thefutureisred

The Day After Ten Years & Why I Won't Watch Video Coverage of the WTC Attacks

I happened to be in NY for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It wasn't planned and I didn't take part in any of the memorials. I didn't want to. Just as I never wanted to watch footage of the planes hitting. I just don't see the point.

Ten Years Ago Marked the First Day of the New Normal

I saw it from the top of our building in Brooklyn, directly across the river where I stared in shock at two massive burn marks seared onto the side of the Twin Towers. 

Sandra, our neighbor, emerged from the stairwell as we stood atop that old schoolhouse-turned-condos on Hicks Street, “The second tower just fell,” she said, explaining the cloud of grey-white dust that billowed out from the buildings and toward us. So matter of fact, it seemed, reporting what she heard from radio, just letting us know.

Then it was a quick succession of burning asbestos, sirens, people crying in the streets, singed papers and ash wafting their way from Manhattan to Brooklyn leaving by our feet a charred memo reminding Michael M to file his expense report by the end of the week.  The radio told of six suspicious passengers removed from a flight at JFK. A truck thought to contain explosives was stopped near the George Washington Bridge.

We decided to go indoors as the dust cloud began to envelop us.

Ten Years Later and Things Feel A Bit Too Normal

Here I am in NYC after not living here in almost five years. On and off the subway. Great food. The weather has been perfect. Tonight I'm taking a yoga class taught by friend. But I expected things to somehow be different, an obvious mark in the air that this big disaster happened a decade ago.

Something to mark the day I stopped believing.

This Is What I Can No Longer Trust Or Believe

September 12, 2001, I listened to the radio to hear journalists speaking live from the scene, their media veneer stripped clean. “Oh my god. It’s falling. I can’t believe it. The building is falling.” There was panic, fear and a complete loss of control, something I had never before or since heard from the media.

I searched online looking for something to answer why this had happened. I read back issues of the New York Times, read the histories of Afghanistan on CIA World Factbook, my favorite site for basic information on any country in the world.

But all clicks lead me to realize that nothing can explain it. Nothing can explain with any true sense of satisfaction the level of destruction and pain we saw on the streets. And the news media didn't help at all. 

After those early days, the sheen of a well-oiled media machine glossed over the first response as Terror At the Towers and A City Under Siege filled the airways to introduce repeatedly new reports of the same information. 

Stories told in the first days disappeared. The six passengers on the plane became four then evaporated. I never learned what happened with the truck of explosives at the bridge, but reports of the buildings falling and man-on-the-street first hand accounts proliferated, singing the same song with pre-prepped intros, outros, b-roll yet provided nothing useful.

I felt deceived by a media that seemed to only want to present that which would garner the most eyes and largest number of clicks, and the surreal nature of reaccustoming myself to a constantly changing post-9/11 world left me grasping for something solid and real.

Until finally I decided, solid and real is an illusion. 

Question Everything.

Prior to 9/11, the news was all about shark attacks.  Every other day, it seemed, another child, man or woman had been being mutilated by these beady-eyed creatures.

Surely we could have found a corner of the world with a story worthy of telling. It’s not as if the Taliban popped up in Afghanistan overnight. Qaddafi wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops until a couple weeks ago when he was ousted. Mubarak of Egypt didn’t suddenly turn sour a few months ago. But they weren’t yet looming, a fearful and direct danger to our lives, our children and our futures.

At the time of September 11, I was teaching composition at Stern College for Women.  When classes resumed after the attacks, I revised my curriculum completely. Instead of Langston Hughes and Hemingway, we pored over news articles, examined them and tried to answer the questions people asked.

Case In Point: Bush Officials Try To Calm Fears Of Anthrax

This article acts as if it's going to calm our fears about anthrax. Instead, it introduces Tom Ridge as the Bush administration’s new domestic security chief. His appointment, suggests the article, is meant to directly address concerns of terrorist threat in the United States as well as streamline methods of addressing those threats.

Mr Ridge describes his new role as such:

I may need some statutory authority down the line if I'm going to rearrange some of the responsibilities and give cleaner lines of responsibility to the agencies," he said.

Mr. Ridge said, for example, that he would not be the official to decide whether the military should shoot down a commercial airliner that behaved suspiciously. "My role, if there is time, would be more as an adviser," he said.

