airplane scramblings...

I still haven’t slept. I am writing this from the plane. I am listening to Amos Lee and getting shivers from the incredible orange horizon stretching out over the clouds. The sun is setting and the clouds are so thick it looks like a perfect snow covered field covering as far as the eye can see.

 The guy giving me the  “international security interview” before I boarded the plane seemed much more intrigued by the idea that this American girl had been living in Spain for three years and was teaching dance there than he was in  the fact that someone had asked me to carry an unmarked package onto the plane and say it was mine.

 Sleep would be nice.

 Another milemarker, I suppose. I am on yet another trans-atlantic flight, winging my way towards the Tracy homestead in the peaceful United states Midwest. Spent a few hours in Holland this morning. Very nice, ate some interesting food. I love trying out the food in European countries, as it is not usually drastically different from what I am used to, but just distinct enough to be interesting.

 As we are stopping over in Memphis, I am just thankful I am not stuck sitting next to the southern frat boys I encountered at the gate. I saw them. I heard them. I had that unnerving annoyance well up inside of me, as it never seems to fail that fate has placed us in the same row on that HUGE plane.

Phew, relief. I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. They were just going to “dude, drink a beer or a shot first thing and get so f*%#ing wasted”

 Lovely.

 I am dressed like a total spaz today. I play this game with myself when I travel through other European countries, trying to not be pegged as an American. Today I wore a semi-ridiculous outfit, partially because I was up so late packing last night that I forgot to take into account that I would need to wear something today.

 No good movies on the plane today. I might need to pop a few antihistamines to force myself to sleep. I know I must be tired. I really only slept one hour. It felt more like when you fall asleep in class with your head propped up on your hand and then suddenly your head drops and knocks itself out of your palm and you wake up in abrupt agony.

That’s what the alarm clock did to me this morning. Knocked my head out of my hand and sent me hurtling into a long and goopy day of exhausted journeying.

 Put shave gel in my hair this morning in the shower. At least I didn’t fall asleep in there and drown.

 

I would rather be on top of the world.

If I seem distracted, it's because most of the time, in my head, this is what I am doing.
If not, well, then it's what I want to be doing.

Uciekać

that's all I needed to do. Ratować się ucieczką...everything.
How do you say "supreme  lethargy" in Polish?

I can remember the last time I ever sat and watched a TV show in hour-long marathons. August. It only happens in August. 

Fans blasting.

Shades drawn.

Patrick Dempsey is saving lives.

We like it when Patrick Dempsey saves lives.

Despite the beautiful lethargic hours and the gallon of Pasión de Café ice cream in the freezer, I am excited to go back to work in the coming days.

My muscles are going to atrophy if I don't.

Plus, I have read some new thoughts, been inspired by countless hours of new music, picked the brains of both new and long-time friends, climbed to gorgeous heights with awe-inspiring views, penned many new chapters and verses and ramblings of my brain, and because of all that...

I feel ready to jump in to both creating and creatively instructing again. 

So I say today.

Ask me again tomorrow.

Things making me smile at this moment: 

-A gigantic king james reference Bible 

-Wearing hand-me-down clothes 

-my roomate's baking impulses

-Subject-O-Matique

-my Polish heritage

-drinking something with the word "spritzer" in the title

-savoring the last few days of 25-ness

-the cinematic orchestra

Home is where the hacking birds are...

There are these birds that sound like smokers with emphysema perched in the tree outside my kitchen window. Someone should have warned them when they were younger.
Sunlight and cool morning air streams into the flat and I am smiling, thinking about my first cup of coffee for the day.

God knows I usually think of coffee first, and I think He's okay with it, so I try to fill the spaces of my mind that are unconsumed by café with prayers.

There's still a few boxes unpacked, a few pictures not yet hung and my bed is covered with an eclectic assortment of things I don't have a place for yet.
Even amidst this clutter and settling, friendships, conversation and laughter filled the hours until 3am. Girlfriends curled up on big couch cushions, with iced drinks clinking in glasses and topics ranging through all things we females discuss at these hours.

And, in that, I'm home.

(What is up with those poor birds, can I give them a throat lozenge or something?)

I care not for consistancy...

