"My soul is elsewhere, I'm sure of that. And I intend to end up there." -- Rumi

Monday, July 23, 2012

Reshaping. A Process.

I've been re-reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  It admittedly doesn't have the same oomph it had when I read it the first time, back in 2008 when I was still searching and at a loss without even being conscious of it, when I had not yet confronted my life head-on and begun to force it into something even resembling a shape that I could step into and still be able to breathe.

But there was one moment that stands out to me.  I had just started reading the book, on the advice of my Aunt Diane and my Mom.  From where I sat, drudging through my emotionally abusive relationship of a career and slogging through self-imposed credit card debt, high-tailing it off to Rome for four months seemed like an unimaginable dream.  I devoured it like heroin.  I chomped through Gilbert's Italy section, slurping up and then underlining every idiom, every description of pizza and piazzas.  (It made her transition to India a tremendous letdown.)

I remember staying up late one night and reading "What do you want to do, Liz?"  And I read about her impressions of the Italians' willful acceptance of hard work in pursuit of the ultimate reward -- the beauty of doing nothing.  It so happened I had also recently read an article about a sommelier who decreed most solemnly that champagne was the only beverage that should ever be served with smoked salmon.  And I decided that what I wanted to do (I was staying at my parents' for the weekend) was to get up early the next morning, go to Whole Foods for the appropriate ingredients, and then enjoy a breakfast of champagne and smoked salmon on the back porch.

So I did.

It was just one morning, nothing special.  I bought my champagne, my bagels, my smoked salmon, my cream cheese.  I came home and boiled eggs and sliced red onion.  And I read my new book, which at the time was beginning -- just beginning -- to unlock ideas inside my brain that I had never considered.

Looking back now, four years later, I see that morning as the moment when my life began to change.  When I began to... wake up.

Not long after that, I bought a ticket to Rome.  I say that like so many travel writers do, like it was easy somehow, but in fact I bought my ticket almost eight months ahead, in order to give me enough time to implement the new superstrict Excel budget spreadsheet I'd just made, and so get rid of my debt and also save up enough that I could enjoy my week in the Eternal City.  One week.  That was all I could afford, but I was going to make it count.

I planned for this trip like no one has ever planned before.  And I dove into Rome like it was... a city-sized lifeboat.  A lifeboat full of wine and lovely laughing Romans and 2,000 year-old priceless ruins in the middle of traffic.

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions, but in the New Year of '08-'09 I made the resolution that I would get at least one new passport stamp every year.  I made this promise to myself after the Rome ticket was booked but long before I would actually get to go, back when my last venture abroad had been almost eight years previous.

The next year I fulfilled my promise to myself and went to Eleuthera, in the Bahamas.  It was beautiful, and supremely relaxing, and I sat outside under my private little tiki hut and wrote like I haven't written since high school.  When I got back, I shared pictures with my co-workers.  I remember one colleague asking me:

"So, you just save up all year and then go someplace cool?

She meant it as a compliment.  I could hear the wistful envy in her voice -- after all, I had just been to the Bahamas.  But her words struck me like a jellyfish sting and I couldn't stop playing them over and over in my brain.  Over time, they morphed into this:

"So, you work all year at a job you hate in order to have one week being happy?"

It was also around this time that I posted on my LJ a list of things I liked about my job (I was trying to convince myself), and listed as Number One the extra week of vacation I had just been granted due to seniority.  A very good friend replied something to this effect:

"The thing you like most about your job is how much time you don't have to spend there.  There is something wrong with this picture."

A few months later something bad happened to me.  This thing was entirely my own fault, but it was Not Good and I responded to it by purchasing three paperbacks on amazon.com -- all of which were supposed to hold the elusive key and guide me through the necessary steps to living a life abroad.  Suffice to say I was disappointed at the content.

