In Which I Go Home

Yep.  I'm going home.

Well, to one of my homes -- the ranch in California.  For that ever elusive chunk of time, a bit.

Two more nights in Szeged, and then I get on that plane.

Why?

More travelling felt like running.  I am tired of travelling and touristing, tired of castles and cathedrals, gelato and old heaps of rocks.

Okay, I'm not really tired of gelato.  Is it possible to get tired of gelato?  I highly doubt it, but just to be on the safe side, I would be happy to do some research.

Another adventure is in the works, but I can't divulge anything just yet.

Until then, avocados from the ranch, dips in the ocean, and trips to woodsy Maine and Oregon.  Seeing my family, the little ones not so little anymore; from wriggling in a lap to walking.

But before I am Stateside, I am saying my final goodbyes to Szeged.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to go eat all of the chocolates I bought as gifts (sorry) and look through photographs of my old students while I cry.

Or pack.

Yeah, maybe I should do that.

Either way, wish me luck.  I'm gonna need it.

Telling the Story, Dropping the Story

"Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world."  ― Ben Okri 

River of Words by Tan Shu Huey

So here is the story I have been anxious to tell because I don't want to get too identified with this part of existence.  I know we all have stories, and part of me loves to tell them.  It feeds my need for connection and playing with words, the poetry of it; it also feeds my ego, something I am letting go hungrier all the time.  

I want to live beyond names, labels, and identification.  I don't want to be anything with a capital letter: Adventurer, Teacher, Victim.  

Speaking of which, I'm not.  A Teacher, I mean.  Not officially anyway, because I quit my job.

It was a decision that was made, somewhere deep inside of my body and consciousness, a long time ago.  It was a decision that I nearly spoke in June at the Principal's office, and then actually spoke in July.  It came from my heart, the only place I know to trust.

And this is the only true practice: following the heart.  I once heard that, "If you lived in your heart, you'd be home by now."  Beautiful, yes, amen.  But like every piece of wisdom I hear, I just want someone to tell me how.  

Sometimes I am such a demanding human being.  I want direction and guidance, I want decisions to be made for me, I want validation and affirmation from the universe.

Only, as soon as I quit, I didn't feel the immediate rush of relief.  Instead, I felt doubt and dread and panic.  Thanks a lot, universe.  Some help you are.

I was making myself sick just chewing on the question of quitting or not quitting, and then once I resigned all in one rush, the mind revved its engines: Did you quit to escape the feelings of indecision?  What about the kids?  You can be unhappy anywhere you go, you know.  Maybe if you go back things will change, you will change.  What did I do?  What will I do?

Other stories started.  The ones about what I would do next, and how cool I am for quitting and getting free and starting something new, or how selfish I am for leaving the kids, or how about just how utterly fucking lost I am.  But amidst the clatter and back-pedaling and stomach acid there was a steady beat that anchored me.

My own heart.

Can I just tell you something real quick?  There is something so magical about following your heart.  I highly recommend it.  Sadly there is no guarantee things get easier or anything like that, no fast-track ticket to enlightenment, but there are other perks.  Like, knowing you are following your heart.  It's good stuff.

So that's what I am doing, and I am not sure, in this moment, where it will take me.  Deeper, probably.

For now, I am back in Szeged, experiencing a strange kind of paralysis.  It is my home and not my home.  I don't love it or hate it, although I am aware that to feel one or the other might make this experience exponentially easier or more difficult. 

Kathryn unpacks while I pack, and mostly make piles of things to give away.  I don't know what I am packing for, but I have a vision, and a week or so to let the direction come.

Everything seems to be up in the air, including me, but it's cool up here, so expansive.

And the future?  I can't make out the picture entirely, but it's looking pretty bright.

Enough words and stories for now.

www.internationalrivers.org

'

I have used up all
of my river.
Nothing is left but the stones.

Oona Lyons

Thanksgiving and things to come

Part one: Chicago.

Exploring the city, I am a tourist-in-training. I stop to take countless pictures, wander aimlessly, happy to be lost amidst all the architecture.

The library.

Statues that caught my eye.

The city as seen through "the bean."

Color-changing brick and city-scape.

And then, Part two: Thanksgiving with my brothers, Steven and Tommy, and Matt.

the menu:

Apple-tofurkey stuffing with homemade rosemary bread

Garlic mashed potatoes with broccoli coulis

Buffalo Brussel Sprouts (deep fried deliciousness)

Pumpkin Soup

Deep Greens warm salad with cranberries and cumin

Homemade cranberry sauce

Kale chips

And for desert, pumpkin and apple pies and a warm mulled wine.

Pumpkin soup and kale chips in the making.

Homemade cranberry sauce.

Lady Guadalupe watches over our table.

Buffalo Brussel Sprouts and spicy dipping sauce.

