The Gallivanting Grasshopper: Boy Likes, Girl Likes -- Puerto Escondido, Mexico

My boy.

Comes to see me tomorrow.

At 3:55.

After spending over twenty-four hours on four different planes and people watching in five different airports.

This is my boy's schedule.

Written by said boy.

Okay.
Leave GJ 12:40.
Land Denver 1:47
Leave Denver 3:something
Land Houston 7:00
Eat with Homie Zach 7:20ish
In Houston Airport.
Hopefully.
Leave Houston 9:something
Land MC 11:00 pm
Try to sleep in MC Airport
Try to find something to do in MC Airport
Walk around MC Airport at least 47 times
Try to find something to eat in MC Airport.
"It's 9:00 am, guess I'll go check in now" MC Airport
So I will check my bags about 12:00 pm MC Airport
And then probably freak out a little bit over realizing that it is ZERO days until I see you (he plays this game too).
Try to find my gate around 1:00 or so.
Wait an hour.
Board.
Fly to you.
Land at 3:55.

Good thing the boy likes airports more than I do... God, that sounds like the worst time ever. Nightmare of nightmares, disaster of disasters. I would have epic migraine time and undoubtably be in a state of constantly needing water and never finding a drinking fountain and constantly needing to pee and never finding a toilet. And always ending up in the lines where people have to repack their bags eight times and be patted down because they forgot to put their keys or bracelets on the belt like a first rate rookie. After watching the other lines practically sprint through security as I gradually tip-toe, grumble-crawl to be scanned (wherein my sports bra sets off the alarm and gets me patted down), I somehow find my way to the seats where families congregate and munchkins run amok like they've been living off of coca-cola for the last 78 hours (at the rate of at least three per hour). I then nearly miss my gate because they changed it last minute (or because I somehow confused the gate number with my seat number or the flight number or the floor number or... Hey. Hey you. Stop laughing. I'm a theatre major. Numbers are hard) and --

Troy likes airports.

I.

Would rather eat a bad avocado.

(which is a lot of dislike for airports)

As everyone and their mom and their mom's tlayuda buddy has heard me talk about my boy and when he's coming to see me (upon, err... multiple occasions), I now enter Akumal's yoga studio and the badass Australian bikers greet me with, "So Aimee, two days, right?"

"TWO DAYS!" I shout/scream/happy dance back at them.

"Hey Antonio," I call to the tour guide who has a turtle releasing, bird watching, sausage over bonfire roasting, swimming with glow in the dark plankton tour on which I'm kind of dying to go. "Can we do the tour this week? I can finally make it because --"

"Because your boyfriend is coming into town in -- "

"TWO DAYS!" I shout/scream/happy dance back at Antonio. And as Antonio is making money off of me and my boy and is thus required to be nice, I happy dance extra hard. Sometimes with rhythm. "TWO DAYS!"

Not even two days now. Now? Just about twenty-four hours.

Whoa.

I have a boy.

I have a boy who's coming to see me in Mexico.

Whoa.

So much happy, but also... so much... letting go.

Enormous life changes aren't exactly easy (revelation of the day). Even though my life is one of constant, dynamic movement, this kind of change takes loads of loads of thoughtful chewing before it can be safely swallowed without making me feel like I'm going to choke and suffocate. I mean, I've spent the better part of three years learning how to travel the world alone and finally feel like I have the skill set to open countless doors the world over. Of equal if not greater importance, I also have the self-respect and confidence to spin on my heel and "girl don't got time for this shit" out of the occasional exploitative situation (and sometimes I can even see them coming).

But now I'm going to have to relearn how to move. In a way that includes Boy.

Which will take a lot of openness, adaptability and creativity.

Boy's skill set is very different from Girl's. Boy understands real jobs and shommitments. And he sometimes wears uncomfortable pants. If Boy got his dream job abroad, it would probably be as a counselor at a non-profit where he would be able to love all over wounded kids. Or as a French chef in a small bistro in a large French city.

