I'm starting this post from the Forest office, and am feeling pretty woebegone about the fact that cafe writing is largely inaccessible to me, for the time being. My macbook battery is so old that it doesn't hold a charge long enough for me to write a blog, and the only charger that works with my laptop lives in the office.
So. I'm here for now. In the dank, dreary space with staplers, schedules, business cards, spiderwebs, and other office paraphernalia.
Which is fine. Just turn on your music and try to tune everything out. Don't resent this cafe-free season. Be grateful for the money you're saving on cappuccinos and that there are no street dogs getting into brawls underneath your table.
Adam, the new videographer intern sits to my left, editing photos from the wedding that took place at The Forest last Saturday. Nele and Anna hug each other and look at the schedule, planning their next to last week.
I wonder how I'm going to feel when I'm on my next to last week. I don't think it'll seem real. Leaving this place. This place that feels so much like home.
It's odd to be the person who witnesses others come and go. During the last six years, I've rarely stayed in a place long enough to watch others pack their bags and continue their journeys elsewhere.
And you know what?
I hate it. Which could be one reason I never do it.
We said goodbye to Abi on Saturday. It wasn't easy.
I'm going to miss her disgruntled glares during yoga classes when I spend too long focusing on core. I'm going to miss her reactions to super hippie things, like when she overheard our meal chant, raised her eyebrows, cast me an askance glance and asked, "Who the hell's Shanti?"
Abi had volunteered at Cafe Circles for a brief six weeks. During which time she managed to turn Tammo, Anna, Nele, and myself into her hippie family, and become a badass yoga ninja (mad props, Abi. Mad props). After which she promptly abandoned us to continue on her merry way to El Salvador.
The jerk.
Also, I wonder if this is the kind of space I create in the lives of my friends when I pack Fat Ellie and continue on MY merry way.
...
Maybe I should eventually consider no longer doing that. The leaving business. It sure doesn't feel very nice to be on this end of things.
I'll try my six months here, and see if staying put is the right thing for me. Before, you know, I sign a lease and start buying couches and shit.
I've been at the Forest nearly three months. And staying put feels great thus far (except for, you know, the whole everyone else leaving bit). I haven't bought couches, but Tammo and I have hung solar-powered Christmas lights from the roof of the Submarine, as well as commandeered a wooden crate.
Which I smothered in cheerful red, yellow, and cream paint. Then covered with quotes such as the following:
"A Balanced Diet is a Cookie in Each Hand."
"In Beer, there is Strength. In Wine, there is Wisdom. In Water, there is Bacteria."
"Life is Unpredictable. Eat Dessert First."
This is my rebellion.
I've also bought overalls, a beige t-shirt, and a black shawl that makes me look like batman (or rather, I wish it made me look like batman. Looking like batman would be pretty okay).
It feels nice to buy stuff and to not worry about carrying it. About cramming all my crap into Fat Ellie and lugging it to the bus station the next day. This sense of ease with accumulating things might not be good for a) my future enlightenment, or b) my current budget, but it is excellent for my sense of well-being.
Which is enough for now.
My nearly three months at the Yoga Forest has also wrought some pretty significant changes in how I cope with life's stimuli. The majority of the last few years has been spent popping in and out of cities. And I've noticed that city life has the tendency to numb my senses. There's just so much stimuli that this introvert becomes... tough. It's like I walk around inside a giant callous. I can still feel the world around me, but everything is deadened.
But nearly three months here has softened those callouses (I really should have used a more romantic metaphor). I feel everything. Anna was frustrated the other day. As people are. And I absorbed every bit of that frustration. Jonas had a stressful day of adulting. And I tuned into that. Nele wanted to prepare the cacao for Sunday's ecstatic dance in the tiny kitchen with the three kitchen ladies flitting about, and I just couldn't. I spent two minutes in there, then kowtowed to my stifling claustrophobia and fled to the hammock area.
"I'm sorry... I can't be in there right now. I don't know what's going on..."
I've become much more introverted than usual. More reluctant to connect with guests and volunteers alike, because I don't have the energy for such intense interactions. I've become more in need of my own physical space, my own headspace, my own energy-space.
