"What Are You Searching For?" -- Grand Junction, Colorado

I'm starting this post from the living room of "The Stoop" (Boy always names his homes. Like I always name my backpacks. And my headlamps. And my cameras. And, well... everything else). The lamp beside me casts a warm glow into the dim room, illuminating several old lady couches, a chess board near the window, several New Yorker magazines, and Boy's favorite mug (named Mortimer). I've got a glass of shitty boxed wine (and am pining for France) and a piece of homemade banitsa (and am pining for Bulgaria). My ukulele, Teal Cecile lies neglected on the table beside me, paint nearly worn clear off her first six frets. 

I've been playing Teal Cecile for two months now. And have a vast repertoire of songs so lugubrious they actually sound rather ludicrous when played on a ukulele. Which is fine with me. 

Life happened and plans changed. When I wrote last, the plan was to get a working holiday visa for France. That didn't pan out, because I'd need to spend about six months in Canada in order to get the health insurance I needed prior to departure. Then my friend Max told me about a longstay visitor visa I could apply for, but that also fell through, for one reason or a menagerie of others. 

So I settled into feeling lost. Directionless. Defeated. 

"Maybe I should just go to Spain and do my walk..." I would bite my lip on Monday. 

"I think I'll go to South America and teach yoga," I would ponder on Tuesday. 

"Greece sounds nice. They have some good Work Exchanges in Greece. I could volunteer on a sailboat!" I would furrow my brow on Tuesday afternoon.  

"I dunno... I've been wanting to do the Camino for so long now..." I would shrug my shoulders Tuesday afternoon-two-minutes-later.

When I flounder, I flounder BIG. Epic big. I settled down and sent out Workaway requests to Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. I even asked my friend in Bulgaria if I could stay with him for a bit. 

I'll just send out feelers and I say yes to the one that responds with the most enthusiasm. 

Of course, I wasn't sending out feelers willy-nilly. I had a few prerequisites.  

I'm tired of moving so quickly. I need to be in one place for a while. I need to build community and feel like I'm a PART of something. I need to plant something and see it grow. To fill out punch cards at cafes. To get to know the tamale lady. Or the banitsa lady. Or the boulangerie lady. I need familiar faces. I need to BE a familiar face.

I need to be doing yoga. I need to be learning and teaching. 

I need to be in a place with no winter. Zero winter. Nada. Girl hates winter. Ain't got time for that.  

I want to be learning a language. It doesn't have to be French. It just has to be a language. 

Guatemala responded with the most enthusiasm, offering me a three to six month gig teaching yoga on Lake Atitlan at the Yoga Forest. 

Guess life is leading me south again. Here we go.

I've been using my short time in the US well. I've visited family, irritated roommates with my incessant ukulele playing, volunteered at Telluride Film Festival (where I saw Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Angelina Jolie, Gary Oldman and Francis Ford Coppola), and witnessed the total solar eclipse in Wyoming. 

The sky got so dark that the streetlamps came on and the temperature dropped twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It was uncanny.

 I've also been baking with the bedeviled doggedness of a hobo foodie who hasn't had her own kitchen in 15 months. I've learned how to make ciabatta, puff pastry, focaccia, scones, pizza crust, pull-apart bread, ravioli, and cinnamon rolls.

When I'm not baking, floundering wildly, roadtripping to Wyoming or noticing that Christian Bale doesn't look so great in real life, I'm painting.

"Krista," I mused to one of my many roommates. "I think that the only reason I make so much shit is that I'm such a stressed out person.  But I'm a high-functioning (some might debate this) stressed out person. Because I know that painting soothes me. Knitting soothes me. Baking danishes and playing the ukulele soothe me. Yoga soothes me. So I do all these things ad nauseam. If I weren't so stressy, I probably would never make anything."

That being said, the US makes me immensely artistic.

I've also been getting my health taken care of. Like the responsible, paranoid human being I am, I applied for Medicaid the day I returned from Canada to Grand Junction, and was approved about two weeks later.  I suppose that when you haven't had any sort of income in over a year, even the US government begrudgingly realizes you might need a little help.

I've been to the dentist, had another unhelpful CAT scan of my throat, and been to a gynecologist. A gynecologist I like so much that I nearly invited her to our themed dinner parties after she'd finished poking around at my lady parts.

