Lucy snuggles up next to me, sniffing my hands as I type. Satisfied that I have not been petting other
dogs on the sly, she turns herself into a little donut, placing her pointy black
head by her tail (which isn’t wagging, for once). Once pastry posture is
attained, she twitches, decides she’s uncomfortable, and morosely moves to the
couch on which Oscar sprawls.
They miss their family.
Jack left this morning and as he walked out the front door with his keys
jangling and his briefcase in hand, I think that both dogs realized they’d be
left with me for far longer than they’d like. The door shut with a certain
clang of finality and the car left the driveway with a “see you next week!”
sort of engine revving. Oscar glares at me between naps and Lucy whines and
jumps up my leg between terrorizing the slumbering Russian, but the canine
members of my English family seem to be (generally) reconciled to their
American puppy-sitter fate.
I have quite a bit more to do this time around, and it feels
good to be busy. Odd, but good. I haven’t actually “worked” this hard in
months, and it takes a bit of warming up to. I’ve grown (dare I say it?) rather
lazy when it comes to physical labor. Sometimes I get caught up in the whole
“I’m in a new country, way outside of my comfort zone, and doing my best to
capture my moments of hardship/triumph/revelation and share them with people
via my blog... isn’t that enough?”
Of course, without any of these other things keeping me busy
there’d be mind-numbingly little about which to write. That said, life really
has settled into the mundane for me. A happy, relaxed simplicity of existence.
I don’t have to worry about food or housing or bills or the like. I have my
chores around the home, but my needs are provided for as if I were a member of
the family... but...
...but everyone has a “worry” threshold, and if it’s not
being met by base-level concerns, you simply start worrying about that which you
need not be bothered with at all. It takes a lot of effort to remember my lesson from the Burren -- the future doesn't exist. So stop worrying about it.
The last couple of days have been dotted with moments of
exquisite joy and moments of extreme self-loathing and doubt. I practiced a
Monty Roberts natural horsemanship technique with Peter on Monday, and the
gelding followed me around the haphazard round pen for minutes. It’s been
nearly two years since I’ve had such a positive interaction with a horse, and
something stifled and nearly snuffed out woke inside of me. Because most of my
experiences with horses have been so negative (two problem Thoroughbred mares
and a foal that nearly died from hypothermia), I’ve grown afraid to expect too
much out of my relationships with these beautiful animals. I expect them to go
through the paces, but I don’t expect to find a good connection or a deep level
of trust.
I find myself warming to Peter. My heart skipped a beat when
I turned away and my equine partner turned to follow. I felt a hard lump in the
back of my throat when I kept walking and his hoof beats echoed my footsteps.
My discouraged and demoralized horse-girl woke up when I
halted and he breathed softly on my lowered right shoulder and snuffled the
relaxed palm of my hand, velvety nose and prickly whiskers tickling my fingers.
Joy has been found in sharing cheese and wine and curries
with my English family. Joy has been found walking and cycling and getting
hopelessly lost through the countryside, in browsing quirky secondhand shops
and in eating Montezuma butterscotch chocolate.
Disappointment and self-loathing have been found in my yoga
practice and my interview project.
Yoga is difficult for
me to practice on my own. I’m an instructor and I ought to have a consistent personal practice, but yoga isn’t really
something I enjoy doing unless I’m sharing it with other people. Practicing
yoga by myself is comparable to drinking by myself. I only do it when I’m
despondent and desperate and can’t find anyone to join me. While this is all
well and good if I have adequate outlets (the 12 classes per week schedule in
Grand Junction was perfect), it
causes my practice to atrophy if I have no consistent classes to guide/follow.
I feel immensely lucky to have Charlotte to lead through a Vinyasa routine
every morning (minus the mornings she spends in Spain, lounging in a beautiful
hotel or horseback riding through the island’s Mediterranean landscape), but I
feel shame and vexation with the fact that I cannot seem to keep myself accountable. I want to be the type of person who can
mind-over-matter her way into making things happen. Consistently. I want to
write --
5:00 – 6:00 = practice yoga
-- in my planner at the beginning of the day and I want to have it look like --
-- at the end. Regardless of how I feel when I wake up in the morning or what transpires during the day. I want to be able to navigate the fuzzy area between keeping myself accountable to my priorities and being flexible and sensitive and sensible enough to go with the flow of life.
My interview project is something I think I will have to let go of, in a public sense. It emerged as a project at a time in my life where I was tremendously self-absorbed and wallowing in my own debilitating depression. I wallowed through writing (so many angsty plays), so my writing became I tool I used to stay sad. I knew that I needed to let go of writing for a good while if I wanted to heal properly, but I knew that if I let go of creativity all together, I would end up being a very different kind of depressed.
So I commenced my "Asking One Question" project and started videotaping interviews with people around Colorado, asking my subjects twenty-five personal questions about their lives and their views on life. This was a way to cease dwelling on my issues and start thinking about other people. Start connecting with a community whilst learning and creating something special. I'd hoped to one day put these interviews together into some sort of documentary, when I'm ninety-odd years old and have slowed down in the traveling the world side of life... but I'm starting to think that this project serves a purely personal purpose. I've been met with so much opposition to it, as of late. People don't want their answer to, "If you had the opportunity to change an aspect of yourself, would you take it? if you did, what would you change?" available for just anyone to listen to. People don't want their answer to, "What are you most afraid of?" to be floating around on the internet.
My goal with this project was to play around with discovering where the influences of culture stop and basic humanity takes over. For instance, did you know that given the question, "If you could do one thing for one person, what would you do and who would it be for?" most people choose mothers? If not their mother, they choose a daughter.
In over 60 interviews, only 3 have chosen significant others.
Did you know most people just want to be less lazy?
Did you know that it's not just a cliche -- most people are truly terrified of being alone or of not reaching their full potential in life?
Did you know that in Morocco, the food that makes people think of home is couscous.
In Spain, the food is paella.
In Italy, it's spaghetti.
In Ireland, it's stew.
In Serbia, it's bread.
In Denmark, it's very diverse.
In the States, it's very diverse, but it's always fast. TV dinners are quite common.
Hardly anyone thinks they have control over their lives.
"HAHAHAHA!" "I have control over my reactions." "Control?!? God, no."
What has been your most romantic experience?
"ummm..." "well..." "errr...." "Walking into a really old building."
What do you have faith in?
"In my friends." "In humanity." "In the goodness of people."
What do you do when you need to escape?
"I draw." "I read." "I write." "I go on really long mountain walks." "I find a space where I can be alone."
When my good friend Sara interviewed me on my birthday this May, my answer to "what do you have faith in?" was --
"That the next moment will be different from this moment."
Perhaps I just need to realize that in this moment, my project isn't a public affair. In this moment, my interviews are purely for me. I will continue to interview and learn as much as I can from the people who are willing to share themselves with me, but I don't think I will continue to aspire to a documentary or a podcast.
Which saddens me more than I can say...
But who knows?
The next moment will be different. Perhaps I'll find a moment where I feel enough support to make my project public.
If you wanted to get to know someone as well as you could and you only had one question, what would you ask?
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