Reluctant Traveler

Most of the time I call myself a reluctant American, but at this moment I am a reluctant traveler. I don’t want to leave my alpine village; I don’t want to speak English all day! As fantastic as London sounds it’s tarnished by the goodbyes I’ve had to say today, it’s jaded by the difficult month ahead of me in the States. Parting is such sweet sorrow…I don’t think that’s true, there is nothing sweet in the sorrow I feel leaving these people. This place I know I’ll return to and I know when I’ll return but I don’t know when I’ll see many of these faces again. This morning was such a whirlwind: all of the campisti leaving, 4 campolovoro leaving, everyone crying, bus schedules to read, trying to find out who was going where, I’m glad it’s over and I’m quietly sitting in the airport. Now just to traverse the English train system and I can attempt to enjoy London. It will be so exciting to see Nic again, fill each other in on all of the events in each other’s lives, what’s happened at Agape, and just as importantly eat some good Indian food.

Washed clean

My body is washed in the cleansing fire of the sun and wiped dry by an alpine wind as I am both Left and Leaving. And for the first time I am alone in a group of people and it feels good. It feels good to sit quietly…no one saying a word to each other but each of our heads filled with a multitude of thoughts and voices. Mine is filled with the voices of Mayan women from Chiapas, the questions of Kenyan acrobats, the lilting song of the Brits, and searching English words for my horde of Italian friends. I can never find those words, I’m beginning to forget bits of the language I’ve spoken for 22 years and replacing it with words I’ve known for only 2 months. My soul aches as I think of how to explain this life to the one I led before.
How do I build such a bridge? One sturdy enough to span oceans, to hold tumbling acrobats, a bundle of immigrants, one that can carry mountains, one that trees can walk across, a bridge that can unite the past and the future while still passing through the moment I’m living in. How do I build a bridge between bouncing children, war veterans who share homemade cheese with me, and foggy nights filled with the warmth of bonfires? I want to dance across such a bridge doing the traditional dances of Piedmonte while Marcolino plays the accordion. I want to dance this exhausted body across that bridge into the loving arms of my family who will gladly listen to my lifetime of bizarre stories that have happened in only 3 months time.
I want to dance into your bed. I want you to stroke my meters of golden hair while I explain to you how I became an American only after I left the country. I want to cook a big Italian dinner for you and the Jews while we swap travel stories over fresh espresso. Most of all I want to tell you these stories without explanation. I want them to seem as normal as they feel, I want some one to understand. I hope that person is you.

Waiting

Still trying to mentally prepare for heading back to the States. I hate the waiting; it’s making it difficult to enjoy my last few days here since I’m constantly thinking about what needs to be done. I still can’t get used to the idea that this is my life. Yesterday I spent the evening cooking with 3 Kenyan acrobats after I met a man from Brooklyn who had befriended them while couch-surfing with them in Nairobi. I’m still trying to make sense of how I’ll explain things like this to everyone back home. I don’t think that going back should be this hard, but maybe there is some truth to the saying “you can’t go home again”. It’s not that I’m not looking forward to seeing everyone it’s that I don’t understand how I’ll merge this new life with my life back in the States. I don’t know how to create a bridge between these two worlds so it doesn’t seem like I’ve just fallen off the face of the planet for 3 months and then suddenly reappeared. And not just reappeared but reappeared profoundly changed. I’m more sure of who I am: a reluctant American, a Jew, open and non judgmental, content, and wanting to experience more. More certain of what I want: a year abroad, to be the crazy auntie in the family, a future with Him, to live communally, to live wholly and completely, however I need to achieve that. I want to be filled with more “when I was picking coffee beans in Guatemala” stories, and I’ve had an excellent start, but it’s going to be difficult to integrate those things into my life in rural Ohio. I suppose each experience strengthens me in a different way and my time back will simply be a coffee bean story for when I’m living in Italy.

Fate

“Fate is encounter only by him that actualizes freedom. That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me.” Martin Buber…perhaps I believe in this kind of fate.