"Can I have a hysterectomy?" I asked after I'd explained my years of painful periods and polyps. "Please? I don't want babies. I never want babies. I mean, if I wanted babies, I could at least see a purpose to this bloody inconvenience, but I will never, ever make a baby. So this is just... useless suffering."

"Well," the nurse smiled at my, err, unbridled vehemence, "a hysterectomy is a major procedure. I can see why you want it and I'm not going to try to tell you what's right or wrong for you, but if something that's free on Medicaid and isn't a major procedure would work just as well, would you like to try that first?"

"Well," my vehemence faltered, "what do you suggest?"

"I think a Mirena IUD could work for you. It releases progesterone locally into your uterus, and keeps the uterine lining from thickening. So your periods should be lighter. And it's free with Medicaid."

"For now."

"For now."

"Okay... let's try it."

So I have surgery next week. To remove that polyp I discovered in Slovenia and to insert an IUD.

I still would just like to have the whole thing out, I grumbled to myself on the way home from the gynecologist. Being a lady can be the worst. Holy bananas. I can't even imagine what it would be like to NOT be in agonizing pain and slightly anemic two days out of the month. 

The days are cooling in Colorado and autumn is creeping in. The temperature's dropped from eighties and nineties to sixties and seventies. A single leaf on our backyard shrub is a vibrant, defiant yellow. And the Grand Mesa is glittering with golden aspens and sparkling snow.
 

This. This is what I'm nostalgic for when I leave Colorado. Crystal clear mountain lakes, golden aspen trees, snow speckled pines. The crisp air and the smell of snow melting into damp earth. This is the part of Colorado I could say feels like home. 

I stared out the window on the windy road home, watching the colors flash by.

Part of me is already antsy to move on... to be in a community of traveling hippies, teaching yoga and grinding my own corn with a bicycle grinder... 

But I'm afraid. I'm much more afraid than I normally am before taking off on an adventure.  This last trip did a real number on me. Being constantly sick and usually alone. And the... errr... not small part of me that's afraid just wants to stay here. Wants to keep painting birds and drinking wine on the porch. Watching the neighbors walk their dogs and saying hi to the mail lady every afternoon. Giving the occasional Thai massage and perfecting my focaccia. And always having clean laundry and hot showers. I'm not ready to give up hot showers yet. Not... yet... oh god... I'm not ready for a glorified solar powered hose. 

But I'm going. I'm going to Guatemala anyway.

"You're courageous," an old friend and mentor commented over a panini the other day. "What are you searching for?" 

"Searching for?" I wrinkled my nose.

I don't feel like I'm looking for anything. 

"Joseph Campbell. The hero's journey. The hero is always searching for something. What are you searching for on your journey?"

I stuttered something meaningless and gracefully buried my face in my panini.

Am I supposed to be searching for something? Huh. Guess I missed that memo. Someone shoulda told me that six years ago before I put on my hobo boots. 

I... I think I always thought of my traveling... my life... as an effort to strip things away. Strip away my fear of getting lost. Strip away my fear of spontaneity. Strip away my fear of people. To simply live in a way that makes SENSE with who I am absent of the expectations of others. Life is so fucking painful. It's beautiful, and unique, and precious, and joyful, and PAINFUL. 

I guess I've never seen the point of enduring all life's pain to then live one that doesn't resonate with ME. 

Maybe that's what I'm searching for. Resonance. Harmony. 

But I don't like the word "searching." To me, it implies that there's a sort of finish line. I don't think there's an end-date to this "hero's quest." There's just... passionate, curious, open living until there isn't. 

I fly from Denver to Guatemala City on the 26th of October. I take a bus from the airport to Antigua, spend one night in the old capitol of Guatemala, and then take a shuttle the next day to Lake Atitlan. Where I will return to the Yoga Forest (up the million stairs) and step into my yoga teacher shoes.

I don't feel ready for these shoes. It's been ages since I've worn them. But then again, I never feel ready for ANY shoes. I think a big part of my life is not feeling ready, but doing it anyway. Giving myself an occasion and rising to it. Trusting that it'll all be okay. That I'll be okay. That things will work out as long as I'm living with resonance. And if it doesn't work out, well, maybe I'm supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else. 

And that's okay too.