or dared me) to go and think of how much I'd be letting them down! I was going to be the ultimate traveler in the developing world!

But I realized, you know what? I have walked really far---this year, and the past six years at Brandeis, and both times I went to graduate school, and ever since I started teaching full-time, thirteen years ago now. It is just about time to rest. Because I have done What We Do. Now I need to figure out What I Want To Do. It might involve teaching in some form or it might not. I might work in a classroom or a school garden or an organization that prepares teachers. Or, I might apply to culinary school or become more focused on my writing or, as my usually very conservative father said on the phone, spend a few months doing something involving drumming and carpentry. Whatever. But I am going to find an apartment in Berkeley, and I am going to get my own dishes along with all the rest of my stuff out of storage, and I am going to set up my new house and I will go to Trader Joe's for all the fresh healthy foods I love, and I will make dinner and sit down and eat and then I will not leave my new house for like a week. Except maybe to go swimming and get ice cream. Because I have walked really far and it is time to rest. I don't know what that means I will have to write about here. Maybe nothing. Adventures at the Berkeley Bowl don't really compare to adventures in a UN refugee camp, I don't think, although hopefully the rate of infection with snail death is lower. No matter what, all of these journeys would have been my adventures and all of them will still be my own adventures and that is the important thing.

And then, just as I was starting to realize that this is indeed the decision I am making, that I am not actually going to Ghana for three months on Sunday, I got this email from Aaron and was reminded, again, how wise he is and how much I adore him completely:

running away from oneself by trying to save the world is problematic for three reasons: 1) you can't run away from yourself because that's who you are, 2) you can't save the world, and 3) you can't even make a dent if you're just trying to run away from yourself. now, if you told me that you needed to stay in san francisco to each cheese puffs and watch daytime tv i'd be worried. if you're staying to do work you feel you need to do, well, then that's a different story. in every good kung fu movie there is a moment when two people are fighting. both of them are confident, but one of them knocks the other down. the one who falls is shocked. the one who knocked is sometimes a wily but benevolent teacher and sometimes the bad guy, but the knocker always says the same thing: "Ha! Your stance is not strong enough!". sarah, if you're going to go struggle with angels or educational inequities in Africa or finding love, you need to have a strong stance. you need to have some grounding, because that's what allows you to use your energy. and energy, as the physicists say, is the ability to do work. so it sounds like maybe this is the part in the movie where you do one-handed pushups and run up mountains carrying your master on your back and practice all your kicks at dawn while balancing on top of a pole. it can be a bitch to shoot, but it's always one of the coolest parts of the movie.
peace be witcha, my sister.

Field Trip! and, Recess

I am going to the city all day today, to drink coffee on 24th Street and hike around Mt. Davidson and speak with the "winner winner, chicken dinner" guy and maybe play the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Dating Game tonight. That is a very exciting field trip and much different than a usual day of substitute teaching, which is what Uri called last night to see if I wanted to do today.

But now it is 7 a.m. and looks like Loch Ness outside: cold, foggy, swirling...and after a slumber filled with garlic-and-ginger-from-dinner-last-night weird dreams I'd rather just go back to bed.

This is one of those "here's what I'm doing, you should find it interesting, I have nothing meaningful to say but I'm writing anyway because my year is not yielding up any interesting stories or lessons I'd like to learn right now" posts. Perhaps time to take a break, a recess, from the blogging until I have a better sense of what is happening next in my life.

I will end, for now, with this--confidential to all y'all: The Beastie Boys are helping immensely. Crafty...

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner--or, Quite Likely a Change of Plans

Tomorrow I am going for an interview that, if it goes well, will generate the funding I need to go to Africa. If it goes poorly I will not get to go and will actually mail out all the cover letters I've been writing this week and do what I can to find a mid-year replacement teaching position here in the East Bay. I have not chosen to ask my family for their financial support, both because I am afraid they would not offer it to me and because I am too stubbornly proud and independent to admit that at the age of 34 I am not asking for a loan from my parents because I am getting married or having a baby or buying a house--all normal, grown-up things to want to do--I want to go live in a refugee camp in Ghana. Not as worthy a pursuit, perhaps. And since my days of millionaire partners, delicious as those times were when I was living in them, are long over I am realizing that my plan for the year is almost certainly about to be derailed right here.