Six months passed.  I was still not living abroad.  I was still wretchedly unhappy.  After one particularly awful phone conversation/abusive screaming session from my boss -- the one and only Ursula -- I began a Hail Mary internet search for ESL positions abroad, that would take me with no experience and no TEFL certificate.  You (more or less) know the rest.

I will always be supremely grateful to Georgia -- for the time it granted me, for the graciousness of its people, for allowing me a place to escape to when I needed that escape like oxygen.  And yes, there is a part of me that feels guilty about not going back to Georgia like I had planned and promised.

But you see... I now have a chance to see ROME again.  And that, my friends, is something that I am simply not going to pass up.

There is a very good reason why I am flying into Paris rather than Rome, why Italy is the last country on my itinerary, and why Rome itself will probably be the very last city I visit, flying out of Leonardo da Vinci (what a name for an airport!) back to my real life and what will hopefully be my next step.  The reason is that I know that if I land in Rome I will very probably not want to ever leave it again, and instead of three months seeing as much of Europe as possible I will simply spend three months wandering through every Roman back alley, eating gelato and ordering la vino rosso della cassa y acqua frizzante, and being utterly, sublimely happy at my situation.

So instead I am saving the best for last.

I feel slightly foolish about the fact that the thing I am looking most forward to on my trip is visiting a city I have already been to.  But there it is.  I have made several lists -- things I will do my first night in Rome, and then, things I missed the first time that I will not miss during my second chance.

My first night in Rome, I will walk to the Pantheon.  I found the Pantheon by accident my first night that first time, and stood in flummoxed astonishment at my good fortune.  I will have a glass (or three) of wine at one of the outside tables at one of the many trattorias that line the Pantheon's piazza.  And then I will walk to the Trevi, seeing if I at all remember the way, if the streets feel even slightly familiar under my adoring rockstar-groupie-esque feet.  Gelato at the Trevi, of course.  In a cone.

And then, I will find the sodium-light bar that was around the corner from my old hotel, just up the street from the Colosseum.  Cocktails are not served at this bar.  Beer from the tap and house wine.  If they like you, they will pull bottles of liquor from under the counter and invite you to do a shot with them.  On the house, of course.  Last time, on request I taught my bartenders how to correctly say in English: "through the arch and to your right", these being the directions to the bar's toilet.  As a reward I was given a cookie.  The shots were later.

They won't remember me.  But I will walk in, smile, sit and order un bicchiere da vino bianca.  I will open my journal and not know how to begin.

You'd think by now I'd know the right words to convey how it feels to come home.

"Buona sera, amica.  I've missed the hell out of you."

Thursday, July 19, 2012

The Un-Plan. Also, Wheelie-Packing

Today was officially the first restless/bored/grouchy day since arriving home.  I guess I've settled in.

Remember this list?  I think I've gotten through maybe half of it, and have plans set to check off a few more, which isn't bad for the first month home.  I felt the need to look this up tonight, after a day of feeling like I was just not doing enough with my summer.  (Did beat my Dad handily at Scrabble earlier, which at least ended the evening on a high note.)

Chemicals are stupid.  I have nothing to feel grouchy about.  Earlier this week I bought a one-way ticket to Paris, which is easily one of the coolest things I have ever done.  It still seems weird to me that this is actually happening.  That I'm really going to go.  To Europe.  For three months.  With no plan other than to have as much fun as possible for as long as possible while being as frugal as possible.

Can anyone recommend a good hostel in Paris?  I also finally just registered for couchsurfing, although am still quite apprehensive about this idea.

I think I've got my France itinerary more or less sketched out.  Paris, Dijon, Lyon, Nice, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and across the border to San Sebastian, on the Spanish side of the Basque region.  Of course the whole point of this trip is to be spontaneous and adventurous, so I am trying my best not to plan to my usual obsessive degree.  I do not plan to make language flash cards, day-by-day bulleted itineraries, watch every documentary I can get my hands on, or purchase multiple guidebooks.  I will -- absolutely -- make at least several lists. But once I step off that plane at Charles de Gaulle, I will go where the cheap train or plane rides take me, as long as there is a reasonably acceptable bed on the other end!

