Reflecting the theme of withdrawal from the world, or "don't let your boat become a house"

I remember reading an article just before leaving "P.A." of an upcoming performance in my former home of New York City labeled "Alaska". Being on the precipice of my 'tuning in' (see below, March 19th) the neurons in my brain perked up as I thought "how ironic for New York and Alaska to be tied together in any way whatsoever, and how odd that I should have run into it, being emotionally torn between elements of both" (having left the former and sort-of fled to the other, then having tried to fit back into the former, only to create more longing for the other).

I began imagining what my dancer-friends would grasp from the work, "Alaska", having no firsthand knowledge of the space for which it was named...not that I am insinuating myself an expert on last-frontier-space.

Created by dance artist/choreographer Diane Szeinblum, the piece, as it was described in the article, was an artistic portrayal of relationships utilizing the idea of "interior spaces"...of one's soul, psyche, personality, etc. I deduce she was likening the vast open spaces of Alaska with some vast sense of solitude or alienation within the individual in relation to others. The journalist summarizing even labeled these internal spaces "disturbing little lonelinesses". I began to wonder: is this theme of withdrawal from the world a shortcoming?

I find this quality of solitude at the forefront of my personality more and more with age. Its harder to connect with others, to form new relationships and maintain them. Through all my traveling and short-lived living the things I really miss are good friends. Frankly, its hard to make new ones.

Most encounters with individuals are tucked away in little interior spaces and turned around a bit like clothing in the dryer and re-emerge as similar commentaries that might be found in the work "Alaska". This blog is essentially a record of my encounters with people to this end. I exist in a continual state of seeking-something-I-can't-define and resultantly I move often, desiring more from life than I am finding at my current locale. Each new landing zone presents the promise of more initially, then turns out just to be another port for my one-person boat to dock. Each time I tie up the line and disembark I anticipate an experience ahead with bells and whistles. And then become quickly disenchanted.

A recent quote I've adapted and adopted: "when your ship long moored in harbour gives you the illusion of being a house...put it out to sea" ~Archbishop Helder Camara, cited in the Art of Pilgrimage.

And so its time for me to load up and head out once more, before my boat becomes a house, or a tree that grows deep and debilitating roots. Big North here I come. I have been trying to get back to Alaska ( the physical site not the interior soul-space-probing dance work) since I left, puddle-jumping from town to town across this giant nation hoping to find something as glorious as the ethereal experience of Fairbanks I've been toting in my soul, but ideally to get back to the true original with dear friends waiting.

My fear: that I'll arrive, settle and take up work but still have the empty yearning within "interior spaces" that I have come to define as my own 'constant dissatisfaction'. I can't help but think my theme of withdrawal from the world has something to do with this perpetual searching. How can it be satiated?

A friend-of-a-friend, John-Paul, wrote: "Being active is exciting but exhausting, planning too much makes the moment seem as though it occurs before it happens. Perhaps, having focus is oxymoronic...when tomorrow arrives, the climb has superceded the summit; so we look for a different tomorrow, because the end seldom justifies the means."



So for now, here's to endless different tomorrows...and a dry cabin for my hermitage.

Chasing people around backyards after dark

I had this dream before leaving the East Coast, cozied-up in my childhood bedroom, of former days of romp and play, of sweet melodrama and usual angst, but they had been supplanted into my adult life. I was twentysomething running around like a teen. There was a scene of bleachers at a rock concert in the gymnasium of my school, all dark and cool, and empty in the corner by the stage, and at the tippy-top it was extra hot and dank. Familiar, but not. Because in the dream, awkward teen encounters were played out by my twenty-something self. Well, that's about the time I knew I had to go. Or that the next two months were going to be long and tedious. And did I mention long??

