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.