Pioneering connection

Have a told this story before? I would tell you to stop me if you've heard it but it may just be different this time around. Stories from my mutating memory bank usually are.

The dolls were lined up against my bedrail aka the back end of the wagon. They had bonnets over yarn hair and took on names such as Emma Mae and Constance (their real names were Anna (the blond) and Becky (the air force pilot)- way too modern. I had friends at playgroup with such names for godsake). I wore a bonnet too along with a calico dress and white fringed cowboy boots. I would sit on my bed and lead the wagon train west- to Strawberry Hill and Oregon City and places where gold rushes through the veins of mountains. To where I was told my ancestors creakily wheeled and (re)named the land a century before. I knew about the dangers of cholera and broken wagon axles and fording rushing rivers from my favorite game on our Apple IIGS. I imagined crossing grassy meadows and roasting buffalo by the campfire and drinking water from ice cold streams. I constructed multiple lives with bits of what I knew to be somebody's truth, bits of ancestral memory, bits of what I thought I wanted to be.
When I asked my mom if I was more country or city girl and she immediately replied, "City" I was angry. Sure I grew up in San Diego. Sure I lived directly above a freeway. Sure I went to an elementary school with a chain-link fence around the periphery and would later go to a middle school with gangs and guns and drive-by shootings. But we had a canyon out back and went camping for a week each year in the Sierras! I played in the mud and had a snail farm! We had dogs and cats and hamsters and birds and rabbits! How more country can you get?
I knew she was right, but I stomped my feet and threw a tantrum anyway. "I'm. A. Country. Girl!" That's all I wanted to be. Why? Being a country girl meant being a pioneer. Being a pioneer meant discovering new lands and having adventures. This is how it worked in my mind. I created the story of who I wanted to be. I didn't want to hear the truth.

So where is the line between creating the life you want through mapping out a dream (all that The Secret stuff) and creating a story in your head that prevents that dream from turning into its own unique version of reality? How do you have a goal but keep yourself open to happy distractions along the way that may delay what you think you want but really get you closer to your true path? Is there such a thing as a true path?

This applies to people as well. I am finding as I get older and more people are in my life it is actually harder to accept people for just who they are. Especially in an intimate relationship. I want a composite of all my favorite people when in reality one person will never be able to fulfill all of my needs. They can get damn close but really why would I want all my needs be met by a single soul anyway? How much pressure is that? It is so hard to start a new relationship with someone, be it friend or lover, and not have expectations of what roles (holes?) they will fill in your life. And my problem is, maker of stories that I am, that when someone doesn't live up to my story of who they are to me, I don't know where my reality lies.
I want to be in a community that encourages each other to be their best selves, where one can feel loved and brave and free to express. Sometimes I think others want the exact same thing and I let my image of them overlay and conceal the fact that maybe a connection in thoughts, feeling, spirit doesn't actually exist in the way I thought it did. That certain qualities I was trying to draw out either aren't there or I'm not the one who is meant to make that person shine. Is it ever our job to help someone else shine? I think yes- isn't that what "community" is? But like a jigsaw puzzle certain pieces fit better than others to make a beautiful picture. (like of kittens playing with yarn. Or a teacup of daisies. Or horses whinnying and neighing in a field of oats. Thats what I want my life to be like- kittens and horses and daisies.)

30 years after leading my wagon train from my bunkbed, I work on a farm. It is a story I have been telling myself for years. I got to be a pioneer on the seas for a decade and now I am getting my hands dirty instead of salty. End of the Oregon trail stuff. Am I a country girl? No. I work on a farm in the smack middle of the city. But if I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of lavender and tomato plants, if I pretend the traffic is a river and the planes overhead are approaching thunderstorms, it's almost like I'm on a "real" farm out in the country.
But that's not my story right now. I don't need to pretend I'm anywhere other than downtown because I like looking up at the skyscrapers and Coronado bridge. I like hearing sirens and students chattering about algorithms or politics. I love the fact that we grow tons of food among the concrete. It's not the story I thought it would be when I was a kid but I'm just fine with the way the plot is developing.