But, asked in the morning if he was "the boss here or are you a coordinator," Mr. Ridge replied, "The coordinator, it's like the conductor of an orchestra. The music doesn't start playing until he taps the baton.

Even after three separate descriptions of Ridge's new role, I still don't know what he's intended to do. I also wonder what exactly is this statutory authority he seeks down the line.

And then I look forward to now, post development of the Department of Homeland Security and wonder if those authorities are the ones that allow the department to wiretap, intercept mail and monitor our e-mails, blog writings, phone calls. Was this Mr. Ridge softening our desire for personal privacy in the hope that opening our lives to the government would protect us from anthrax and whatever else might arise.

Fear Is A Fantastic Motivator

As I told my students in the weeks after 9/11, if a piece of news tweaks the fear strings in your body, take a step back, analyze it and pull it apart.

That is not to say fear is useless. It protects us. Humans are more suggestible and more likely to listen to direction without question when under the influence of fear.

That is a fabulous thing when you’re caught in a flaming movie theater and someone tells you to remain calm, don’t run in directions and follow the aisle to the brightly lit EXIT sign.

It is dangerous and destructive, though, when the fear stimulus is prolonged and has no directed goal. Then, fear leads to random and useless action, often rife with violence and ultimately the mind and body breaks down into disorder.

I don't want to make my choices based on fear. Instead of allowing that belly twinge of emotion to guide my choices, I looked at my life and said "What am I waiting for?"

So many things I'd always wanted but never did because of fear, obligation, not wanting to do the wrong thing. Without fear, I am able to put aside the you-shoulds and what-ifs.

And, for what it's worth, it's easier to give up fear when you live through an event like 9/11. Because that's when I saw without a doubt that staying in one place is no more secure than moving. 

Last Week I Finally Saw the Airplane Footage

I chose not to watch the moment the planes hit because what good does watching a past event that cannot be changed. It's a spectator sport, and I prefer to live by my actions and my own memories.

It happened by mistake when I passed by a TV showing Tenth Anniversary coverage, and I was surprised at my response.

My chest tightened, breathing quickened. I went directly back to my apartment that no longer exists in a life that only lives in photos and memory. I was there again in all that pain and unknowing and indecision. 

Again, I felt the fear vividly. I re-experienced the wild look in the eyes of people around me, when they weren’t filled with tears, and then recognized the same wildness in my own face in the mirror. I thought I'd moved past these feelings, and I suppose I had. The image of the plen hitting brought me back.

For days, I closed my eyes to see those few seconds of footage repeating in my head on loop, watching helplessly as the flight speeds up in those last moments, as if the pilot relished the thought of all the damage he’d cause. Or was that my imagination?

The mind is powerful. It is up to us how we choose to use that power.

And Yet I Do Not Say No To Media

I often criticize the media for being self-interested and false. At the same time, I remain acutely aware that I am clearly part of the media. Am I being hypocritical? I certainly know I'm not immune to representing facts in a light that might misrepresent them or including mainly parts of stories that I know my readers will find most interesting.

Aldous Huxley says in Brave New World Revisited that all media is propaganda. It is impossible to present any experience in its entirety or as an absolute truth. The best we can do is write what we believe to be accurate with the goal of improving what exists in the world around us.

I try to keep Huxley's words as my guideline. I may not present absolute truth, but I do write what I believe to be true, given my own slants and prejudices. I try to think for myself. I make my best decisions with whatever information I have at the moment.

That is the best any of us can do.

This First Day Of the Second Decade After

I don't know what I expected to see on the streets of New York this week. Something palpable to mark the horror I saw? Sitting on the subway yesterday, with the credible threat of a new attack looming, a voice came over the loudspeaker reminding us to report any suspicious packages or people. I felt more vulnerable surrounded by so many people, because, were something to happen, it would be harder to escape.

I'd forgotten the anthrax threats, tucked away in my mind images of two massive plumes of smoke pouring upward where the Twin Towers used to be. I realized I no longer notice the proliferation of police, blockades and metal detectors. They, too, have become normal, and I accept them as helpful.

I Have Chosen To Forget

My most vivid memory of September 11, 2001 is watching a flock of pigeons flying their rounds from my side of the river to the other, circling the smoke as if it wasn’t there.

It was a beautiful day, much like today. The sky rings clear azure, not a cloud, and the sun shines brightly. It's the kind of day when moms take their babies to the park to play and people sit outside chatting with their neighbors over a coffee.