Tommy's plate (photo: Tommy Jackson)

And after the extravagance of Thanksgiving, a simpler meal: gluten-free pasta with balsamic-glazed brussell sprouts and basil with a side of braised turnips.

Part three: Hungary.

My plane takes off in a matter of hours.

I have a lot, as always, to be thankful for.

The next time I write I will be 8 hours ahead of myself, in a new apartment, city, and country.

Am I prepared?

I like to think so.

Although, the only Hungarian words I know by heart are apple, berry, and no.

So on the plus side, I can say this: "No apple-berry!"

I bet you can imagine the downside.

But my plane ride is 15 hours long, so baby, I've got time.

Cheers, guys. See you on the other side.

Figures

Number of days until I get on that damned plane: 5

Number of lego figures gifted to me so I "won't forget about" my 8-year-old cousin: 1

Number of times I had to remind my 10-year-old cousin this was the final goodbye so she should really turn off that Nicki Minaj video she and some friends had recorded so I could hug her goodbye because I had to leave now: 4

Number of glasses of wine consumed this evening: 2

Number of things left on my to-do list: 1746.3333333

Number of things completed from my to-do list today: 2.3333333

It does not look good, ladies and gentlemen. It does not look good.

So Many Ghosts

My neck hurts from craning in both directions; forward, back, forward, back. My departure is encroaching and the pressure it is mounting. I am looking with eyes stoned from too much computer time with trip preparations, and I am looking in every direction. I am forward-thinking to me in snowy Szeged, teaching English and stumbling through sentences in Hungarian, to my holiday break in Italy. I am imagining new futures, but I can't stop looking back to the past.

The past is a herd of ghosts, haunting me. They slither out of every box I open and drawer I slide unshut. They wrap around me while I sleep, burrowing into my dreams. I have anxiety dreams about teaching English or catching planes, but I also dreamt up an old boyfriend last night. This one is old-old, from when I was 15. Maybe this is because I found his sweetly punk-rock mixed cd he'd made for me while I was sorting through binders of old discs, but it haunted me. I am chilled to my bones with guilt and nostalgia, coulda-beens, shoulda-beens, never-beens. I think about everything I've ever done that I am not proud of, everything I never did that I wished I had.

When is it time to call the code? My lungs are tired from all this air I'm pumping into something that I already lost, that died to the past, that can't live with me in this time period - my present. How long am I going to press my sorry lips to all these cold mouths? How long am I going to act out of guilt?

And how do I let it go?

How do I let it go?

. . .

I am near-tears in grocery stores, holding Charlie tight to my chest and breathing in his baby scent. This may be is drastic, but I feel like my life is about to end, and everything that happens is happening for the last time. Sentimental in a supermarket, that's me this week.

As I drive on the 126, I breathe in the chipotle processing plant, that sweet smoke rising. I look out at the rows of lemon trees, at the ocean, and I think how far I will be from all of this, from my citrusy home.

This time, leaving feels much harder. Does this say something about my life? That I have more to lose? Or maybe, I shouldn't have scheduled my departure date to close to my menstrual cycle.

When I tell people I have a week and a half left before I leave, they ask how I feel. "Mushy," I say with a small laugh and watery smile, but maybe that adjective isn't quite right. I have a feeling my fire is burning down because I'm about to leave camp - I'm all coals and ashes, disintegrating, a slow burn before the atmosphere swallows me up again.

. . .

If I had to pick one word to describe how I am feeling: grief.

And then the ghosts arrive.

It's such a smooth B&E that I can't call the police. There is no hard evidence of their presence here, just my prickly skin and eyes, the stubble of last night's nightmares, a sinking feeling of guilt.

I don't know how to kick them out. I don't know what to do with them.

Wait, that's not true.

I know what to do, I just don't want to do it.

They come up when I am sifting through old letters; they are old hurt, failed relationships, actions of mine I wish I could erase. I packed them up, boxes sealed tight and labeled, and they sat, waiting for me. As soon as my knife made the incision in cardboard, I felt the bleed.

They had been gathering strength from their hurt, from unresolved tension, from being ignored and abandoned, and now they are here in my life with a vengeance.

I tried with slippery sweaty palms to collect them, to shoo them into a rubbermaid I thought would contain them.

So here I am, kneeling in front of the box, fingers on the edges, trembling.

On the edge, trembling.

"Okay," I say, and just like that, my fingers lift. "Okay," I say, "you are free."

So when will I be free?

. . .

Stickers and Squirrels

Today I purchased 4,984 stickers.

Do you think that perhaps I am over-packing?

...

The last time I traveled (and coincidentally the first time I traveled), I wasn't very well equipped. I didn't really know how to backpack, how to travel. I learned on the spot, through trial and error. I am embarrassed to say that I thought buying a piece of luggage (and this was a huge, boxy piece of luggage) was a good idea when it became clear to me, three months into my trip, that my 32-liter backpack wasn't cutting it. My Swiss hostel-mate at the time told me it was a horrible idea, but I didn't listen. What do you know, it was a horrible idea. Thanks Suzana, for trying to warn me.