Now its time to turn the page and sharpen my pencil and let my new friends, new loves, new psuedo-family write their own stories in my book and be receptive to the truths, the erasures, the scribbles that will occur. I might not understand it all at first. It takes time to learn the personal languages of each individual. Patience is a challenge for me because when I was a traveling gypsy I constantly felt the need to connect deeply, intensely, immediately. And move on. Because that's all the time I thought I had.
But now, rooted in San Diego, I have time. We have time to flesh out our stories.

Keep writing, reading, living each other.
Scarier than fording a rushing river, right?

Coming back

"Palm Desert outlets!" the woman in the seat across from me crooned as we made our final descent into Southern California. She craned her neck around to her kid in the seat behind her. She listed off shopping outlet after shopping mall with relish. "We can go to Sea World too."
I wanted to cry.
We bumped our way across the taupe desert. The ocean became visible through the gloom of June as we barreled over the mountains towards the swath of heavily-housed hills and canyons.
Brown. Dry. Treeless. Open space-less.
These were the thoughts that skipped across my brain. I thought about the lush farms I spent time upon in Belgium, New York, Alabama. I thought about laughter and growth and old barns full of secrets and swimming ponds secreting grass and the Hudson River flowing beside my speeding train and miles of green fields with happy cows and sheep.
What am I doing here?
San Diego. Home. Friends. Community. Farming.
I willed the second set of words to overpower the first.
The beaches split the view of land and sea as we glided over downtown and the Pacific opened up into the sky.
OK, San Diego, you know me. How can I be disappointed in the ocean? In a brilliant blue sky? How can I stay sullen about a summer infused with salty breezes and fresh basil and dirty fingernails?

I have jumped right back into San Diego farming life. Much has changed. Trees that were bare when I left are full of fruit, brassicas have been replaced with peppers and potatoes, new faces appear at the farm with hands willing to dig and weed and plant. I am now (almost) in charge of directing those hands! This is why I'm here. To work in this clay and sand, this arid earth. To work with people in this overpopulated region to regrow the soil stolen for lawns and concrete. Is it practical to farm food here with modern agricultural practices? Can it be sustainable? With a few exceptions I believe the answer is a negative. With 90% of our water being piped in and the sprawl forever extending outward and upward, we are pushing our land past its limits with every shower and gulp of water. We are too many.
But people (I) do live here. People (me) need to eat. Eating should be healthy and pleasurable and not a constant worry. If people knew how to grow even one thing on a window sill, they are helping themselves and the environment. That is why I am here.
Maybe. I mean it sounds noble right?
But maybe it is to surround myself with people who care- about me, about food, about the environment, about social justice, about issues rather than stuff.
Or maybe it is just to hang out at local bars and drink good beer and connect.
Or maybe to find that boat in some marina that is going to sail me across the Pacific and to another life.
Or maybe to find out that I hate vegetables and trees and am actually a Republican.

Whatever my purpose may be, for now I will farm and breathe in salt air and root myself in the place where I was born and keep leaving.

And keep coming back to- brown, dry, sprawling, and all.

Haggling my way to Hell

My friends are trading a peacock for a chicken across the alley when I see the set laying on a box. The florescent pink poster on the back of his van reads "XXX adult DVDs $3.00." The middle aged man reading a magazine next to the car also has a few chipped glasses and frying pans, knick knacks resembling angels, and stained kitchen appliances on card tables. But the silver spoons, tarnished forks, and half-polished knives are on the side of his booth territory laid out in cases on an old crate. Another much smaller florescent sign proclaims "$60.00."
He is sweating profusely at 9:30 in the rural Alabama morning and I wonder how he will survive Trade Day in the heat. I trace my finger along the patterns in the plated silver and pick up a knife to test its weight. As if I knew anything about silver!

My friends watch as a fellow farmer reaches into the old wooden cage and grabs the peacock by the legs, flips him upside down with nary a peck (those suckers are dangerous; I watched the bird sharpening his beak earlier that morning when we were trying to catch him), and shoves him into a metal cage housing a turkey. "Do you think he would take thirty?" I ask Joe. I had first hoped I could get XXX DVD man down to twenty but Joe, who lives on the farm across the street and is much more familiar with Trade Day etiquette, scoffs at such a lowball. And he isn't even the one selling the silver. "Thirty can be the start of haggling," Joe suggests. Damn. I hate haggling.

