Ghiro Tondo: Magical Moments on the Family Farm in Italy

Northern Italy, near Lake Como.  A scramble up a rocky trail and a path that winds up into the mountains will take you to Ghiro Tondo.

When I found Ghiro Tondo on HelpX and e-mailed Ruby, the farm-mama, she said I was nutty enough to enjoy life on the farm. 

Look at this place.  Green trees as far as the eye can see, and alps in the distance, fog humbling their grand presence.  A duck pond, which the girls enjoyed more than the ducklings.  A simple warm house decorated with mosaics on the outside and murals on the inside.

Scraps of paper litter the floor.  Joy, 5 years old now, asks incessantly for “Disegnas!”  The volunteers who were here the day I arrived (and left the next) told me about a book I could use to copy the designs, and Joy fingers the pages carefully before deciding which disegna she wants me to draw.  “Something easy,” I tell her, but it never is.  I begin drawing and her face twists in disapproval.  Sometimes she scratches out my failed design; sometimes I do.

In time, and with lots of practice, I improve.  I outline and she colors.  We make puppets from the popsicle sticks left over from the girls’ ghiaccioli.

the disegnas

Joy & Jess

I stay in a yurt, painted the happiest orange you could imagine.  One night, their friend Cristian stays.  I have music playing on the speakers, but I turn it off with the lights.  In Italian, he tells me I can leave it on.  I tell him the animals will be our music.  Crickets and cicadas chirp and the duck family rustles beneath us.  An occasional dog barks.  If you listen close, you can hear the stars breathing.

In the morning Cristian tells Ruby he was waiting for the animal music.  Ruby translates this to me, and I am doubled over in laughter.  “I meant music from the outside world!”  He thought I had a CD, and waited for it to come on, only to look over and find me sound asleep.

“Questa sera,” tonight, I tell Cristian, laughing.

We drive to the other side of the mountains and walk to pick wild blueberries.  Amy and I take up the lead.  She kneels to try and catch every grasshopper.  We don’t talk much, just hold hands we we walk, and switch when they get too warm.

Near the end of the walk, she sits on every stone large enough to hold her.  Her eyes meet mine and she sighs, tired.

lake como

Eventually we catch up to the group and pick berries in the hot sun.  A few more kilometers and we’d be in Switzerland.  Maurizio, another family friend, tells me Switzerland “Is like one beautiful garden,” but I am glad to be in the wild with this family, for now.

I had planned to leave for Switzerland to enroll in a Vipassana course, but I didn’t quite make it.  The bus never came, so I ended up back at the farm, and stayed for another two weeks.

Was it fate?  Or just the incorrect bus schedule I got from Ruby?  Maybe both.  😉  Thank you, Ruby!

Life at the farm was simple and sufficient, which isn’t to say it was easy.  Eggs came from their chickens, who wandered free; milk, butter, yogurt and cheese from the cow, Amma, and her baby, Theresa.  Sheep were moved every so often so they had new grass for grazing and enough shade.  Animals were tended to, as was the garden and land.

Food came from the garden, from neighbors and friends, from shops who couldn’t sell the products.  Food came from Sam’s fiery hands, deft in the kitchen, playful and sober.  Cooking is his art.

homemade pasta and pesto

Reggae blasted through the house as we played with girls, swept up paper scraps, and washed mountains of dishes.  Hot water came from a fire you had to stoke every few minutes, and the soap was no joy or dawn, but a soap the family made.  Washing dishes was often a greasy occasion, but nothing harmful went down the drain.  I learned a lot, too: ash paste (ash + water) and pasta water both help cut the grease.

When we weren’t washing dishes or picking berries or splashing in the stream, we tried to watch Zeitgeist from the pink futon, but it never loaded entirely.

Mostly, though, I got to be with the girls.

me and vida

I sang spirituals, folk songs, and mantras as Vida fell asleep in my arms.  When she was really tired, she warbled, a song that vibrated from within.  Then her breath slowed and her body heavied in my arms.