After trying to lug it on and off of buses, hoist it into the trunks of taxis, and bang it up flights of hostel stairs, I ditched it. I decided to buy another backpack. It was taller than my first, and my sleeping bag fit strapped on the top, teetering threateningly. The problem was, my first backpack was shoulder-cut for a woman's body, and I had to wear it on my back. This meant that the taller backpack hugged my front, the top of the bag covering my face, the sleeping bag bonking me ever so often. I had to tilt my head to the left or the right in order to see where I was going. The drunken backpacker, that's what I was, bobbing and weaving in order to avoid injury or accident.

Ginna, Kate, Jess taking off for our hitching adventure through Ecuador and Peru. This pack on my back eventually moved to my front.

This time, though... this time I am prepared.

Maybe over-prepared?

For instance, I bought packing cubes. And 4,984 stickers. I feel like hardcore backpackers, off-the-beaten-path travelers are not allowed to buy packing cubes, or anything from Rick Steves. I have done both. What has become of me?

Is it possible that the fact that I am leaving for Hungary to teach English for six months (and with the intention to stay gone for a long time thereafter) has set in? I have my suspicions that I am part squirrel, gathering nuts, preparing for a bitter winter in a land unknown to me. It seems a natural reaction, to try and control anything you can when you're entering a situation that feels out of your hands. I, like most humans, prefer for my hands to be sticky, so that nothing can slip through their claws and clutches. So my hands are busy scribbling lists and entering my credit card information for countless orders of things I (think I) need.

Maybe I am still a drunken backpacker after all, sedating myself with sharpies, bulk toiletries, and stickers.

Ok, Universe. Have it your way.

Did you know I am leaving 2 years to the day to when I came back from my travels in South America?

I did not plan this, at least not consciously. Weird, right?

But this serendipity will all seem normal to you soon. This is how my life works. The ebbs and the flows, while often jarring, start to make sense once my head is above water again and I can see how everything is connected. Someone up in the sky is very clever, showing off with synchronicities and serendipities, sneaking signs into my life that leave me shaking my head and smiling.

I was all set to fly stand-by to Europe (with an unknown arrival, how stressful/adventurous), making my way to Italy to see my friend John from Peru (who might be in love with me, but that's another story), and hang out on farms.

And then . . . I discovered I couldn't stay with John. There went my landing pad. Now I know the only constant in life is change, and I didn't sign up for this adventure in Europe to have a strict itinerary and have "everything figured out"-but come on, I needed something to arrive to, a soft place to land. And I'm not exactly picky. I was happy to land with John, a guy I met at a street fair (the same one who invited me to the chicken fight), a guy I have spent a total of about 15 hours with, a guy who might be in love with me. Does this seem stable or secure? Maybe not, but I'm not picky, and it would have been enough. When he told me I couldn't stay with him (but he was looking for a place for the two of us to rent. Again, another story), I was floored. Or at least tripped up.

There went my small piece of stability, the cord that tied my dreams and visions to a tangible reality.

I freaked out and ate lots of ice cream while watching the Food Network . When Giada De Laurentiss came on Food Network, I had to change the channel. When she made "bru-skett-a" it killed me. I couldn't watch her scooping ricotta and stirring the penne. I couldn't listen to how one bite of this dish would take me back to the rolling hills of Tuscany. So I watched Chopped re-runs, and I ate more ice cream, and the depression [in the couch] grew deeper.

I tried to think of the bigger picture. I tried not to lose hope. Eventually, I put the spoon down and turned the TV off and slowly shuffled over to the butter-yellow piece of posterboard pinned to my wall. I had pinned it there a week or so ago, and it just sat there in all its infantile possibility. Eyes glazed over and ass numb, I began a vision board, gluing photos of sunflowers in Tuscany, writing intentions, and delving deep into the dreamy wildness of my desires for this adventure.

I also e-mailed an Osho meditation farm in Italy. I said, can I come? They said, Yes!

Ok, I was set again. I was back to listening to Italian during my commute to work and watching Giada whip up Italian culinary wonders in minutes. The farm was a go. Processing olive oil and processing? I was in. Trance dance, open communication, and working in the garden sounded a dream. Hey, it was my dream. I've got a vision board to prove it. But then again, nowhere on my vision board was Hungary.

Oh Hungary. You sneak-attacked me.

In the pits of my despair I had an intuition that said "Hey, go look at the job listings on Dave's ESL Cafe." I found a teaching position in Hungary. I e-mailed. The American director lives in Portland, and in my e-mail I mentioned Yachats, asking if she had heard of it. She had, she loved Yachats, it is her favorite place on the coast, and the Hungarian director visited and loved Yachats, too!