How can the sun shine when the world is falling apart? But then, here we are, ten years later.

Photo courtesy of David Barrie's Flickrstream.

 

Blackmail & Extortion: Are These Just Growing Pains?

Live and Learn! This is the mantra that has helped me get through this particularly difficult week, and I'm hoping you'd offer your perspective on this.

The past year has been insane for us. Between forming Cloudhead Art Foundation, buying the arthouse here in Salta, filming for House Hunters International, setting up the art residency and, well, just living life, it's been difficult finding time to breathe.

Just recently, we were blackmailed by an artist we've been working with. She tried to extort money from us. . She threatened to go to immigration and tell them we are working illegally in Argentina We're not, but telling them so might lead to an investigation and cause problems for our residency status. She warned if we didn't pay, she'd go to the press and say bad things about our organization and then report us to the police for stealing her art.

The reality is we've done nothing illegal, so her blackmail didn't hold much bite, but it did make for a rather stressful week. 

I think it's over now. The worst has passed. While we lost out on time and money spent working with her, we did gain some valuable experience and have a much clearer idea of how to work with artists in the future. We will also employ a much more rigorous vetting system before allowing anyone into our lives and organization.

All that said... is this just a sign of putting yourself out there? Is this just the sort of thing that happens when you take risks and chances? That inevitably, we will make some mistakes, that we will encounter challenges and pitfalls?

Or are we doing something wrong?

 

Homeless & Loving It: 2011 Presents Its First Challenge

Only four days into 2011 and absurdity abounds.

We had to move out of the house we'd been renting last Wednesday, and the new house is still a bit on hold due to a series of complications, so just before new year's day, we were, essentially, homeless.

Then Ani and Maxi, two friends of ours took us in. Then Mary, another good friend, invited us to her place for New Year's dinner. Then Dennis, a.k.a Victor -- because apparently Argentines simply cannot understand the name Dennis -- traded a website for his hotel in exchange for giving us a place to live for the next two weeks.

Dennis is fantastic in so many ways. Obviously, because he's given us a place to call home, but also because he walks around all day long in his bikini bathing suit and loves to chat about anything, but especially his girlfriends.

I feel like I'm in some made for TV movie. Something funny, not the cheesy sort of crap you find too often on the Lifetime network. Something you'd find maybe on HBO, you know, creative but allows nudity and obscenity. Keeping that in mind, imagine the scene that followed when we found a bat flying around our room late last night.

The hotel, Campo de Esperanza, is just a little way down the road from our last place, but there is so much more wild life here. Perhaps because of it's proximity to the river?

Mani loves the new place. This photo shows him hunting for a family of cats that lives in the the trees behind the house. Truly, he has not a chance of actually catching them. In spite of his almost fifty pound heft, he's a puppy at heart and the white mama cat easily intimidates him.

Yes, that about sums up life right about now. Am I frustrated? Yes. Am I grateful? Absolutely. The sheer number of people who have helped us most definitely takes the edge off our uncertainty.

Besides, this isn't the first time we've been homeless. It's just the first time that we've done it with a dog and a couch.

Tread Softly On My Dreams: The Education Crisis Revolution

I'm currently reading a book by Maya Frost titled The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education. In it, she describes the nature of the adolescent mind, how in our teen years our brains open to growth potential that is left largely ignored by the current education system in the United States.

The following paragraph resonated particularly strongly with me on many levels.

Our kid's brains are ravenous for content that will lend itself to analysis, and yet we're sticking them into a world that is so limited they are reduced to examining hairstyles and hook-ups instead of more challenging fare. Instead of analyzing culture, politics or world affairs on a daily basis, they're prognosticating about prom dates. They zero in on the fit of their jeans rather than on the fit of a cultural identity within a larger population,and they devote hours to enhancing the clarity of their skin instead of the clarity of their thinking. They are digging into a plate of pettiness because that is precisely what we've served them. They deserve -- and are ready for -- so much more.

It struck me when I read this that the image of the typical obnoxious teen who lives only to text her friends and meet at the mall is something we take for granted. We assume it is the case, because that is what we see around us. In fact, it is entirely possible we amplify that image because we expect it.

But it is not a given.

Following on that little piece of food for thought, I want to share with you a recent TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson about education. In it he calls for the complete revolution of our international education system, now based on a "fast food module." By that, he refers to the standardization and structuring of most systems of education that overlook the needs of the individual.