Aha. Ebay. I pull out my I-fancy-phone. A huge tattooed guy with a buzz cut and truckers hat stops and says something to me but like many of the interactions I've had in the deep south, I have to ask him to repeat whatever he just said. "You're going to have trouble getting a signal out here in the sticks!" he laughs. I laugh too and agree, willing the Ebay page with "Wm Rogers IC" cutlery displayed to appear. He just stands and smiles as I continue to wait. I'm not sure whether to talk to him more or move to get a better signal. No need for either- we both smile, he moves on, I stay put, Ebay comes through. I figure out that $60 for the 40 or so pieces, even if a few are mismatched, is a deal. But being at a flea market/trade day extravaganza where the people-watching far outweighs the value of most of the stuff, I feel like I should still get him to lower the price. That's what you do at a flea market right?

Now my friends are grabbing squawking and flapping hens and delivering them into the wooden cage on a wagon to take back to the farm. Five hens later they secure the cage and start pulling the feathery lot towards the road where the occasional rusted pickup and semi scream by.

I need to decide. I have a flight to catch.

XXX DVD man tells me that the set is over a hundred years old and that spoons sell on Ebay for $3.00 each. "Oh really?" I say innocently, secretly clutching my I-fancy-phone in my purse. My friend Joe approaches and I get nervous because I am embarrassed by my haggling skills or lack thereof. (What was I thinking, twenty bucks? Ha!) I know XXX DVD man wont take $30. "Uh, I really like them, but uh, I can't really spend $60." I am not making eye contact as I stare at the silver. "My mother said I shouldn't take less than $50." he says. Shit! His mother? He mentions his mother? Is that a sales maneuver? Jesus, Jenny, she's probably at home in a wheelchair strapped to a ventilator.
"Will you take $40?" I say sheepishly, knowing he won't, knowing I'm a bad person for even offering. His mother is at home smoking a pack of Marlborough reds alternating with puffs of oxygen and watching her programs as her son sells off the family silver.
"$50." he says.
"OK." I say. I pull out my purse and yup, I only have three twenty dollar bills. Rule number one of haggling: have the correct change for what you are willing to pay. Nothing is more awkward than lowballing someone saying you can't pay their price, getting your way, then handing them the amount they originally asked for (and was still a good deal) and forcing them to make change. Shit, his mother? Is she OK? Does she need a new house dress or more kibble for her 20 cats?
He hands me back $10 and we fold up the cases. He even throws in a polishing rag.
"Thank you sir." I say, wishing him a nice day.
He wipes sweat from his forehead and settles back into the lawn chair staring us down (or so it seems to me!) as we walk off.

As a good friend should, Joe immediately starts with, "Good job, his mother going to come home and find the family heirlooms all sold off, her son strung out in the living room..."
I tell him to shut up but we both continue to make up ridiculous scenarios about XXX DVD man and his mother, trying to assuage my guilt with a bit of humor.
We exchange stories of bargaining in Asia and how its rude not to haggle in certain cultures. We agree that we are both bad hagglers. Or at least we agree that I am.

We eat tacos with that extra $10 before rushing back to farm (I am going to hell), before I shove the two cases into my overstuffed bag (I have a ceramic hand from Brugge, a mug that says "Melk" from Cleo, a few bars of Belgian chocolate, and assorted Indian spices from the East Village already packed in my duffel among flea market clothes and heavy boots). We drive through the rolling hills of Alabama then I get on a plane flying far from XXX DVD man, his poor invalid mother, and their once illustrious but now broken family history encased in silver coated cutlery.

But damn it's going to look good on my dinner table.
And maybe he'll by his mom a new housedress and a pack of Reds.
See? Everyone wins.

Ropes and vegetables

My hands are still dirty when I grasp the sisal rope.
I was planting celery at Red Hook Farm. The dirt was dark and loose and full of freshly harvested compost. The girls doing most of the digging and planting were high schoolers but at the farm they were Youth Leaders, this was their job. They live in the projects a couple of blocks from the 2.75 acre farm and it was clear they loved getting their hands dirty too. Between conversations punctuated with giggling and teasing, they carefully placed seedlings into each shallow hole, surrounded the baby plant with soil, and patted down the earth with bare hands. All around us other young adults and volunteers waded through rows of lettuce, hills of potatoes, blocks of spinach with buckets full of weeds or wheelbarrows full of mulch. New York Harbor is literally a stones throw away and that olfactory cacophony of saltwater and diesel and hotdogs fills the air but on the farm you can also smell wet earth and the trace of nightshades as you brush past. It is a challenging neighborhood and it is nothing less than amazing that a farm exists between an Ikea, old warehouses, and the projects.