I am motivated by change.
This is why I am not very motivated right now. Monday morning, I find myself sitting at the reception desk in our school, answering phones and writing emails (okay, so I'm pausing to write this) again.... Another week of work, more work than before, now that I'm looking around and taking inventory.
I have always known that I thrive on change, that's nothing new. But I have realized that without change I can grow very apathetic.
That's probably no good.
Next week I am moving for the sixth time in two and a half years. I want to think that a new apartment will be enough change to motivate me a little more. I have this idea that it will inspire me. I will want to cook, write, and draw again. Maybe I'll go back to practicing the guitar. I need my creativity to be refreshed, because this past year and summer session sucked quite a bit out of me. Even though I am not going home, or traveling anywhere (because I have no money...) I am forging heavy battle against my pessimistic tendencies (my mother would be so proud) so I can step into August and the coming school year in expectancy and hope.

Is it alright to need change like that? I just don't foresee myself ever not needing it so badly...

7:30 am, Madrid, Bus 65...

I was craning my neck looking for “For Rent” signs whilst riding bus 65 to work this morning when I discovered something.
If you stretch your gaze towards the peaks of tall buildings while winding through narrow streets on public transportation (or private transportation, I suppose) and you allow the sun to catch your face for just a second before you inevitably squint your eyes…for just that split-second there is an amazing metaphorical sensation.
It captures perfectly the perspective from which I find myself viewing the world and my personal circumstances as of late.
Swirling and bending, looming tall above me, but also thoroughly surrounding me on all sides, this season has me feeling slightly dizzy and so very small, tucked deep inside of something much more profound and expansive than I would like to acknowledge.

So much of my life right now is wildly out of control. Wildly out of my control, that is. I could list all the areas of my existence that have suddenly taken flight and started soaring around me, taunting my human need for containment and understanding, but it is not necessary. Suffice it to say they are all pretty substantial.

My reaction to this season has been to draw everything into an intense thought life, rolling stuff around my brain until I go crazy. I guess I assume my brain can handle stuff that my emotions could not. Being both female and artistic, my nature lends itself to reacting to everything with feelings, and so I guess I have given more credit to dealing with things intellectually than is actually due. Neither one works completely.

A very wise mother as well as a very dear friend has been just the right human voice to talk me out of this dizzy and floating intellectual wrestling match.

Today I embraced that which has been made tangible. My cute little campers, music, dance, laughter, a mop and broom, perfectly ripe cherries, friendship…

As for the rest, well, sometimes you just have to let your head fall back and let the world swirl around you as you give into the all-knowing and all-encompassing guidance of the Creator of this journey.

Can you die from lack of solitude?!

It’s going to be a long month, folks. Only two days into this schedule and I am fairly certain I will not survive. Could be a close call.
Working from 7 am to 11 pm, children's camp all morning and hours of adult dance classes all evening, (with little more than 45 minutes to eat midday) = not our best idea. Period.

And for me, the most frustrating part is not so much tiredness, as it is being absolutely, completely surrounded by people all day. I start to grow edgy and irritated if I can’t find a moment of solitude. It’s ridiculous, I tell you. Even in the bathroom I can hear them outside asking where I am, because I need to find a list or make a phone call or answer a question. I realize I come off looking like a jerk, because I blame it on tiredness when I am short with someone, and I know that we’re all working the same schedule, so what right do I have?
I mean, is it ever okay to say to someone: “Well, I am actually not just tired, and you’re really great and all, but you have got to stop talking, go away and leave me in peace before I start to have nervous spasms”?

Please tell me that it is okay, because my only other option is to run away. And since I am already planning on trying that option out tomorrow and this weekend, I will be in need of a plan B.

Haha…there’s something so pathetic about so much whining coming from the person that works her job “for the relationships she builds with people” (direct quote from my job description). I wonder if I am fulfilling that line in my contract before or after I tell them to shut up and leave me alone…?

I hope and want to believe that there has got to be some grace, even for the most irritable of introverts…sigh.

1 o’clock am. I am finally alone, and here I am writing to a mass of people.

And I don’t even have Internet and won’t be able to post until tomorrow. What is wrong with me?
Nevermind.

Sticking out the gross days...

I hate, hate, hate, driving in this city. I actually don't care for driving in general, but I really hate getting lost in Madrid. (and with gas at obscene prices these days, who needs to be driving for hours around rotundas and up little side streets without hope of ever becoming un-lost?)


Today was Jessica to the rescue day. I had to force myself to do some things I don't feel comfortable with, because emergency struck our little school today. (again...)
I got a call from my boss as I was getting on the train, I could barely hear him, and I had to hang up and call back several times before I deciphered his weak plead, that he was practically unconscious on the side of the road, and could I please go get the other car and find him?
Luckily he came to enough to call an ambulance, because I was not going to make it to him with the other car for at least an hour. Plus, he couldn't even tell me where he was.

