"Possession"

Thinking about Grandparents a lot lately, and missing them. This is a poem my Grandma, Ruth Glick, wrote. My cousin Jonathan Reuel put it to music and played it during her memorial service. (I was going to attach it here, but I seem to be incapable...sorry.)

Not what we own, nor what our hands have held…not measured wealth nor horded gold or land, but what our eyes behold or have beheld: treasures of the mind, not of the hands. The ocean’s beauty has no price, the sands and waves belong to those who know…and love. Flowers come with dew-drop filled silvery light and starry sky above. Not what we have is life, but what we deeply love. The ocean’s beauty has no price, the sands and waves belong to those who know…and love.

Praia do Meco, Portugal

memories of stars

I remember the first time I was truly aware of the Milky Way, and able to watch its shift across a clear night sky. I was about ten years old and we were vacationing to our soon-to-be home: Glenwood, New Mexico. I'd lived in Ohio until then, and slept out under the stars my fair share of times, but even though we lived in the woods, you don't get the openness or the intensity of the stars that you get in Nowhere, Southwest. I seem to recall sleeping on an open trailer, so it may have actually been once we moved, but our whole family had laid out sleeping bags on the trailer and could stare up at the enormous openness of the real-life Van Gogh painting. The Milky Way was probably nearly straight above us as we fell asleep.

Coyote calls awakened us, and we whisper-marveled to each other: coyotes so close, they probably don't even know we're here! What wild land! (They probably knew we were there.) And then gazing upwards again, the lactic-like cluster of stars had shifted noticeably. My eyesight must have been better then than now, because I'm sure I didn't have to put on glasses to notice this... It's easy to understand why early astronomers imagined the Earth to be the center of the universe, with the sun, moon and stars rotating around us...but oh! to be Kepler, Galileo, Newton! Study the paths of light trekking across the skies season to season, and propose absurd and wondrous ideas about how the universe appears and behaves!

Monday I went on a beautiful hike with some friends and we walked about an hour though the snow in the dark on our way back. It was one day short of new moon, so our starlight was unadulterated by the sun's faithful mirror, and we could see our bright galaxy clearly defined. (The only con associated with aiming one's glance upward is the almost immediate slight shift of your step to one side, which when trudging through knee-deep snow--albeit trampled down from our trek in--usually results in a mild loss of balance.)

I don't think the stars remember me, or benefit in any way from my presence, but the opposite is most certainly true. Were it an action, not a feeling, I'd be proving Newton's third law of motion wrong...but I think he knew what he was talking about. Salud!

the little things

This morning I broke one of my favorite mugs. I didn't even really care. I just looked down, at the broken pieces of ceramic, coffee spreading across the brick like some strange, pale, alien-ic blood, all tan and watery. It was one of those perfect mornings, I sat outside in the sun, starting a new book, eating a green chili cheese bagel and drinking coffee. And then I reached over to get another bite of bagel and knocked my mug off its delicate perch on the armrest. crash. Huh, I thought, that was one of my favorite mugs. I took two semesters of ceramics in college, and have a few boxes of various and sundry dishes, but few of them are really all that nice. This was one of them, but you know, sometimes you just have to say, it's a mug. Just a little, insignificant material piece of nothing. I wish I could feel that way about everything. A complete and absolute lack of sentimentality for material items. One could just pick up and leave, with a backpack full of necessities, and not even care.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other notes, I didn't actually break a mug this morning. It was just a scenario I played out in my head, imagining it happening, staring at the hypothetical result, and feeling nothing. It was amusing to me, to think all these things out, for some reason, like having conversations in my head that never occur. And then, because I wanted to write a blog entry, but writing about Spain was too daunting for the moment, I wrote about an insignificant event that never occurred. Well on my way to becoming a great fantasy writer! hah!

there and back again and then there again!

I'm about to embark on a mini-adventure: a quick trip back to Spain to visit friends, and hopefully see a few new places--but friends are the priority. I decided that it was a rather silly idea financially (to which my sister decidedly agreed--since when did she get all responsible and stuff?) but then, the timing was pretty good: the research job I've been working on in schools finished up before Christmas, and I'd been planning to quit my side job at an entirely too infrequently visited Mediterranean restaurant nearly since I started two months ago. The problem with working two part-time jobs without benefits is that you don't really make money.

By the time you pay the bills, and the loans and eat and go out a bit, there's your monthly income! So I didn't really have much money saved up, but I was looking at tickets and they were so cheap! And then a housesitting gig came up, providing me with three months' free rent...the perfect post-trip, no-job cushion! So I decided to do it. And I leave in 2 days! ¡olé!

Now, the other thing all this job changing thing is doing is making me think pretty seriously about a career (and, as my wizened older sister cautioned, it doesn't look good on your resume to change jobs so often--no one will want to hire you, assuming you'll leave after a few months). My roommate mentioned once that she learned about climbers who went up to the top of wind turbines to fix them, and this sounded like a pretty great job, so I've been doing some research. Rope access technician does sound like a job I would enjoy! But unfortunately though the original certification can be obtained in a week-long training course, you'd have to have some other skills

(welding, for example, and be certified in these other skills) and until you've reached a level 2 or 3 (several years' worth of work/experience) you might be hard-pressed to find work, unless you get on with a good company early on. A lot of freelance type of work at the beginning. So it would be great if I already had a side job, with a flexible schedule. But it's not an investment I can probably afford at this point, and also probably not something I'd want to do for decades (is there anything out there??) and thus I am, a bit regretfully, putting that idea back on the shelf. Next? (Ok, Kevin, you win...)