But the other portion of that dream was outside, in the the cool dark night of summer, somewhere safe and familiar but not necessarily home (because where is home anymore?). I was running through grasses, tall in some lots, taller still in some others, and hiding on decks of homes for fun. I was chasing people around backyards after dark (people I knew, people I know and love still now). It wasn't awkward, dank, or age-inappropriate, but rather sweet, refreshing, and so comfortable. In my dream I liked feeling the grass hit my face as I ran and the excitement of finding someone I knew unexpectedly arriving at my spot at the very same time...like we both thought of it together, but separately. An alignment of thoughts.

I wrote it down, the dream, just as the title of this post describes... saving it in my sketchbook, awaiting its purpose, meaning, calling.

Segue: I'm tuning in.
Not to the radio. To little signs in my life. Things that show up more than once: on the same day, in the same week, in the same context...( I know one of you is cringing right now. grin and bear it eh?). Like this: I have read two consecutive books in the last month or so that came at just the right time, and even moreso in the right way. In fact one helped me leave my pessimism in the air over the Midwest somewhere. I arrived here on the West Coast, free of metaphorical baggage and wearing my biggest grin. But looking for a new book. I tried to fit into the current trend, to hear the words of others telling me I should read this or that. I even bought a "this" and a "that". But this or that were not calling me. I knew what was, but I just didn't know it. Luckily it came to me on my birthday. It fits perfectly.

And now I know more about the feeling of chasing people around backyards after dark.

NPR commentator Romanian-born Andrei Codrescu writes of his learning to drive in America: "Here was a chance for me to transform myself once more, to begin again...I love being born again, and I practice it. It's my passion...my specialty"

I know, just as a forced-stay in New York was becoming my detriment, so too was staying in my childhood dream, affixed in this limbo-ic place between being an adult and being a child. Coming West was my chance for reformation. Or perhaps linguistically better to say continual-formation. Hometown was stagnant. And what's more, if I had committed a forced-stay in Alaska this winter I wouldn't have bottomed out at my old home, thereby wouldn't have seen and known Berkeley or Oakland, thereby wouldn't have been ready to endure the outdoors the way I need to be ready in Alaska, and potentially wouldn't have received the incoming call to go to Peru. (I'm planning a volunteer-build trip with my number one hippie brother in early June. The urge is all-consuming). In the three weeks I have been here I have mentally checked in. To pacifism. To conservation. To helping, beyond classroom walls. To my own headspace. To nature and exploration. To the notion of embracing a life henceforth where I can go chasing people around backyards after dark. And the metaphysical means to achieve it. What joy.

Here's to transforming oneself again..to practicing the act of being reborn. Again. And again.

Finding little treasures, and an ode to open spaces

One of the most exciting things about new places is heading out with one task or agenda in mind and discovering something unexpected. Today I was seeking a post office, my interview site, and a public bathroom (not in that order, of course) and a place to sit and wait in downtown Oakland for interview time to arrive. Not as easy as you think.

But while trying to communicate to security guards of multiple office buildings in the square the urgency of my request, to convey through that desperate look in my eyes that "my teeth are floating", i.e. I could really use an honest answer to my inquiry about the locale of a public restroom, I stumbled upon a delightful little something-different-altogether.

This lovely little exhibit of objects by Sean Olson (from whom I borrowed the radical image above) put on by the Oakland Museum of California in the lobby of suits-ville. Quiet, peaceful, meticulous and tactile somehow eloquently placed among buzzing, active, stale. I love when that happens, and wondered today if I was getting side-eye glances because I was actually taking the time to look at the art.

I remembered then a similar experience on my trip to Portland in fall, when I was roaming around the streets with "nothingparticularinmind", and stumbled right upon the gallery district and fell right into an exhibit entitled "Ice Houses" by Scott Peterman (again, stole this image from him too, thanks.) Elegant, quiet, simple, and thought-provoking. And having just said a bittersweet sayonara to Alaska for the time being, it was like those little winter huts (from New England, however) were calling out to me like some exquisite corpses; an ode to my months of cabin-life and open spaces.

My other little treasure for the day: a dream-job scenario for fall, and an interview for it that fit like a glove.