It starts with the pressure we feel as parents to make sure our children place well into pre-school and goes from there.

That pressure is one of the reasons I wanted to leave New York City. I couldn't see putting LIla through interviews, essays and evaluation play dates, all for the pleasure of paying $20K for a 2-year-old to go to school. It is too painful.

We take for granted that our model is one we must adhere to because it is what we know, and while that model has served us well in many aspects, we must still continue to evaluate and re-evaluate. It's on us as parents, educators and students to identify that which is no longer working and prune the excess.

The pain we experience while pushing our toddlers into pre-school and again when encouraging them to take AP courses and to ace the SAT is a sign something isn't quite right. Embracing a new system is never easy, though. It is another form of letting go.

Photo by HVX Silverstar

Five Steps To Banish Chaos & Get Your Life In Order

 

I wrote this post already. I wrote it on Saturday night, and it was a doozy of a post. One of those great posts that just slips from my fingers to paper like water. It was well written, poignant and said everything I wanted to say in just the way I wanted to say it.

Then when I go to copy and paste the text into Typepad this morning so I can publish it as a blog post, the article disappears. Totally gone. It’s not in previous documents. I didn’t save it online. It’s just gone.

Enter frustration and anger.

I kick myself for not making sure to save it carefully. All the other documents I had open when I wrote it are still there. This one Very Important Post? Not there. Who has time to write the same article twice?

The post I wrote was all about forging order and balance in a world that will never be truly under control, and the irony of such doesn't escape me. 

It all started Saturday night as I was catching up on blog reading. I have a section in my Google Reader called Inspirational Blogs. It’s not that they are the blogs from which I draw my greatest inspiration as such, but more a description of a type of blog genre.

Blogs To Help You Find Yourself In 10 Easy Steps

50 Inspirational Sayings To Help Let Go Of Attachment, Find & Open Your Heart Shakras

How To Break Free From Bad Habits & Learn To Rule the World.

It’s not that I don’t find value in posts such as these. Websites like Leo Barbauta’s Zen Habits and Chris Gillebeau’s The Art of Nonconformity are fabulous.  You’ll always find great information to help you reorganize, order and breath through difficult spots.

What frustrates me about them is they give the impression that the writers of those articles are always under control of everything in their lives. From what I read, I’d believe they exercise every day, meditate, do yoga, finish their work, get the best deals on all flights. Their kids never whine. Their meals, always balanced and their inboxes always empty.

Not me. Not even close.

I have four different mailboxes. Couchsurfing. Google for Matador. One I use for The Future Is Red and then another mailbox I use for e-mail subscriptions. Let's also not forget Facebook and Skype. Each is teeming full.

I remember reading on Tim Ferris’ website how the number one rule of keeping order in your e-mail box is never use it as a file cabinet. All of mine are file cabinets.

Me? I have a to do list a mile long and I probably spend more time than I should searching for things I should have put away where they were supposed to go. Only I wasn’t really sure where they were supposed to go because my to do list has so many variables, each item would go in a place of its own, which doesn’t really organize anything. It only forces me to add Organize Files to my to do list.

Perhaps there are many people who are able to find that serene sense of order that  eludes me. I have simply come to the conclusion that I must accept the chaos and learn to exist with it.

Thus, I have developed My Own Personal Rules of Dealing With Chaos & Imperfection.

1. There will always be more to do. 
2. It will all eventually get done.
3. That which doesn’t get done, probably didn’t need to be done in the first place.
4. If I forget something, it won’t matter too much.
5. If it does matter a lot, I will deal with it.

Today, Noah took Lila to school only to find today she has no school which made having our regular Monday morning meeting over Skype with an education consultant in NY difficult. So we set Lila up in our bedroom with a movie – proving exactly how fantastic Mr Fox can actually be. Then the dog starts barking halfway through. Lila sweetly lets him in the house when she comes into the kitchen to pour herself another bowl of cornflakes.

I put him on my lap in an attempt to calm him down. It doesn’t work. Then our internet gets fuzzy.

Meeting ends early because of all the noise and our internet line goes completely down. The dog, somehow miraculously shits on the floor in the five minutes he was in the house even though he was on my lap most of the time. I revive the internet and go to publish my amazing article written Saturday night only to find it has disappeared.

Bottom line, no matter how much I get under control, I will never be able to get my head around everything. There will always be something that goes beyond my capacity.