After a long talk with my Mom... I'm also pretty certain I'm not going to be actually backpacking.  To put it frankly, I am old, and I see no reason to be humping heavy-ass shite on my back when wheeled suitcases have been invented.  Especially since I do own a suitcase already, and a decent backpack would set me back a cool $300.  It's just the fiscally responsible thing to do.  And it's not like I plan to be spending the night on any mountaintops -- or anywhere I could not roll a suitcase, for that matter.  (Or carry it for a reasonable [brief] length of time.)  Still going to pack as light as possible, given that I will be arriving in Europe at the end of summer and leaving at the beginning of winter.  But yeah.  I've christened it "wheelie-packing."  I think it rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Seize the time.

"Seize the time.  Live now.  Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again."

I've been quoting that to my parents all week, until they're visibly ready to kill me.  A small part of that animosity -- on my mother's part at least -- stems from the fact that one of her favorite sayings is "Now is always the best time," and she probably is irritated at the idea of Captain Picard saying something more eloquently than her.

I've decided to postpone -- for a semester, or longer -- my return to Georgia.

Instead, I'm doing something possibly even more crazy, even more ill-advised (especially if "you" refers to my parents).  In the beginning of September, I'll be embarking on a three-month solo backpacking trip around southern Europe.

So why -- and how -- did this happen?

Now, one thing that has always pissed me off is reading travelogues and having the writer say something to the effect of "And so then I got on a plane to Borneo", with little or no explanation whatsoever as to how such a luxury was so ephemerally available.  They come across with this unspoken idea that the only thing you -- the average anybody -- need in order to embark on a life-changing journey to Borneo is the sudden willingness to just give up things like jobs and bills and life, and take a'hold of your gumption and the stones to take an occasional cold shower and eat a cockroach.

As someone who has often dreamed of escaping to Borneo, or Italy, or even Georgia, I can tell you with authority that it takes a lot more than gumption.  This shit takes money, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter how much gumption you have.  You aren't getting on a plane to Delaware, let alone Borneo.

Which is why I feel a responsibility to come clean and let all my nebulous global readers know that what I am about to do is only possible because I recently received an entirely unexpected legacy from my incredible grandparents.  If I had not been the humble, grateful, entirely floored recipient of said gift, I'd be planning to haul my butt back to Georgia this autumn as planned and be not the least bit unhappy at this prospect.  But that's turned out to be not the case.  Instead, I have an opportunity.  I have choice.

I've always said that if I had the chance, I would just travel, for as long as possible.  I finally was able to figure out that travel is what makes me happy, makes me alive.  I'd stagnated for way too long -- and possibly that's made me a tad overeager, I admit it -- but I have an opportunity now, and I'm not going to waste it.

Three months, alone.  On the move.  France, Spain, Malta, Greece, Italy, and wherever else I can go after that should I still have anything left in the warp nacells.

I talked to my Grandmother about my plans while I was in New Jersey last week.  She was all for it, 100%.  And I had more than one relative assure me that my Grandfather -- the one who passed away last autumn and whose seashells are currently sitting on my bookshelf -- would want me to take this chance, take this time.  This being the same Grandfather who sat me down and told me that the one thing I absolutely, positively, had to do in Rome was to order a Campari and soda on the Piazza Navona, I find myself agreeing.

Make now always the most precious time.  I've wasted so much Now already, and that's time that no one ever gets to have back.  Wish to heaven I'd figured all this out seven or ten years ago, although I would never be able to appreciate it the way I do, had I not had those years in between.

So maybe this is a foolish decision.  Maybe it's dumb to tear off to Europe instead of building my international resume or giving my 401(k) an infusion, or some other practical, responsible thing.

Don't care.

Gonna go.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The First Days

So I've stepped away for a little bit.

