Where to begin.
This morning I woke up bright and early to go outside and enjoy the free wifi that comes in at my friend's house since he lives so close to the Camara. He left brighter and earlier to go to a wedding at the opposite end of the island, and I was getting ready to enjoy a full day of internet, Skype dates, food and rest on my own. Unfortunately, within five minutes of coming outside at 10am (3 hours ago) the wind blew the door shut, and I've been stuck in this tiny ass space since then. However, the internet just kicked in (finally) so I can at least amuse myself for a while.
I put on The Life Aquatic to stave off the claustrophobia. Halfway through, my friend called to tell me that he would be two or three hours later than he had expected, bringing my anticipated total time outside to six hours or so. Current status: hungry and kind of have to pee. Luckily my friend lives next to a restaurant owned by a deportee, who came out for a minute. I yelled at him and asked for a cheeseburger. They're out of bread, of course. Just as it was starting to sound so good....but anyway, now he's on his way to find a small child who is used to scaling walls and can go to the roof of this three story apartment building to break in and open the door for me.
Outcome pending...
Update: as I was sitting outside waiting for my friend to get back, a kid maybe thirteen years old or so came by asking if I was the one who needed help. As soon as I said yes, he started climbing the wall. In the time that it took me to even consider that as an "adult" I should tell him to stay put and find someone with a key, he scaled a three-story apartment building like it was nothing, came downstairs and casually opened the door to let me in. My hero! And now the door to the balcony is securely held open with a copy of War and Peace. Lesson learned: Americans are pansies.
Cape Verde
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
She's a good girl, loves her mama
To my astonishment, I found exactly one week ago to be the six month mark from the day that I woke up in my nearly empty condo, fanatically deconstructed and reassembled my luggage, and, bewildered, loaded 80lbs worth of my life into a taxi cab and sat silently watching the chaos of the DC metro and traffic of Port Republic fade into the distance and into memory. It is a morning and an assortment of feelings that I'll never forget. But as soon as I made it into that moment I realized I would survive it, and I knew that everything would be ok.
I've thought about those many moments that we anticipate and make ourselves sick over. They are huge moments in our development that usually involve leaving small parts of ourselves behind to grow into the new. I've wondered how often people carry through with a decision that they've lost sleep over and regret it. It certainly happens. But what if it doesn't? In elementary school I used to come down with cases of "the Thursdays and Fridays." I would call home every week right before music class and, initially, whine to my mother about how my throat hurt or how my stomach was killing me and I wanted to die. She would come pick me up and I would watch cable tv at my friend's house or go to work with her and eat pizza. Eventually she caught on.
It turned into pleading and begging because I couldn't sit through that class again. I always wanted to sing, but I never once had the courage to volunteer, so I begrudgingly sat in the back of the room with a recorder and a sorry rendition of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" with my heart beating out of my chest, knowing that this next moment, or this one, or this next one, could be that time that I ask the teacher if I could sing in front of the class and allow my life to change. It wasn't a decision that would make one day better. It was a decision that could have turned two days of every week for at least a year of my childhood from something to dread into something to be excited about and gain confidence from. It was a decision that I never brought myself to make, which I still regret, because now I can't carry a tune in a bedong.
Alternatively, in college I took an entrepreneurial course that culminated in a very formal presentation of the business plan that we had spent the semester creating-- cross-checking demographics and budget analysis, spending nights in the computer lab until we saw two computer screens and had to call it quits. I took the class because I had stumbled into a travel boutique in Paris that made me want to gather up everything I owned and open a store, and I realized that I had no idea how to do it. During the presentation at the end of the semester, the room was packed with small business owners and investors, and I was completely out of my element. The presentation itself was terrifying. But I did it, and I was still alive. I also realized that certain aspects of entrepreneurship weren't for me at that point in my life, and it allowed me to move on to different things without getting caught up in what could have been, which I'd allowed myself to explore.
So here I am, reevaluating my boundaries and fears and detriments, and realizing that I've spent too much time imagining them. Or, at the very least, letting situations define them for me, and not realizing that with a small amount of inner reflection and the courage to try, I could break them down in a matter of seconds. It's astonishing how much of our limitations are the products of our own minds.
I suppose the physical equivalent that comes to mind is skydiving. When I was in Switzerland, watching the Alps approaching from the open door of a plane, watching the color drain from everyone's faces and realizing I was about to jump out of a freaking plane, there was a voice in my head that kept forcing its way into consciousness, saying, "you don't have to do this." But I knew that I did. The work that I'd put into making the trip happen--the emails back and forth, the phone calls on the hostel phone, the amount of time and energy spent convincing the other party involved that he had to try it--had made turning back impossible. And despite my nerves, I was still smiling inside because I knew that I was accomplishing something that I'd always wanted to do.
The initial feeling of falling out of a plane isn't like anything that I've felt in any other context. There's a draw back, like reaching the top of a rollercoaster and looking down and trying to back up in your seat as the car slowly tilts over the edge. Only there's nothing there. Nothing. There is air to every side of you, and another blunt object that you're strapped to that can do nothing to stop you mid-way. You're committed, 3,500 feet in the air, there's no turning back. There is confusion, and a desperate internal and external attempt by every conceivable sense to find something, anything, that is there to help you. And then for no reason, aside from perhaps the understanding that there is no alternative to acceptance, there is just a calm. Beauty and an appreciation for life and this new spectacular view of it. The freefall by far is the best part of skydiving. Because it contains every emotion from start to finish that life should encapsulate.
