Estamos en Espana! First Impressions of Things I Would Like to Do For the Month.

la mia amiga come se dice "lovely"

I’ve busted out. I’ve taken the plunge. Jumped the bridge. Is that even a phrase? However you want to say it (though busted out is a personal fave), I’ve made my way to Spain for the month of August. Now on my fourth day, it might be starting to sink in. Enough, at least, for me to consider the things I would like to focus on while I’m here.

— Try to learn some freaking Spanish. It’s horrendous how much you can forget.
— Try not to speak in Italian. Or some weird hybrid non-language of Italian and Spanish.
— Talk and feel like a fool.
— Carry a journal with me of notes and observations and lists of things I need for travels and here at the casa in Madrid.
— Write lists in Spanish. But write longer observations in English, because let’s not get ridiculous.

— Remember that this is real.
— Remember that I am here for twenty more days. Walk around slowly, get lost, sit in a park or a cafe for several hours and pretend that I really live here.
— Take photos of things up close.

— Travel outside of Madrid alone. (Perhaps nearer to the end of the trip after I’ve learned some of that Spanish.)
— Definitely see more playas.
— Take notes about the food! Cook Spanish-inspired things. Eat and drink and be merry.

This is definitely an on-going list, and I’m sure there are many more things I will add to it as I’ve been here longer. I still have no idea what to expect, and I am grateful for that. One of the main things this is about is exploring and living as things come to you. And understanding that living as things come to you does not mean living with everything that comes to you; it is understanding the difference between what is valuable to engage in and what isn’t.

(Unanticipated) Cushions, and How They Affect Us.

Let’s take a minute and appreciate our cushions.

I got into a conversation today with a professor on the topic of whether I will decide to travel to Madrid for the month of August. It is seemingly the perfect opportunity. One of my very best friends is living there temporarily and has offered me a place to stay, so the cost would be relatively incredibly cheap; I just learned my full-time position will end August 1st; my lease is up August 1st; and Mr. B’s Spanish class in high school (taken with same good friend) has given me so many fond memories that the positive associations with the place are astounding.
This isn’t the first time a felicitous opportunity of this kind has come knocking on my door. For that reason, as well as the obvious sadness of turning down something so potentially amazing, I’m desperate to convince myself to go for it.

When I told this to the professor — his name is Russell Epstein, and he is wonderful by the way — he agreed. “Go! Have I convinced you?” I sighed. I’m not sure. I’m so thankful for his encouragement. (If I don’t get it from people like him, I don’t know from where I would.) But there’s a small but undeniable wrinkle: where will this trip leave me when I come back? How will I manage the rest of the year after spending all this money at the start of it?
As the kind-hearted soul would be apt to do, Russell then began to brainstorm some ways that I could make it work. Ask your parents for money? Eat lettuce for the year? Get the CCN to host a benefit dinner? The quick spiral into ridiculousness made the inevitable impracticality of the idea seem even more clear. I admitted I couldn’t ask my parents for money. In fact, they are the ones who ask me for money. I just don’t have a cushion that could support me throughout the rest of the year

The closing sentence of my friend’s email, received earlier that day, went through my mind. “sometimes reality gets in the way of dreams.” And that, combined with Russell’s obvious change of expression, made the sadness of the reality even more heavy.

******

What is the word that describes the state in which something is so close in reach, but yet unattainable despite all your efforts and wishes?

******

Cushions can exist everywhere and for everyone. They aren’t just issues of privilege and power and social standing. They are the issue of whether we forego future worries in making decisions that might otherwise be perceived as too risky. And in that, they are also what allow us to persevere through tough but rewarding situations. The cushion is when you are working tirelessly on a big project and, when a sudden mishap threatens disaster, you call your parents to give you the boost you need to regain your cool and finish the job well. A cushion in my own life centers around food. When I was hardcore vegan, I became insatiably hungry. Thoughts of food and how to get full took up too many of my thoughts; it was tiresome to even walk; and I was in more ways than one overwhelmed. So I introduced a cushion: just once a week on average, a moderately sized serving of chicken. It was just enough protein to keep me going through the rest of the week. It alleviated my desperation. It allowed me to shift my focus from one of an inflexible and future-minded “where will I get my fill?” to one that allowed me to enjoy and explore more deeply the various other events of my day. Just that little thing, every now and then, made all the difference between a dire condition and a happy one.

