Two Weeks

Here I am at the dining room table, drinking coffee, listening to the leaves rustle on the trees... breezes blowing in the windows, a green haze of sunlight filtering through a veritable forest of foliage, steady power, knowledge that the water is clean straight out of the tap, favorite Trader Joe's snacks in the fridge, laundry in the dryer. Everything is as I know it to be even though I have only been at this house for one month and a half.

This is Illinois. I was raised here. The dirt and the grass and the flowering weeds in the empty lots have a distinct and intoxicating smell that exists nowhere else on earth. The people look how I expect them to look, talk the way I have always heard, drive in the same bad ways as all the other drivers, eat where I expect them to eat making certain restaurants instantly popular, congregate for the same reasons, in the same ways with the same target picnic blankets. We all look the same. I can spot the Chicagoans in the airports now. You can just tell by the way they dress in black tops and blue jeans and the way they stand with cocky self assurance and the particular proportions of height and girth. These are my people.

I am leaving here to invest in knowing other people. People who belong to someone else, who mean home to them. I am not going to Europe as so many assume when you try to politely skirt the issue of voluntarily not having a job by saying you'll "be traveling". I am going to Mexico, a place I barely knew existed outside of mythical Spring Break Cancun, and the somewhere that all those Mexicans came from to live in Chicago. How's that for ignorant American? Mexico is just as North American as the US and Canada, and I know so little about all three. Yet I stand up and say I'm American as though that is different. There are approximately 900 million people (if you believe wikipedia) who can rightfully call themselves American and I can't see them because they are like my own face. I need to go far away and look back in order to have proper perspective.

I will have new people. In two weeks, I will have new people. I am not going to visit, I am going to live and to love and to be of a place. I am not going to be a US citizen on vacation, or a scholar doing research, although I will do both of these things. I am freely and fully accepting that there is a world which produced a human being who is more like me than most of my people. I am beginning to trust that what is foreign is actually kin.

This kind of blows my mind.

Pancetta and Peace

I had a wonderful dinner tonight with friends who are in the middle of life. They struggle and they learn and they remember. And then we eat pasta with pancetta in it. I am not certain, but I am pretty sure pancetta is really thick chunks of Italian bacon. Pause for effect... Right?

We leave, we come back and what should be full circle is sometimes retrograde. Our lives take us places and it is just like math, you can only move forward, positive accumulation of forward trajectory. But sometimes, the pals back at the ranch expect that you are the same person you were when you left. They are suspicious, they are unsure, they just don't know what you've been up to, so they assume you've been right there with them. Or that you are pulling a fast one. It takes some bravery to say "you have changed" and not have that connote a loss. It takes more courage to admit you do not have the same experience as someone else, especially if you are from the same home town. Humans find comfort in what is familiar, yet sometimes resent familiarity's limits. Humans sometimes fear that which is foreign, yet are attracted to the difference and the potential. It is a hard task to rebuild trust when returning to one's home town from valuable life enriching adventures. Humility, forgiveness and total respect for the growth and maturity of the pals who stayed put are necessary on behalf of the traveler. And the same for the life long residents.

Earlier, before dinner, we all visited our friend who recently gave birth to a beautiful girl. She is brand new, fresh and precious. She has a condition wherein her lower intestine has a portion that does not have nerves and so therefore cannot process the elimination of waste. Now I don't know how many of y'all have been around babies, but the biggest thing they do is poop. It is like life and death for a newborn and all the adults hover around saying "did she poop yet? is she pooping? make sure she poops..." So this is a big deal. And I am so happy to know this family and to be able to help them get through this rough phase until their baby can have surgery and poop like a normal baby.

I love life. Poop and pancetta, and all. (Wait, that is gross...)

GRIN

Well That Wasn't So Hard

Today's accomplishments include the following:

1) Resigning position at esteemed architecture firm
2) Receiving 3rd degree from father on actual intentions for trip to D.F.

Both tasks were so much easier than I thought they would be according to my anxiety and mole-hill-mountain-making. Those sweaty palms suggested that I might have had something to fear. I suppose it is just my respect for authority that caused me such trepidation. Speaking of big words... Little Bro, the correct usage of that word would have been: "Those screaming kids seem to be creating the prevailing background noise in this phone conversation".

It turns out that I have a pretty good plan, fairly well thought out, nicely funded, adequately supported and soon to be executed. I also have a dog on my foot. Belle the black lab likes to wedge my toes in the crook of her ear. She also likes to eat cheese and take dirty Kleenex out of the bathroom waste paper basket. I am starting to see a pattern here. It just became apparent to me recently that there are dog people and there are cat people. I don't know anything about bird, reptile, insect or amphibian people... but dogs and cats are so different. I like dogs, but I don't think I am a dog person. I used to be afraid of dogs due to a few minor maulings in my youth by the family Airedale-ish mutt, but I have had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Belle to get over all that. And, yep, turns out I dig cats as pets way better, box-o-poop included.

