A year in one place

I’ve been invited to be a resident at Agape for a year…I’ve decided to accept.

On mountain climbing

Yesterday was one of the most beautiful days since I’ve been in Europe. Marcolino, J, Mischa, Guilia, Lucia, and I spent the day hiking in the mountains around Prali. We hiked to the 13 lakes – unfortunately we only made it to the first 5 or 6, but nothing about making it to less than half was disappointing. We stopped at the 2nd lake and ate Panini and fruit. After we stopped for pranzo we climbed around some old building from WWI. I’ve been to Gettysburg, visited war memorials in DC, but this is the first time that I felt connected to anything of the sort. It wasn’t artifice or simulacrum of war, it wasn’t meant to remind you of those who fought and died, it simply was. Left, maybe not forgotten, but no longer there to serve any purpose, just left to the valleys to crumble at will, to have floor that turn to fields, window that were once looked through in fear now serve no purpose other than to let in a view of the border with France. Writings on the walls are now lost to time meaning little to the few who stumble on the buildings other than to remind them that at one point real men huddled together in that place hoping to make it through the day. Now only adventurous hikers set eyes on those ruins and remember the men who once feigned sleep and bravery in that place. After we felt content to leave the memories and barracks to the mountains we climbed further up and spend hours walking along the crest of the mountain. It’s amazing how you can feel so big and so small all in the same moment. You stand on the top of your world at that moment and marvel at the petite existence below you, and in looking out you see the rest of the Alps and recognize your own place in the petite existence. I have conquered the world and shrunk into an insect all in the same moment. On our descent back to the valley we found a great cliff for rock climbing so we all harnessed up and Marcolino gave me my first lesson in rock climbing. How many people can say they learned to rock climb in the Italian Alps?
This moment in my life is so amazing. I’m living in such a strange place – where parties of men dressed in drag and children building hot air balloons all seem part of a normal day, where practicality reigns, and attempting 3 or 4 languages each day is simply par for the course. I think what amazes me most is not the occurrence of such events but the fact that I feel so normal participating in them. That living with people from all over the world, that my dinner table each evening is filled with at least 4 languages, and I live with a Hungarian woman is all so normal…I will never be able to explain this to someone who has yet to experience Agape. Communal living and this strange world I now inhabit. What beauty, what peculiarity, what perfection now surrounds me?

Andiamo o aspeto

Quivering nights and rooftop sunrises. Cold bodies huddled together keeping warm with liters of red wine. Damp days, dry skin, dry eyes, and we don’t kiss good bye as I climb the mountain to my house in the morning. Tonight I learned that my bed is devoid of a soul and surely doesn’t miss me when I leave it alone for nights on end. Tomorrow I speak Spanish with a Moroccan man and feign a Mexican competence with a woman from Spain. I hang wet sheets in the afternoon and think about crawling into his later in the night. And they all know I haven’t slept in the house for days, and quietly whisper questions as to why I know my way around his. No one bothers to ask what’s happened. No one asks questions but everyone already seems to have the answers. I discover the inadequacy of the English language to describe the world around me, and we all make plans to dance naked around the fire as some one plays the drums the next time the sun refuses to shine. We gather up withered bodies as the world around us begins to glow and the moon skulks behind mountain tops, quietly slipping through open windows as 80 useless men sleep below us.
This world is strange and beautiful and I’m happy that it’s mine. I say I don’t believe in fate but sometimes I wonder if I’m telling a lie. Random chance has flung me to the far corners of the earth with people who make me feel more at home, more my self, and more free than the “home” I’ve know my entire life. Random chance has brought us all to this alpine village to take more than we could ever give to each other, but letting each of us leave feeling that if we were anymore full our bodies would no longer be able to contain our souls. Random chance has brought us all here to participate in the creation of God in our service to one another, to celebrate love in every capacity, and to live fully into the freedom that this God has given us. I say I believe only in love and choice but I marvel at the same love and choice that has led me to spending months in Prali with Koreans, Slovaks, Brits, Japanese, French, and other reluctant Americans. I wonder at this love and entertain the idea that maybe this love is larger than just my soul, larger than all the souls around me who have made the same choice. I am in awe of the love that has brough me away from all that I “love” to serve other people. Not to serve “the needy” not to serve “the poor” but serve humanity. To serve it blindly in recognition that each of us should serve another and deserve to be served by those around us, that rich and poor can serve one another and be equally valued in the moment of divine manifestation. My service is no more valuable than another’s and my participation in divine reality is no more impressive than anyone else’s. I believe in love and choice, and weary souls who gladly restore themselves by giving pieces of themselves to the sacred humanity that surrounds them.