I had to sit down and have a serious talk with myself, and then cry for awhile, yesterday because in my mind this trip has come to symbolize many, many things--some realistic and some not. If I do not go, it does not mean my plan was not sound or I have failed. It just means I am not going.

But, the man with whom I scheduled my interview was very warm and funny and positive and although we have never met one another we know a lot of the same people and when we were trying to find a date and time that worked for both of us to meet, and found one, he said "Ah! Winner winner, chicken dinner--we found our appointment. See you Friday at two."

That's a great expression and bodes well, I hope.

Have I mentioned I am losing my mind over this? I don't know if I should go to REI and buy a mosquito net to hang over my Ghanaian bed or to Kinko's to buy more resume paper. I am also struggling with the concept of distribution of wealth because, while the amount of money I'm interested in seems like a lot to me (i.e., more than one of my teaching-salary paychecks but maybe that's not saying a lot) and is a fortune in the economic lives of the people I want to go serve, it is not that much more than the price a parent in the class of one of my colleagues paid for a pair of shoes. How do I know? Because that parent, when asked to send in a shoebox for a project, sent one in with the price tag still attached. Mm hmm.

This post is crabby and should not get published but I might not be able to control myself. "How's the blog coming?" Mark asked just now on his way to go watch Lost before bed. "Snarky," I said. "Like you're getting your frustrations out through writing?" he wanted to know. "YES--exactly," I replied.

Time Warp: Sufganiot

On the second day of Chanukah I went with Dana on a tiyul, a field trip, around Jerusalem in the quest to find the ultimate sufganiot. These boiled-in-oil doughnuts, commonly found stateside covered in granulated sugar and filled with a jelly that can only be described as "red", are a traditional food of the holiday and have become nothing short of an absolute gourmet delicacy in Israel. Here is a photo of our first four selections, of which I ate fully half of each one. The two on top were my favorite. On the left: chocolate filled, covered in frosting and sprinkles and prominently featuring Pop Rocks (!) as an ingredient...and on the right: standard vanilla buttercream filled, with chocolate frosting and a dollop of whipped cream. The two on the bottom were the ones Dana liked best. On the left: Hazelnut filled, topped with white chocolate frosting and diced Chinese pecans...and on the right: something something coconut and rum, I do not remember because I was too busy with my Pop Rocks.

Later in the day, after a walk to try and bring our blood sugar down, we went and ate four more in a bakery by the shuk. Afterwards we made our way to Village Green and had huge salads to try and prevent ourselves from going into complete hyperglycemic shock but it didn't really work. I was sick as anything. That night I ate a dinner of spinach, tofu, and lentils hoping that would begin to swing my system in the other direction but it took a few days to fully recover. No wonder my pants don't quite fit the same anymore.

Present Day: Dishes

Today is the first day this week that I have not worked, and I am remembering very clearly now--oh right, I use school as a not-so-effective technique for avoiding my uncomfortable feelings about whatever is happening in my life. In some cases it works, in the short term at least, since I got through three very complicated and challenging break-ups as well as numerous challenges with family and finances by being a completely ambitious, focused, motivated, driven educator the past six or so years...except for the times when I would hide in the adult bathroom in the upstairs hall next to the library and cry. Ugh.

And, old habits die hard so the past two days at school have been busy, busy and relatively emotion-free (other than the emotion I feel when I ask a student to GET IN LINE AND STOP TALKING ALREADY and they look at me, turn back around, and continue their conversation with a friend) but today I am home and playing housewife, doing laundry and cleaning up the kitchen from last night's dinner with Rebecca's cousins who are here from out of town and guess what? There are a lot of things that, without the distraction of pitching kickball at P.E., have been on my mind.