In the beginning, my heartbeat quickened as her naked legs got closer and closer to the steps on the porch.  A true free-range baby, she crawled and tottered around naked and with a smile on her face, putting things (the dirtier the better) in her mouth, exploring her beautiful world.  Eventually my heart beat relaxed as I did, and as my connection with her deepened, so did my trust.

happy as can be, at the top of the steps.  ooh baby baby it’s a wild world!

Joy & Amy

I miss these wild girls and this amazing family.  The girls peed wherever they pleased; scooped into the mud from the duck pond and “washed” the rocking horse with it; were free in their bodies and on the land.  And for kids who run around half (or wholly) naked most of the time, they had more wardrobe changes than Cher.

Joy corrected my Italian, and helped me with pronunciation.  We communicated beautifully, a blend of my broken Italian (at least 65% hopeful Spanish words) and their broken English.  We learned to count in both languages; we can both go up to at least 11.  But most of the communication came from a different place.  We didn’t need words.

And for 2 1/2 days, we didn’t use many words.  Ruby offered a small Vipassana for us when I missed my course, and we stayed quiet and smiling for a few days.  I even got to wear tank-tops and make eye contact.  The day I took the kids to the lake wasn’t as quiet as the others, and when Cristian arrived we spoke some under the stars.

Have I mentioned the stars here?  The sky is spherical, a dome scattered with bright light.  My neck hurt from craning.  Some nights fireworks from nearby summer fiestas sounded in the distance, a couple of evenings treated us to thunder and lightning.  

Fresh air, crickets singing, and stars.  These might be the only ingredients to a happy life.  

Oh, and this:

Amy, Ruby, and Vida

And this:

Joy, Sam, and Amy making pasta

And this:

I am steeped with gratitude for a wonderful couple of weeks on this farm and with this family, sharing moments of presence and laughter belly-deep; chasing the girls and the chickens; sharing wine over dinner and tea in the afternoon . . . and for the mountains of dishes, because enlightenment (or so they say) comes sometime before, after, or during the dishes.

I love you my soft-world tribe, my dead-fish-flow tribe, my nutso tribe.

I’ll be back to finish Zeitgeist.  Let me know when it’s loaded.  😉

Colors of Umbria

I couchsurfed with a lovely couple near Perugia, and these photos are from a walk we took near the house.

We also took a day trip to Assisi, which has charm, cobblestone, and of course, cathedrals.  Oh, and a castle, too.  It is the city of peace.

Views from the castle.

We sorted (and ate) many apricots from the family farm.

After couchsurfing, I stayed on a farm and explored the area on a rusty old beach cruiser.

Though I have no pictures of sunflower fields, there were many.  I had this romantic, idyllic desire to see fields of sunflowers, but in reality the shriek of yellow nodding heads made me feel a bit seasick.

And that was Umbria.

A Quick Update from the Chestnut Forest

In Northern Italy, working on a farm with a lovely nutty crunchy granola family.  Holding a baby who feeds me fists of peach.  And what is more perfect than the blush of a perfectly ripe peach?  Watching the duck family and listening to sheep, who sound like drunken sailors or disgruntled old men with garbled dentured speech.

On my way to Switzerland tomorrow for a Vipassana meditation course.  10 days of sitting with my own mind, in silence and without communication of any kind, including eye contact.

Sexy dress prohibited (a.k.a. tanks tops, leggings, etc.).  For that matter, sex is prohibited.  Luxurious bed prohibited for the second-timers.  No technology, music, writing or reading material.

Doesn’t this remind you just a tiny bit of rehab?

See you on the other side.

I am doing this all in the wrong order.  I should be telling you about blue blue seas and the brine of sweat and olives; about the ride we hitched with an old man, his grandson, and many water bottles; about the trance chanting.  That was Greece, and I will tell you about it soon.  For now, Italy.

A friend of mine who lives in Rome warned me I would fall in love.  At the very least, I have a little crush.  Rome, you are my type — gritty and full of heart.  When I walk the streets I am assaulted with the smells of spring, flowers blossoming, pollen ripe; and then, the smell of hot pavement, urine.

