Swirly Girl

Still Above the Clouds

There's nothing like getting settled in my seat, ready for an almost-six hour flight home, and immediately hearing, "We don't know where our pilots are," from the flight attendant. 

Hmmm...that seems like a fairly significant thing to overlook as flight preparations are being made, but what do I know about running an airline?

Later, as we approached Los Angeles right around midnight - about three hours beyond what was scheduled - I could see a layer of fog hovering over the west side of the city, lights twinkling not far below.  Fog hugs the coast like this quite a bit during this time of the year.  Known as "June Gloom", this is when the mornings are soft and gray, and the sun takes its own sweet time burning through and giving us a glimpse of blue skies.  For a few moments, as we began our descent, it almost looked as if Los Angeles were underwater, and I felt like I was making my way into another world, maybe even another planet.

As our altitude decreased and I watched the city come into clearer view, I thought about how peculiar, unnerving and curious it sometimes feels to move between worlds.  As much as I travel - and love to travel - I don't know that I'll ever quite master it.  There is always a certain discomfort I go through in those moments between one place and another, and every transition has its own unique flavor.  There are bits and pieces of exhaustion, jet lag, euphoria - over all the joy I might have just experienced as well as the relief I feel at the thought of sleeping in my own bed - gratitude, longing and desire - desire to go back, have more time, do more, do less, stay home, run, sleep, sit and create. 

Maybe the illusion of Los Angeles being underwater wasn't so much about Los Angeles as it was about my own self - about feeling like each of my journeys away from home creates a certain sense of drowning.  I realize drowning might, at first, seem like a frightening analogy, but when I imagine myself in this kind of immersion, it isn't about being overcome to the point of annihilation, but about surrendering and sinking into everything that is before me.  It is a visual representation of my wanting To Take What I Am Given, and when I travel, I am always given a lot.

This morning it is gray and everything outside my windows looks quiet.  June Gloom is in full swing.  But today I am savoring the soft skies and appreciating the way it encourages me to move slowly and walk gently.  I am still making my way back home, still not quite here or there.

“Like sudden blossom on the naked trees
Memories shoot; the place is all alive
With questing thoughts that like Spring-quickened bees
Find and bear back remembrance to my hive.”

~ Julian Huxley, from the poem The Old Home

Heading East

[Photo taken in Big Sur last week.]

Before each of my travels this year, I've managed to get a few posts scheduled to go up while I'm away, but no such luck this time.  I begin my journey to Squam Art Workshops early tomorrow morning, so will be back next week with stories and images from a magic haven by the lake.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."  ~From A Course in Miracles

Heaven on a Stick

[Taken in Big Sur this week.] 

I have been back home for only about two hours now, having just returned from a lazy, blissful stretch of a vacation in Yosemite and Big Sur.  It feels too soon to try to expound too deeply upon what this time away from everything meant, but I could not resist posting a little something as I begin my journey through the many piles of laundry that now sit waiting for my attention.

(Update:  It is now one hour later, and I have been writing in between folding laundry the entire time.  Clearly it is not too soon to share what this trip was about for me, as you'll see.)

A woman named Tina and her husband Kenneth sat down next to us last night at the bar of our resort and caused quite a stir as soon as the staff noticed they were there.  People were coming over to give them hugs, everyone excited to see them, and it was obvious they had been making regular sojourns to this particular part of the world for a long time.  Within five minutes we started talking to them, and that conversation took us all the way through dinner, dessert and even some time during breakfast this morning.

We talked about classical music, opera, ballet and art.  We shared local restaurant tips - as it turns out they live right here in Santa Monica.  We waxed poetic about Big Sur, good food, Jacqueline Du Pre and...life.  There might have been a break here and there to, you know, eat, but the main course of our dinner last night was not the halibut or the pappardelle - it was this conversation, and it was divine.