Sometimes you get what you want

It’s mid-July and my skin is a sun-kissed gold, my hair has grown longer and it too is changed by the sun. At night when my skin is still damp from nights filled with reggae I let him touch this body which scarcely resembles my own. I let him kiss me, and it feels good, but I never look into his face. Maybe because he’s more afraid of letting someone in than I am. Suddenly I find the scent of cigarettes, campfire, and alcohol more than appealing. I have an urge to be close enough that in the morning my new found golden hair smells of the night before. I want to be let in, but in the same moment let someone in. In this moment we both need each other. I need warm hands on my hip bones in the middle of the night and he needs me to ask “why the distance?”
And at that moment I think about love. I know that I will never love this man. And I know that 3,000 miles away there is a man who pines for me, who spends long afternoons looking at baristas in small artsy glasses and big scarves while thinking about me. At the same moment I’m serving a morning macchiato to the man I sometimes share a bed with – while I wear my small artsy glasses and think about my favorite scarves packed away in boxes just begging to be let out. I try not to think about that boy. I wish I was wearing my favorite green, silk, scarf from Delhi, and I hope that the afternoon will be filled with sun for lazy cat naps. I concentrate on all the Italian words around me and try to will the courage into him to speak to me before he’s had his third pint. I finally have a warm body next to me but sometimes it comes at the price of silence. I decide that maybe the warm body isn’t enough. Perhaps I need a warm heart too – even if I have no intention of loving it any more than I do the rest of this sacred humanity.
I want to cure fear rather than inspire it. I want warm arms around me at this moment, dark eyes peering over my shoulder as I write these lines, and a Milanese accent asking why he can’t read what I’ve written about him. Maybe I would let him see. Maybe he would find courage in these words, find some assurance in my desire to understand another’s humanity, for both of us to find something of ourselves in another person, and know that maybe the gain of allowing someone to glimpse a piece of your soul outweighs the risk of getting hurt. And maybe in trying to teach this lesson I’d be able to learn it myself.
I know I will never love this man, not because he is unworthy of being loved but because he is incapable of being loved. And even with this knowledge I still want him to lead me in a dance to an old Rat Pack song, to invite me back to his bed that is thousands of degrees warmer than mine will ever be, to kiss my stomach as the notes of a smoky jazz singer fill the unavoidable silence. I want him to quietly rouse me as he heads out in the morning. I see only his body in bed next to me and a soul behind looked doors of steel, below the head I lay on his chest. I realize at this moment I’ve gotten exactly what I asked for, but maybe it wasn’t what I needed.

Walk of shame

Well the truth of it seems that I suck at leaving complicated relationships behind me. Spent last night in J’s bed trying to explain that I don’t believe in sex without love. He asked me what I was doing there then. I don’t know…maybe it feels good to be next to somebody, maybe I just like feeling desired, maybe I like having the power to say “No”. I know that I can’t detach emotion from my physical being. I need to be careful about having this fling. I don’t want to end up hurting myself or some one else. I don’t know what I was doing there…Looking for something I don’t know I can find. I thought perhaps I would be able to validate my humanity through some one else. – but I don’t think that’s possible when the connection is only physical. So this morning I got up and made my “walk of shame,” ashamed only of the truths I didn’t tell and the false hope I keep giving that something more may come of this when I know the reality of it is that it won’t.