Mobile

What is it about people ( read as "guys") picking up telemarketing gigs or working as street-supporters who bark "don't you even have a minute for the environment?", posing as pavement-pounding petition-toters asking passers-by to metaphorically "stand" for this or that....and then using this position to bombard others with inappropriate, lest I say awkward, romantic insinuations? I can't imagine boasting this much bravado myself, whether genuine or contrived. The most unsettling fact about the nature of this cornering tactic is that I, regardless of the day's mood, sensibility, mindset, physical or mental wanderings, inevitably ALWAYS get caught like a deer in the proverbial headlight. And I am certain...CERTAIN...I do not lead on in any way that I am in search of some mindless unfamiliar suitor. Because I frankly don't have time.

My impetus for inquiry: while aimlessly strolling to the train to make my way home recently I was approached by aforementioned petition-toting persons hoping to get my John Hancock on an Alameda County issue in the upcoming election. I asserted politely that I just moved here and am not registered to vote in CA ( ...so please leave me alone). I passed a few phrases back and forth with the dude with balls (henceforth referred as "dude with balls", sometimes "d.w.b.") and signaled that I was ready to get movin' again. Thanksbutnothanks. Ironically dude with balls identified this as his time to lurch in on the prey and tackle- "why don't I give you my number and we can have a drink. You can put it in your cell phone..."
I froze in place when I should have been trotting swiftly out of the way of oncoming traffic...."uuhhhh". I reached for my cell phone reluctantly.
"Fine" I thought, "I'll just take his number real cool-like and stroll away like its nothin' then delete the atrocity outright and pronto."

Glitch, and further fodder for my justified frustration at such circumstances: due to the advent and proliferation of the cellular phone, the mobile, one cannot remain anonymous anymore; one cannot screen, avoid, or dodge. Due to the nature of the cellular phone, that is one with out cords or lines, one is assumed to be carrying it on one's person at all times. After all its just a tiny cell. Additionally, and most unfortunately, I always forget the bait-and-switch tactic used by dudes with balls so that they don't have to ask for your number...here it comes:

"OK now call me and then I'll have your number" d.w.b. says while digging his cell phone out of his messenger bag.......F! my mind says to my heart.

Chalk me up to a six-point-buck all taxidermy-ed and hung on the wall. I'd been caught. And slaughtered. And what's more its the price I pay too often for being polite; for daring to have sympathy for the twenty-something manual laborer, for insinuating support for the cause and explaining away my reason not to act...

As I walked away I slapped my own wrist for my inability to be a d.w.b. myself. What's so hard about saying " uh no thanks you're not my type. you can't even form sentences and I'm pretty sure you're stoned." ??? Further punishment always reinforces my own temporary self-loathing: repeated texts and phone calls.
Perhaps from now on it would be in my best interest to avoid the road altogether so as not to be caught in the headlights. Forget what's in my nature and err on the side of defending myself for the sake of staying "mobile".

Toast

As the one-year anniversary of my period of "transition" (as my beloved mother likes to say) approaches, I have been peering at my experiences through retrospective glasses more now than ever before throughout this year; recounting moments of struggle and frustration, seeking the growth through and within them, and trying to refocus my forward motion with positive thinking. I know, it all sounds metaphysical, "hippie-dippie". It certainly hasn't been that easy. But from moving here and there, working where and when I can at often odd and random tasks, experiencing the diverse lifestyles of "america" both first-hand and as an outsider, and sending my professional life (i.e. teaching skills) down the gauntlet, I think I might just emerge on the other side soon.

Last week my overly extensive potential-barista-gig evaluation seemed just the final push I needed to go ahead and make a plan, if only a short-term one; to decide on something I want and a time frame within which I wish to obtain it. That's more than I can say for the last, well, six months or so. I wasn't embarrassed when I didn't have a resolute answer to the oft-dreaded "what is your dream job?" question. In fact I felt satisfied to answer honestly "I am figuring that out" with pride and integrity.