On sowing

Today while chatting with Rachel: "we are always sowing the seeds, we just don't know what will grow"

My soles and my soul

This sole has tread on the holy ground of Krishna’s youth, and this sole has danced a dance with Mayan women to thank her mother Earth for the life giving water. This sole has followed the foot steps of brave Waldensians escaping the inquisition. This sole has carried me to the tops of mountains and through deserts painted red. It has forced me forward when I wanted to stop. This sole has danced salsa barefoot and linked me to generations before me dancing the traditional dances of Piedmonte. This sole has led me into dangerous places. It has brought me into oceans and through crowded city streets. These soles have turned inward in prayer to the deity and outward in the most artificial stance of dance. This sole has carried me through races and anchored me to the earth in the most tranquil of yoga poses. This sole has been dirtied by the blood of the earth and washed clean by the tears of the sky. This sole has guided me home in dark nights and carried others to safety in moments of chaos. This sole has held me safely in place and has been a cursed anchor as I urged to fly. This sole has been wrapped in the brown gold of the Earth. Perhaps most importantly these soles have carried this soul around the world and finally to a place of happiness and tranquility.

Io sono una teiera

Io sono una teiera: there are moments when I am filled with the warmth and comfort of a cup of tea.
There are times when the liquid inside of me is cold and refreshes those who drink of it.
And sometimes I boil and those who take from me thinking they will be satisfied are burned at the first taste.
Io sono una teiera: I am made from porcelain and can easily be broken when people are careless with me.
I am made of tin and steel and aluminum. I can stand the test of time and am strong enough to live for generations.
Io sono una teiera: most of the world gathers around me at meals. Political discussions arise because of my presence and are sometimes settled if I just last long enough. I am unique to each place and time, with the Indians I am spicy and old, with the British creamy and sweet, with the Americans – well they don’t quite know what to do with me.
Io sono una teiera: I am sometimes put up on a shelf and forgotten about and on special occasions I am proudly displayed like some type of masterpiece.
Io sono una teiera: I am sometimes polished and decorated with fineries, but most frequently I am common. I am dented and plain and those who appreciate my beauty do so only through the memories of unity and happiness I have been a part of.
Io sono una teiera.

You can do anything you put your mind to

There is a Brazilian man cutting the grass on the hill of my little utopia as I try not to look too put together with my new jade earings from my excursion to the city; it would seem out of place here. The smell of fresh cut grass reminds me of summers in rural Ohio where bikini's were the only acceptable wordrobe and I think of a well polished woman who used to don her bathing suit, stained green shoes, and spend hours mowing our grass. I used to call her mom. I hope she's proud of the choices I've made and the loves of my life. This moment is one of the few where I think nostagically about that time but not sadly. I hope my choices make her life mission complete and successful. I relish the memories this scent calls forward.
Those memories of fishing in bathing suits and the scent of grass remind me of bailing season, of sun burnt boys and men exhausted from days of hard labor, and I remember I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to have left that town in Eastern Ohio, I'm not supposed to draw maps of my country for Indian men and Italian women, I'm not supposed to compliment some one's English as I struggle to construct a sentence in Italian. I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE. I should be going to school at the local branch of Kent State, taking 6 years to finish my degree, I should be looking for houses with the neighbor boy who finally decided to put a little diamond on my finger, I should be content with summer vacations to the beach. But instead I've chosen rebellion. I've chosen a complete happiness -- I've experienced the world, and the whole world, and chosen my happiness; not from the choices presented before me but from the struggle and strife of making the whole world available to me. I've chosen a complete happiness because I know I can choose anything. I was the child it was dangerous to tell "you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it". They didn't know that to me it meant teaching children in Mexico at 14, or roaming around India at 19, or running off to Guatemala when I felt like my life was crashing in around me. They didn't know it meant a year in Italy after I finished with Latin honors at a university I "couldn't go to". They didn't know that my mind was so curious, devoid of the fear that keeps people tied to one place. No one knew what they were getting into. Doing anything I wanted to has led me around the world, taught me self reliance (or perhaps at least the ability to feign it convincingly), taught me to be open to those around me, to pick coffee beans, to dig foundations of houses, to learn new languages, trust in the kindness of strangers, and to truly decide what I want because for me anything is possible if I put my mind to it. What a dangerous phrase for children like me, but some part of me knows my mother is smiling if she knows any of this. She recused me from what the world would assume to be a life of impossibility and gave me life, a life so I could life it. Never telling me anything was off limits but simply telling me that if I truly want something I have to do everything in my power to get it. So here I am -- 22 university graduate, world traveler, journaler, want to be barissta, hiker, lover, translator, and most importantly content.