But it is not the end of the world, and I am not perfect.

And that is fine with me.

P.S. If I ever do find my first, wonderfully perfect article, I'll be sure to post it here.

Photos by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino and Quinn.Anya

What Can Happen In A Thousand Days?

As of today, I've been writing this blog for exactly 1000 days. One. Thousand. Days. I know that's not very long if you compare to all the days I've been alive or days of the recorded universe. Still, it measures the distance between here and there. What was and what is.

Yesterday, I found some old forgotten photos from a cell phone I no longer have and sent to an e-mail address I no longer use. They were taken right before we left New York, just before my thousand days of blogging began.

We had just finished the long and tedious process of selling our apartment and divesting of all the things we didn't need. These were the days just before the beginning, when we were mired down with saying goodbye and had no idea what lay ahead of us.

This is my cat Paloma. Lila is giving her a last goodbye kiss at the vet's office.

I found Paloma at the ASPCA on 5th Avenue on the Upper East Side when she was three months old. She lived with me through college, my first apartment in NYC. Marriage. A move to Brooklyn. Pregnancy. Newborn. Paloma patiently bore the wrath of toddlers running rampant through the apartment, grabbing her tail. She was sick once in her life and that once was complete renal failure. The vet suspected all the excitement of packing and an inadvertant change in food were too much for her aging body.

I remember this particular day even more clearly, because 7am the morning this photo was taken, we received a call to say that during the night Noah's grandmother, Grandma Ruth had passed away.  Noah took Lila home right afterward, and I stayed while Paloma was put to sleep.

Then I took a long walk listening to Sufjan Stevens before going home to pack our suitcases and fly to Atlanta for Grandma Ruth's memorial service.

This next photo I took while waiting for the 2/3 train to arrive at Borough Hall in Brooklyn.

I was on my way to my very first Couchsurfing meeting. It was one of the last times I ever took the subway, and I felt that as a landmark as acutely as the nervousness I felt about going to some random bar on the Lower East Side to meet a group of strangers from Couchsurfing.

I met a couple from Iowa, now living and acting in New York City, although they traveled pretty extensively for work as well. I met a 22 year old guy who had just been living in Prague. And a cool woman named Jennifer who had just been to her first Burning Man.

Noah, Lila and I were living in a rented apartment, where I didn't feel comfortable inviting strangers since it wasn't really our place. (Now, I wouldn't care) The owners of that place sent their friends around with regularity to check up on us and make sure we weren't ruining their things or doing things we weren't supposed to do. It was an uncomfortable situation.

This third photo comes from a goodbye brunch we had with all the families we knew from the neighborhood. It was at Pacifico restaurant early one Sunday morning. Too early for all the non-childed folk of the neighborhood to even consider being awake on a weekend. So we had the place to ourselves.

The kids sat lined up at the bar watching cartoons on the TV while the most awesome bartender ever served them drinks and snacks. Apparently, he used to be a nanny, so he was fabulous with the kids. Pacifico, itself, got a bit punchy though. Something about worrying they'd lose their liquor license because of minors seated at the bar (I mean. Really?).

There's something funny about old photos, especially when you haven't seen or thought about them in a long time. They carry with them a shock of emotion, bringing back the past to life for just a brief moment. And like a smell or strain of music, evaporates quickly as you incorporate the past into the now.

But for just a brief time, I again feel the cold February wind as I wandered the streets of Brooklyn between the vet's office and our house. Or that amusement bubbling from the bit of my belly as I saw all our three year olds on bar stools ordering another juice. Or how amazing was that first bite of salmon taco?

What I can't quite grasp is who I was then.

It's only been 1000 days, and yet those days of travel have changed everything.  I am no longer the person I was then. They way I think, the manner in which I relate to other people, all different. Saying hello to strangers or goodbye to old friends have become part of my daily landscape. 

I look at this photo taken by Ali. We celebrated Lila's first four birthdays with famous John's pizza on Bleeker followed by a walk to Magnolia Bakery. Then to the park where we played on the jungle gyms and ate banana pudding with Nilla wafers. 

And while I know just what I was thinking by the look in my eyes, I no longer understand why I was thinking it.

So tell me, where were you 1000 days ago? What were you eating? Or wearing? Who were you then and how has your life moved?

What will the next 1000 days bring?