Oh god. What's happening? I guess three months at the Forest has also made me feel like statements such as, "I need my own energy-space" are normal."
...
I'll just flow with it for now. I'll notice when I become overwhelmed and I'll try to create more room for myself. I'll try to journal more, to paint more, and to not get tangled in other people's energy. Because I like being sensitive. I like being in touch with life. But I don't like it when I absorb everything indiscriminately, take it all so damn personally, and lose my sense of equanimity.
The Forest hosted a wedding on Saturday. The wedding of Jayananda and Saraswati. Or, in layman's terms, the wedding of James and Hayley.
According to the schedule, Saturday was a day off for me. But as a volunteer, I was expected to help out with the wedding.
On the one hand, the wedding was absolutely spectacular, and it was a bonding experience for the volunteers. Where we all got dressed up and put flowers in our hair and took an excessive amount of photographs.
On the other hand, it was... demeaning and dehumanizing to feel like I was at someone's beck and call.
I don't know Jaya. I don't know Saraswati. Sure, Saraswati mostly owns the place, but I don't KNOW her. And just being expected to help with her wedding after I've already finished my work exchange hours makes me feel taken advantage of.
Now, if Jonas and Michelle were to get married, I would enthusiastically help with their wedding in a heartbeat. Because I know them and love them and want to support them.
But for Jaya and Saraswati, I would have preferred my help to be asked for, instead of just expected.
But this is one of the freedoms you sacrifice as a volunteer who always lives in the spaces of others. You gain the freedom to leave when you choose. The freedom of a light life. But you lose a great deal of the autonomy that comes along with roots.
But at least at The Forest, I've gained this crazy, funky, hippie family.
A group of people who can make anything fun. Even washing a myriad of dishes after a particularly exhausting pizza night.
So whatever challenges volunteer life brings with it, I'm glad I get to face those challenges with these people.
For now, anyway.
The wedding ceremony was gorgeous, and I nearly forgot about how irritated I was about being coerced into helping. Mostly because I had so much fun watching Nele cleanse the guests with sage smoke at the entrance to the seating area.
Tammo and I stayed behind after the ceremony to wash the mountain of dishes left in the wedding's wake. Then we meandered down to the reception, where I was disappointed to discover that drinks were not on the house. So we stayed for dinner, the toasts, and then moseyed on back to the Submarine.
Why do I feel so crummy about being expected to help with the wedding? It wasn't such a big deal. Sure, it was my whole Saturday, but it was just one day.
I think it goes much deeper than that. This feeling of general crumminess has its roots in my need to be treated like an adult with a life of my own. My need to NOT be at someone's beck and call on my scheduled day off. My need to have my time, my space, respected. To be asked if I am willing to give my time, and not just expected to because I'm "only a volunteer".
In other news, my nose has created an abundance of unnecessary drama in my life. I figured (naively) that the worst part of getting my nose pierced would be, well, getting my nose pierced.
I didn't take into consideration that my nostrils are about as thick as the "callouses" I built around myself after three months of living in Istanbul.
Which is, err... pretty thick.
The fellow who pierced my nose gave me a nose ring stud and sent me away with a smile and a, "Just make sure to disinfect it in the night and in the morning. Everything should be fine."
Everything was not fine. The ring popped out that afternoon. I gingerly shoved it back into my face, but something felt wrong.
Why can't I feel the ring on the inside of my nostril? It seems like it's not going all the way through.
Fuckballs.
So after four days of the ring popping in and out of my nose whenever my nostrils flared (so whenever I walked up the stairs from the Submarine), I decided to take matters into my own hands.
"Michelle? Do you have an extra nose ring I can borrow? One of the circular kinds? I think I need to re-pierce my nose."
I've noticed that I have a very high pain tolerance when I'm the one inflicting the pain. So I went to the shower (which has the only mirror in The Forest), and re-stabbed my nose with a rather dull nose ring.
And now it's gloriously infected, exceedingly sensitive, and thoroughly pissed off.
I'm not altogether sure that this was worth it. Blurgh. Will certainly make me think several times before piercing another body part.
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