My heart opens and closes like the rising and falling chest that contains it.  I see women in head scarves kneeling, hands in prayer position, on the streets.  A boy with quiet eyes wanders the metro with his accordion.  He plays what sounds like ‘Get On the Floor’ by J-Lo.  I don’t give him anything.  Men whistle low and slow as I walk to my hostel in the night.  Ruins are everywhere, sun bursting through the Colosseum.  An Indian man selling a laser light flashes the neon green on the Pantheon.  

I threw a coin into the fountain.  I sat on the Spanish steps.  I have seen far more seagulls than pigeons.  Mountains on gelato dripping down cones.  I paid too much (45 euro too much) to listen to the crackle of our tour guide through my earpiece and shuffle slowly with millions of other sweaty people in the Vatican.  It was the only ‘site’ I paid for.  I don’t like tours.  I don’t spend 45 euro on anything, except maybe train tickets.  What was I thinking?

This was a terrible idea.  You can see that now, can’t you?  I nearly had a nervous breakdown.  To be fair, most of my life experiences almost result in nervous breakdowns, but this was up there with the skiing incident.

It was worse than Disneyland.  You couldn’t enjoy anything.  And, if I am being honest, I can only look at so many naked angel statues and exuberant Jesues, so much God and gold.

In the Sistine Chapel, shoulders and knees are supposed to be covered, people are supposed to be quiet, and no one is supposed to take photos.  It was buzzing with chatter and the quick glare of camera flashes.  I walked through quickly, searching for the exit sign.  Exiting the Vatican was an event in and of itself.  Being outside felt like a breath of fresh air, even if it was 38 celcius.


On the plus side, I now have many creepy, religious, and geometrical photos to show you.

For some travel advice, if the line is several hours long to get into the Vatican museum and Sistine Chapel, the line is not what you should worry about.  It is the amount of people that will be inside.  I would seriously reconsider visiting if it is so busy.  It is not a pleasant experience.

Buy a fan from the guys who keep flapping fans in your face.  It feels like harassment, but they are onto something.

Also, the prime time to visit Trevi Fountain?  After a winning soccer match.  Drunken jubilation and street brawls mean the Police shut down parts of the city.

The city was drunk on futbol.  I watched the game from the bridge to Trastevere (the beyond) and Italy was fierce.  Italy won against Germany, and the city went wild.  I ate pasta at an outside cafe as taxis and motos coughed by, the horns incessant; boys arm in arm bouncing sloppily down the street.  The waiter, who stood by the special sign, did not look amused.

The party continued.  There was dancing on buses, flags waved and worn as capes.  Traffic was blocked.  Soccer balls were kicked high from the crowd.  Music blared.  I got a little high off it, so much passion.  I can’t wait for Sunday.  If Italy wins, I predict an earthquake.

I made a wish at Trevi Fountain along with a million other people.

As usual, old men are very eager to help me with things (like directions, or buying bus tickets), and just as eager to ask me out for coffee afterwards.

As usual, I have had some misadventures.  I won’t get into details, but I have gained a deeper understanding of my own strength.

Rome, I love you dearly and all, but I’m off for a smaller town tomorrow.  Ciao bella.

A Visit to Visegrad

So I took off for Visegrad yesterday.  The Danube, like many things in life, is strikingly beautiful when the sun hits it, and muddy upon further inspection.

I took a ferry across the river and into Visegrad, which is a charming town that winds with the river.

There is a castle at the top of the hill, but I only had ballet flats, thanks to rule # 2361 when travelling: don’t be too prepared.  Normally, I am not much for rules, but I follow this one to a T.  No way were those puppies making it up the hill.

Look at this rusty green-capped building!

Pisti, whose qualifications include film afficianado, Hungarian literature teacher at the gimnazium, and my Hungarian tutor, took the same train as I did to Budapest.  Thank goodness (or really, just thank Pisti), because I didn’t really know where I was going.  No big surprise there — this is my usual state.

Dragon cloud about to chomp down on the moon!

I am tree, hear me roar!  Or at least, look at my scowl. 

Now that you’ve seen dragon cloud and grumpy tree, let’s move onto the main event in my Visegrad stay: the jazz festival.

I saw a local flyer for a jazz festival, with a free show in the park, and I was stoked.  My usual self/universe-congratulatory dialogue started: “Wow, my life is so great!  This kind of thing is always happening to me!  A jazz festival on the day I am in Visegrad?  Shucks!”