Always it is wonderful living with Mark and Rebecca, and sometimes it is challenging as the single housemate of two newlyweds. Today while doing the dishes, avoiding the set for which the happy couple registered as wedding gifts since they are handmade and not so inexpensive and there is a "you break it, you replace it" policy in this household and I should not have to replace anything if I didn't even get to marry either of them and experience the ownership of these gorgeous table settings in the first place, I was thinking about my own dishes. This is not the first time, actually the third I think, that dishes or other kitchenware have prompted a strange and melancholic reflection this year. Once was in my Jerusalem kitchen, once was in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda, and then today. The fact that I was listening to Ani DiFranco probably didn't help much.

There is someone with whom I had talked about traveling this year. From January to June it was an on-again, off-again topic of discussion, as were many things between and about us. I remembered today while doing the dishes a time in April when I was setting a table not for cousins coming to dinner but for a Passover seder of twenty, a table that was to be surrounded by friends and friends of friends and covered with the haggadot, the books that tell the order of the meal and the story of the exodus from Egypt, that we had made ourselves. Amidst the seder plate we'd created from chunks of old mortared bricks we'd found at Baker Beach, among the crayons and pipe cleaners and beads and construction paper we'd put out for those dining with us that evening to craft into art projects along the way, I laid out a set of dishes I'd never seen before, dishes washed in beautiful handpainted stripes and shades of brown. "You know," their owner said, "I just realized something--these dishes will look really nice with your green ones. We won't even need a new set right away, we'll make our own set by putting all these together and then we'll have so many that we can have everyone over for dinner whenever we want!"

And, my green dishes and bowls and cups and plates are now in storage in Alameda and I am leaving for Ghana in ten days. On my own. So I think you can figure out the end of that story.

Sigh.

A (publicly) confidential note to the owner of those dishes, even though I know you do not read what I write here: Yes--they would have looked nice together. Just like we would have looked nice together standing by the Kotel or by the Dead Sea or under the bright blue African sky. But, things had gotten very not-nice between us and in the end I know, no matter how much I miss your or even my own dishes, this is a year for me to travel alone.

A note to myself: Knock it off with the Ani DiFranco. Maybe some Beastie Boys would be better? I think I'll try that.

Present Day: Va'ed

(note: since there's a time warp going on with the posts right now I wanted to be sure and anchor us chronologically by specifying that this event is from here and now, Berkeley in February, not Jerusalem in December)

In the middle of class the other day, one of Rebecca's students shouted out of nowhere. "Va'ed, va'ed!" he was yelling.

"I'm sorry, does someone have a question?" Rebecca asked in a very diplomatic, teacher-speak way.

"Va'ed! I hear that all the time in our prayers, it's in a lot of blessings that we say!" the student exclaimed.

"Yes, true, and right now we are doing math so maybe you want to talk about that with the Judaics teacher," Rebecca replied. Moving on...

So I have been thinking about va'ed recently, especially today. It is an expression in Biblical Hebrew which is used almost exclusively as part of the phrase "l'Olam Va'ed," which means "the world to come." Traditional Judaism does not speak specifically of heaven but rather of the world to come, where and whenever that world may be for each one of us. So as I sit here in Berkeley, folding laundry and washing dishes and sorting the recycling and preparing to go for a walk to Pet Food Express I am considering va'ed, that which is to come for me. I was supposed to be on a plane to Heathrow right now, today was the day I was originally scheduled to leave for Accra. Instead my departure is still part of what is va'ed as I continue to conduct my business and prepare myself here in California for the next ten days. There is a lot va'ed right now, it seems. It is hard to be patient and it is hard not to know, but I am reminded by the wisdom of Rebecca's student that there has been, and there continues to be, much va'ed for each of us and for all of us together, too. At least I am not the only one who doesn't know what is going to happen.

Time Warp: Causing Distress

Today at school, during my free period, I scammed off the free wireless and uploaded a dozen pictures from Jerusalem into draft-version posts of upcoming blog entries. There are all part of what feels like a time warp since they were taken in December, almost two months ago now, but they are all somewhat interesting and so one by one I will share them with you.