But perhaps it was the speaking-it-out loud that reverberated the issue in my mind for the last few days....what do I want??

If I can say with truth and commitment that I have "grown as a person" as the psychologists and philosophers like to say, over this past year it is in two pertinent ways.

First, the professional gauntlet resembles the day-to-day duties of an academic substitute teacher, K-12 with a split-second game face turnaround. That is, running the gauntlet in the classroom...being hit from both sides: students on one end haggling and testing limits, and learning on the other-can I execute this work/lesson/material?? I answered with a resounding yes. Apparently, I am a good teacher. No. A great one.

I never knew.

Second, I can persevere. I can be flexible. And most times I can even be patient.

YAAARR!

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Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Aahhh sunny California. Full of indulgences: sunsets, surf, art, artists, alternative culture, organic food, coffee, cafés, the outdoors...
There are so many facets of life in California I want to dive into and hang out in, treading water for a while until I can execute my next move. Just taking in the sunny days and glorious sunsets is a full-time commitment in itself, and not one to complain about either. Sometimes I wish time could stand still so that I could allow myself to fit in as much as possible in this one moment before the next moment arrives. As usual my next moment is identified only insomuch as a few things I would like to do or a few places I would like to be; the same destinations, ideals, or ambiances I am always chasing after or viewing at a telescope-lens-like distance from right now. That's the downfall of transience. If time were frozen in THIS moment, I could idle here for a while and make a community for myself; define a neighborhood, a routine, a group of "friends". I haven't been able to do this since Fairbanks, and haven't been stationary in real time since New York. The other downfall of my own nomadic lifestyle is that with those "likes" lingering in the near distance I become stunted in my ability to be boundary-less to any opportunities I see...because I would "like" to get to such-and-such a place by such-and-such a time. My good 'ol alpha-control freak attempting to latch onto anything that resembles a plan...

Yesterday in sunny California, I humored myself with an interview for barista at a family-owned café near UC Berkeley. With all my traveling and picking up menial jobs, I was feeling confident that they would just go ahead and hire me on the spot, since menial jobs for me always include some sort of café food service. In short, I've got the experience.

At the interview, which lasted an hour and a half and included three broadsides of questions (all different sheets with all different questions mind you) delivered by three different interviewers-namely, the owner, then her husband, then the only barista on shift at that time of day, then the owner again- I suddenly became my own personal advocate for my recent traveling lifestyle, and my own worst enemy as I tried to defend myself for the sake of a minimum-wage, part-time coffee job yet seeming only be digging myself deeper in. Or was it for the sake of my integrity that I rambled?

Then there was that weird scenario where I started to loosen up (after an hour-plus of interviewing, sheesh!) and allow my quirky sense of sarcastic humor to seep out. I was pretty certain I grew another head right then and that they suddenly understood I was from another planet, but still the questions continued. "What's your dream job?" "Name something at a workplace that annoyed you". "What's your passion?". " I see you over here with art, and with education, and us over here with coffee...so where do we meet?" "How do we know you won't leave us in six months (for an art job)?"

In retrospect I realize they all were to have been answered like this: "coffee! coffee! coffee!". I just couldn't do it. I couldn't stretch myself that far. To the point of outright lying that is.

I also couldn't stretch myself thin enough to pretend I had a dream job in mind, lying out there in some achievable distance, at some definable location, in some measurable time frame. I told them honestly at one time I had a definition for that phrase, but that life throws curve-balls and I'm mastering my dodge move right now. And for that I think they derogatorily wrote down "drifter", "flake" or "wanderer" next to the dream job question. At least I re-checked my integrity, if only to myself.

The only things I can affirm: Coffee's good, but not life-altering. Making it's fun, but not for a lifetime. Minimum-wage part-time jobs should not be allowed to conduct two hour interviews. And in the words of JRR Tolkien, Not All Who Wander Are Lost.