Part of that is the simple need/desire for a bit of a break... as I attempted to explain two posts ago, there is an almost-unbreachable disconnect between what what then and what is now.  Also the obsessive desire to connect with loved ones far away has somewhat ebbed, being as many of them are no longer far away, or at least were within huggable, pettable distance for a while.  And then... then, of course, is simply the fact that I have been quite busy, living and enjoying my largely responsibility-free days (and nights), reconnecting with friends and family, reading books with pages, cooking, and enjoying proper GnTs with plenty of fresh tonic, ice, lime, and Beefeater gin.

This blog was set up as a medium for me to explore and muse over my life in Georgia, and -- as I am uniquely, unceasingly aware of, both waking and sleeping -- I am not in Georgia any more.  For the moment, I am not traveling anywhere (except that I do happen to be currently in New Jersey, which will get more attention later).  Life has (blessedly) become about absorbing comforts, about slipping into old routines.  I can take a shower whenever I want.  So far, the only challenge/irritation has been a tedious 90 minutes spent at the DMV, during which I taught my father to play Angry Birds.

Life is good; I am happy almost to the point of absurdity.  All this makes for an extremely pleasant passing of hours, very little of which has been devoted to things like email, blogging, or learning Georgian numbers past 15.

Over the summer, one thing I do not want to have happen is for this blog to turn into some sort of Livejournal-esque chronicling of "what I did last weekend."  I don't think that will happen; for one thing, I've been devoting a lot of headspace to planning a band-new, entirely unexpected and previously unthought-of adventure, that I will likely unveil in the weeks to come.  I'm extremely excited about it -- if all goes as planned I will have more than my fill of both challenges and new experiences.  At the moment, things are still quite new and un-set, and I don't want to jinx everything by crowing prematurely.  But stay tuned... it is entirely possible that life is about to get very... nomadic.

But for NOW, I'm afraid that this is going to be a "what I did last weekend" post.  (This one, and the next couple to come.)  Or at least, what I've been doing since I've been home.  Some of it's been pretty noteworthy.  At least if you're me.

As I mentioned previous, my wonderful family -- my mother, father, and sister -- greeted me at the Dulles Airport arrivals gate with tears, hugs, and a Starbucks grande latte.  There's no way I can effectively communicate how it felt to see these people again face-to-face, wrap my arms around them, hear their laughter.  We drove home and Mom made polenta with sauteed mushrooms and spinach, and Dad grilled tuna steaks.  We opened a bottle of white wine and sat out on the screened-in porch, my favorite room in the house.  I know I keep saying this, but it was like I had never been away.  Things settled into place with a comfortable ease that comes from knowing that this is how everything is supposed to be.

First meal back home!!
The next day, I was supposed to be recovering from jet lag, but instead drove into DC with my sister and her friend to have drinks at The Willard and then meet some people at a beer garden.  We took a short tourist walk and said "Hi" to Obama at home.

Mohito at The Willard's Round Robin bar

The next day, our family held a big gathering at the house to welcome both of us girls home at the same time!  I sadly did not take many pictures, but it was an excellent afternoon and I got to see so many friends for the first time in way, way too long!

And then the next day after that, we celebrated Father's Day.  Eve and I got my Dad a gift certificate to his favorite pizza restaurant, Victor's Pizza.


Tasted as good as it looks!

June 20th got off to a sad start; my Dad and I drove my sister to the airport, saying our farewells at United's departure terminal.  The best thing about being an expat, and having a sister who is also an expat, is all the amazing places we both get to see, and visits we sometimes are able to make.  But the worst thing about being an expat, and also having a sister who is also an expat is that there is simply never enough time.  Visits of four days or one month, never enough time.

But then Dad and I met Mom at a local Mexican place for lunch.  So I was at least able to soothe the pangs of goodbye with jalepenos.  Inadequate solace, but better than nothing.

I felt so blessed to be able to have the four of us together again under one roof, even if it was only for a few days.  There is no substitute for family.  So, so happy to be back.