Time to Get Naked -- Korcula, Croatia

One year.

Three hundred and sixty five days

Lots of hours.

Quite a few minutes.

I feel like a lifetime has passed.

Moments have been so long.

Life has been too full to fit (snugly or otherwise) into a meager three hundred and sixty five days.

The lessons have been too fast and furious.

So many beds have been slept in.

Or not slept in.

So many tables have been eaten at.

Or not eaten at.

So many spoons.

Spoons not quite the right size.

But annoyingly close.

So many coffee cups.

So many different brands of coffee.

And coffee makers.

Mocha.

Turkish coffee.

French press/cafetiere.

Filter.

Espresso.

I miss the kind of coffee my father would purchase from Main Street Bagels. The mug my little sister painted at that pottery place. It fit into my hands so picturely perfectly. 

Time seems to have adopted a different capacity for holding life.

It's expanded.

Like a big, fat hot air balloon that never seems to pop.

It fills with sensation after sensation, each so sublime that the hot air balloon can't say, "excuse me, but I'm already filled to bursting. Would you mind waiting until next weekend to view another sunset? I just... can't... pretty." 

*pump, expand, balloon*

sigh. 

Like my stomach when I'm around people like Kristina and Darko.

"You want chocolate? Cheese? Wine? Sausage? Here, take some stuffed paprikas. No, not one -- four!"

*pump, expand, balloon*

sigh. 

I go to Dubrovnik today. Martin and I take the taxi from Dragan's Den hostel at 8:20 and arrive sometime later.

One day in Dubrovnik.  

Enough for a taste. I'll see what kind of coffee they have.

Then I move on.

I thought I'd hitchhike across the border into Montenegro.

But then I thought I'd take the bus.

Tessa is still wild camping with Judy.

God, my travel buddy is hardcore. 

I'm not as hardcore as my travel buddy. I don't trust myself enough to hitchhike alone.

One day. One day hitching alone will feel right. But I don't think this is something I should force. 

We'll resume our hitchhiking odyssey in Greece. After we've finished walking through Montenegro (with the Italian we've pretty much kidnapped from Croatia) and railing through Albania, that is.

But first?

It's time to get naked.

Yes.

Oh, yes. 

Naked.

I spend a lot of time thinking/talking/writing about removing emotional, spiritual, mental walls. I compare this vulnerability, this sensitivity to some manner of nakedness.

But now I'm just going to go be naked. Full on.

Or off.

Aimee's going to volunteer at Camp Full Monte near Herceg Novi for one week.

Cooking tasty things, building rocky things, gardening leafy things.

Teaching naked yoga. 

I like nudity. I like its simplicity. Its honesty. Its utter unpretentiousness.

There's beauty, power, play in such vulnerability. 

I like nudity because I don't like feeling ashamed of my body.

When I tell people I'm volunteering at a clothing optional eco friendly campsite, I get a very mixed response.

"You're just going to see a lot of fat old men."

"Well, what's wrong with fat old men?"

"It's gross! Nobody wants to see that."

Why is it gross? Who says it's gross? A body is a body is a body is the home of a human. Why should some people feel pressured to cover up because other people "don't want to see that"?

Another popular response is something akin to, "God, there's going to be so much sex."

Umm. No. Not necessarily.

Nudity does not equal sex and I think it's a destructive mindset to think that the less clothes someone wears, the more sexually available they are. 

I think that in today's western world, we've made nudity dirty. Shameful. Inextricably linked to sex (which we've also turned into something dirty and shameful).

I want nudity to be a celebration.

My body is beautiful. Your body is beautiful. Not because it's skinny, fat, pasty, brown, dainty, beefy, short, tall --

-- it's beautiful because it's where you live.

I'm choosing to celebrate where I live.



Also, it means I don't have to worry about laundry for a week.