How To Clean & Organize Your Mind With A Breath Of Fire

There's too much going on. Work. Home. Friends. Family. Sometimes it feels like I can barely fit everything I need and want to do on the list in my head, let alone in my life. This is how I cope.

I’ve been far too caught up in things lately.  Everything feels way too serious.

From cruise ships destroying the planet to Native Americans massacred, my poor brain is overwhelmed. It’s been weeks since I joked around about joining the gym here in Salta, and my life feels very much all business.

This has lead me to one very important conclusion.

Honey, It's Time To Lighten Up

This is what I do when it’s time to relax but my brain is having a hard letting go. I take a deep breath. Not just any breath. Yogic breath. It's said to heal everything from asthma to anxiety to depression. Yep, just a breath.

The basics of yogic breathing, also called pranayama, are relatively simple. You bring in fresh, oxygenated air, breath out old, flat air. Every organ benefits. Deep breathing also helps you relax, reduce stress and even helps you live longer.

This video shows a qigong pranayama method for reducing allergies and asthma with, you guessed it, breathing.

Two Breaths To Ease the Mind

While I myself haven't tried the qigong breath above, I have incorporated many types of breathing into my daily yoga and meditation practice. The two I'm about to describe are my favorite for clearing the mind and learning how to relax again.

I learned these years ago from Jerry Scarnato, one of my favorite yoga teachers from the now no-longer-extant Energy Center in Brooklyn. Jerry is an amazing man. He’s a firefighter and one of the first on the scene during 9/11. He taught yoga and relaxation techniques to other firefighters, including these two types of breath.

Breath of Fire Or Kapalabati Breathing

Another name for this is bellows breath, because, well,  try it once and you’ll immediately understand. This breath warms you and has been known to give an intense  abdominal workout, particularly if you’re not used to it.

You begin by breathing in and out, slowly and deeply. Filling your lungs with new air and expelling as much of the old as you can. Then when you’re ready, begin rapidly exhaling through the nose. Focus on contracting your abdomen with your out-breath.  The in-breath will happen naturally.

After a set of about 50 breaths – you decide how many based on your comfort level – slow the breath down like a train coming into the station. Clean out your lungs again with a few full deep slow breaths until you finally hold gently at the top of the breath. Hold for 30 seconds to begin then work up to see if you can hold for two minutes or longer.

Repeat the succession of rapid breathing, then holding three times altogether.

Alternate Nostril Breathing or Anuloma Viloma

Breath of Fire is intended to break up all the dirt in your body – metaphorically speaking. For this reason, kapalabati is also called skull shining breath. The force and fire of the breath burns through all the little bits of grime that get in your way, then you simply breathe them out your body.

Alternate Nostril breath restores order, rebalances everything after being shaken by fire.

Sit comfortably cross legged wherever you want to sit. Now take your right hand and take the two fingers directly beside the thumb and fold them inward. Place your pinky and ring finger by your left nostril, closing off the air passage. Your thumb goes to your right, but don’t close that side yet.

Breathe gently into your right nostril for a count of five, close it off with your thumb. Hold to a count of ten. Release your pinky and ring fingers on the left side and breathe out gently for a count of 5.  Then breathe in the left for a count of five. Hold for ten. Breathe out the right for a count of five.

Repeat this 10-20 times.

The key here is that your breath move easily and quietly. If you find yourself struggling to finish the count or running out of breath, take a shorter count. The only rhythm you want to maintain is to hold the breath twice the count of your in and out.

All the numbers I mention here are entirely negotiable.

You decide how long you want to hold your breath, how long to draw it in and how many repetitions. You'll decide based on your own comfort and ability. Literally, your body and breath will tell you if you want more or less.

Another Reason Why This Works

As you practice this breathing, you’ll notice something. It’s almost impossible to think of anything other than the breath.  You can’t really worry about what’s to come or what was. You don’t plan ahead and you don’t fall behind. You just sit there, focusing on your breath.

Afterward, just imagine you return to your life with a shiny, clean head – metaphorically speaking, of course.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS: Check out another description of how to perform these two breaths along with more information about yogic breathing. It's also important to keep in mind that kapalabati is contraindicated with certain conditions such as pregnancy, menstruation, high blood pressure and any abdominal surgery. Remember, you're working your abdomen strongly. If you have any doubt, check with your doctor or a local yogi you trust.

Photos courtesy of compasspoint and xanetia.

What's In the Traveler's Handbag?

I've never been the neat handbag type.