I walked the path along the river, strolling past families splashing in the water and 2,000 too many couples sating their appetites for love (a.k.a sucking face; PDA is pandemic in Hungary) on picnic blankets, and that’s when I heard it.

I would know it anywhere, and you would too.

.

.

.

.

.

You Can Leave Your Hat On

It totally makes sense that they played this song, this jazz classic, because hello! we’re at a jazz festival.

Oh my god, Hungary, you make no sense!!

!!!!!!!!!

Let me set the scene for you.  I was too entranced (or maybe dumbfounded) to take pictures.

We are in a “park” which is really just a patch of green grass.  About 20 white plastic lawn chairs sit in front of the stage, and around 10 vendors are selling clothes, pottery, and sausages.

On stage, a guy who can only be described as “beefy” wears a black Harley Davidson t-shirt that hugs his mound of a belly, and a rock-star grimace.  He thrusts his white handkerchief in the air before using it to wipe his forehead just above his glasses.  He is trying to be Eddie Vedder, and it is not a success.  To back him up, we have Bandanna-Man, a guy with long sandy brown hair covered with a black bandanna.  He wears camouflage cargo shorts and his head rocks up and down as he stands in the power stance.  He could be 14 years old, playing air guitar in his living room, and I kind of wish he was.  Apparently, so does everyone else, because the applause is pitiful.

The drummer and bassist complete the band both musically and aesthetically.  The drummer has impressive 70s-style-hair: long sun-blonde curls (I smell a perm) and the bassist is clearly the most bad-ass of them all.  A shaved head, AC/DC shirt, and tattooed sleeves.  They cover classic rock songs with gusto.

Where am I again?  In Hungary, right?  At a jazz festival?

Suddenly I am not too sure.

But either way, I’m amused.

I was positively charmed by these hillside houses. 

I walked through the town to a local cemetery.  Two women tend gravestone flowers.  Teal plastic watering cans hang by their elbows, next to a hose.  Jo napot kivanok, a woman smiles to me.  I do the same.  I am looking at all of the names and the dates, overgrown flowers pushing their way to the sun.

What I am really thinking about is the Holocaust, about all of the names and dates we don’t know.  I have been reading Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees, and I am queasy as I walk through the cemetery.

I wonder whose flowers she is tending.

I heard a story on NPR about a woman in Maine who goes to the cemetery to scrub grave stones, the shock green and black of lichen disguising the names.  She spends hours each day scrubbing.  At the time of the interview, she had cleaned over 1,000 gravestones.  I wonder who will kneel in front of her grave, scrubbing.

Ljubljana

In early March Kathryn and I spent a couple of lovely days in Slovenia.

  

After hours (how about 8 of them) on trains, we rolled into the train station on a Wednesday night.  We had reservations at Hostel Celica, which is a converted prison, and has been dubbed one of the best hostels in the world.  Was there a misprint?  After a short walk from the train station, we find the hotel.  It is like a hipster convention.  I am the only fleece jacket surrounded by ironic nerd glasses, skinny jeans, and cardigans with tiny buttons.  Music is blaring and we’re not sure how to make our way through the crowd to the reception desk.  Where is the reception desk anyway?

“Maybe it’s over there,” I say to Kathryn.

“That’s a bar.”

Q: How do you know you have landed in a party hostel?
A: When you confuse the reception desk with a bar.

There were even wine glasses on it!

Kathryn and I were slightly traumatized by the sea of hipsters, and I asked to change our reservation to just one night.  We are old grannies, or at the very least, tired teachers, and this hostel was not going to cut it.  It actually did feel like a prison.  Instead of denim jump-suits everyone wore clothing from H&M, and their hands were shackled to cocktails and cheap beer.

We pushed through the crowd to our room, hysterical with laughter.

. . .

The trip to Slovenia began with the tUnE-yArDs.  After my brother introduced me to them last year, I intended to see them in LA in the fall before I took off for Hungary.  That didn’t work out, but when I saw that they were going to be touring in Eastern Europe in 2012, I said jokingly that I would just see them then. So, I did it.

