On Becoming Strong and Flexible

I've been thinking about travel lately. Nope, this post isn't about yoga despite the title. Instead, a very random and brief conversation together with a lovely book have me thinking about getting back out on the road and getting actually in reality lost, instead of just wandering in my own head lost. The conversation was truly brief and random, but the book is worth mentioning. It is Adventures in a Mud Hut:An Innocent Anthropologist Abroad by Nigel Barley. A book I found by following the bread crumb trail of other books, it is exactly what it advertises. I cackled, snorted and hooted as I read, recalling many of my own absolute worst travel experiences.

My strongest memory is also my most recent, involving my trip to Costa Rica for yoga teacher training. (Okay, so there's a little yoga in the post.) Once I made the decision to go, I did very little of my own research about travel in Costa Rica, focusing instead on the finances, setting things up at home to be gone for a month, figuring out how to pack for several daily yoga classes in a hot and humid climate, and trusted to the travel agent recommended by the school. We did lots of emailing back and forth which led me to the understanding that English was not a comfortable language for her, and Spanish, despite the early efforts of Sesame Street and 3 Spanish lessons in 5th grade, was certainly not a comfortable language for me. Due to time and money constraints I decided to do the entire trip to Nosara as one single Herculean effort, with no breaks. I flew from Seattle to Miami, a long flight in itself, and landed there to find the entire airport under construction, with no signs anywhere indicating where to go, left security, came back through security, and hiked what felt like the same distance I had just flown, carrying 50 pounds of yoga clothes and a mat, to find my next departure gate, which then changed, sending me hiking off again with a fervent promise to myself to check my luggage next time. On that first flight my bottle of water had leaked all over my travel documents, fading my careful print-outs of contact information and addresses. I spent a good chunk of the flight in the bathroom, blotting papers with paper towels, trying to salvage anything I could. I was completely exhausted and I hadn't left the States yet.

On arrival in San Jose, the capitol of Costa Rica, I went through customs and out where I had been directed by my travel agent to meet my driver. My flight was a couple of hours late and I was worried about this next connection. Out in the heat, I searched the crowd for a sign with my name on it. Up and down I went, the whole length of the concourse searching every piece of cardboard held aloft. My name wasn't there. A strange man approached me and asked me if he could help. I explained the situation and he helped me look for my name. I didn't have the phone number for the car company or for the travel agent, but he used his cell phone to track down the agent and spoke briefly with her in Spanish. When he got off the phone, he explained that she didn't know where my driver was and I was on my own for transportation. By an interesting coincidence, he himself was a professional driver and with a little schedule finagling would be able to take me to Nosara. (I know what you're thinking, but, shhhh...just wait and we can talk about that later.)

I've forgotten now, a couple of years later, exactly how long I had been awake by this time. One of my flights was a red eye, I had a delay and a layover, and now I was looking at a 5-6 hour drive to the coast. I went with the stranger to his car after he had a couple more conversations on his cell phone. He didn't speak much English and I spoke no Spanish. I tried hard to stay awake and make conversation; he tried hard to entertain me with information about the countryside. He offered to stop for dinner but we both laughed at the thought, realizing at the same time that I'd just snooze on the table. He warned me that once we were on the peninsula the roads weren't paved and we might have to leave his car and rent a jeep. The thought of any more delays made me want to weep, so I just refused to think about it. As it turned out, we didn't need a jeep, but once we were on those roads I had no trouble at all staying awake, bouncing from pothole to pothole.

We finally reached Nosara and the hotel that would be my home for the next month. He gave me his card and told me to call him if I needed anything. I gave him his fee and half again for a tip and all of my gratitude. It was late at night, I had been up for more than 24 hours with nothing to eat but cashews and graham crackers. I checked in at the front desk, was shown to my room and opened the door on...a roomful of ants. Big ones, little ones, red ones, black ones. All over the room. I was too tired to have whooping hysterics so I just sat on the bed and cried. I wanted nothing more than to run back out and find my stranger, tell him to "take me back, take me back! I just want to go home. Please just take me home." Instead, I cried. I called my partner using the hotel phone and damn the expense. And I went to sleep.

