This morning, before most people had woken up, I had an adventure. I didn’t go to sleep last night because I was too caught up in talking to a friend, and before I knew it, it was around 5:30 and I could see the colored fragments of light broadcasting the recent sunrise and impending after-effects. So, like the first morning I woke up in New York after returning from Europe earlier this week, I got dressed and departed the house, determined to see as much of the celebration as possible.
I biked down Ludlow, into the beautiful nearby cemetery. I biked from there down a bunch of streets I recognize but never use toward, wouldn’t you know it, water. I ended up by the back cove, and from there I made my way to the east end beach. No, first I stopped by a street that I haven’t visited in 6 years, a street and a house that have haunted my memory (in a good way, mostly) for all that time. I almost made my way down Codman Street, to take a gander at the house where I was a baby, where my family lived until I was 2 and a half and Seth was born and we moved into the house where we live now, and have for the last 20 years. But I don’t really have any memory of Codman street, so that wasn’t so important.
I followed the water for the rest of the morning, until I reached the far end of Commercial street and stopped for breakfast with some locals and some tourists at Becky’s Diner. That was a $4 well spent. I scarfed my breakfast down, hot as it was, starving after a night of not sleeping and a morning of activity. I passed the abandoned old trains a few times, and I passed all different kinds of boats, mostly for fishing, and I passed men fishing off rocks, bridges and wharfs. I walked to the end of every dock to see what I could see from there. I heard music coming out of a parking garage, which until I heard Flight of the Valkeries in a similar manner in Amsterdam, I didn’t realize was par for the course with those things at odd hours, particularly early in the morning. Live and learn. Today’s main lesson, though, was to realize that all those signs that say “No Trespassing” “Closed” “No Admittance” etc. are not for me. I can and must go wherever my spirit carries me. I also found an awesome tall wooden sculpture to climb on. ☺
I basically biked/walked the entire perimeter of the city of Portland and saw the port from as many angles as possible (without actually getting to go out into any boats ☹) and the conclusion I came to is that my hometown is devastatingly, bone-crushingly beautiful. I saw more new sides and parts of it today than in the last 10 years put together. So I guess it just goes to show you…no matter how well you think you know a place, or how small and provincial and uninteresting it may sometimes seem, there is always more to see and discover.
I feel a little bit like I’ve been on a quest lately. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been going on for, what the purpose of it is exactly, or how long it will last. Maybe this quest is something that will continue for the rest of my life. I think the quest has a lot to do with finding meaning in my life, but also finding joy, bliss and harmony with myself. I’m figuring out who I am and what my place in this world is. I don’t know yet if I will be a sailor, a teacher, an actress, a politician, a drifter, a bartender, a writer, a therapist, a guru, a crazy cat lady, a scuba diver, a horseback rider, a hermit, a kind friendly person, a thrill seeker, an eternal wanderer or something else entirely. I have a strong feeling that I need to try and bring as much good and as much positive energy into the world as I can. I want to help people and make their lives better, in any way that I can. I want to be flooded with love for other people all of the time. I also have a feeling that my path is going to be a wandering, meandering one, with all sorts of twists and turns and short cuts and u-turns and long ways around, and with delightful, magical and terrible surprises awaiting me. I think I will be doing a lot of traveling, probably from now until I drop dead, but perhaps just for the time being. I also think that my life is going to continue to be rich and wonderful and overrun with blessings, like ants on an ant farm. I have friendships that are so powerful they seem impossible and I have a positive attitude that really seems to have stuck, so I have nothing but excitement when I think about launching out on the road ahead.
I spent September-December of 2009 backpacking around Europe—taking some me time to not have to go to school, to see old friends and make new connections, and to see a whole continent-load of new, different countries, languages, sets of architecture, behavior and raisons d’etre, and ways of life. The pace of life was slow, the opportunity for self-sufficiency and independence close to maximal, and I had an incredibly good time—reading, writing, thinking, walking, listening to music, riding on trains, exploring, and living in the moment. Then I returned to Brown and had my best semester there so far—continuing to explore, to live in the moment, making new and closer friends, doing theatre, writing, singing, being a pirate, rededicating myself to my studies and to learning for learning’s sake.
This summer, by a crazy fluke, I ended up returning to Europe. I spent 2 months living in Italy, moving around every week or two, teaching English to Italian kids through immersion summer camps using songs, games, theatre and every kind of creativity I had. It was an extremely challenging job, and it wasn’t that much fun at first, but I think by the end I got the hang of it, and I feel I learned and grew so much from the challenge. And now I have a better idea of whether and where and in what ways I might like to be a teacher, because that is a very real possibility for me.
I thought I might keep this blog up while I was away these last few months, but the work was too demanding and draining and using the internet too difficult to finagle and daunting to face. So I didn’t and it is only here to house a few vague reflections upon returning home, but I know that I will be unleashed into the wild world again very soon and most likely this blog will live to rear its ugly head another day.
I’ve been back in the states for almost 5 days now. I had a hectic and wonderful holdover in New York, where I got to see a bunch more friends I hadn’t seen in far too long, and now I am in Maine for around 2 weeks, hoping to explore the area in some new ways (perhaps a long awaited camping trip up to Moosehead Lake?! pretty please!!), get in a few more beach days before the autumn’s fast closing grip takes too strong a hold and the nights and the wind get too cold, and I need to psyche myself up and prepare for the insanity of the coming year ahead. I can’t believe my last year of college is already upon me, and then I will be unleashed for real. I know it will go by faster than I want it to, but I am determined to do my best to make the most of it, to spend my time doing things I really care about and want to do, being with people I really love, and making something useful of myself. I am directing King Lear on the green in the fall, and I need to do a bunch of work to prepare that now too. I would like it to be a piece of work I can be truly proud of, and perhaps have a large number of my close friends come from all corners to see it, and to be reunited and together and have a great big delightful party. Or perhaps that will happen when/if I complete my poetry thesis. I don’t know—I have a lot of big ideas and plans and perhaps all of it is completely over-ambitious, but that’s just me. Shoot for the moon and you’ll end up amongst the stars. (Nevermind the logical fallacy there, that the moon is in fact far closer in distance than the stars.)
I think that after I graduate I will either be going into the Peace Corps, or getting some kind of international teaching gig if I can swing it, or perhaps working for the UN or another good NGO in some capacity (perhaps the Amy Biehl Foundation), or I might be seeking a sailor apprenticeship, or I might be going to some cool city like New Orleans or Paris or Hong Kong or Chicago to be a bartender and save up money for my future boat/home. Or I might be going to New York to try and find work in the theatre. Or maybe to London to get trained. But my guess is I will probably be somewhere out of the country. Wherever I end up, though, I will try to make the most of it and learn, and in the meantime, thank you again to everyone who has been a part of my journey so far. I hope that we can continue to coincide on our paths a great deal throughout the coming years, because that is the main difference between a beautiful, soulful, world-changing, eye-expanding quest and a life that is busy and varied but still sorely lacking in the real grit of the matter- love. So I will continue to look forward to my many painful and glorious homecomings and returns, wherever they may be.
++I’m sorry if this is sappy or nonsensical, but I didn’t sleep last night, so what can you expect. ++
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