The book I'm reading has a line that keeps standing out to me. It says, "life is untidy." In a world of people strugging to control their comfort, happiness, relationships, finances, bodies, thoughts, and even other people, I feel that sometimes the best thing to do is to embrace the mess. By all means, do the research and think things through, but if after all of that your heart is still beating, why not? If you take a wrong turn and need to backtrack, congratulations, you know something that you didn't know before. You'll stop wondering now. Life is a freefall! Life is always one step ahead of control. And it all ends the same way, so fall into it, and love the unknown for what it is: a chance to experience something new.
I've thought about those many moments that we anticipate and make ourselves sick over. They are huge moments in our development that usually involve leaving small parts of ourselves behind to grow into the new. I've wondered how often people carry through with a decision that they've lost sleep over and regret it. It certainly happens. But what if it doesn't? In elementary school I used to come down with cases of "the Thursdays and Fridays." I would call home every week right before music class and, initially, whine to my mother about how my throat hurt or how my stomach was killing me and I wanted to die. She would come pick me up and I would watch cable tv at my friend's house or go to work with her and eat pizza. Eventually she caught on.
It turned into pleading and begging because I couldn't sit through that class again. I always wanted to sing, but I never once had the courage to volunteer, so I begrudgingly sat in the back of the room with a recorder and a sorry rendition of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" with my heart beating out of my chest, knowing that this next moment, or this one, or this next one, could be that time that I ask the teacher if I could sing in front of the class and allow my life to change. It wasn't a decision that would make one day better. It was a decision that could have turned two days of every week for at least a year of my childhood from something to dread into something to be excited about and gain confidence from. It was a decision that I never brought myself to make, which I still regret, because now I can't carry a tune in a bedong.
Alternatively, in college I took an entrepreneurial course that culminated in a very formal presentation of the business plan that we had spent the semester creating-- cross-checking demographics and budget analysis, spending nights in the computer lab until we saw two computer screens and had to call it quits. I took the class because I had stumbled into a travel boutique in Paris that made me want to gather up everything I owned and open a store, and I realized that I had no idea how to do it. During the presentation at the end of the semester, the room was packed with small business owners and investors, and I was completely out of my element. The presentation itself was terrifying. But I did it, and I was still alive. I also realized that certain aspects of entrepreneurship weren't for me at that point in my life, and it allowed me to move on to different things without getting caught up in what could have been, which I'd allowed myself to explore.
So here I am, reevaluating my boundaries and fears and detriments, and realizing that I've spent too much time imagining them. Or, at the very least, letting situations define them for me, and not realizing that with a small amount of inner reflection and the courage to try, I could break them down in a matter of seconds. It's astonishing how much of our limitations are the products of our own minds.
I suppose the physical equivalent that comes to mind is skydiving. When I was in Switzerland, watching the Alps approaching from the open door of a plane, watching the color drain from everyone's faces and realizing I was about to jump out of a freaking plane, there was a voice in my head that kept forcing its way into consciousness, saying, "you don't have to do this." But I knew that I did. The work that I'd put into making the trip happen--the emails back and forth, the phone calls on the hostel phone, the amount of time and energy spent convincing the other party involved that he had to try it--had made turning back impossible. And despite my nerves, I was still smiling inside because I knew that I was accomplishing something that I'd always wanted to do.
The initial feeling of falling out of a plane isn't like anything that I've felt in any other context. There's a draw back, like reaching the top of a rollercoaster and looking down and trying to back up in your seat as the car slowly tilts over the edge. Only there's nothing there. Nothing. There is air to every side of you, and another blunt object that you're strapped to that can do nothing to stop you mid-way. You're committed, 3,500 feet in the air, there's no turning back. There is confusion, and a desperate internal and external attempt by every conceivable sense to find something, anything, that is there to help you. And then for no reason, aside from perhaps the understanding that there is no alternative to acceptance, there is just a calm. Beauty and an appreciation for life and this new spectacular view of it. The freefall by far is the best part of skydiving. Because it contains every emotion from start to finish that life should encapsulate.
The book I'm reading has a line that keeps standing out to me. It says, "life is untidy." In a world of people strugging to control their comfort, happiness, relationships, finances, bodies, thoughts, and even other people, I feel that sometimes the best thing to do is to embrace the mess. By all means, do the research and think things through, but if after all of that your heart is still beating, why not? If you take a wrong turn and need to backtrack, congratulations, you know something that you didn't know before. You'll stop wondering now. Life is a freefall! Life is always one step ahead of control. And it all ends the same way, so fall into it, and love the unknown for what it is: a chance to experience something new.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Volcano
So I climbed the volcano last Sunday! It's the highest point in Cape Verde. We were above the cloud line before we even started climbing. Cha is beautiful; very rustic and simple but there's a lot of character there. I can't load too many photos, so here are some of the select few:
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