Last winter, a year ago in January, we were sitting on a very windy Crissy Field and playing a name game. As a way of describing people from school without having to use their real identity, since speaking publicly about a cohort of professionals with relatively high-profile positions in our community is not so discrete, we created a series of nicknames. We used these names not for any form of slander or disrespect but just because it felt not quite right to go to dinner at Ebisu and tell a story about someone with whom we worked in a way that anyone could hear. Based not on some coded version of initials or on appearance or anything else that might be detectable by someone listening these nicknames assigned each person a country based on their personality. And, of course we had to have nicknames ourselves! So we named each other based on our observations and perceptions, and much to my surprise I became Miss India.
Why? Because I can feel far away but whoever comes to visit feels instantly at home once they arrive. Because I look messy and complicated on the outside sometimes but deep within have a strong sense of self. Because I can be curry-hot or mango-sweet. Because I can blend into the those around me when I choose but when cleaning up for holidays and festivals I can very surprisingly stand out among the crowd.
Now, as I think about the time I have left before I go back to work at camp in two months I want to travel one more time. I went to Yosemite and I went to Israel, as I had planned, and in the end I did not go to Ghana even though it was a big part of what I had thought would happen this year. I have spent a lot of time going places and seeing things and doing work that I felt I should, that I thought would benefit me professionally and in turn the community in which I was living as well. This time, on my next and perhaps--for this year, anyway--final trip, I would like to go to India. Not just because I was named for it but because it has both engaged and mystified me for awhile now, long before that winter day at Crissy Field. I have enough time to go and I am about to have enough money so as not to worry the entire way there and back. I might even have a traveling companion, something I have been without on the trips I have taken so far this year. So this week: school. Next week: working on this new project, moving to my next house, and exploring options for the fall. After that: cooking at Esalen. And then: going away to India? I hope so--I think I would really like it there.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Home, Sweet Homes
Before I left to go away last June, I lived in a fabulous apartment in the city. I could see the sunrise over Mount Sutro and the sunset over Ocean Beach, I had a huge kitchen and an equally huge closet, I showered in a retro 1950s style baby blue tiled bathroom and I watched the N-Judah rumble by through the big bay window and I had painted it myself with colors I'd gotten to pick out and I got to sleep with my head pointing north, one of those quirky things that no one else cares about but that makes an inexplicable difference to me. Did I mention it was cheap, this apartment? So cheap! Not so consistently heated, but...small detail.
Since June when I packed up my tiny, tidy apartment and put all my things into storage I have lived a number of different places, never more than two months at a time at the most. It is time now to move again, for the last time before going away again to camp in June, and while in some ways it is exciting to find another house to share for a bit it does make me realize how ready I am not to settle down but at least to stop moving all the time. As Liora said, "It sounds like having a closet would make a world of difference to you right now!" And, indeed it would.
So I am going today and tomorrow to look at two new places where I might live, for April and May, while I try out my new two-month contract job and consider my options for the fall and continue to live out of my two huge bags and my three Rubbermaid bins. It has been quite a year in that way and I have definitely learned a lot about what I really need to have on a daily basis and what I just think I need to have.
But for the next ten days, while I look for my newest house, I am here by myself at Mark and Rebecca's while they are in Italy on their honeymoon and I am remembering what it is like to live alone and while of course I love being with them, with anyone who is my housemate, I really do love having my own home all to myself. I know I have a few more months of adventuring but I am excited for the time, after camp, when I get to pick out my next house and get all my stuff, dishes and lamps and bedsheets and books, and settle in somewhere I can really call home.
Since June when I packed up my tiny, tidy apartment and put all my things into storage I have lived a number of different places, never more than two months at a time at the most. It is time now to move again, for the last time before going away again to camp in June, and while in some ways it is exciting to find another house to share for a bit it does make me realize how ready I am not to settle down but at least to stop moving all the time. As Liora said, "It sounds like having a closet would make a world of difference to you right now!" And, indeed it would.
So I am going today and tomorrow to look at two new places where I might live, for April and May, while I try out my new two-month contract job and consider my options for the fall and continue to live out of my two huge bags and my three Rubbermaid bins. It has been quite a year in that way and I have definitely learned a lot about what I really need to have on a daily basis and what I just think I need to have.