They played at this arty funky grungy venue, during Ljubljana’s Queer Festival.  We shoved to the front and we were inches from the stage.

Kathryn and I were the only Americans there.  “We love you!!”  Kathryn shouted.  “That sounded like an American,” the lead singer said, eyes searching.

“It was!” Kathryn called back.

Good times.

And let’s not forget Kiurki, the unfortunately unforgettable opening act.  She was a noise DJ.  I am sure she was very good, it’s just that the noises were so noisy.  Her set sounded like planes full of cows crashing.  Kathryn has a video, which I will share with you when I can, lucky you are.

Ljubljana is covered with graffiti, and this was my favorite and sums up my feelings exactly.

We spend our days wandering the cobblestone streets, drinking coffees and eating pastries at sidewalk cafes, and indulging.  Slovenians are incredibly sweet, and the trip was a welcome change from life in Szeged, although we both missed home. It’s a good feeling, to miss home.

Lock your love bridge.  Lovers come to seal their commitment by attaching a lock to the bridge.  It’s pretty cute.

Lovin’ the bike lock.

I miss you, Ljubljana.  See you soon.

Vienna, you’ve been good to me & the New Year.

Nine days in Vienna and I was such a bad tourist.  I didn’t take many pictures, I didn’t visit museums, I never left the hostel before 11 am. I did see a palace, but only from the outside, which apparently doesn’t count, and the closest I got to Mozart was the pub next door to our hostel.  So, it appears that not much was checked off my list.  And still, I have stories to tell.

Silly little me thought I was going to Vienna to see my friend John from Peru.  It made sense, as he does live there, after all, and we planned my visit.  However, when I was there, he was gone, and then when he was back, he was unreachable.  Weirdly, how-ever-many-times-I-tried-to-reach-him unreachable.  Somehow it was so not in my cards that his card was missing from the deck — much like the cards we played with at the hostel.  The intention of meeting with him and the possibility of sharing time and love and intimate human connection got scribbled on someone else’s card, and this is all I will say directly about the matter.

I just want to speak to you in poetry about this trip to Vienna, I just want to use this crazy English language in ways that won’t make sense unless you were there deep into that night at the hostel or having tea and talking about God, or sleeping and coughing and crying on the couch.

It is amazing, isn’t it, how many places we can go by only going to one?

I meant to go other places, but I couldn’t leave Vienna.  It was like a magnet that kept pulsing in my direction, keeping me glued to the cobblestone and kebab stands, to the markets and the hostel, to the fast and slow feet moving on the streets.  I kept intending to check out, to travel somewhere else, and each day, I would say yet another batch of goodbyes to my hostel friends, only to see them again the next morning while I was paying another 14 euro for my bunk.

One day, I really did try to leave.  I checked out, which is an important first step, and I even went to the train station.  After Schniztel, of course.

P.S., Steven, I had blood sausage!  Toast with toppings is a specialty, apparently, and it was so delicious. 

You might guess that I missed the train, and then the next train had a middle-of-the-night middle-of-nowhere layover, which sounded cold to me and kind of dangerous to the woman selling the tickets (which was a whopping 63 euro, more incentive not to buy it).  Mostly I had this tug that didn’t pull me anywhere in the direction of the train back to Szeged but I had to start doing practical things like “looking at my options” because it was December 30th, I had nowhere to stay, and eventually I had to get back to Szeged in order to start work on January 3rd.

In the train station, on facebook, hoping to connect with this elusive John (because what better timing for him to come out of the woodwork than the night where I am bed-less?), I see my friend’s post:

Ruurd van Ruiten

back to HU tomorrow :-)))

Like ·  · Friday at 6:37pm near Wommels, Friesland · 

• Kathryn Metz and 2 others like this.

I was totally joking, but Ruurd was not, so it’s set: he is happy to pick me up in Vienna on his way home from visiting family in Holland.

It is this enormously funny blessing.  I am cracking up at the perfection.  I walk back to the hostel, just thinking “hey maybe a room has opened up…” and it hasn’t, but I am home here.  I adore so many of the guys who work there, and the feeling seems to be mutual.  I can stash my stuff and hang out, and I am told in whisper-quiet-voices that maybe there is somewhere random I can sleep, but I will have to wait until S comes on for the night shift.