Towards the end of the evening, we started talking about what it means to make a committed choice in a world where we are taught and encouraged to follow our daily urges like a pinball - to pursue, chase and grasp, and believe that the grass is always going to be greener, sweeter and more satisfying somewhere other than where we are.  And in the midst of this conversation, I noticed Tina looking up adoringly - and I mean adoringly - at her husband as she explained that sure, there could have been other loves here and there, but she loved Kenneth.  And from there Kenneth agreed, and before too long they were both looking at one another, touching each other's faces and saying things like, "I mean, look at her - she's heaven on a stick!"

Heaven on a stick.

Never, ever, will I forget that moment.

Kenneth and Tina have been together for nearly forty years.  They are originally from the U.K., so I am sure it isn't too difficult to imagine how their accents only added to the charm and magic of our exchanges.  Their passion for life and for one another was like a galaxy of shooting stars, and as I walked back to our room for our last night in Big Sur, I felt like I was being carried on a magic carpet woven by their energy.  I had a hard time falling asleep I was so overwhelmed by their light, their joie de vivre.

And they live in Santa Monica!  Come on!

Kenneth and Tina were two people in a handful of new friends made on this trip, friends I know will continue to be in our lives.  People who I met, and then immediately felt a strange anxiety over until our contact information was exchanged.  These were people I couldn't dare say good-bye to without the information necessary to stay in touch with them.

I know all of this sounds corny - and maybe it was simply because I was in Big Sur, where it is easier for me to be totally open and get immediately, absolutely smitten.  Maybe in Big Sur I just walk around with little hearts in my eyes, and the fog that blocked our view of just about everything for most of the week - which was cozy and magical in its own quiet way - also managed to seep into that part of me that sometimes believes I need to approach the world and other people with my guard up.

I have fled to Big Sur in moments of absolute panic, in times of peaceful celebration and for the feeling of calm that only Big Sur gives me.  And, oddly, I have never become friends with anyone during any of these visits.  So maybe this week was the week to make up for all those other visits when I snuck in and out without leaving much of a trace.  Maybe this time in Big Sur was meant to teach me that it doesn't always have to be about escaping, turning inward and being, in a way, invisible.  Maybe I needed to be reminded that friends appear in all kinds of unexpected places.  In forests, over coffee, in a place some of us like to call Heaven on a Stick.

Five Things

Five Things:  Berlin

OK, this is kind of a re-cap of the entry I posted about my visit there, but I can't resist giving one more shout out to my favorite spots in this fascinating city. 

1.  The East Side Gallery

2. The DDR Museum

3.  The Stasi Museum - which I actually did not get a chance to visit, and I was totally bummed.

4.  Kado Licorice Shop

5.  The Lives of Others - watch this riveting film and you'll understand why I wish I could have gone to the Stasi Museum.

Copenhagen Hipstamatic

Home

[Two women walking in front of one of the murals of the East Side Gallery in Berlin, where I spent most of my last day there last week.]

Back home, here for less than 24 hours.  This trip felt long, like I was away for a month.  Our first afternoon in Amsterdam just over a week ago feels so far away - the colors in my imaginings are already washed out, the sounds are muffled.  There was so much in between that day and right now, and it all feels like a blur.  As I've unpacked, started laundry, and walked all over my house getting things in order and put back in their proper place, every detail has felt more stark than usual.  The line separating my computer from the desk it sits on is strong and precise.  I want to touch everything and feel its existence.

On every trip - no matter how longed for, beautiful or fulfilling - I always, without fail, have a moment where I would give anything to close my eyes and be back in my own home.  The desire to see and experience different parts of the world will always tug at my heart, but I am beginning to understand what this always-present pull towards home means - that I need my home, and all the routines that go with it.  I am not one to plan the details of my life too far in advance, and I thrive on adventure and spontaneity, but I also need a certain foundation of calm that is based on ritual, routine and organization, whether I am home or anywhere else (it takes me about two seconds flat to embrace routines wherever I go.)  When my husband and I were on our honeymoon and fell madly in love with a bartender named Leo at Harry's Bar in Florence, we proceeded to go there three times that week.  We became regulars!  Last week, on our last night in Copenhagen - when we could have gone to any number of great restaurants - I wanted to go to the little spot near our hotel that was popular with the locals, the same place we went the first night, and I wanted the same appetizer.  In the midst of my travels - that are always teeming with beautiful details for me to swoon over - I also liked having little bits of familiarity here and there.