Girl wonders why she can't just go build a yurt on Joy and Vajra's property in California and spend winter months working in Joy's soon to be happy, hippie restaurant and wrangling Vajra into being her guru (I'm not sure how one goes about getting a guru, but somehow wrangling doesn't seem like the appropriate verb. I'm open to suggestions). Girl's dream job abroad would be hopping from yoga retreat to yoga retreat, country to country, loving all over whoever happened to be there and then step, two, three skip-hopping on. Or apprenticing for the local Italian cheese lady with whiskers sticking out of her moles and boobs dangling past her belt.

And Girl would never wear uncomfortable pants.

Ever.

Boy lives for community and moves much more slowly than Girl. He lets down his roots and focuses his energy on giving and receiving from the people and place around him.

Girl... well... let's just say that one reason she treats the world like a giant hot potato is that community -- for more than a few months, anyway -- has not been her happy place.

Boy lets down his roots.

Girl lets down her hair.

Boy dreams of big cities.

Girl just wants a pond with some ducks and a tree to climb. In which to eat picnics and nap underneath afterwards. Whilst watching ducks preen and dive through drifting eyelids.

I'm at a place in my life wherein I feel very much like a blank slate (more so than ever before, anyway). The vivid, random, chaotic way in which I've scampered, stumbled, sobbed, celebrated through the last few years has not layered experience upon my being the way oil paint is layered upon a canvas. Forcing myself to live in dramatically different situations with people who know me now and not me then has succeeded in scraping the gobs of paint (beautiful or otherwise) from my canvas and leaving it...

...clean.

I love acro yoga so much because it takes the mindfulness, awareness and self-love we cultivate during a personal practice and extends it to another human being with an attitude of trust and playfulness. I've spent the last three years cultivating mindfulness, awareness and struggling with allowing myself to explore my own full expression of self-love. This is, of course, on ongoing journey (gotta love those guys) -- but I feel like I'm finally mindful enough, aware enough, blank enough to invite another person to share my journey in an intimate, playful way.

I "plan" for life the way I used to manipulate my dreams as a child. I imagine myself at the edge of a cliff and I visualize the world I want below me. I cock my feet in the direction of this world and then just allow the wind to blow.

But now I'm standing on the edge of that cliff with my hand in Boy's (or Boy's hand in mine. I will wear the pants (comfortable ones) for a large percentage of the time. Boy is aware if this). Now I need to make sure our feet are pointing in the same direction and that the world I see below at least, you know, vaguely resembles what he sees.

Else when the wind blows, we'll either be wrenched apart or we'll hurtle into a world that neither of us wanted (but perhaps needed. Who knows).

My boy is coming in just about 24 hours. For four days. We'll eat tlayudas, watch sunsets, drink Mexican coffee and talk about the new world beneath the cliff.

Anatole France has a quote about change that resonates very deeply with me:

"Changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

I'm experiencing all this melancholy about expanding and extending my life as a TREMENDOUSLY independent single woman and solo traveler to encompass another person. No matter how much I adore Troy, part of my life that I love feels like it's being lost in this expansion.

The melancholy has been exacerbated for both of us because we see and feel our old lives dying, but we're not there physically to love each other into the new ones. Skype can only do so much to assuage the pain of walking away from an old self. You want to have someone around to learn on when you're moving your feet to fall into a new dream.

But he's on his way to me. Right now.

Brittany and Nick had to hear so much about the boy (sorry 'bout that...), but they left yesterday evening so won't be able to meet him.

I'm missing them already (although I'm sure they're kind of relieved to be free of the "BRITTANY! TROY'S COMING IN TWO DAYS!").

I also enjoy that this shirt was mistakenly given to me at the laundry place up the road and over the hill. Along with a pair of grey boxer shorts. I'm keeping both because the laundry place up the road and over the hill stole my polka dot bra. The jerk.

Vajra's here for another week. Thank god. Girl's not gonna be happy to see him go.

Vajra and Joy will even get to meet Troy. Which is good, because we're going to build a yurt on their land in California after we finish walking across Switzerland with them. Vajra says the only requirement is that I don't stop writing my blog. Umm... I think I got that one covered (says the lady with an embarrassing 400+ posts and who won't go out partying 'cos she either has to teach yoga in the morning or wants to write)

Nick and Brittany are back in Canada (on their way to Australia. Detours confuse me. I don't ask.), and I'm currently mourning the departure of two of the best avocados of all time ever.

But I still have acro.

I hope to always have acro.