today, today

Hello beautiful friends and lovers and strangers,

When I began writing this, it was yesterday morning and I was sitting in Denver intl airport awaiting the next leg of my sabbatical: the European vacation. It is now the following morning and I am at Lisbon airport. Soon I’m off to the Azores where I will re-join mi cariño. The forecast is 60’s and rain, lots of rain, some wind, but who cares? How dull to complain about the weather. How invigorating to embrace rain on one’s face and hair. Humans and our preferences, they’ll be the death of us. How often is that we want a steaming desert when it’s cold, or a frozen tundra when we’re hot, or whatever is just up ahead or close behind or opposite of what surrounds us? And what good does this really do us? … says the girl gleefully leaving winter behind.

Honestly though, today I just want whatever it is.

Today I do not want.

Today, today.

Some lovely things:

I’m just over one month into twice weekly Spanish lessons, I love them. I’m beginning to enunciate well and recognize certain words/phrases. By the time I get back to Costa Rica in the fall of this year, I should be conversational. By the time I get to Guatemala in March, I should be mas o menos. And by the time I’m back to NYC I’ll be able to better understand the people who I volunteer with.

Yesterday a friend performed hypnosis on me. I prepared some questions to ask my higher self, my past selves, my future self, all of my spirit guides and all of her spirit guides, although, I nearly didn’t go through with it. It felt like an arduous task according to my stress which was preoccupied with preparing for today and thinking about taxes (and if I should pay them, since, well, civil disobedience)—essentially, thinking upon thinking. But then I did the session anyway and I’m so glad I did. The takeaway, don’t let stress trick you into thinking you don’t have time to relax or let it go—you do. Even mid stress out. Especially mid stress out. The bigger takeaway, relationships are everything. And everything is relationships.

I didn’t get to see everyone I had intended while home and everyone was totally cool about it because, well, I suppose many of the humans in my life, near and far, are cool. And I love them for that. The other day I drafted an essay about our human expectations of one another, and how it’s possible we make ourselves and others suffer more by not taking these into consideration with more accuracy. We each have varying carrying capacities in every moment that affect what we are able to give and what we need to take. This is dynamic, of course, thus what makes sense one day might not on another. This is not as personal as it often feels, though our feelings are our feelings. Whenever I go home, and at this stage of my life, I learn more about these carrying capacities and to more honestly confront them without the defensiveness of my precious ego.

I’m leaving Colorado with a full heart, some excitement, and a hint of apprehension for what awaits me. While I am so thrilled for the next leg of this beautiful journey I’ve gifted myself, it hit me again that I don’t have a concrete home to return to. This disturbs me a little. I miss my bed. I thought of my old bedroom and the flooding morning light, and how I long for it. I told a friend I feel scattered like the ashes of my dead body; the drama. But truly, all of my belongings are either in storage or have been left behind at my parents or are with me now in either a small backpack purse, a backpack, or a large suitcase. Perhaps it’s rather appropriate I’m shedding my things all over the place in the final weeks of the wood snake year.

Very soon we enter the fire horse year—and what a giddyup sensation I am feeling. My friend reminded me that just because I may be feeling without a physical home I will have a bed or couch wherever I go. My mom reminded me, you always have a home here. I find myself more and more at home in my own feet. Which is to say, I am not without home. I know I am going to learn a lot about “home” along this nomadic journey. Yee haw.

What a deep sense of gratitude I am feeling—beneath all that is horrible and deranged in this world, that we are watching unfold before our very eyes, that we were told to never let happen again—I am utterly grateful to be here. Because of this deep gratitude for my own life, I’m feeling a deep sense of anger that there are humans on this Earth who wish to steal this gratitude from other people. Who want children to grow up without their parents—who want to harm children. The fucking scum they are. How dare they? Let me be very clear—fuck I C E, fuck the current administration (and those who paved the way before them), and fuck the unrelenting war machine. Fuck it away. Fuck it down. Fuck it back to the hearts and minds of humans who want well for one another because we want well for ourselves and to share that wellness, despite our nationality/ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation blah blah blah. Fuck it back to the people who wish to be in a reciprocal relationship with the land instead of exploit it into oblivion. Fuck it towards a future with human dignity which emerges from none other than a reverence for Death.

That’s all I have to say,

today, today.

:)