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Thanks for patience while I work to complete my MA degree ~ perhaps I can find a way to blog and complete my thesis at the same time. Ooo. Inspiration…
In honor of September 11th, my stepfather, a retired Marine, was asked to address my small hometown in Cali and speak at a remembrance ceremony. And across the country, I paid my respects here in NYC.
Having lived here (but just visiting on business at the moment), I always find it interesting how quiet this city can become when thoughts of 9/11 settle in, as if the collective consciousness becomes calmly introspective. Even the local news stations allow for silence on the air, followed by the lonely and haunting sounds of bagpipes which seem to play every year on the anniversary of that day.
It is hard to fathom, really. I suppose only a potent silence or a singular tune could really express what that day must have been like for so many.
But the respect people seem to have carried through is still expressed in small moments– as I was walking down the street, a firetruck was rounding the city block and a group of people, 4 or 5 grown men and women began clapping and one of them yelled out “Thank you!” in sort of a choked burst of emotion.
The honor here is palpable.
Now I wouldn’t consider myself a heavily religious person, but I have great fondness for the St. Paul Church near what is considered Ground Zero. This church was built in the 1760′s and has a history spanning from hosting George Washington’s inauguration to surviving the American Revolutionary War to surviving the attacks on September 11th. While buildings around it were destroyed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, this little church that could survived and became a place of refuge for rescuers and those rescued — while everything around it became chaotic debris, the church did not even have a broken window.
(photo by wallyg)
Inside of the chapel now stands a display of honor for those who’s lives ended or were altered forever by that day:
A chalice made from World Trade Center debris.
The boot of a rescue worker who gave his life.
Across this country, whether in a small town, uptown, or downtown, we come together in honoring all who were effected, all who are effected, and all who continue to serve our country and humanity on a whole.
Thank you.
I just received a note from a dear family friend in the hometown that is, quite truly, one of the best emails I’ve ever received (and I’m not just saying that because it’s complimentary to me! Or wait…maybe I am…). Anyway, this note is WHY I am writing this blog ~ to inspire in myself (and hopefully in others!?) an appreciation for adventure, exploration and those simple moments that make life worth living and laughing about.
With permission by the writer of this note, here it is:
Hi… I so enjoyed reading your comments about your trip. It is such a beautiful place to visit. I’ve never been to Nice, but Avignon is also in the south of France, and it was amazingly beautiful. You were very brave to go all alone, but you younger women have grown up in such a different world.
When I was your age, my “big adventure” when I separated from my husband was to go, by myself, to Monterey and check into a motel. In my whole life, I had only stayed in motels selected by my parents or my husband. My hand shook as I registered! The really funny thing was that, the next morning, there was a big earthquake centered in that area. Do you think God was displeased with me? Somehow I don’t think so, but the thought definitely crossed my mind as I held on tight to the bathroom sink! My second big adventure was to drive the “Bloody Bayshore” from Milpitas to near the SFO airport, with no mishaps! Now I want to take either a cruise by myself or maybe go to Seattle by myself. You are a model for me to emulate!
Continue to be you… we can all learn from you and live vicariously through your exciting experiences. Love, AD
Here’s to inspiring each other through our exciting experiences!
xo
Uptown Small Town
I woke after a total of 3 hours of sporadic sleep (too excited!) and headed to the SF airport to begin my 24-hour journey to Nice, France. Ahh….vacation on the horizon.
The goal of this trip was as follows: 1. Reconnect with feeling HUMAN. 2. Relax 3. Explore 4. Take pictures 5. Have my first solo journey to a foreign land and NOT get kidnapped and sold into a French Prostitution Ring (as my father was actually worried about).
So as I cozied myself into the seat of my second flight for the day that would take me from Philadelphia to Munich, a young guy– maybe early to mid 20′s– sat next to me. And almost immediately I got a strong sense of military. Not that he visibly appeared as though he were in the military– he was wearing jeans and sneakers– but there was just something about him…
Anyway, I settled in and opened up the book I’d purchased for the plane ride — Julia Child’s memoir, My Life In France,– and fell completely in love with this book. I didn’t know much about her as she was before my era of cooking show addictions, but wow… what an amazing woman. Textured, interesting, humble, enthusiastic, passionate, and someone who wove a great amount of integrity throughout her work. A delicious foray into France for me.
Then came dinner service for the flight which looked even more mundane than usual seeing that I’d been absorbed in a memoir about a woman’s love affair with fine, fresh French cooking, but it’s airplane food… it is what it is! I opened up the salad and started eating when I noticed the guy next to me again: He had such precision with his movements– the way he would unwrap butter, spread butter onto roll, eat roll. He would uncover his chicken dish, then eat chicken. He would unwrap dessert then eat the dessert. When he was finished, his tray was tidy and he’d wasted nothing.