Why would anyone travel? Here's a postcard from the rest of that trip, one particular memory of many: It's night and I've spent sunset alone at the beach. You can't call what I've been doing "swimming", it's more like making love with the ocean, playfully. It's warm and pouring rain. I'm padding home in my pink flip flops, splashed with mud up to my thighs, in just my bathing suit and multi-colored sarong, room key tied to one corner and a flashlight in my hand. The fireflies aren't out tonight; it's raining too hard. When a bike or car goes by, the driver and I wave to one another, or call out " 'noches!" When I get back to my room, I'll shower, shake out my bedding to check for scorpions (my roommate and I have a ritual for this, calling out, "Scorpion! O-oh, scorpion!") and set my alarm for 5 AM for my early morning yoga class. Sometime tomorrow I will go to the local ice cream stand, peruse all of the flavors for the day and get what I always get, one scoop of coffee and one scoop of chocolate chip.

Have I ever known a feeling like this? Do I even have the vocabulary for it? I can only make snapshots with my words. The pictures would show the kindness of strangers, on which I have often depended without regret. The quick response to my own intuition. The little gifts to myself, the contentment in my own skin. And finally the proof of my own indomitability. I do not need to become strong and flexible; I am strong and flexible, and here is the proof for myself. Travel is an easy way to prove it to myself, over and over again.

I don't think travel is necessary though to find the proof. Sometimes the tests find us. But sometimes we have to go looking for them. Remember the fairy tales, the ones with the impossible task to complete by morning? Our hero's despair in the face of it? But then he or she begins, and help comes. Inertia can be hard to overcome. I know because I love nothing more than to just be left alone to sit and read. I would sit and read my life away given half a chance. But if I do that then I can't believe in myself, and I need to believe in myself. If life doesn't give me an impossible task, then I have to give it to myself, somehow, find the adventure I can have, the monster I can slay, so I can know myself. More importantly, so I can trust myself, and trust that help will come in the form of the stranger, in the form of my own willingness to stay put until my impossible task becomes just, well, my life and I'm just living it, triumphantly.

copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles

Staying Awake

I sat with my sweetie a few months back watching Young @ Heart, a lovely documentary about a choir of oldsters who sing modern music, and realized–I don't have the slightest idea what I'll want to do when I grow up.

This is shocking news to me since I am a big planner. (You might refer to my earlier post about list-making in case you doubt me.) I have little plans for the day, the week, the month, bigger plans for the future. A 5 year plan, a 10 year plan, a plan for retirement. But while watching that movie, I had the thought for the first time: I'm doing an awful lot of planning for a person I haven't met yet. A total stranger, who might not appreciate my input, thanks very much. I imagine her at 75 saying back to me now, "I know how much you've scrimped and saved and planned so that I can go on a world cruise, but I'm really much too busy with my accordion quartet to take the time now. Sorry."

I think about when I turned 38 or so and suddenly realized that my 22-year-old self had made a decision for me that I was still living by. She was well intentioned but kind of a tight ass frankly, and she swore off alcohol, not because she had a problem with it, but because her rare encounters with it had convinced her that it simply was not worth the time and money. So for the next 16 years my knee jerk response to any offer was, "No thanks. I don't drink." That is fine, except that I had not given it any thought at all for 16 years. I had no idea whether I still felt that way or not. At 38, was I still someone who doesn't drink? As it turns out, I am, for the most part, but now I enjoy a very occasional girly drink, and about once every 10 years or so I like to go a little wild with friends for about 2 weeks. My 22-year-old self would not have guessed that about me, nor would she have given me space for it. Her opinions were a lot more, well, clearly defined, let's say, than mine are.

As I said, I am a planner, but I am also a planner who has frequently had the experience of plans gone astray. Once, during my travels, I met a woman in Austria who was also traveling. We hit it off, but I was going to Italy next and she was off to Germany. We agreed to meet in southern France on a particular day about a week later and travel a little together. (Just for everyone's information, I am talking about a time before cell phones.) I got on a train for Florence, I thought, but I arrived the next morning in Venice. I have written about this before. I was frustrated and angry and not sure what to do. I had a specific timeline to work with and I was in the wrong place! There was no way to force this situation to fit my plans so I had to be creative. I had to be flexible.

I cannot plan for every possible eventuality. And I cannot predict every choice I will make. I think I know myself and the shape of my life, the direction I want to go. I keep getting these little hints though that my life is actually the space between breaths. I need to stay awake for the breathing, so that I can enjoy this one breath right now, appreciate it and be ready. Be ready for the shift that happens inside that says, not that way, this way now. Be ready for the obstacle that shows up outside that says, not this way, that way now. Be ready for the lost luggage, the broken dish, the winning ticket, the surprise vacation, the broken arm, the long-lost relative, the new love, the change of heart, the move across country, the flooded basement, and maybe even be ready to take up the accordion when I grow up.

copyright 2009 J. Autumn Needles