Well, I'll work on the next idea. In the meantime, it's time to take a holiday in Spain! And then get back and find a job ASAP. (It will probably be another temporary job I don't particularly enjoy, which will help me get by until I move to South America in the fall. I haven't quite figured the details of this move out, yet, but no worries. The adventure is there. Probably just for a year, and then I'll come back and be a real adult, I promise. Maybe. Don't hold me to that. I may have

been crossing some fingers in there, which is tricky while you're typing, by the way).

Until next time (probably next year), do something to improve your karma, drink some good tea, laugh with friends, hug your family, and wave to the sun.

To know the universe itself as a road—as many roads—as roads for traveling souls!

Here is a tale--no, less a tale, more an anecdote of recent times:

Over Halloween weekend I went to several different parties, donning a big red sheet, a pillowcase over my head, and a little woven basket: a decent (and simple) Little Red Riding Hood costume (Caperucita Roja). I had a good time, being silly and hanging out with friends. But the best part? At one of the parties I was talking with some Colombian friends and decided that I wasn't going to speak English to anyone the rest of the night. I thought it would just be funny for a while, but that non-Spanish speakers would probably get annoyed with me and I'd have to stop. ;) And then something very fun happened! I began talking to random people...and they answered me in Spanish! So I made new friends. And then a friend introduced me to some Brazilian friends of his, so I tried out my rusty/poor Portuguese! And then one of my new friends switched to French, so I tried to follow suit, of course. It is very probable that I mixed up and/or invented some words and conjugations during this tri-lingual conversation...but it was entertaining beyond reasonable explanation. I left feeling giddy and elated--delighted with these short interactions. Just what was it that made those conversations so noteworthy for me? Have I simply been suffering from intercultural interaction withdrawal? Did it remind me of friends and adventures I had in Spain/Portugal? Was it simply a linguistic libido, a mere morphemic thrill?

Let us assume it was some combination of these possible explanations, and let us also assume

this has not been an isolated experience. What, then, do I do with this unsurprising revelation? I love languages and meeting people from other cultures.

It seems I should figure out a job/career which involves these things. Don't get me wrong, I've had this idea before. (You know, the whole getting-a-master's-degree-in-Translation-and-Interpreting, etc...but so far I've come up blank on that front.) My friend suggested I take the foreign service exam...maybe should. Also going to apply to be a program leader for various youth summer abroad programs. In the meantime, the days are getting shorter and colder, making me a restless little gypsy, all bundled up in her down comforter and dreaming of days not long gone: of sun and summer; dreaming of new adventures.

So it goes.

This repeating mantra in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five gives a sense of resignation and acceptance, though, in most cases, without seeming overly fatalistic.

I think that about sums it up for my general feelings right now. I've been working towards my court interpreting certification since January (each step/exam only happens every few months) and just got my results from my last exam: not a passing score. The next exam date is on a Saturday I can't attend, so if I want to keep doing it, it's not until next year sometime. I'd also

gotten all excited about doing Teach for America--the perfect solution, I thought, for becoming a teacher without having to go into more debt to go back to school! And found out I didn't get accepted to the next application step. So it goes.

I recently did job training for a new job, and I'm excited to be working in schools with kids--even though giving them exams will probably get really repetitive and tiring after about...5 times (=one day). It will still be better than sitting in front of a computer all day in an office. That kind of job just isn't for me.

At any rate, I've begun to get a bit restless, I guess. It's not that I'm unhappy in Albuquerque--

I've made some really good friends, am having a good time playing frisbee, the weather's been great, I have a garden (cut a most divine cantaloupe this morning), I'm close enough to home that I can visit for a weekend, there are beautiful mountains and places to explore nearby... and yet, I'm directionless. I don't know what I want to do with my life. There's got to be something out there for me... that really fits! Something that I love, and yet is useful/productive/valuable to humanity or the earth. Hah. Very specific, I know. But if I knew what I wanted to do, I wouldn't be writing this, I suppose. I would be applying to school somewhere, or jobs in a certain field or...

As it is, I think it's time to seek out another adventure. Let me clarify: time to move to another

country again! Maybe teach English, since that and translating are about the only skills I have to offer. I'm looking for positions in Latin America, mostly, though also Spain (if only!) and Morocco. I've considered going to a country where they actually pay well, too, which would allow me to continue paying student loans, and have leftover for traveling after a year... Though for whatever reason I'm not as attracted to China, Vietnam, South Korea... So it goes.

If you have ideas for me, I'd love to hear them. In the meantime, I need to go get some seeds for a fall planting, and maybe painfully pick out the chords on my guitar to a really easy song. Wouldn't it be nice to be a musical prodigy? I am not. So it goes.

Alaska: a teaser

So! I have returned from the land of the midnight sun with entirely too many activities/adventures/pictures to put into a blog entry. I'll just select a few pictures, and hopefully do a follow-up entry later.

Alaska has a bunch of beautiful flowers in the summer, it turns out.

And there are glaciers in Alaska!

And more glaciers! I am dazzled.

And foxes!! Taking home ground squirrels to the kits!!