But for the next ten days, while I look for my newest house, I am here by myself at Mark and Rebecca's while they are in Italy on their honeymoon and I am remembering what it is like to live alone and while of course I love being with them, with anyone who is my housemate, I really do love having my own home all to myself. I know I have a few more months of adventuring but I am excited for the time, after camp, when I get to pick out my next house and get all my stuff, dishes and lamps and bedsheets and books, and settle in somewhere I can really call home.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Purim 2008
Don't I look sneaky and mean? The knee-high lace-up black leather boots and studded black leather cuffs that I added as menacing accessories to the $9.50 Goodwill black dress I found on University Avenue yesterday seemed to muddy the waters for adults trying to figure out who I was supposed to be, but the kids all knew me right away.
In case you could not guess, I was Miss Viola Swamp for Purim this year. Now as a much-beloved South Park episode says, Sit down and study! Shut up or I'll pop you in the mouth!
She can be mean sometimes, that Miss Viola Swamp. When is Miss Nelson coming back?!
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Purim Costume Retrospective
It is the Jewish holiday of Purim. For more about Purim, read here. Purim and its related insanity when celebrated at school can be totally exhausting but generally speaking I love the tradition of switching everything around for a day and becoming someone you're not. For this reason I have over the years developed my own practice of wearing a costume to school that might be a significant departure from the usual wardrobe and personality of Ms. Kotleba, not only because it is fun but also--I'm not embarrassed to admit--for the shock value. Nice, sweet Ms. Kotleba is wearing an ice-blue floor-length strapless fairy princess ballgown and chandelier earrings with four-inch Lucite heels? Yes, yes she is, ladies and gentlemen.
My outfits have definitely improved over the years. I offer you here a chronology, in brief because I need to layer on another coat of black nail polish before I go to bed:
2002:
I was a doctor.
2003:
I was also a doctor--boring.
2004:
I was a fairy princess whose outfit included a floor-length gown, shawl, wand, tiara, glitter wings and four-inch heels. This required wearing a strapless bra to school for seven hours and while I looked fabulous I was miserable.
2005:
At school I was a very comfy Old MacDonald. At the synagogue for the reading of the Megillah, I was Miss America complete with sash and two dozen red carnations in a presentation bouquet (very nice touch courtesy of Jody at the House of Flowers).
2006:
I was an Austin Powers go-go dancer complete with blacklight-activated minidress, neon green wig and matching knee-high boots. There are a lot of embarrassing things I did that year but the fact that I wore the exact same sweaty, nasty, fabulous outfit both to the Matisyahu concert at Ruby Skye the night the holiday began and the next morning to school (different tights as a nod to hygiene but that was it) was not one of them. It was perhaps my greatest Purim so far...
2007:
Thanks to Revital's costume generosity I was a geisha including blue silk kimono, white face paint, black eyeliner, blood red lipstick, red satin sandals and a fan all of which I wore to Trader Joe's when dashing out from the Purim carnival in the middle of the day to buy my lunch.
2008:
That is for me to know and you to find out, until I post the pictures tomorrow of course!
My outfits have definitely improved over the years. I offer you here a chronology, in brief because I need to layer on another coat of black nail polish before I go to bed:
2002:
I was a doctor.
2003:
I was also a doctor--boring.
2004:
I was a fairy princess whose outfit included a floor-length gown, shawl, wand, tiara, glitter wings and four-inch heels. This required wearing a strapless bra to school for seven hours and while I looked fabulous I was miserable.
2005:
At school I was a very comfy Old MacDonald. At the synagogue for the reading of the Megillah, I was Miss America complete with sash and two dozen red carnations in a presentation bouquet (very nice touch courtesy of Jody at the House of Flowers).
2006:
I was an Austin Powers go-go dancer complete with blacklight-activated minidress, neon green wig and matching knee-high boots. There are a lot of embarrassing things I did that year but the fact that I wore the exact same sweaty, nasty, fabulous outfit both to the Matisyahu concert at Ruby Skye the night the holiday began and the next morning to school (different tights as a nod to hygiene but that was it) was not one of them. It was perhaps my greatest Purim so far...
2007:
Thanks to Revital's costume generosity I was a geisha including blue silk kimono, white face paint, black eyeliner, blood red lipstick, red satin sandals and a fan all of which I wore to Trader Joe's when dashing out from the Purim carnival in the middle of the day to buy my lunch.
2008:
That is for me to know and you to find out, until I post the pictures tomorrow of course!