That was the start of my day. I went to the accountant, got last minute legal documents in order and mailed out (hopefully all signed and stamped as they need to be) went wandering all over to find the abandoned car, drive it to the hospital to pick up my boss, and get back to the school. Oh, I also taught a modern dance class in there somewhere.

I feel compelled to stay up typing this story (in spite of supreme exhaustion) because it verifies the basis of my decision to stay on for another year. I am needed here, and as a wise friend recently quoted to me: "My calling is wherever my greatest gift fills the greatest need."
I don't need to go make a need for myself somewhere else, I need to fill the gap I see right here.
Even though it is not at all appealing on days like today. Or when I am feeling restless and wanting change. Or when I am lonely and missing my family.
I think there are good things in store for sticking out the gross days like today.

Desperation and real estate.

I am afraid I might have to move...again. It was all so good, after a long summer of living alone in the outskirts of a city where I knew practically no one, and two months of imposing on dear friends in my state of homelessness, I finally found a place to settle. A really great place.

Eeeeshhh, I am already dreading the apartment hunt. It is NOT a fun pastime, let me state for the record.
I hope and pray it will just occur. The apartment will be found and I will be all moved in with Leah and maybe Mariana, without incident or desperate times of wandering through more of Madrid's hell-holes (valued at 900 euros a month, including moldy ham leg left on counter and permeating aroma of said ham).

I'll keep this updated.

Ahhhh...

Well, Jessica officially loves the south of France. I figured that would be the case.
Last week was the Euroretreat 2008, in Montpelier, on the Mediterranean coast of France.

I was a bit of a mess when I got there, and it took me a couple of moody walks on the beach and a nice long sleep to shake it off. It didn't help that I only slept one hour the night before, and sat in the Barcelona airport for 8 hours waiting for all my traveling buddies from La Coruña to arrive. Yet, when they did, it was like going home. Man, I miss them all so much.

What an intense week. I wrestled with the really messy details of my life and begged people wiser than me to help me answer the questions. It wasn't easy or anything, but when all was said and done, I felt free and ready to move forward. Thank God for these people who are so incredible, there are no words.
I got thousands of hugs from Sophia, co-lead a spontaneous dance party, shared in introducing people new to the wonderful brand of humor that is "The Office", and savored way too much cheese and wine. I met some new peeps from 5101, cool, great people from the Chicago offices.

And the trip home? Well, Andy rented a car and Nate, Sean and I got to drive with him all the way down the Mediterranean coast of France to Barcelona. We stopped one last time in France to eat, (I ate raw beef...it was not good) and got out of the car frequently to take pictures and walks and enjoy the journey to the fullest. Nate took me for a ride around Barcelona on the moto, (I'm not so scared in a city that is primarily bikes and pedestrians) and I even got to see Rebecca for a bit. All in all, I came home a bit lighter inside...possibly heavier outside from all the cheese and pastries, but it was worth it.

Too many homes...

I have been thinking about home lately. It is not that I don´t have a home, it is that I have many homes. I will eventually have an eternal home, but who knows when that will be? Sooo, in the meantime, I am deciding between the two countries I live in, the US and Spain, or maybe somewhere new altogether.

When I am here (Madrid) I am happy, and want to be here. When I am there (states) I am happy and ready to move back. It is frustrating to live overseas, I won´t lie. Everything is 10 times harder than it really needs to be, and I long for familiarity. But, every day has a bit of adventure to it and life is seldom mundane. Ya gotta love that...

I know that if I were to move back stateside, I would miss it here like crazy. I wouldn´t be able to remember how frustrated I used to get and why I ever wanted to come back in the first place. But it sure would be nice to not have to misunderstand and be misunderstood every day. (I am talking more about cultural differences than language at this point, because understanding the language does not = understanding the people and their ways, it really doesn´t)

It sure would be nice to be able to drive and visit my family, or hop on a plane and be there in a couple hours instead of fourteen.

Gosh, I suck at making decisions. Maybe I´ll just move to another country all together. You know, home is here, home is there, maybe I shoulsn´t live at home.

That doesn´t make any sense, but then neither does my life at this time.

Having a fun two weeks showing my cousin Hannah around my Spanish hometown and realizing that I have amazing people that I love and who love me in both of my homes, and for that I am thankful.

I don´t need more than that for the moment.