I have always had these two sides to me - the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants artist who makes a huge mess in my studio and the one whose after-creative-project ritual is to clean said studio top to bottom and get it all organized - and I need both to feel centered.  By creating a certain level of organization, routine and familiarity, I am free to stretch, reach and explore that much farther out of my comfort zone.  I love to travel, but I need a home to return to.  I love days when I can wander for hours without any agenda, but I need the days when I'm paying the bills, buying the groceries and making my own coffee.  I need to see the pictures on my shelves, and feel the softness of my own sheets; I need to be surrounded by these walls, and feel these floors beneath my feet.  This is where my heart soars, where everything I truly need exists.

The Journey

[Lights hanging in trees in Copenhagen.]

I can't count how many times it has crossed my mind that I haven't yet written about the night I saw Mary Oliver speak, which was just a few days before I went to Jordan.  And I'm amazed I haven't written about it, because I took her words, her voice and her presence across an ocean and a couple of continents, back home and everywhere else I've been since then.  After hearing her read The Journey aloud, followed by the barely audible gasp that traveled through the audience when she was finished, those words entered my bloodstream, and have been traveling with me ever since.  I think about that particular moment of the evening quite often, and every single time I get goose bumps.  In that instant, when she finished with the words "...the only life you could save" I think everyone in the audience felt we were in the presence of God, who was standing before us in the form of a tiny old woman in black who also liked to talk about her dog Percy*.

Mary Oliver explained that she wrote that poem more than thirty years ago.  When she said that, I marveled that those words somehow managed to float through the world and across time into my awareness.  How did I find her?  I don't even know.  But that night, hearing those words in her voice, I had a moment of perfection, and there was nothing more in the world I wanted, needed or wished for.

* Percy is also the name of the gardener/handyman who worked on May Sarton's property.  Coincidence?

~

I arrived in Copenhagen last night, and spent this afternoon wandering around, picking up some goodies and taking pictures.  On my way back to our hotel around 3:00pm, I suddenly felt the exhaustive effects of jet lag, three plane rides and five days packed with many miles on foot.  So I decided that at this particular point of my journey here in Denmark, it was time to be still.  I am now in our hotel room, feet up on the table, and a live band just started playing outside (kind of marching band-ish.  OK - I just looked out our window, and it is a marching band.  They are walking all over Tivoli Gardens, which is a kooky little amusement park of sorts just behind our hotel.  But I digress.)

As I was walking back to our hotel - before I made the decision to lay low for the rest of the day - I was thinking about how it has felt being on my own these last three days, for they have been the days my husband has been most occupied with work.  And I thought about an idea I've had for a long time, which is the notion that someday I might wander all over the world indefinitely, and might very well do that alone.  This is not something I am necessarily wishing for - it isn't a longing to fulfill something in me that I think is missing.  In other words, it isn't an idea I am attached to.  It is more like something that just feels like it might happen - that someday, somehow, and perhaps for reasons that won't be pleasant or easy - this is what I will do.  

Or perhaps I am only embellishing a truth that feeds me and gives me strength - that the responsibility for this journey I am on is mine to care for and manage, and no one else.  Maybe in these thought experiments I'm just adding a lot of exotic, challenging and fascinating backdrops.  Either way, these thoughts led me to Mary Oliver, and the night I heard her speak just about two months ago, when she read the words that are now with me everywhere - words that remind me that no one else can show me the way to my own truth, and that as long as I remember this, I'll never really be lost.  

"...there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper,
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save."

[Cue "Super-cali-fragi-listic-expi-ali-docious" by the marching band outside.]

Berlin Hipstamatic

 

 

Amsterdam Hipstamatic

 

Berlin

[Statues at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church, my first official stop today.] 