Word of the Day
liminal
Main Entry: lim·i·nal
Pronunciation: \ˈli-mə-nəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin limin-, limen threshold
Date: 1884
1 : of or relating to a sensory threshold
2 : barely perceptible
3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition
Almost exactly four years ago, at just this time of year, I learned a new word: liminal. It was the perfect description of what was happening at that time in my life and it is, while not the exact match it was then, very much a part of what I feel is taking place now. Sometimes, not often, it feels to me like there are countless pinpricks in the shell of the universe and that all the order is raining out, drop by drop, blending together and getting all mixed up in liminal ways that are hard for someone like me who creates patterns and algorithms everywhere--even where they do not exist--to understand.
Recent days have been like this. Interviews for jobs to which I never applied, conversations that I never dreamed would happen outside my imagination, email and phone calls and comings and goings and wow. Things are, in a wonderful scary exciting complicated scary delicious way, all brand new and the edge of my sensory threshold and my ability to understand it feels very close--or perhaps I have crossed it already and should just not try any more to understand.
To hang some proverbial meat on the metaphoric bones of all this:
•Yesterday I got not one, but two jobs for the next few months--neither of which I sought but both of which found me.
•This morning at a shop in town the owner was so overwhelmed with joy that I was her first customer of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which she celebrates as part of her culture that she gave me everything for which I came free of charge with blessings for a healthy, prosperous, and happy new year.
•I spent the first part of the afternoon at Goodwill, buying my Purim costumes for this year (soon-to-be topic of another post later this evening) and the second part taking Mark and Rebecca to the airport for their two week honeymoon in Italy.
•I came home from SFO, finally, through two hours of bridge traffic, to an empty house and am now living entirely alone for the first time in almost a year.
•Later while I was shopping at Trader Joe's Aaron called me, in full Purim regalia, from Providence to brag to me about his excellent costume (independent contractor who built the gallows in Shushan, complete with union badge and construction helmet...hard to explain but very witty), to tell me he was about to chant his verses of the Megillah (the musical story of Purim that is recited the evening before the holiday, and on the holiday itself, and throughout the entire festivities it seems), and to wish me Chag Sameach, a happy holiday.
•To try and clear my head I went running during which time two completely incongruous people: a young Orthodox Jewish woman swathed head to toe in various sarongs and shawls and scarves, Berkeley-style, bundling her two preschool-aged children dressed as a lion and Queen Esther into their minivan to go hear the Megillan read at the temple, and a more-than-middle-aged nun in habit and head covering, rosary wrapped between her fingers as she walked to church for Maundy Thursday Mass.
•Winter is over and it is the first day of Spring.
Now I am home and am going to make dinner, then put my Goodwill finds in the dryer and prepare my costume's accessories before making lunch and going to bed. I have to be at school quite early tomorrow to teach First Grade, or shall I say a very famous substitute will be arriving in First Grade in the morning dressed to the hilt not for Purim but just in her everyday outfit. Can you imagine who I might be? If you know my usual pseudonym you will quickly be able to guess :)
Until then I plan to breathe deeply and instead of feeling washed out with the tide as the universe's order slowly recedes like so many waves on the dark windswept beach where I learned this Word of the Day in the first place, I will try to look up at the pinpricks in the universe's shell and see them for what they really are: the stars in the night sky that covers us all.
Happy Spring and Purim and Nowruz and Easter Weekend and everything to you, wherever under the sky you are right now.
Main Entry: lim·i·nal
Pronunciation: \ˈli-mə-nəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin limin-, limen threshold
Date: 1884
1 : of or relating to a sensory threshold
2 : barely perceptible
3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition
Almost exactly four years ago, at just this time of year, I learned a new word: liminal. It was the perfect description of what was happening at that time in my life and it is, while not the exact match it was then, very much a part of what I feel is taking place now. Sometimes, not often, it feels to me like there are countless pinpricks in the shell of the universe and that all the order is raining out, drop by drop, blending together and getting all mixed up in liminal ways that are hard for someone like me who creates patterns and algorithms everywhere--even where they do not exist--to understand.
Recent days have been like this. Interviews for jobs to which I never applied, conversations that I never dreamed would happen outside my imagination, email and phone calls and comings and goings and wow. Things are, in a wonderful scary exciting complicated scary delicious way, all brand new and the edge of my sensory threshold and my ability to understand it feels very close--or perhaps I have crossed it already and should just not try any more to understand.