Two worlds collide

There are moments in this place where the world I live in and the world I aspire to come dangerously close to mingling in the hazy low hanging clouds of the Alps. I relish the sliver of a limbo I’m now living in. I sit with my wet hair in a damp and dreary world that feels as if the mountains are gently wrapping a lacey blanket around my golden body. I listen to a song that takes me to several places all in the same instant: back to late night drives home, back to long flights to the farm, back to café lunches of alligators and discussions of why vegetarians can eat ducks. Despite the fact that I live in worn out jeans, bare feet, and without make-up I feel more beautiful than I have in the entirety of my existence. I know that what others see are not my clothes or well done make-up but my soul shining through my whole body. My heart isn’t visible only on my sleeve but in my eyes and on my lips, I wear it as patches on my ripped jeans and as shoes on my bare feet. I am wholly myself at every moment, and there are times when I have to remember to breathe, remind myself that this life is real, and that the hazy fog that surrounds me at this moment isn’t the rousing of a dreamer whose sleepy world defines my existence. Remind myself that the fairy tale around me is a result of my choices, my struggle, my tears, and my world, which makes it all the more sweet. This world is mine because of love and choice. I’ve chosen to leave those I love to find out what and in some cases who I really love. I’ve chosen this struggle of language, of solitude in the midst of a crowd, of distance, of self reliance, rather that the struggle of obligation, apartment searching, and moving trucks. And these moments where I’m alone but not lonely, sitting safely wrapped in the blankets of clouds, happily looking like some type of street urchin are my reward. Moment of peace I’ve only felt while seated quietly on my Taize cushion while the scent of incense slowly fills my soul now become a common afternoon occurrence.
I no longer feel like I’m struggling against myself: that the distance I’ve put between myself and the entirety of my life to this point has enabled my soul to expand to full capacity, to grow into what it has been attempting for the past several years but was confined to the size of my body. In this moment I feel not as if my soul inhabits my body but rather like my body inhabits my soul.

None of the Above

None of the Above has suddenly become my theme song and I think of those cold winter drives past the Mason Dixon, and I long to head north to an all night restaurant in North Caldonon while I watch you trace my outline in spilled sugar. I remember those nights when we thought it was impossible for us to live without each other and perhaps in that moment it was true. And now? And now you’ve sent me to pick coffee beans in Guatemala and learn to make patatas a la importancia in Spain and maybe you’ve started to trace my outline while drinking coffee that tastes like soap. I try to replace the cold space in my borrowed bed with a perfectly pressed Milanese man, but I felt nothing. My body is warm and tired but my soul is cold. And now matter how much I want not to want you I realize now that maybe I need you. I hope you’re eating dinner with a bunch of the Jews and impress them with the Yiddish I’ve taught you, but are silently weeping inside as you tell the story of how you became a boy with no last name. I hope you pick up a loaf of Challah on Shabbat and think that this loaf could never send a woman into labor. I hope you miss me. Despite my actions to fill your space I hope you haven’t done the same. As selfish as it is I want to know that even in the moments I didn’t miss you, you were drinking an espresso and thinking about the one I was making at that moment. And as much as I hate the thought of a month back in the states I can’t wait to see you again, kiss you at the airport like no one is watching and spend an entire Saturday in bed while Carla Bruni runs on repeat. I want my parallel lives to easily coexist and perhaps one day in the not too distant future they’ll happily merge into one complete existence.