If Amsterdam and I had a mad, weekend-long love affair, then Berlin and I are taking our time getting to know one another.  You know, starting with coffee and taking it step by step from there.  Details such as days of the week and weather have a lot to do with this, as I was in Amsterdam from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning - each day filled with blue skies and sunshine - and arrived to gray skies and rain Monday afternoon in Berlin.  My husband had to race to a meeting right away, so I spent my first hour staying fairly close to our hotel on foot, walking with an umbrella and taking pictures with my iPhone.  (Speaking of which - my iPhone Hipstamatic shots have turned out great here in Berlin, but I'll have to post those images later since my husband got dibs on the charger and he's off in another country at the moment.)  Yesterday - my first day - I was feeling overwhelmed by Berlin, and how BIG it felt compared to Amsterdam.  

[Book and typewriter installation near a used bookstore on Graefestrasse.  Why did I go to that particular street?  To go to Kado - a tiny shop devoted entirely to licorice.]

Amsterdam is tall, narrow buildings that are actually sometimes crooked because they exist on canals, and there are little shops and cafes all over the place.  It feels cozy and inviting.  Berlin is big columns with big statues on top, the great big Brandenburg Gate, and big, solid buildings that look like they grew from the concrete beneath them.  This isn't to say my first impressions have been unpleasant, it is that I had to adjust to the contrast and an entirely different approach to seeing and experiencing the city.

[Near Graefestrasse.]

I was thrilled when I woke up this morning and saw clear skies.  Exploring in the rain would not have been a complete disaster, but it would have made taking pictures a bit difficult.  I headed out in the morning, and after a very kind woman helped me procure an all-day U-Bahn ticket, I headed to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church (pictured above).  A quick & dirty re-cap of my day after that:  Took the train to Graefestrasse in order to find Kado (found it  - bought some licorice treats), and had lunch at a teeny cafe nearby.  From there I went to catch another train, and as I was heading to the station I got sidetracked by an amazing open air market with a lot of Turkish shoppers (there is a significant Turkish population in Berlin, which I did not know about until I first started researching Berlin.)  The market had everything from fabrics to jewelry to cheeses to huge stacks of grape leaves, but the best part was the people watching.  (Those pictures are on my phone - I'll post them soon!)

[View from the Berlin TV Tower, one of today's happy distractions.]

I finally got on my train, and upon exiting the station, found myself staring at the Berlin TV Tower, which I had seen from a distance here and there throughout the city.  And then I thought to myself, "What's this?  I can go up there?  Excellent!" and off I went, enjoying a 360-degree view of Berlin.

[See the heart in the field?]

After this, I walked to the DDR Museum.  This was fascinating - it is a small, interactive museum that showed what everyday life was like for East Germans when the wall (as in - The Wall) was still up.  Visitors open drawers and cabinets to see examples of clothing, toys, books and other household items and there are descriptions of almost every aspect of the day-to-day experiences of East Germans at each display.  The weirdest part?  That this was still going on in the 80s - which is actually not so long ago.

[Feet shot!]

After the museum, I found a tiny bakery where I enjoyed a cappucino and cherry streusal - yum - before heading back to my hotel.  I think that is going to end up being my dinner, as I'm camped out in my room, probably not far away from sleep (and amazingly, not hungry, which just seems wrong.) 

Today's wandering - which took me all over the city - reminded me of my backpacking trips around Europe right after college.  I remember arriving in a new city by train, hunting down the best hostels, grabbing a croissant or loaf of bread, and doing my best to see and do as much as possible at every location.  Today I wasn't on a particularly hell-bent mission to tackle every corner of Berlin, but I got to experience what I love most about these days when I can wander without an itinerary - moments when I turn a corner or exit a train station and see something I didn't expect and decide in that instant to go check it out.  There were other sights I saw today that I haven't even mentioned yet, and they all happened that way - happenstance, or to put it another way, perfectly.

[Kids chasing bubbles in front of the Brandenburg Gate - pretty much in the exact spot where The Wall used to be.  What else is close by?  A Starbucks, of course.]

And tomorrow?  Tomorrow is still holding its surprises for me.