To hang some proverbial meat on the metaphoric bones of all this:
•Yesterday I got not one, but two jobs for the next few months--neither of which I sought but both of which found me.
•This morning at a shop in town the owner was so overwhelmed with joy that I was her first customer of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, which she celebrates as part of her culture that she gave me everything for which I came free of charge with blessings for a healthy, prosperous, and happy new year.
•I spent the first part of the afternoon at Goodwill, buying my Purim costumes for this year (soon-to-be topic of another post later this evening) and the second part taking Mark and Rebecca to the airport for their two week honeymoon in Italy.
•I came home from SFO, finally, through two hours of bridge traffic, to an empty house and am now living entirely alone for the first time in almost a year.
•Later while I was shopping at Trader Joe's Aaron called me, in full Purim regalia, from Providence to brag to me about his excellent costume (independent contractor who built the gallows in Shushan, complete with union badge and construction helmet...hard to explain but very witty), to tell me he was about to chant his verses of the Megillah (the musical story of Purim that is recited the evening before the holiday, and on the holiday itself, and throughout the entire festivities it seems), and to wish me Chag Sameach, a happy holiday.
•To try and clear my head I went running during which time two completely incongruous people: a young Orthodox Jewish woman swathed head to toe in various sarongs and shawls and scarves, Berkeley-style, bundling her two preschool-aged children dressed as a lion and Queen Esther into their minivan to go hear the Megillan read at the temple, and a more-than-middle-aged nun in habit and head covering, rosary wrapped between her fingers as she walked to church for Maundy Thursday Mass.
•Winter is over and it is the first day of Spring.
Now I am home and am going to make dinner, then put my Goodwill finds in the dryer and prepare my costume's accessories before making lunch and going to bed. I have to be at school quite early tomorrow to teach First Grade, or shall I say a very famous substitute will be arriving in First Grade in the morning dressed to the hilt not for Purim but just in her everyday outfit. Can you imagine who I might be? If you know my usual pseudonym you will quickly be able to guess :)
Until then I plan to breathe deeply and instead of feeling washed out with the tide as the universe's order slowly recedes like so many waves on the dark windswept beach where I learned this Word of the Day in the first place, I will try to look up at the pinpricks in the universe's shell and see them for what they really are: the stars in the night sky that covers us all.
Happy Spring and Purim and Nowruz and Easter Weekend and everything to you, wherever under the sky you are right now.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Gone Away To Old Navy
Not long ago in his office, Ben was waxing emphatic on his strong negative feelings about shopping at Old Navy. I myself am not a huge fan either, for a variety of reasons, but the other day sucked it up and went to Bay Street in Emeryville for the purpose of buying new pants.
I have been wearing the same five pairs of pants since June, when I put my clothes into storage and moved to camp. The purchase of an additional pair of jeans in Israel, for the lowlow price of 375 shekels (almost $100) because western- or European-style clothes are SO expensive there, brought my total up to half a dozen. One was a pair of black wool lined Ann Taylor dress pants, though, which while quite helpful for the few dress-up events I did encouter didn't really count anyway in the everyday rotation of things.
So, my sheer exhaustion of these pants coupled with the fact that I apparently ate a lot of falafel for post-ulpan dinner and leftover chocolate cake for Shabbat morning breakfast while living in the Middle East--in preparation for moving to a Ghanaian refugee camp, natch, where one eats food brought on the UN supply trucks--meant none of the six of them actually really even FIT anymore. To remedy this problem I did a little sweatshop-supporting earlier this week by purchasing five of the exact same pairs of pants at Old Navy: green, grey, brown, and two shades of khaki. This effectively doubled my lower-body clothing options.
Fortunately, all the pants were on sale so this was a much less expensive wardrobe upgrade than I thought it might be. Unfortunately, they were all about six inches too long so I had to take them in two separate rounds to the cleaners to be altered. Of course I could not take them all at the same time, because then I would be back in the same situation with five tired pairs of pants that didn't fit. So right now two of them are being hemmed and the other three are faux-cuffed with safety pins, so that I can actually get dressed in the morning.
Yay new pants! It does not take much to make me happy.
I have been wearing the same five pairs of pants since June, when I put my clothes into storage and moved to camp. The purchase of an additional pair of jeans in Israel, for the lowlow price of 375 shekels (almost $100) because western- or European-style clothes are SO expensive there, brought my total up to half a dozen. One was a pair of black wool lined Ann Taylor dress pants, though, which while quite helpful for the few dress-up events I did encouter didn't really count anyway in the everyday rotation of things.