There is no sleeping, I am too high.  The night is ridiculous.  My life is ridiculous.  We research the cause of snoring and precipitation levels (and at one point, S mistakenly googles “participation levels, Yachats, per year”) and watch youtube videos.  We eat lots of cheese and suck on cough drops.  I am shaking my head as I write this because it sounds so strange and boring.  Cheese?  Cough drops?  Precipitation levels?  We say early-morning goodbyes to travelers taking off for trains or planes, smiling at these humans who look like hermit crabs (if hermit crabs wore backpacks), suited up and still crackly and crusted with sleep.  Behind the counter, where I am sure I am not allowed, there is a nice perspective.  I have discovered that I like to be in this position: pointing people in the right direction, meeting people in saturated minutes . . .  It reminds me of the morning shift at the Drift.  When I wait tables in the morning I feel a weird sense of responsibility to start people’s day off right and it changes me a little bit.  I feel like it’s not out of place if I call people “darlin” in the morning which is awesome for me (because it is always my dream to be the southern belle waitress, but I’ve never felt old [or southern] enough for it) and I like to be the one giving people the simplest things they need: smiles, coffee, pet names and small shoulder touches when appropriate.

Anyway.  I change clothes and sneak out in the morning before the shift changes and wander Vienna.  The sky cannot decide what time it is.  It is so blue and dark it is hard for me to paint it for you, but if you think of hair so black it is blue, just hold that picture into your mind, and then think of hair so blue it is black, and you will have the color of the sky.  It is lit up from somewhere, and it holds a light that doesn’t pierce through but glows softly from under the color.

I didn’t capture that sky, but here are a few others as seen by my camera:

The rest of this morning is not so exciting, just a slow soaking up of my last few hours in Vienna.  I am achingly tired and I pay a lot for a breakfast so that I can be inside and drinking hot tea and writing in my journal.  I buy lots of fancy tea to bring back to not-so-fancy Szeged.  I wander back to the hostel so that I can grab my backpack and then I head off to catch my bus to the airport so I can meet Ruurd.  I meet another girl from Singapore, who coincidentally was also staying at my hostel, although we never met, and she wasn’t in her bed last night. She says I should have stayed in it, and we laugh, but her eyes are sparked through with tears.  She is not ready to leave Europe and while we talk on the bus ride little tears keep oozing out.  I give her some Rescue Remedy spray and a hug, we exchange e-mails, and she offers me the possibility of an ESL job in Singapore.

I meet Ruurd.  We drive home.  And now, I am back in Szeged.  Weeeeeird.  I slept through the New Year, but not through the fireworks that lit up the sky here.  After being up for over 30 consecutive hours, I am happy to be sleeping in my own bed, and after 9 days in Vienna with friendship and connection and fun times, I am determined to make Szeged feel like more of my home.

  

Christmas market owls.

Maybe this new years business is getting to me (well hey there, 2012!), but I want to ditch the realities for the metaphors.  And didn’t I promise you poetry?

Even after all this time and not for lack of trying I am still a human with sticky honey fingers just making a hot mess of everything, but I am growing so fast I think the whole world must be singing to me.  I am bursts of buds and blossoms, I am so soaked through with rain and sun, sinking deeper into the soil that sustains me.  I am surrendering to the frost that chills me over and closes me like a fist, and I am saying yes to the sun who flirts with my lashes til the petals open and light tumbles out.  In my eyes you can see the nectar, that sweet spot of honey where the bees want to go.  And that night oh how they were stinging until the tears came.

So here I am again rambling with these nonsense words.  In 2012 I want to only be as sensible as I need to be.  Can’t the rest be fun and games, poetry and sing-song?  Because all we’ve got is time, and even still, we have no idea how much.  So ok, Rikle, I’ll do like you do and love the questions and I’ll be myself since the rest are taken, and I’ll do all those bumper sticker things that are annoyingly cloyingly cliche but important in living ‘the good life’.