And I live

This sluggish and dry body which has been called by my name is slowly creeping back into life, nursed by rivers of water and a small stream of tea and whisky. I’m once again beginning to inhabit this place not surrounded by the fog of sleep or the need of sleep. The sun has some how roused this life within me and coupled with my new found knowledge of my emotional self I feel content coming to life again in this place. My new home where trees walk, clowns cook with me in the kitchen, and although I spend hours each day trying to explain what I’ve said I feel like I’m perfectly understood. With bruised arms from wrestling with brothers who have been born to mothers thousands of miles from mine, I dance the night away – all of us dressed in togas as we simultaneously mourn the leaving of a friend and celebrate his time with us in this unusual place. Each of us dances abandoning pretence and allowing our souls to mingle together as life swells inside each of our bodies and begins to leak out of our pores. Mosca and mucca flit about in this thin mountain air and quietly mix with the late night laughter expelled with a hint of alcohol on all of our breaths. And with all these bodies the cold night air is suddenly warmed by the love that each of us is filled with for whoever happens to be seated next to you. I can’t wait to share this new existence with the loves of my previous life, show them that my wandering may have been selfish but it is not in vain, let them meet my kindred souls from the world over and smile to myself as I know they try to make sense of my desire to live with the whole world in one house guarded by a gentle French woman, a consistently angry Italian man, and giants who kindly hold us all in the palms of their cracked and rocky hands. Show them the maps I’ve drawn of the life I used to live, let them see that even the darkest night here is filled with the incredibly light of the worlds I pray are even better than the one I now am privileged to live in.

New month...new decisions

August! When did that happen? I feel simultaneously like I’ve been here forever and I’ve only just arrived. I think I’ve officially become a hippie – I now own a pair of Birkenstocks, but only wear them when absolutely necessary, I go a week without wearing make-up, shave only when I can’t stand myself, and sing around a bonfire at least once a week. I must admit it’s quite perfect.
The past few days I’ve been missing Him terribly so last night I decided I was in desperate need of hearing his voice. It may have been the best phone call since I’ve been away. It was so comforting to hear his voice, to tell him about my new life, and hear all of the wonderful things he’s been doing since I’ve left. I asked him to come to Italy in December and he sounded pleased at my request. I wanted to take this trip and say I could choose him or anyone else I wanted and that any relationship I had was a matter choice but now I think perhaps it isn’t a matter of choice but of need. I’ve had other boys since I’ve been here, and shared a bed with one on several occasions, but the reality of the situation was that even in that moment I felt nothing for that man. Perhaps I didn’t miss Him, and maybe I was trying to fulfill some need I thought I had for physical comfort but no one has yet to stir any emotion inside of me. I slept in another man’s bed but could have been sleeping alone, not to say that it didn’t feel good to be wanted and I didn’t enjoy huddling close to another body when I was cold in the evening, but all of it was devoid of emotion. I think in realizing that I need or want Him, whatever the situation may be. I’ve liberated myself emotionally. I’m not longer fighting something or searching for the emotional of physical comfort of another man. I can relax into myself and even though I’m living for a moment months away with a man a world away I feel content. It’s good for me to know that although it’ll be months before I see Him at least the moments I spend with Him will be filled with emotional satisfaction, that I’ll feel something when he touches me other than the warmth of his body slipping into mine. My soul will be warmed in that moment as well. I’ll no longer fight against myself to give of myself to some one who means nothing more to me than anyone else I live with. Although this moment seems light years away it gives me reason to wait knowing that the moment will be worth it. That once again I’ll get to be one of those couples who run to embrace each other at the airport and kiss with a crowd around them like they are alone in the world. I wanted so badly to walk away and say I don’t need any of that but it simply isn’t true. I suppose the answers we find when we are truly looking are not always the ones we expect to find but perhaps this one is one of the most honest – it wasn’t what I was looking for or what I wanted to find, but some how the truth managed to find a way to seep in even in the midst of my desire for something else. Love has certainly found a roundabout way of getting to me, but nonetheless it has found me and its presence is one of the things I am most thankful for in this strange existence I’m proud to call my life.