And his manners were impeccable. He was very conscientious of his space– he was not at all sloppy with his movements, as if, along with wasting no food, he wasted no energy. And I suppose this may make him sound robotic and I don’t mean to imply that at all. Quite the contrary really. He seemed so in tune with simple life, as if he were not the kid with a jumbo box of crayons who scribbled, but rather the kid with a mere 4 colors who would draw something absolutely lovely.
Then he stood up and I saw the side of his head– there was a scar about 4 inches long, looking as though it covered something rather deep.
And I melted.
I sat there very much attempting to swallow back tears– literally melting in my seat. There was just something so human and heartbreaking about this guy… and yet, we hadn’t spoken many words to one another outside of pleasantries of “please” and “thank you.”
Any residual feelings of work/life stress disappeared in my 9-hour long journey to Germany. Sitting next to this guy, I felt so silently connected to simple humanity and purely humbled. I’m sure he had no idea what me and my admittedly sensitive, crazy self was feeling, but what a gift this guy was. It’s amazing how one person can effect another in so many ways… and most likely never even know it.
So between Julia Child’s memoir and sitting next to a German soldier (I spotted his army bag on our way off the plane), day 1 of my trip saw the reaching of goal #1: Reconnect with feeling Human. And I reconnected whole-heartedly (and managed to not actually break down crying!) to being a human with my little metaphysical box of 4 crayons.
Over the next few posts, I’ve decided to share a sort of series of travelogue entries from my trip to the South of France. I make no promises to stay in chronological order, but I’ll try!
Also good to note here that, as I’ll speak more to soon, the over-arching goal of my trip was to reconnect with the light of my simple, humble, human center that can sometimes be overshadowed by the day-to-day deadline driven, career stress most of us encounter, so my travelogue entries will be mostly feeling in nature rather than a presentation of factual travel tips. Not to imply a void of facts… but rather that my trip did not contain any contrived factual focus and instead was more of a sweeping meander along the Mediterranean at a speed determined by mood, curiosity, and the distance between gelato/sorbet shops.
Cheers to bon cote des choses! (sunny side of things)
While I take my time uploading photos of the trip to the South of France (clearly I’m still operating on vacation time), I was (perhaps because I’ve been questioning what it is I really want– a dangerous question!), thinking about what home is to me. (obviously a topic on my mind)
Home, in its ultimate sense, is in the center of me and yet paradoxically much bigger than me, but I think what I mean here is the home one builds for oneself throughout life. The center that expands as we come across new desires, “additions” if you will, and that we continue to remodel and redesign as we zoom around discovering new adventures and ways of being.
Lately, perhaps because I’ve been living in those “uptown” city apartments for so many years, I find myself really craving the manifestation of home… the home that I knew growing up with a yard and a garden and a dog and a view and a kitchen guests are welcome in and a deck that invites friends to stay in their pajamas while laughing and visiting in the sunshine well past the morning hours. Home.
A friend of mine and I actually have a code word for this: Both of us grew up in a small mountain community and both of us are living that city girl life. Whenever stress levels reach the point of ridiculousness, we say to each other “Elmo!” (If you’ve ever seen the show “Men in trees”– that’s where this is from.) To us, Elmo! is that word that means, get me back home to real life!!
So, while I’m not quite pulling the Elmo! card here (how could I? I still have vacation glow), I am saying that vacation has given me a time to think and breathe…
And for those of you who know me… this can lead to many things. (She says with a devious smile.) 
“What he needed, Arnaud often told himself, was a wife.
He had one in early August, unfortunately not his own.”
Hahah. That is my favorite line, thus far, in the book Encore Provence by Peter Mayle. In preparation for my first “real” vacation in a ridiculously long-stretching dusty dry path of two years, today I purchased the book about the South of France as I’ve spontaneously decided that I am going to the South of France to explore my lil’ petite self along the Cote d’Azur. Tres enthousiaste!
My morning preparatory measures involved three missions:
1. Purchase homeopathic remedy to combat jet lag.
This morning I received a call from a family friend/hair stylist in my hometown.
She said: Hi honey! I’m here with your mom, doing her hair, and she told me about your trip to France– so excited for you! Now, you must go get this homeopathic remedy so you don’t get jet lag or it will ruin your whole trip.
I said: Oh, wow, thank you! I hadn’t actually thought of that…
She said: Well, do you have time today to find some? If you don’t find any, let me know, I have some and I’ll overnight it to you on Monday.
I said: Yeah, this is San Francisco. I don’t see it being any trouble at all locating homeopathic remedies.
She said: Okay great! Well, have fun and we love you!
