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.

Long Lost Traveler

(this is a picture of Heidi and me in the kitchen of the Big House at Esalen--check out my hipster apron! they're certainly not flattering in a body-conscious sort of way but are a must with that much cooking going on)

An email recently arrived in my inbox with the salutation "Hello long lost traveler!" I have not been lost, although I did lose consistent access to the Internet--a problem that continues even to this day--and so it has been almost a month since I wrote. Here's the bullet-point update of what has happened during the past weeks, in no particular order:

•I was planning a two-person trip to India but my travel companion-to-be thought it best not to go.

•I began to plan a solo trip to India but then accidentally got a full-time job for the months of April and May.

•I went to what felt like a million but was actually only four interviews in my search for something new to do in the fall.

•I moved to a new house.

•I found out a very good friend and former colleague of mine is having a baby.

•I angered a few people.

•I made amends with someone important to me.

•I heard from a few voices from my past.

•I celebrated Passover with my new East Bay community.

•I ride my bike to work and back home every day now.

•I put a huge load of stuff back into storage.

•I taught Rebecca's class for a week and a half while she and Mark were on their honeymoon in Italy.

•I lived and cooked at Esalen in Big Sur for awhile.

And the rest, as they say, is history. My days have been quite full--that is one reason I have not written. Also circumstances have not exactly been working in my favor, between my time in Big Sur where there isn't even cell service much less more advanced communication technology to my new house in Berkeley where the wireless password remains a mystery, and as a result I have not had access to the Internet with any consistency. Even as I type this I am shamelessly scamming off one of the neighbors. So, hopefully once that is resolved I will be able to offer somewhat more frequent updates. It's not for lack of material that I haven't written.

Coming soon: more! news! from a traveler who's not so long lost after all.

Destination: India

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.

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.

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?!

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.