This year, Simon says: “Love more.”  And even though from some dark corner of the room you might hear “Stop!” listen real close and you’ll hear it’s not from Simon.

Christmas Eve in Vienna: Cathedrals, Texas Hold ‘Em, and Getting Left at the Altar

Bad renditions of Christmas carols play at the hostel bar as we drink on Christmas Eve.  I meet Francesco, half Italian, half Colombian, with a giving smile and sparkling eyes.  You can tell he is on fire.  I meet Eric, a tall American man who is drunk from chugs of beer and too much time in the war.  He talks about death like it is nothing, the flip of a coin.  His hands move quickly and his mouth is over-exaggerated twists, working overtime to get words out.  I listen with eyes growing watery, listen about Afghanistan and tanks of natural gas and the “bdmm-bdmm-bdmm-bdmm-bdmm” sound he makes to mimic an automatic weapon as he tells stories of death, over and over.  Suddenly I cannot listen anymore, and I excuse myself to the bathroom, needing space from hearing about war I know exists, but I don’t want to hear about it tonight, not on Christmas Eve, not in Vienna.  I want to talk to the Brazilian boys, I want to make youtube requests to the bar tender, I want to drink more red wine and sing terrible Christmas carols by the piano.

We go back and forth about whether or not to attend midnight mass.  Barry, an older Irish man who is here because “I knew there would be nothing to do” so he can study for his second major: environmental engineering, leads the crew — me, Francesco, and the drunken Eric, but the church around the corner is closed.  I am dreading walking into a church with Eric, this drunken obnoxious man who is swearing every three words, and Barry makes an executive decision.  He grabs my hand and we run for a taxi.  I am defeated, not drunk enough or maybe too drunk, past the point of caring — “I’m over it,” I tell him, but he insists.  I’m in Vienna, it’s Christmas Eve, and he’s taking me to the cathedral.

Side streets in a smooth taxi, we talk.  He pats my head, which I don’t appreciate, and somehow, the subject of veganism comes up.  He tells me he is vegan a few months out of each year.  I ask him why.  With a smile he says he can’t tell me now, he’ll tell me in the morning.  There is something strange about this.  He says it like it is a card he has been saving to use at the right moment.  Is this supposed to be so mysterious that it woos me into sticking around long enough to find out the reasons behind his sometimes-veganism?

We arrive at the cathedral, which is an open vaulted space.  I smell sage and the cool backs of rocks.  It is a cave, and I hear the clicking of shoes, the rubbing of coats against jackets as we humans weave quietly in and out of the mass.  I can’t see anything, I can’t understand anything, but I am drawn closer, filling up the space other bodies leave for me as they exit.  I am tired and I am wondering how people belonging to a religion that claims to love God and love their brothers and neighbors can take part in the Holocaust.  I think, how many people in this church believe that they are saying?  How many of us are blindly following without knowing or caring where we are going?  How many of us are living that truth of ‘when you pray, move your feet.’?  My mind wanders to cynicism, and it doesn’t have to travel very far to get there.  People shake one another’s hand, saying “Peace be with you” in German I believe, and one man turns to me, pauses a breath of a second as if to register that I do not quite belong but here I am anyway, and shakes mine.

Near the end of the service, they play ‘Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming’ and I am thinking about my grandfather.  This is the song he, my aunt, my mom, and my grandma always struggled through on Christmas Eve, after too much egg nog, and it seems fitting that it plays.  He is here, in this church, in this instant.  He is the hum of singing, the notes swooping like birds.  The service closes with Silent Night, just as our Christmas Eve always ends, and I sing quietly in English, harmonizing with everything around me — the cool air and the warm breath, the sage smoking and the sounds of coughing, voices in German, the muddy organ, and the promise of God.  

One by one, the lamps above are turned off, and the purple glow of lights come on in their place.  I wait while families and tourists with cameras file out and take pictures, cameras tilting up to the ceiling.  I walk up to the front of the church.  I don’t know what I am looking for, but there is no time to find it.  We are being ushered out of the cathedral.  I dip two fingers in the holy water and cross myself.  It seems right, a blessing of dewy hands over my heart as I head out into the night, which is gray and quiet.