I look down through the hole in the fire escape. There is no longer a ladder, just this rope. It is knotted at two foot intervals. My hands grasp the uppermost knot. I look at my friend nervously. "You want some shoes? Let me get you some shoes." he says. I have kicked off my boots and they lie on the porch 15 feet below. He brings me trainers and somehow they fit perfectly. My hesitancy, my shifting of hands and feet on rope has made us both more nervous. It's a long drop. Once I skooch off the grating will I be able to lower myself down? If not, I most likely won't be able to pull myself up either.

This is not a big deal.
But if I fall it is.
R. says he will spot me. He swings onto the rope and lowers himself down. "I'm all upper arm strength," he says.
"Yup, I'm not," I say.
He's down there, I'm up here, I hold onto the rope and position my feet on a knot.

I drop off the fire escape and am swinging in the air above a porch behind a brownstone in Brooklyn. A few seconds later I have shimmied down the rope without a problem, my new trainers landing softly on the plywood below.
No big deal.
And its not. But R. and I are super excited about our little challenge and grinning like mad. I am proud of myself for not using my fear of heights (falling) or my muscle weakness as an excuse not to do it. Everyday we face little challenges and they can be as satisfying to conquer as climbing a mountain or winning a hotdog eating contest.

My hands have strands of rope sticking to residual dirt. I think about where I was a year ago. I came to New York last summer and volunteered at Eagle Street Farm in Greenpoint. I learned how to properly pick kale and to shake as much dirt as possible off of the roots of plants to be composted because hauling tons of dirt onto a roof is hard work. I was looking into internship programs and had just heard about the one at City College in San Diego. I hadn't lived in San Diego in almost a decade and wasn't sure what the year would bring. I jumped in anyway.
I now know my brassicas from my solanaceae. I know when to use a digging fork or a hula hoe. I have eaten better, fresher, greener in the last year than ever before in my life. I am slated to return to San Diego to actually work at the farm that has brought me community, knowledge, opportunity.
I am anxious. I hope that I know enough, am strong enough to lead.
In a week I scooch off the edge of my travels and shimmy down into the dirty life of California farming once again.

Like growing vegetables on an urban farm or in pots on a windowsill, like seeking knowledge and a healthier life in the middle of a socially depressed urban center, like climbing a rope off a fire escape: whether the challenges are big or small, jumping into the unknown is just about always worth it.

Something to look forward to

Yes. I'm pretty sure its going to happen. I'm positive actually.
I am going to be a batty old person. Maybe even a batty middle aged person.

I'll wear long patchwork skirts and rubber galoshes and bangles from India and leather bracelets from islands where Brahmin cows roam freely through streets with cracked pavement and fruit rotting in the gutters. I may even re-pierce my nose and instead of my old hoop I'll adorn it with a red ceramic rose. My skin will be dark with blended freckles and mapped with a globe's worth of laugh lines. I'll live in a house with people of all ages to whom I am a mother, a lover, a companion, a confidant, a friend, a colorful old character.

And I'll be talking to myself more than I do now. Biking through Belgian fields, stumbling over cobblestoned town centers, riding to my next cup of coffee or goblet of pungent beer, I talked to myself. When I wasn't talking, often in a French accent (my actual French is horrible but my accent is pretty awesome if I do say so myself), I was singing or laughing or listening to the deeper voice inside, the one that was me but not quite me. Not in a schizophrenic way, just in a way that happens after days or weeks or months of being mostly alone. When the only people you talk to hand you things like food or drinks or little statues of pissing boys (I didn't buy one). But what is more fun than flying through a flower filled pasture, past actual windmills spinning underneath modern wind generators, beside canals singing at the top of your lungs to the goats and cows and ducks?

I continue to hum and talk and laugh and sing as I walk through Brooklyn or across my old campus near Washington Square Park. It is New York and talking, singing, yelling to oneself (or strangers) on the street is pretty normal.