Some things I'm enjoying at the moment

1. living communally
2. German boys
3. Italian boys
4. dancing at least 3 nights a week
5. foosball
6. morning cappuccinos
7. lovely French girls
8. late afternoon naps
9. being suntanned
10. being barefoot
11. old ripped jeans
12. bread and oil at every meal
13. climbing into bed exhausted at 4am
14. “looking at the stars”
15. scalp massages
16. Pausa
17. Hanging sheets
18. Friday and Saturday night
19. not worrying about tomorrow
20. Reggae music
21. The excitement of people back home when I call
22. Playing gin
23. journaling in the sun
24. working in the kitchen
25. hip bones
26. feeling like I’m normal
27. my ipod
28 being warm
29. fitting in
30. How things happen when you stop trying
31. feeling desired
32. new friends
33. long afternoon breaks in the sun
34. waking up in the mountains
35. living without judgment
36 slumber parties in my room
37 working at the bar
38. conversations where everyone speaks their own language but everyone understands.

MERDE!

No one next to me has turned into too many people trying to be next to me at the same time.

News from home

Finally go to check my e-mail last night. It was wonderful to read all my messages from home…good to know that no one has forgotten me just yet. Got a message from Him. Now I feel like all those things I’d written about not missing Him and being fine here on my own weren’t the whole truth. His message was filled with lovely new from home – Corey’s wedding, how beautiful it was, how much I would have enjoyed it, and how it was like something he would like to have. How much he hates coming home to an empty apartment and how he would rather come home to me instead. I don’t know if it made me miss Him but it certainly shocked me. I need to stop thinking about which warm body I want to entice to be next to me and start thinking more about long term decisions. Do I want Him to come home to me? I don’t know how good of an idea it is for me to come back from a year abroad, having not seen him for months and months, and trying to get really serious in this relationship right away. I’m sure the moment I start to really focus my attention on these big decisions will be the moment when I suddenly have more boys that I know what to do with, that seems to be the story of my life.

On a lighter note I got to talk to Idge last night. It was so good to hear her voice, hear about her summer, E’s baseball, and to tell her about my little alpine village. Unfortunately she sounded so sad as we were getting off the phone. I felt so awful – a little selfish for taking this trip for myself and leaving my baby sister back in the States. I’m sure that these months will fly past and we’ll be sitting together at home before I know it. But right now it doesn’t feel like that at all.

I am

I AM
An artist,
Adventurous,
Barefoot,
Insatiably curious,
A daughter 3 times over, an orphan twice,
Brave,
Independent,
Difficult,
A traveler,
A secret keeper,
Want to be life changer,
Sister,
Observer,
Hungry for more,
A lover without a lover,
Student of life,
Wandering but not lost,
Hopeful,
A believer in the sacredness of humanity,
Alive but also living,
quasi-bohemian,
reluctantly American,
citizen of the world,
alone but not lonely,
warm hearted,
big souled,
often confused,
an idealist,
trying to be better than I am,
always changing,
lover of broken things,
hiker,
singer,
cat napper,
impulsive,
over analyzer,
full of contradictions,
a river,
constantly finding parts of me that I didn’t know existed,
unfortunately often intimidating,
sun worshiper,
daughter of the universe,
lover of worn out jeans,
author,
living for the future,
trying to be present,
caught up in the clouds,

Meag

Cold nights

Still no warm body next to me at night and I've started to do some serious thinking about Him...no conclusions yet. If I can leave for this long and not really miss Him maybe that should tell me a few things. I do feel bad about not having checked my e-mail in a couple weeks to see if He's written, but more because I don't want to hurt Him rather than the fact that I really miss Him. I suppose I've only been gone for 3 weeks so all of this could change in time. I think that right now I miss the physical comfort of that relationship. I miss the idea of having some one at home waiting for me, but I think that that also would change if I started a bit of a summer fling with some one here. I feel like a bit of a school girl trying to hedge my bets...who knows. I want to be more self sufficient when it comes to things like this, not to need someone to comfort or validate me. I don't want to go home and make things permanent with Him because I need to be in close proximity to another human body. I want to do it because I love Him, but at this moment I think that any relationship I have will be based on my need for a warm body and not genuine emotions. Knowing that makes it difficult to treat some one as an ends in themself and not just a means to an ends.