There is more to the story, less poetry and more re-tellings.  Barry is nowhere to be found, I am alone in the middle of the night in the middle of Vienna, waiting outside of the cathedral.  He doesn’t come and I curse him under my breath.  I find a metro, the right metro, and I am reminded yet again of what this Christmas trip means for me: my independence.  With leaps of brave independence come small gifts: I see Rafael, the Brazilian music-journalist who writes for Brazil’s Rolling Stone, on the metro.  We sit together and walk back to the hostel.

I am disillusioned and ready for bed, but M (the English hostel bartender) and S (the Austrian front desk man) are playing Texas Hold ‘Em (in this moment, I am missing Elena), and the invite me to join them.  We are shits and giggles, betting with shelled peanuts and wasabi nuts (these are worth 5 euro).  They give me the bag of peanuts and I lose terribly; my nickname is Greece but the boys bail me out.  The material for jokes about nuts is endless.  “Nuts up!”  “Let me just reach into my nutsack here…”  I drink more wine and learn a few words in German.  We talk about everything, we stay up ’til the morning in the hostel lobby, and I work on my poker face.

I love my life.  I love my life.  I love my life.  Even though I often feel some sort of variation of getting left at a cathedral, I am finding more and more that I know how to get home, and the thing about that is, my home is always changing and I never know what will be waiting for me.

This is my new mantra: I am home.  I am home in every moment, no matter the geographical location, because I am living in my heart, which is full like peals of belly-deep laughter.  When we let go, and when we trust that there will be somewhere soft for us to land, we can just be in that woosh of falling.  Falling deeper into self and out of ego, every moment and every day is a new beginning for us.  And maybe this is a broken record, the same old song and dance of getting lost and getting found, and maybe there is no succinct way for me to end this, to connect all the dots.  I am flushed, and this year, no matter if my hand is winning or losing, I am reaching into my nutsack and going all in.

So on that note, Boldog Karácsonyt! Frohe Weihnachten! Feliz Navidad! Merry Christmas!  Whatever you celebrate, may you celebrate peace and love.

Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen

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.

31.Aug.09: In Which I Almost Milked a Cow and got Engaged.

There´s this family I teach every afternoon. I visited their farm yesterday after class to milk a cow. Jennifer, the younger one, brings me a noisy piglet, telling me to hold him tightly like a baby. I do. The cow I am to milk doesn´t have any milk after all. They invite me back this weekend, they invite me to the river, to eat soup, to sit by the fire. I do, but not until Jennifer, Kevin and I bring fat, fluffy sheep up to the farm, pound wooden poles into the ground, and leave them in the dark field. We all sit by the fire, talking and laughing. We talk about life in the United States, life in Ecuador; they tell me their brother, Fabian Freddy, is working in Italy. He is a good person, they say, with a degree in Engineering. We could get married and I could live in this house, sitting by the fire and milking the cows. I could take care of their parents; they have a house down the road that only needs windows and doors. Can he cook? I ask. Rice, Jennifer tells me. I am not sure this will work out. Jennifer brings me his University ID so I can see his photo although it is outdated. ¨Do you like this bracelet?¨ Marta asks. Yes, it is beautiful, I say, a bracelet made of thin orange thread. She tenderly ties it on my wrist. Comprometido! she cackles. Engaged, ooops!

The people are strong here in Salasaca, they tell me. Yes, I agree. The women. We laugh, but it´s true. Mamitas and Abuelitas carry heavy bundles of hierba and plant on their aching backs, bare feet padding down dusty roads.

My students teach me Quichua. It is their turn to write on the whiteboard, to give me vocabulary and correct my pronunciation. Small hands show me how to move my mouth. I can say small words; good morning, thank you, you´re welcome. I can´t seem to remember ¨hello¨ but I haven´t yet given up hope.

There is a hammock on the porch and when the sky is clear I can see the volcano. Dan plays fiddle when the stars are out and Jose is lending me his guitar. I was sick this weekend and the crew who went to Baños brought me back a small ukelele I named Patito. Sim and I have started Singing Club. Our reportie includes Lauren Hill and the Beach Boys. There is talk of a barbershop quartet. Look out, Salasaca! Here we come.