Did I want to come teach in Hungary?

Why yes I did.

So the ball got rolling, but it picked up speed faster than I imagined, faster than my brain could keep up with. Oh my tired brain, which has been knotted up in intricate prioritized to-do lists and the frenzy of pre-departure missives and missions. Can I just take a minute to say, Thank you Brain! Also an honorable mention to my guts.

Anyway. I wanted to come. I just didn't want to come so soon. Mary Rose e-mailed and said a position had just opened in Szeged in a university town, I could share an apartment with another teacher, did I want to start right away? It was tempting; a roommate, a beautiful city, teaching positions in the city and in outlying villages . . . But I was going to this Osho farm! Wasn't I? Wasn't I?

Oh, Universe. You clever fox, you. You knew what was happening all along. You lured me with the safety (and let's face it, potential torrid affair) of staying with John, and then when you got worried I was eating so much ice cream I would develop diabetes, you teased me with an Osho farm. You know me too well, don't you? You had me at "trance dance." But it was all a lie! A grand deception! A facade that hid the truth until I was good and ready.

Because guess what?

I said yes. Yes to Hungary.

And then guess what?

I got an e-mail from the Osho farm, who, even though they said Yes before, said No.

Ok, Universe. You win. I'm going to Hungary.

Thanks for everything, I will send you a postcard.

And in conclusion: Holy crap, guys! I am going to Hungary!

Chicago

Hey from Chicago. I am staying with the wonderful Matt and Graham in their cute apartment.  I do have a roommate, but she's pretty quiet and really cute.  Her name is Angelina; she's a hamster.  We've (Matt and Graham and I; not Angelina and I) been cooking together, eating out, playing games and showing off our smarts, watching Fleetwood Mac videos, and observing lent (some of us). M&G live in Pilsen, a largely Latino neighborhood.  It's sweet, and also a little bit sour. Perrrrfect.   

I am wrapping myself up in Chicago's gray skies and getting lost, staying in, sleeping in, wandering, cooking beautiful food for my working-class-friends to come home to, and sharing laughter and clever comebacks with the boys.  

Other things to note: I got sick (fainty, hotcold, etc.) in the airplane (partially dehydration, partially a low-level cold intensified by being onboard) and somehow this deli cashier at the airport tuned in to that because when I arrived at O'Hare he gave me a free banana and told me, "Take care of yourself."  

I am remembering to say thank you.  I have a lot to be thankful for.

 

an email regarding my travels:

Hey dear ones,

I am in the chilly and beautiful Chicago with a couple of good friends, transitioning into my trip to Cusco, Peru.  I leave for Cusco on Friday the 6th and wanted to send an email to check in with all of you.  I'm ditching my cell phone on the 6th but I will be reachable through email, facebook, and my blog (http://quetzalista.blogspot.com).  Pictures can be seen on my blog and also on my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/quetzalista

For all of you that aren't aware of my plans, I am embarking on an independent traveling journey to Cusco.  I will be taking a training course in order to be certified to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) in other countries.  The training itself will take 6 weeks; after that, I will go where the pull comes from (and hopefully appreciate wherever I am, all of the time, and hopefully listen for the pull, and hopefully count my blessings, and, well, you get the point!).  I am also going continue learning and experiencing Spanish (organically- through conversation and immersion; I can't wait to DREAM in Spanish!  I'll let you know when that happens... expect an email) travel around Peru (and other countries), experience new culture, set intentions, say yes, say no, and stay present, open, clear, and aware.  I might eat a guinea pig.  I'm definitely going to connect with Machu Picchu on a physical level.

I am positive that this will be a challenging and beautiful experience, and if you want to stay connected please feel free to email me, check my blog (which will be full of pictures and stories) and remember that we're always connected anyway, whether or not we email.  :)

I am wishing you every peace as you welcome the Spring, and I would love to hear whatever you would love to share.

Love to all,
Jessica

leave of absence, beginning of presence

So here's the scoop: I took a leave of absence from school and I AM GOING TO PERU THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH!

TESOL PROGRAM (languagecorps.com) BEGINS MARCH THE 25TH.
COMPLIMENTARY LANGUAGE SCHOOL BEGINS TWO WEEKS PRIOR.
CUSCO, CUSCO, CUSCO!

I leave in four weeks!
I can't believe I'm doing this.
It is going to be fantastic.
I might even eat a guinea pig or chichi, the beer that is fermented with spit!
Mostly I want to see chubby children cheeks and take pictures and speak Spanish and ride sweaty buses and ride a bike through town and meet magical people and adventure!!

I am planning up until Peru, and then letting future plans take care of themselves. I have friends and family to visit in all kinds of places, and many new people and places to meet. I would love to learn a handful of Quechua and remain open to all my new journey has to offer.

Much love and peace to you,
ALL,
Jess