I want to feel like that incredibly self assured woman I was in Guatemala, but it's proving much more difficult than I had imagined when I left. I thought I would leave home, come to Europe, and easily grow into that woman. But I just don't feel like that's happening at all. Instead I'm feeling more and more awkward in my skin and finding it difficult to express myself or generate conversation with some people. Perhaps it's because I'm not sure I'll come across as the woman I want to be. I'm afraid that instead of the intriguing, wandering soul I'll come across as merely average and trying to be something that I'm not. Since The Kate has written me that lovely e-mail about really revealing myself to some one I've been trying quite hard to attempt to let people in, but instead I think my consiousness has made it nearly impossible for me to show people the public or private version of myself. I find myself caught in a strange limbo where nothing that I show anyone seems true, this distorted public image, that is quite differient from the one I usually display, and I can't seem to let anyone into the core of my being either. Such an inability make me very unsure of what that core really consists of. I suppose only more time will tell. I think part of what I'm lacking is I've yet to have a meaningful converation with anyone, the kind that start when you're the only two people left at the bonfire or the ones that start right before you plan to go to bed but instead spend another 3 hours solving the problems of the world. I think one of those conversations would do some good for my soul, hopefully in the near future one of those will happen. I suppose until then I'll keep tring to find the space I fit into, not at Agape, but rather on the whole. How I can have enough faith in humanity to let people into my soul without worrying about the possibility of pain or rejection, just letting the world see me for me and let the consequences fall where they will. So much work to do on myself, I feel like I'm going backwards instead of forwards but I suppose self recognition is the first step in understanding myself and becoming who I want to be.

Some things I've learned

A list of things I've learned thus far

1. How to make patatas a la importancia
2. A glass or two or three or four of wine with dinner is a good thing
3. Giddy does not mean a happy young girl in Spain...not something I want to be
4. Friendship comes from some of the most unexpected places
5. The kindness and good will of humanity never ceases to surprise me
6. pomadore = tomato
7. framagio = cheese
8. I still hate wearing shoes
9. a whole new meaning for pinocchio
10. I still have an intense desire to be wanted
11. I still love a good chase
12. Fooseball is an invaluable skill I have yet to master
13. How to abandon pretense
14. No matter how far away I am from those I love there is no substitute for exploration of the world and yourself
15. I need a human body next to me
16. How to make polenta
17. Being open to letting people redeem themselves usually yeilds good results
18. There is no substitute for a life well lived
19. What it feels like to be utterly alone
20. How good it feels to know that no matter what happens I'll be able to make a home for myself.

On wholeness

"Pleasure is the absense of suffering"

I have an intense desire to be wholly in this place -- disconnected from friends and family. The ability to drift into a lifestyle where ever I am frightens me a bit. Everything I "truly love" is thousands of miles away and I sit happily in my tiny alpine village - just me, the mountains and a desire to sort out my soul. I just want to live...simply live. I have this magnificant education and I'm happier working in a kitchen and spending lazy afternoons surrounded by the giants of the earth than I ever was working on any research or project. I want to discuss lofty ideas, muse about love, and choice, and freedon, but live away from the majority of the world. I know this year was supposed to be an experiment in simply living, finding out what I truly need and I find myself looking around trying to find some one to share it with. I hate feeling like I'm no good on my own. I like to have a warm body against mine and I hate the fact that at this moment I have little regard for whose body it is. I need the touch of another human being to validate my own humanity in some way. Maybe the lesson I need to learn this year is not about simple living but more about a new type of self reliance. That no matter how much I desire another body the validation of my humanity and choices have to come from myself. I just hope that sometime in the near future I start to feel that way, rather than simply saying it. Soon, soon...I will settle into my own skin and this silly desire for a warm body will either be satisfied or disappear.