Here is a *large* sign posted on the side of a home in the religious neighborhood of Nachlaot, one of many such signs throughout observant communities in Jerusalem. When I took this picture I was indeed wearing pants, causing profuse distress to the Orthodox people who live there I am sure. This photo was taken at night because if I were to have taken it during the day it is possible I could have been at least yelled at, or maybe pelted with rocks like the time I wore a kippah in the shuk on my first trip to Israel three years ago. I'm a rebel, I tell you. So distressing.

Overnight Shipping

Yesterday evening the FedEx desk agent asked me when I would like my documents to arrive in Washington DC--this morning, or this afternoon? "Oh, in the morning, definitely," I replied. "Okay, no problem," he said...$35 and 13.5 hours later the FedEx online tracking shows that my visa application arrived and was signed for at the Embassy of Ghana on International Drive, 2427 miles from where I dropped it off in Berkeley, California. The world is a very small place and shrinking all the time. Here's where my passport has been between when I gave it over to Kent at FedEx/Kinko's on Shattuck last night, just as the sun was going down, and when it arrived on the East Coast before the sun came up again.

Feb 5, 2008

9:55 AM Delivered


8:12 AM On FedEx vehicle for delivery WASHINGTON, DC


7:49 AM At local FedEx facility WASHINGTON, DC


5:24 AM At dest sort facility DULLES, VA


3:56 AM Departed FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN


2:41 AM In transit MEMPHIS, TN


1:54 AM Arrived at FedEx location MEMPHIS, TN



Feb 4, 2008

8:56 PM In transit OAKLAND, CA


8:13 PM Departed FedEx location OAKLAND, CA


6:10 PM Left origin EMERYVILLE, CA


5:31 PM Picked up BERKELEY, CA

A Bit of an Inconvenience

The wireless is not working in our house, for some reason, still. So all the photos on my computer that I want to put here on my blog and write about are trapped on my laptop since also somehow connecting my machine directly to the Internet by plugging the cable into the side does not work either. At school, however, there is wireless and so during my prep time tomorrow I might just throw every picture about which I want to tell a story up on here and write a whole pile of random posts about everything from the piano in my bedroom in Jerusalem to the flea market I went to in Tel Aviv on Christmas and what I found there to the funny note I found on the whiteboard in Rebecca's classroom the other day (that picture I actually took with my phone but I can't figure out how to put those images on here either, wireless or not).

Basically I am chagrined at my boring posts lately and have chosen to wait until I can write something more illustrated, every thousand words illuminated by each picture I want to share with you. And, lately I either sub at Rebecca's school or, on days that I don't teach, sit around the house because it's too rainy and cold to go out and freak out endlessly about everything related to my supposedly-upcoing trip to Ghana, absolutely nothing I can control (Will I get malaria? What if there is a coup? Am I brave enough to carry a snake on a stick through the wilderness to the clinic if need be?). Not so fun for you to read about.

So, on to Kodak moments tomorrow I say! As I used to tell my students in Jerusalem: savlanut, chaverim--patience, friends. The fun stories will return soon enough.

Quote of the Day

setting: on the phone, particularly harried after a day of teaching middle school, just having run from our house in North Berkeley to Bank of America and the post office and downtown to Kinko's all in time to beat the FedEx 5:30 p.m. package drop-off deadline for overnight shipments to the East Coast so that I could send my passport (oh no oh no, giving your passport away to a stranger, right up there with the dangerous combination of dirty underwear and out-of-control buses) and my visa application to the Embassy of Ghana in Washington, DC

me: I just did something our parents told us never to do!

Matt: Oh, no. Not again. What this time?

Matt is my oldest friend in the Bay Area--we met in May of 1998. I can be myself around him enough to call him, out of my mind with really un-upsetting news like this, and he will tolerate me. So we talked for three minutes but he was leaving work and then once I came home drained from all this hysteria, I fell asleep and did not call him back like I was supposed to. Sorry, Matt. I'll call during recess tomorrow, I promise.