Where was I? Oh yes, pasta dinner... wait no, no, I was talking about accomplishments. The result of today's efforts is that I am completely free and clear to continue on my plan to see the world.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Cheeseburger Monday

I highly promote starting your week with a cheeseburger for lunch. It is the perfect food. Perfect, I tell you. All of your food groups neatly packaged and ready for consumption. And you can get one fast. Very fast, depending on your standards of quality.

Just make sure it has pickles on it, okay?

Lisbon Stories

As I mentioned earlier, here are some stories from Lisbon:

This weekend in Lisbon there is the festival of Sao Antonio, the patron saint of Lisboa. The streets of Alfama are all decorated with colorful streamers and little shrines to Sao Antonio depicted at the top of a set of stairs pouring out a jug of water that runs s\down to a little pile of treasure. The story is (well part of it anyway) the Sao Antonio helps women to find a husband. On Saturday the city will sponsor the marriage of twenty couples too poor to have their own wedding. The ceremony will take place on the steps of the cathedral (which is being set up with a temporary platform stage as we speak). The city will dress the brides in gowns and tux the men, perform the ceremony, drive the pals around in Rolls Royces and then give them some loot to set up their new life together like household appliances.

On Tuesday I got pooped on by an pigeon. Right in the eye, goggles notwithstanding. Antonio, our tour guide and chef, told me this was very good luck and alluded to a possible situation in which I might be lucky in love. And I am lucky. And I have love. And I hope I don't get some evil disease from Portuguese bird poo.

Ok, pals, the truth is I didn't do anything special in Lisbon. I just wandered around taking pictures the whole time and discussing the most important things in the universe with my new-found girlfriends from the hostel. It took me two days to figure out how to say "thank you". I ate at the hostel almost every night because I blew my budget on airfare. And it turned out that the home cooking there was much better than anything I had out at restaurants. And it felt like home, like going home to your parents' house and letting your sunburn set in while waiting for dinner. There were big soft rolls for breakfast and slices of cheese and tomato jam (which was awesome) and coffee that tasted funny, not ha ha but weird. There was sunshine, something I don't get much of in Chicago, and fresh air and internet access.

That was it. Every day was about the same, just new streets to wander. It was truly wonderful. I bought a few pieces of fruit and a couple of bottles of wine. I sent postcards for the first time in my life. I didn't have to do or be anything. I just existed.

It's not at the bottom, it's not at the top

Today I decided that the time has come. I'd like to play with the emphasis on this sentence for a moment. Join me will you?

THE time has come.
The TIME has come.
The time HAS come.
The time has COME.

Before explaining, I would first like to point out a few small things. Sardines are better out of the can. Sorry Portugal, I prefer when you can them and ship them to me. The locals can have the fresh ones. I can survive on cheese plates forever. Yesterday it was bread with brie and apricot jam. Today it is bread with the leftover brie and sun-dried tomatoes, capers and the aforementioned sardines. Some red wine to wash it down with and presto! dinner, or breakfast, or whatever.

Ok, back to topic A. The time has come to leave. I can go now. I was free to go a few months ago, but I was like a well trained animal who doesn't realize that the cage door is open. I was patiently waiting for the day when everything had come together, when I had reached a point of closure sufficient enough to counteract my "do not run away" edict. It only took 11 years, six boyfriends, four therapists, two cities, one confession and the arms of a sweet lovin' man to open the door. Nothing can stop me from going through it. I don't have to stay. I can go.

Until then, I am not really anywhere. This is a bit like limbo, hopefully enough people will pray me out of here. May my purchase button pushing finger be true when I book the plane ticket. It's better when you are moving.

USA

I am back in Chicago this evening, drinking Spanish wine and eating French cheese at the dining table of my good friends who give me shelter. Lisbon was tremendously beautiful and I have some stories to transcribe from my journal in the coming days. For now I will just say that I simply cannot be bothered to pick up the pace to Midwestern standards. I am on vacation slow, Lisbon time, and I do not care. I feel so relaxed and serene and this should not be spoiled. Pause for sip of wine... mmm, thank you.

I think I need to update my technological devices if I intend to blog on the road. I learned the term "RTW" for a type of travel taken in your life as advertised to young Brits. Never mind the "gap year"... I've decided that this is my gap year and I will be taking this time to follow some dreams and bolster my resume before I decide what I really want to do with my life. The only problem with that is I really already know what I want to do with my life, so the world travel is just reinforcement at this point. I digress. What I really need is one of those twee little laptops that slide right into your purse and are only useful for logging on and typing up some travel observations, because a blackberry is too small and slow to type on and paper is nice but it is hard to make photocopies and mail that stuff to people.

Next topic: flying vs. airplane rides. I have decided that I indeed enjoy winging about in the clouds. I like it, I really do. I do not like being on airplanes, though. Too dry, too noisy, not enough snacks, small children kicking your seat, neck pain when you fall asleep with your head tilted back, not so nice. But oh! the dreamy dreamy cloudscapes and panoramic vistas and piercing sunshine above the cloud cover. How sweet to be in the ether. I can't wait to get up there again! If only it didn't have to involve an airplane ride.