Only present

"Maybe this...the man hunched over the motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and futures; he is stretched from the continuity of time; in other words he is in a state of ecstasy...he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of time has nothing to fear" -- Milan Kundera Slowness

This is my life at this moment, I know I'm at Agape for the next 2 months, I'm taken care of in all my physical needs and I have no worries about the future. It's not quite as life altering as picking coffee beans in Guatemala yet, but that's okay, it has potential. It's good practice for living in the moment, because at this moment I have no future -- tomorrow means no more than today or yesterday. The following days will be the same as today, and in alot of ways that's okay. It keeps me concerned about things other than the crazy boys at home, whether or not I'll take the job with Lance, and if I should be going to grad school.
It's good practice to focus on letting people into the core of who I am -- and deciding who that will be. It seems a little silly to be thinking about deciding who my true self will be. One would think that if it was truly the essense of who I am it would just emerge without a decision. I suppose I need to just sit quietly and be, and what falls away falls away, and whatever is left will stay. Now if I can just manage to sit and be quiet.

Words of wisdom

"People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself."

Words of wisdom come from some of the most unlikely places. Last night I got an e-mail from The Kate that was the most kind and beautiful way of forcing me to face a difficult reality about myself. She told me she'd been doing some reading and realized that although the political science widows chat about all the aspects of our lives and we've spent alot of time together she realized she doesn't feel as if she knows me at all. She knows the public image of me, who I want the world to see me as, the things I have done and decisions I have made but not all of the emotions or contradictions and internal conflicts that have led me to the life I now lead...and it's true.

I have a carefully crafted idea of how I want people to perceive me, I want to be the thoughtful, open woman who has waters that run so deep everyone is intrigued but few people are willing to explore the abyss; that I am different than the woman the world expects a 22 year old American girl to be. But at this moment I don't know if I'm truly that woman. I suppose the question is not whether or not I am that woman but rather why I want to keep most people standing on the edge of the ocean instead of inviting them into the water. Getting hurt is possible, I suppose, but I wonder what it feels like to really let some on in. How do you feel when you can be absolutely bare with some one. When will I be able to strip away the pieces of that publice image for some one? This isn't to say that no one really knows me. Sure there are friends who have known me my entire life but there are still pieces of me that are hidden away, all of my intense pain or desires that may not fit into the strong woman image I want people to see. Hopefully somewhere along this trip I'll begin to be able to let a person into the core of my being. A life long work that will have to begin here.

Finally leaving

All of those months of prep work, a month at home living like today would never come, and part of me is wishing I could forever live in that beautiful limbo. But finally I am here, just me and me: one girl, one bag, one year and endless possibilites. Leaving is always so hard. This is by far the most diffiuclt it has ever been. No person waiting joyfully for me at the other end of my journey, no one putting months into showing me their world. Just me, a world full of people back home who miss me intensley and a heart and head full of questions that I hope this time will answer. I just have to keep telling myself that all the sadness I caused at leaving will be drowned out on my return and that I will be the better for having taken this trip. I know I will be forever changed and that this is a journey my soul needs to take -- my body just has to come along for the ride. I keep faith that as my pack grows lighter with the casting off of worn out clothes and old shampoo bottles so will my soul as it throws away unnecessary burdens and decisions become clearer, more concise. I'll be casting off emotional burdens I've been carting around for far too long. This trip will be a course in taking my own advice: that no person should be given the power to take my joy, that life is better lived learning from mistakes rather than living in regreats, and that at the end of the day my life is about the choices I make. My soul will be renewed, my body beaten and tired, but at the end of the day it will be mine and I will be happy to live in it.