The captain that I worked with in the Caribbean commented over dinner one night that I am always making sounds. He said he found it charming, my steady stream of grunts at thoughts or humming of songs or sighing or clicking my tongue at spatulas and bowls in the galley. I wasn't aware of it but I kind of like that I can't seem to contain the sounds I am thinking and feeling.
They bubble up or shoot forth without my consent.
They burst or are whispered into the world and color other peoples afternoons.

So I figure I'm well on my way to being that eternally mumbling eccentric old woman. I will start (OK, continue) stockpiling fuzzy sweaters and leather boots with mismatching laces, tiny barrettes, scarves of all sizes and colors, flowy tops with embroidered flowers. I will wait to buy the blue eyeshadow but I may as well start a tchotchke collection now. Maybe I will go in the salt and pepper cellars direction. I might as well collect ugly ceramic cherubs that serve a purpose.

But hey, as long as my little voices, my sounds, my songs keep me entertained, keep me laughing, keep my eyes open to the world like a curious child, all is well.

Misbuttoned sweaters, dirty galoshes, and all.

There is always a Them

The conversation about Them happens after a poor mans champagne at Cirio, after a local fruity sour beer concoction at Guests, after a walk around the Flemish ghetto and Grand Place, after seeing both the pissing boy and squatting girl and rubbing the reclining man with a dog for good luck (on the arm!) It happens after dinner in a Spanish bar where battered calamari and smoked ribs and deep fried anchovies and lush red wine graces our mouths. It happens on my first day in Belgium after walking the streets and smelling the smells of last year's trip to northern Africa, seeing women in burqas and men sipping strong coffee at cafe tables. It happens late in the night in Brussels.
The Moroccan question came up earlier in the night but was brushed aside. We talked of health care and maternity leave and unemployment. Of Obama and Elio di Rupo (Gay! Italian heritage! Socialist!). Of denying climate change and killing lobsters and how far a business can go making itself as environmentally sustainable as possible without putting itself out of business.
There is vehement talk of social service abuse and having six babies each, of failure to assimilate and of poor work ethic, of public schools going to hell having to deal with more languages and different cultural norms regarding parent participation in education.
We talked as we sipped tea in a kitchen of an apartment subsidized by the government in an attempt to keep the middle class in Brussels. She bought it six months ago and is now on unemployment as she thinks about her next career move. Her unemployment compensation is over 1000 Euros a month. That is more than some of my friends make with jobs. Health care is included of course, even if it is basic. The immigrants don't get this kind of money on Belgium's version of welfare, but like the rest of the inhabitants they know their health care is covered, that they will be able to get enough money to put food on the table. The social safety net will most likely catch them. This is why they come to Belgium.
As I told my host (who is a highly compassionate, intelligent, well educated person and more stating her perception of the national sentiment than her own position), I am trying to be sympathetic to an ethnic Belgian's position but to me it just sounds like any country's born-and-raised citizen complaining about the most recent immigrant. Just fill in the ethnic group with the complaints I just mentioned. In the USA it's Mexicans (It seems like Latin Americans all seem to get called Mexican if they work in a kitchen or as a gardener or farm worker). Italians before that? Irish way back when? Moroccans seem to be the thorn in the side in Belgium. There are a lot of them. Speaking their own language and making their own neighborhoods. They often end up with the jobs no one else wants to do and are sometimes/often discriminated against for "skilled" jobs. Before that it was the Spanish and Italians and Turks who came (invited by the government) to work in the coal mines.
The Spanish restaurant we patronized began because of these immigrants. The owner was kissed on the cheek and told all the best when we departed. The Spanish are accepted (It seems). Would this have happened in a Moroccan restaurant? Would we even have gone to a Moroccan restaurant or is that supporting the enemy? But isn't that what everyone should be doing? Supporting those that need support, reaching out to a community that is reminded every day that they are the outsiders and not necessarily welcome in their new country? Or is it not as bad as I perceive?
We emptied our cups and headed to bed, digesting foods, wines, tea, (ideas about culture, the notion of changing populations) from around the world.

You're still a traveler if...

"The place where you were robbed?" Cleo asks when I tell her I rode past the center and down into the zuid area by the river. "No," I replied, laughing a little, "a bit more north."
It is a running joke now, the whole robbery thing. It wasn't as funny the day before but after a little talking and a bit of meditation on compassion, it transitioned into a joke.