The last thing Russell told me was, “more opportunities will come,” in what I believe was his way of helping me not get weighed down in the lament of this possible opportunity not taken. More opportunities will come, I know, and that itself can be a cushion of its own. If not Madrid, there is you here, with me, sharing my experience of not being in Madrid. There is the reticent calm in acceptance of things we can’t fully control. There is the appreciation of the mundane; the awareness of the steady and natural boosts of goodness from the world; and the constant motivation to do what we can to change the lived world and attainable dreams of (at least some) deserving others.

I thank my mentors and my advocates. Even those who don’t see themselves as this in name. They have been the cushions that have not just sustained me, but brought me to places further than where I knew existed. They have kept positivity alive. And their reliable presence has been showing me, slowly, that I might just be ok if I take that big scary risk.

Beautiful Women of the Year.

To the beautiful women of 2011, I have been thinking about you a lot lately. I could clearly be crazy, but I think it means something more than happenstance that you lovely ladies have been able to share with me, with no intent and only few words, some essences of your being that resonate with my future, past, and present selves.

Perhaps this means that I’m focusing on what’s important to me in the world, and, as the natural forces would have it, finding myself upon it.

To the woman in the Green Goddess cafe, nestled away at the chair by the counter which my arrival made even more crowded. With your calm demeanor, dark clothes, and solid-shaped rings, you waited patiently for an order that took too long. You were going down to the river for the festival. You, like me I think, got a late start. It was already 3 o’clock. You mentioned “interesting flavor combinations” and that “that dish looks heavy for such a hot day” in such a way that I could tell you had some wealth. You lived in Oklahoma now, which had “lots of poverty” and the cooks talked about you after you had left. It could have been the 20 dollar tip you left them when they comped your delayed order, or it could have been that you were just so naturally captivating. I went to the river, to the festival, where you said you were going too, and didn’t see you; I never expected to.

You, woman who set me first in trance, with your fully clad in floral cotton, tall, thin, frame. I noticed you in the airport from afar and as expected you sat next to me while we waited to board. I thought up close, you were even more fantastic. What wonderful bright green eye makeup, what lovely bone structure and gleaming white hair. I thought “surely, this woman’s on her way to New Orleans!” But you were not; it was to Hawaii with you, and your husband (who also had quite lovely white hair)…and I liked the sounds of the two of you conversing…….   When I got to my seat on the plane, you laughed that we were sitting beside each other again. You said “I was just thinking how funny it would be to sit next to the same person on the plane!” And I jumped inside because I was thinking the same thing. But then, I wasn’t sure if I was just making up that memory for the thought of it being so incredible. You said “the lord works in mysterious ways”, and I heard that phrase more often than usual for those several days that I was in NOLA. At moments both then and now, I thought you might be my fairy godmother; if I believed in those sorts of things. The way you slept on top of your husband by the end of the flight, his legs holding yours, gave me hope for an eternal love. I thought about you a lot that flight. I was sad and disappointed in myself that I took my way off the plane so quickly once we landed in order to catch a short connection, instead of saying farewell, take care, to you. I looked back a couple times, to try to catch your eye; I will have to believe that you saw me through your periphery.

The last of you beauties on that same wonderful trip only came to me as a beauty much afterward. You were a bit self-involved, with your nonstop drawing through that miserable flight home. Your bags overstuffed, items dripping down the sides. But the pencils and you that afternoon created on the page a young girl, eyes closed, lying somewhere. You were so open and deliberate with your creation. It was the only thing that the person stuck beside you for hours could see, and at times I thought you were drawing it for me; like you were showing me something of myself. You were to say, “Hi Jennifer, this is how loving and beautiful you are on the outside. You will be ok.” And you weren’t just showing me myself in the drawing, but also in your own actions. You showed me that I am you, an artist, for as long as I acted on a desire to put pencil to paper…… I remember I liked your earrings, and I knew you weren’t intending to be drawing “me.” But that was ok. I still believed in it.