Business cards, old receipts, things Lila hands to me, things I want to keep but don't know what to do with them, they all eventually end up at the bottom or in the numerous pockets of my bag. Some things are useful. Others, junk. And some are mementos, things I don't really need, but can't bring myself to throw away. Yet.

Before every major trip, though, I clean and organize. I like to think of it as a testament to the need to move on.

This time, my bag --  which triples as handbag, computer bag and carry on -- has been through a lot. It began with us in Salta beginning of July. We made our way through Cordoba, Neuquen and skiing San Martin de los Andes. Then Atlanta, Burning Man, where my bag arrived to find itself smack in the middle of a dust storm, and finally two overnight drives from Atlanta to NYC and back.

What did I find?

Zipties

These little things are endlessly useful for Burning Man. From attaching tarp to poles for a shade structure, to securing your tent, connecting a cup handle to utility belt, bondage classes and excellent for tying, securing or binding just about anything. Very handy.

Now that I'm no longer at Burning Man, I still use them in dozens of situations. Bracelets for Lila, collars for her stuffed kitty -- which honestly, is so tight, it seems to border on bondage as well. Quick suitcase fixes, holding computer cables and so much more.

Half Eaten String Cheese, Still In Wrapper

I'm not proud. I guess it ended up here somewhere between Harrisburg and Roanoke, but this isn't the first time I've found food remains festering here.

Balloons

I carry these just about everywhere, always. Not so much for Burning Man, because I figured a burst balloon will likely end up in pieces all over the playa, but as a toy. Blow one up and Lila is occupied for hours. They're also great when playing with a group of kids, because their floaty, bouncy ways ensure that all children playing have a chance at the ball.

Bike Cover In Ziplock

Another prop from Burning Man. I got mine at Black Rock Bicycles, where we rented our bikes. The owner's wife makes them. Mine is purple on top with a many colored tie-dyed edge. It's still filthy from dust storms, and there's an inch of playa dust at the bottom of the bag which oddly makes me wax nostalgic. How quickly a girl forgets how corrosive such dust can be.

Two Pairs Of Underwear.

One Lila's. One mine. Both clean. Because you never know when you'll need them.

Yes, those are my Top Five. Three of which, I'll continue to keep in my bag. Can you guess which ones?

The others, I'm sure, will somehow find their way back, along with incense, a bike lock, jeweled heart and butterfly stickers, candles, ski lift ticket, a few rocks, seeds, leaves from various trees and a pack of two inch nails.

I go through this every time we pack.  It's the constant winnowing of what is important enough to carry along, what must be thrown out and what must be left behind. This process is enormous, overwhelming the first time you do it. Over time, though, it gets easier, and eventually, you find you just won't feel right unless you've lightened your load. After all, do you really want to carry a sleeping bag cover and hammer along for the ride?

This time, I'll admit, has been much harder than in the past. I don't want to leave Atlanta, although I do want to return to our adventure in Salta. Here, we have family, contacts, connections. There, we have a new project, a summer of camping in some of the most beautiful terrain on the planet, and plenty I have yet to uncover.

Photo courtesy of Valerie Renee's Flickrstream

Welcome Home, Burning Man! Welcome Home?

I've been writing home for as long as I can remember. 

My first really big project developed itself into a discourse on the nature of home. Winter, senior year of college, my best friend Jen and I drove cross country to explore Native American culture in the United States, mostly focused on the Lakota Sioux, also known as Oglala, in South Dakota. I came away from that project clearly seeing how so many Native Americans consider this land their home, yet they have been displaced from it. I am the opposite. I have not been forcibly moved, and yet my connection to the United States is far more tenuous.

So upon first entering Black Rock City to hear the warm greeting of "Welcome Home!" I was discomfited. It felt strange, wrong. "This is not home," I told them silently.

No place is really home to me.

Brooklyn? It once was home, but I don't feel that way anymore. South Africa? I don't even remember it. Atlanta? My parents sold the house I grew up in almost a decade ago, and while I feel entirely comfortable in their house, it doesn't feel like home to me. Panama? No. South of France? Gorgeous, but not home.

In a sense, Noah, Lila and I attempt to create our home in Salta, but I suspect no where will ever have the weight and permanence of what I think home should have. Perhaps that's why travel comes so easily to me. I don't feel sad when I leave a place because for me leaving is as inevitable an event as arriving.