Ha.

Ha.

Turns out I may or may not have been robbed as I acquiesced in a request for change for a 2 Euro coin. It's the oldest trick in the "What not to do if you don't want to be a stupid traveler" book. But everyone had been mistaking me for a Flemish local and I was on a well traveled bike and he looked nicely dressed and I didn't think I would be targeted as a tourist and... well, he got a little too close to me as I tried to pick a couple of euros out of the change pocket of my wallet.
Stupid traveler mistake number two: I was carrying a bunch of US dollars and euros in my regular wallet and to give change I had to totally open up my wallet and flash the cash as well as my credit cards. His fingers hovered above my purse as he dropped the 2 euro coin into the pouch. I'm freaking out (internally) at this point knowing this is not cool. Then he pointed to the 20 euro bill and said, "You give me 20 euros." I looked up at him, the growing uneasiness now transitioning into alarm as I wondered if I was being robbed. I was confused by his intentions. Did I give him the wrong change? I still had to look at the numbers on the coins. Or was he trying to say he gave me a twenty bill when he clearly gave me a small coin? No, he was asking for money. I knew in a split second that he had no visible weapon and it was in the middle of the day on a busy street.
I got angry but tried to keep cool.
"No." I said as I backed away and shoved my wallet into my bag.
"Give me another euro?" he asked a little more tentatively this time.
"No," I said, "I need my money."

OK. Totally lame comeback. I wanted to shout, "What the fuck is going on here?" But I didn't. Instead I shakily got back on my bike and pedaled to meet Cleo for coffee half way between the red light district and the new MAS museum in the Docklands area. I replayed the event over in my head.
"You have your credit cards?" Cleo asked she sipped coffee and I wolfed down a sandwich. I felt better with a bit of food in my stomach: I knew that my vulnerability with the guy had been partly due to caffeine overload, lack of food, and being on the achy sniffly edge of the flu.
"Um, I think so." I checked my purse. Yup, all there. As were all the euros I'd counted that morning. The only thing in question were the dollars. Had he used slight of hand to lift a hundred from my poorly concealed stash? Or had I changed that hundred bill last week when I flew in or had I put it back with the other money I had in my luggage at Cleo's home? I just didn't remember. Had he put his other hand into my open bag when he was distracting me with the coin move? Luckily all I had in there was a sweater and my zippered up purse with some paper (and my Iphone! still there!)
Sucker. No camera or Ipad to be had.
So what the hell happened? Did he just see the 20 euro bill (and the 50 behind it) and figure he might as well ask?

I have to say I was more upset about the unpleasantness and confusion of the event, the robbery, the nothing, not because of possibly losing some money (which always sucks but hey, money is just money and not an eyeball or a finger or a life) but because all of my time in Belgium had been so positive and I didn't want this to mar my overall experience. After the initial feeling of dirty vulnerability, I began to think of it as a reminder that even though I am a guest of a good friend in a town I'm beginning to know by feel, I am still a traveler. I am still a woman in a city. I am still just made of thin skin and blood and bones. I am breakable. And sometimes too trusting. It is hard to find the balance. I do not want to hide from everyone who says hello on the street. I want to be open to sharing a moment with a stranger, be willing to alter my day for an adventure, clear my preconceptions of a place and see it in a pure light.

Unfortunately I have the muscle memory of being physically assaulted on the sidewalks of New York and on the roads and trains of India. I've been verbally battered in too many of the places I've lived and traveled. I've had things stolen from me in Paris and New Jersey and the Caribbean. I've lunged, cussing and swinging, at leering men on motorbikes. I've barricaded hotel room doors in the middle of the night against fists hammering flimsy plywood secured with cheap bolts.

But I still travel, I still smile at folks as I ride my bike past chocolate shops and mosques here in Antwerp or wander through rasta markets in the Caribbean. I look forward to traveling in Asia again and exploring South America, traversing Africa. There are still too many places to go to stay at home for too long. Especially when you're not totally sure of where home is.

Maybe I was robbed, maybe I wasn't. I'll change the wallet I use and make it a policy not to make change on the street, but I hope the only other change I make is in the positive direction that traveling always takes me: Learning, growing, meeting, living.