I have a ridiculous love for conversations like this ~ homegrown love from the hometown. Nothing beats it.
(Remedy found at WholeFoods!)
2. Travel Guide + French book to provide path for the feeling of France to awaken within me.
It’s not hard for me to connect with the feeling of France. I do have some French ancestral roots in me and quite a few times it’s been assumed that I’m French… by fellow Americans. (a bit odd but it makes me smile every time.) Anyway, I wanted to read some sort of travel memoir about France to provide proper mood alignment. Sound weird? Maybe. I actually did this with New York too. One day I read the book The Devil Wears Prada (not my usual sort of book but entertaining nonetheless) and within 4 weeks I was living in NY without having had any real previous conscious thought about moving there.) (I’ll send postcards if I decide to move to France while there– promesse!)
Also purchased travel guide and pocket translator — essential dining translations necessary to avoid such things as duck meat cooked in flaky butter pastry. (Leave the flaky butter pastry, s’il vous plaît, remove the duck.)
3. Première Passe packing
This first pass at the packing thing involves:
~ Drag sun dresses out from back of San Francisco closet.
~ Decide that packing for the French Riviera is fantastique. Love one-dress-wonder packing.
~ Try on bikini and determine that… good lord almighty. I clearly work indoors for entirely too many hours a day. Any tan gleaned from the 4th of July has disparaitre. Oh well. C’est la vie!
So, now I return to my preparations for spontaneity… South of France, here I come mon amour.
Clearly I’m a bit delayed to express appreciation for this lovely commencement speech J.K. Rowling gave at a Harvard graduation ceremony last year… but I believe this loveliness is of the timeless variety (<– wow, how’s that for making up for having a 13-month delay in my expression of gratitude??)
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.”
“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
(emphasis added)
My horoscope today seems to have provided a nice explanation as to one of the purposes of this blog:
“In your not so humble opinion, life is meant to be a series of extended vacations, which certainly explains why you move so much, so easily and with such great abandon. It’s not that you’re irresponsible, exactly — it’s that you don’t want to miss seeing anything. This type of attitude will make your earth-sign friends crazy, but if any of them are undergoing a time period now where things aren’t entirely under their control — their least favorite state of affairs — share this philosophy. It might help and it can’t hurt.”
So, my earthly friends, should any of you be undergoing a period of change where things feel out of your control ~ take heart. And feel free to ask me anything. I’ve been there.
(PS- I highly recommend you just throw up your arms and enjoy the ride ~ I give myself this advice quite frequently.)
xo
Uptown Small Town
As I’ve mentioned before, my mother tells me I have the “courage to interrogate reality.” As much as one’s personality can be described in a statement, this one is fairly undeniable for me.
Last weekend I met my father and step-mother in Half Moon Bay as they began their week-long Harley ride “wherever they feel like riding to on any given day” and it got me thinking ~ my adventurous side (err… middle) is not only ingrained in my lil’ self, but most decidedly, inherited. I was basically born with a paradoxical sense of knowingness and curiosity which propels me to places I’ve never been and yet places in which I feel very much at home.
While there are vast variations on my adventurous roots, here’s a glimpse at a few that I’m sincerely grateful for:
Adventure of the Imagination: This comes from both parents. What I love though is that they are both very grounded individuals ~ I wouldn’t label either of them “dreamers” but I would certainly say that they make their dreams happen in their lives. And this ventures fairly far back in the family trees: My mother’s grandfather was an inventor ~ he had an airplane/landing strip at his home and apparently had Charles Lindbergh as a buddy. My grandfather on my father’s side had a mine in the mountains outside of Yosemite then purchased an entire railroad and community because he liked it there (so did I! This is where I grew up.). My mom was accepted into the San Francisco Ballet at the age of 16 (she politely declined) and my father became a race-car driver. I come from a long line of practical dreamers.
Adventures in Travel: Again, this comes from both parents. Mom is more of the “hotel in Paris/Nice/London/Tuscany” type and dad is more “ride the Harley and stop at an Inn on the coast whenever we feel like stopping” kind of traveler. I have heaping doses of both approaches… though that’s not to imply I ride a Harley when I travel. I’m a spontaneous planner, I suppose.
Adventures in People: I love people’s stories. Adore them. Why are they the way they are? Where have they been? What have they seen? What shaped them? Influenced them? I think my mom is a people explorer but she’s not really one to ask questions. She’d rather have people share whatever it is they want to share. My dad is a bit more of a “I’ll join you wherever you’re coming from” sort of story-listener. Both are empathetic listeners in their own way… I am straight out an empathic, curious, and voracious listener of people stories.
Any way you look at it, I’ve got Adventurous Roots. How can I not with a father who looks like this?