So, my sheer exhaustion of these pants coupled with the fact that I apparently ate a lot of falafel for post-ulpan dinner and leftover chocolate cake for Shabbat morning breakfast while living in the Middle East--in preparation for moving to a Ghanaian refugee camp, natch, where one eats food brought on the UN supply trucks--meant none of the six of them actually really even FIT anymore. To remedy this problem I did a little sweatshop-supporting earlier this week by purchasing five of the exact same pairs of pants at Old Navy: green, grey, brown, and two shades of khaki. This effectively doubled my lower-body clothing options.
Fortunately, all the pants were on sale so this was a much less expensive wardrobe upgrade than I thought it might be. Unfortunately, they were all about six inches too long so I had to take them in two separate rounds to the cleaners to be altered. Of course I could not take them all at the same time, because then I would be back in the same situation with five tired pairs of pants that didn't fit. So right now two of them are being hemmed and the other three are faux-cuffed with safety pins, so that I can actually get dressed in the morning.
Yay new pants! It does not take much to make me happy.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Going Back To Esalen
Last year, at Spring Break, we went on a road trip down and back up California's central coast. The first three days and two nights were spent in Santa Barbara staying with family, dining everywhere from a most elegant restaurant filled with childhood memories to the cafeteria of a retirement community, running for miles along the sandy beaches and watching movies on the hide-a-bed until 2 a.m., until we left one rainy morning and drove to Solvang to eat ourselves sick on jelly doughnuts and buy sandals and bracelets and postcards and dreamcatchers, all kinds of vacation accessories, before piling back into the car for the crowning jewel of the long weekend: two days and a night at Esalen in Big Sur.
There I fell in love with hula hooping, spending what felt like hours standing on a broad tree stump overlooking the crashing waves of the Terrific Pacific while putting all those Middle Eastern and belly dancing classes to good use and earning a huge bruise on my right hip to show for my efforts. We wandered over the bridge to the Art Barn and I don't even need to close my eyes to feel the smooth planks of the studio's floor, still warm from the heat of the day, beneath my bare feet as I ran in and out, back and forth from the tables filled with every thickness of brush and hue of paint to the makeshift easel I'd created for myself on a split log laid parallel to the edge of the cliff, mere meters away from its plunging edge and the roar of the sea below. Our explorations took us everywhere from the farm to the nest, the dining hall to the pools and back again finally to our room at the end of the evening, full of fresh air and good food and all the stars we could see in the dark night sky.
Unfortunately, from that point on the rest of our time there was a profound disaster and in no way worth the hundreds of dollars each person paid for the experience of spending thirty supposedly blissful hours in coastal paradise fighting about absolutely nothing, so let us leave the story about my first trip to Esalen at that and not speak of it again.
Last week, though, as I was rethinking for what feels now like the thousandth time how I want to use my time this spring I began to think not about what I should do...or what others might do...or what it would be cool or important or unique or valiant or ever-memorable to do. Instead, I ventured into completely uncharted territory in my mind and started thinking about what I *want* to do. And, one of the things I want to do is go back to Esalen.
For six days in early April I will be learning to cook from Charlie Cascio, Esalen's kitchen manager from 1998 to 2004, in the very kitchen that serves 750 meals a day to students, teachers, and hula hoopers alike. I am taking my sleeping bag and will camp on the floor of the Big House, sharing a classroom by day, bedroom by night with other "seminarians" also there to learn in this or other workshops taking place the same week, and I will shower at the baths overlooking the sea. The course's required reading is The Esalen Cookbook, nine chapters of delicious recipes originally created to serve 250 people at a time but now rewritten on a much smaller scale for preparation in a normal-sized kitchen. I can already feel the sun-warmed floorboards of the Art Barn underneath my bare feet, worn smooth by the steps of years worth of artists, including myself.
What else might I want to do this spring?
