Monday's Activities: Coffee-shop. Drank Mate with rice milk and laughed out loud while reading "Holy Cow". Explored the NE's shi-shi neighborhood on my bike, explored a new path to the SE, began recognizing places and began memorizing their locations, ate an amazing meat-loaf sandwich and had my coffee refilled 3 times while reading and still laughing out loud to "Holy Cow". Biked to a small rose garden and continued reading. Sat with the roses. Talked to Maggie. Biked home.
Tuesday's Activities: Had a late start. Made breakfast of leftovers and egg on bread, topped off with some homemade sauerkraut and pickled cucumber. Intended to sit in the coffee-shop mentioned above and read more, and then go to a yoga class, I instead played guitar and procrastinated leaving the house, and then went to the coffee-shop with Lolo and neglected to go to yoga. Figured out a good herbal regimen for Lolo, drank a chai and ate a chocolate-chip cookie, and later, a heavy pesto sandwich that wasn't very good. Went to the co-op and bought produce as well as sea salt and baking soda for toothpowder. Lolo bought her recommended tinctures, some lemon balm for tea, and some sea salt for a bath scrub.
Wednesday's Activities: Woke up at 5. Enjoyed the morning silence in bed, fell asleep about an hour later until 10:30. Took time eating and brushing teeth and watching hair. Booked it to new yoga studio, "Bhaktishop," and made it there panting and red-faced just in time for the level 4 yoga class to begin. I almost considered skipping the class, but it turned out to be a lot of fun and felt good to get out all the unused energy I'm used to spending hoeing for hours on the farm. Met Stella and sat in her apartment. Walked to get a burrito for her and a drink for me, got coffee and mate and sat in the park and watched her dog play, went to her apartment and chatted, walked to eat another meatloaf sandwich for me and fries for both of us. Forgot phone so returned to her apartment. Drank peppermint tea and reminisced about old camp friends and situations. Walked to my bike and biked home.
Now I'm going to try to finish "Holy Cow" and then sleep soundly, thinking about how lucky I am, and about all the people around me, near and far. Thanks for your support, love, and encouragement.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Starting Portland LIfe
Walking in Portland is delightful. Most of the front lawns are strewn with flowers and herbs, people are friendly and interesting, and the neighborhoods make it feel like a small town.
Yesterday I went to one of ten nights at a neighborhood building convergence. I have never seen so many creatively dressed people in one place in my life, and everyone was smiling and open to meeting each other. We did a circle dance outside where all 300 people, of every age and ethnicity, held hands and sang, ending with a collective OM that might have been the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. After the dance I went inside for free acupuncture that reduced the chronic pain I've had from a muscle I pulled over a year ago so drastically that I think stretching might be enough to bring it back to normal (where stretching worsened the pain prior to the session). And to top the night off, a band played called Medicine for the People that encompassed all my favorite music styles and inspired me to dance more than I've danced in years.
Life is good.
Yesterday I went to one of ten nights at a neighborhood building convergence. I have never seen so many creatively dressed people in one place in my life, and everyone was smiling and open to meeting each other. We did a circle dance outside where all 300 people, of every age and ethnicity, held hands and sang, ending with a collective OM that might have been the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. After the dance I went inside for free acupuncture that reduced the chronic pain I've had from a muscle I pulled over a year ago so drastically that I think stretching might be enough to bring it back to normal (where stretching worsened the pain prior to the session). And to top the night off, a band played called Medicine for the People that encompassed all my favorite music styles and inspired me to dance more than I've danced in years.
Life is good.
Friday, June 5, 2009
I'm Leaving, On a Grayhound Bus, won't be comin' back again. Oh babe, I hate to go....
Some version of that song is always running through the back of my head when I am at the end of something big. Those phases of time that are lived so intensely that they consume you, in which your identity has been first and foremost a member of that specific experience, cannot be fully realized until you've been gone for while.
Significant culture shock can be expected.
When I remember that this is it, it's really over, I feel like parts of me are leaving as people depart. The people who I have learned to live around- and therefore with and even through- may never make an appearance in my life again. In fact, experience has proven that I won't see most of them ever again, and perhaps only ever hear from a few.
Leaving the "We" of doing everything together, and reclaiming the "I" that we were initially hesitant to let go of, each of us must now get to know themselves again as we realize how we've transformed since we were last outside of this experience.
The blackboard has a few scraps of messages left from when we communicated through it, and where the lost and found has been written in the past, Missing are instead names of departed interns. It is like looking at our group's tomb stone, it's identity unraveling, no longer present in this moment. And the empty tincture shelf looks like a ghost of it's former self.
Walking up stairs I realized my ears no longer needed to be perked for certain voices, or chance encounters in the hallway. Most of the rooms are empty now.
Jars are still out in the kitchen, and the drying rack is full, but there are no eggs frying in a cast-iron, nor are dull knives chopping garlic; no hands are washing a dish, nor making tea. Nobody's reading books and nobody's upstairs either. Nobody's frolicking in the grass through a rainstorm, nor sunbathing, nor doing yoga, nor panting from jogging club, and no abdominals are being made phenomenal. Nobody's watching a movie, no Pandora Radio-station to be heard singing on the computer. Our speakers are gone, and work is over.
I wonder how long my calluses will hold.
The house is silent save one conversation in the yoga room and the buzzing of the still-overflowing refrigerator. And though I craved a silent moment just a couple days ago, it's too loud to sit in comfortably right now that it has arrived in absence.
I wonder how I'll reflect on my aloneness, when I'm sitting in the house tomorrow morning, one of the last to go, and then as I roll off to Portland on a Grayhound bus, starting a new reality once again.
The last batch of photos from Herb Pharm: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2146825&id=6901865&l=31325b6bab
Significant culture shock can be expected.
When I remember that this is it, it's really over, I feel like parts of me are leaving as people depart. The people who I have learned to live around- and therefore with and even through- may never make an appearance in my life again. In fact, experience has proven that I won't see most of them ever again, and perhaps only ever hear from a few.
Leaving the "We" of doing everything together, and reclaiming the "I" that we were initially hesitant to let go of, each of us must now get to know themselves again as we realize how we've transformed since we were last outside of this experience.
The blackboard has a few scraps of messages left from when we communicated through it, and where the lost and found has been written in the past, Missing are instead names of departed interns. It is like looking at our group's tomb stone, it's identity unraveling, no longer present in this moment. And the empty tincture shelf looks like a ghost of it's former self.
Walking up stairs I realized my ears no longer needed to be perked for certain voices, or chance encounters in the hallway. Most of the rooms are empty now.
Jars are still out in the kitchen, and the drying rack is full, but there are no eggs frying in a cast-iron, nor are dull knives chopping garlic; no hands are washing a dish, nor making tea. Nobody's reading books and nobody's upstairs either. Nobody's frolicking in the grass through a rainstorm, nor sunbathing, nor doing yoga, nor panting from jogging club, and no abdominals are being made phenomenal. Nobody's watching a movie, no Pandora Radio-station to be heard singing on the computer. Our speakers are gone, and work is over.
I wonder how long my calluses will hold.
The house is silent save one conversation in the yoga room and the buzzing of the still-overflowing refrigerator. And though I craved a silent moment just a couple days ago, it's too loud to sit in comfortably right now that it has arrived in absence.
I wonder how I'll reflect on my aloneness, when I'm sitting in the house tomorrow morning, one of the last to go, and then as I roll off to Portland on a Grayhound bus, starting a new reality once again.
The last batch of photos from Herb Pharm: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2146825&id=6901865&l=31325b6bab
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