There I fell in love with hula hooping, spending what felt like hours standing on a broad tree stump overlooking the crashing waves of the Terrific Pacific while putting all those Middle Eastern and belly dancing classes to good use and earning a huge bruise on my right hip to show for my efforts. We wandered over the bridge to the Art Barn and I don't even need to close my eyes to feel the smooth planks of the studio's floor, still warm from the heat of the day, beneath my bare feet as I ran in and out, back and forth from the tables filled with every thickness of brush and hue of paint to the makeshift easel I'd created for myself on a split log laid parallel to the edge of the cliff, mere meters away from its plunging edge and the roar of the sea below. Our explorations took us everywhere from the farm to the nest, the dining hall to the pools and back again finally to our room at the end of the evening, full of fresh air and good food and all the stars we could see in the dark night sky.
Unfortunately, from that point on the rest of our time there was a profound disaster and in no way worth the hundreds of dollars each person paid for the experience of spending thirty supposedly blissful hours in coastal paradise fighting about absolutely nothing, so let us leave the story about my first trip to Esalen at that and not speak of it again.
Last week, though, as I was rethinking for what feels now like the thousandth time how I want to use my time this spring I began to think not about what I should do...or what others might do...or what it would be cool or important or unique or valiant or ever-memorable to do. Instead, I ventured into completely uncharted territory in my mind and started thinking about what I *want* to do. And, one of the things I want to do is go back to Esalen.
For six days in early April I will be learning to cook from Charlie Cascio, Esalen's kitchen manager from 1998 to 2004, in the very kitchen that serves 750 meals a day to students, teachers, and hula hoopers alike. I am taking my sleeping bag and will camp on the floor of the Big House, sharing a classroom by day, bedroom by night with other "seminarians" also there to learn in this or other workshops taking place the same week, and I will shower at the baths overlooking the sea. The course's required reading is The Esalen Cookbook, nine chapters of delicious recipes originally created to serve 250 people at a time but now rewritten on a much smaller scale for preparation in a normal-sized kitchen. I can already feel the sun-warmed floorboards of the Art Barn underneath my bare feet, worn smooth by the steps of years worth of artists, including myself.
What else might I want to do this spring?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Fork in the Road
In the book The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, there is a passage where Milo and his friends Tock and the Humbug come to a large fork in the road. Not just any fork, this divergence of two paths that Robert Frost so eloquently described is actually marked by a massive utensil stuck in the ground and to pass beyond it, they soon discover, is to find the Doldrums.
The two weeks that have passed since I was supposed to have left for Ghana have been filled mostly with apartment hunting and the occasional day at Rebecca's school, or writing curriculum for the summer, or meeting Ben's friends over breakfast...oh, and the Doldrums about my times of adventure being over for now with almost twelve weeks left before I have to move into my house at camp for the summer...oh, and the realization that if I do rent an apartment here in Berkeley for the next three months the MINIMUM I will pay is $2,400.
So instead I think I will leave again. Time with my brother and his little family at their cozy house that I adore, in a place far away from here that was once home to me too, has been discussed. There is a fabulous week-long cooking class at Esalen in early April which would bring together two activities of which I am indescribably fond: cooking fresh local food, and doing art in a sun-soaked barn overlooking Big Sur's slice of the Pacific coast with a little hula hooping thrown in on the side for good measure. Then, after all that, I am considering a trip to the country whose name I was awarded, interestingly enough, in the What Country Are You? activity--India.
My time here has been restorative to my heart and spirit in ways I didn't even realize I needed when I first returned. Now, I believe I am almost ready to begin again the journey I set out to take this year. I said almost. I'll keep you posted.
The two weeks that have passed since I was supposed to have left for Ghana have been filled mostly with apartment hunting and the occasional day at Rebecca's school, or writing curriculum for the summer, or meeting Ben's friends over breakfast...oh, and the Doldrums about my times of adventure being over for now with almost twelve weeks left before I have to move into my house at camp for the summer...oh, and the realization that if I do rent an apartment here in Berkeley for the next three months the MINIMUM I will pay is $2,400.
So instead I think I will leave again. Time with my brother and his little family at their cozy house that I adore, in a place far away from here that was once home to me too, has been discussed. There is a fabulous week-long cooking class at Esalen in early April which would bring together two activities of which I am indescribably fond: cooking fresh local food, and doing art in a sun-soaked barn overlooking Big Sur's slice of the Pacific coast with a little hula hooping thrown in on the side for good measure. Then, after all that, I am considering a trip to the country whose name I was awarded, interestingly enough, in the What Country Are You? activity--India.
My time here has been restorative to my heart and spirit in ways I didn't even realize I needed when I first returned. Now, I believe I am almost ready to begin again the journey I set out to take this year. I said almost. I'll keep you posted.
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