But staying, relaxing, creating a place, one place that is no longer an apartment, la casa or even a tent, but is regardless of brick and mortar, independent of form and furniture, a place I feel safe calling home, that has eluded me thus far.

I suspect I'm not interested in having a real home.

I like flitting around, a couple months here, a few days there. So on the eve of our return to Salta, I find myself apprehensive. We plan to go back, rent a house for a couple years (yes, years!), work, live life. And so you know, we decided to stay in Salta -- aside from it being a lovely place to live -- when Lila told us she didn't want to move around anymore. "Why do we keep going places and not staying," she asked. So it was time to be still for a while.

I'm finding the prospect of creating one place as home, becoming an expat instead of a traveler, as difficult and overwhelming as the process of selling everything and packing up to go. It's Newton's Law of Motion applied to travel. A body at rest prefers to remain at rest, and a body in motion, well, you know how it goes.

Yesterday, I asked Lila where she calls home.

She points straight down to the ground. "Right here," she told me. Right in Granny and Grandpa's house. She is also excited to go back to Salta, to return to school and see her friends and teachers.

I find great satisfaction in the thought that somehow, we have created a life for Lila in which she has a space to call her own. Maybe more than one even.

Photo courtesy of eyesplash's flickrstream

How Do You Maintain the Blog Life vs Real Life Balance?

We´re finally coming out of 2 weeks of being sick, and life has been something of a triage. The things that need to be done are done first: doctor visits, Lila´s needs and food.  Everything else waits.

And since we´ve been sick, my blogging has most definitely suffered. I haven´t had much time at all to write, compose notes or follow up on comments and e-mail.  Every time I leave the house, I see and experience things that make me think, ¨Wow, that would be great for a blog entry!¨

But for now, they must wait.

It highlights for me something I´ve often wondered. How do you live in the moment when you´re thinking about blogging it? When you turn a life event into a blog entry, you think about your life from an outside perspective. How will others see this? How can I recreate this, my own life experience, so that someone else can read and relate? Even stopping to take pictures becomes an action of ending your own moment in order to capture it.

It´s the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle applied to your life. You cannot both do what you are doing and plan where you are going at the very same time without the experience of one or the other drastically changing.

So how do I seek balance?

I keep a list of Future Blog Posts. When I have an idea, I immediately write it down and then forget about it until I´m ready to sit and write it. I do the same with the Things I Need To Do. It is surprising how well this works. Somehow, the simple act of writing down removes the nagging action from my head.

I force myself to take full days during which I entirely put aside my computer, Blackberry, To-Do-Lists, journal and camera and just live the day. It´s really hard! Too often I think how much I´d like to Twitter something, and my mind is too often on more than one thing at once. Even as I write this post, I´m thinking how I´d like to post a picture I saw of Noel Gallagher and make some sort of witty comment about Cigarettes and Alcohol.

Meditation & Yoga. I often talk about yoga, but meditation is something I don´t think about nearly enough. My favorite place for meditation is somewhere completely alone in a darkened room with a lit candle. I focus on the flame while I clear my mind. Focus on my breathing and one by one remove the thoughts from my head, because they are not important.

Oh, I need to reply to @blumimsy about writing. Set that aside for now.

I want to order a nightlight from @fogandthistle for Lila. Our friend Jen is coming to visit and I want it sent to her in time for her to bring it. Oh, yes!! Jen is coming to visit. She´ll be here in less than two weeks. I can´t wait to see her. What time do I have to pick her up from the airport, again?

Stop! Set aside each of these thoughts one by one, because again, the list is endless. I repeat. It is endless. Were I to start working now, contacting, writing and posting, I would never, ever finish. So the quest to finish is futile, is it not?

Of course, it is far easier to write about these things than to actually implement them, so I´m curious to know what others do in order to find their balance

A Slow Walk Through Salta

I'm On my way to pick Lila up from school but don't have to be there for another 30 minutes.

Let's take a walk.

Whenever I first arrive in a place, I find it's easy to overlook much of what's there. There's so much to assimilate that it's overwhelming. Soon enough, the city begins to open up to you, and you see, hear and feel so much more.

Can someone explain why there are suddenly hundreds of red Salteno cabs jamming the street and honking? In this town, where I have yet to see a traffic jam of any sort, suddenly, this? Perhaps it's a parade or protest. Like yesterday, when hundreds of people marched around the Plaza de Julio, the central plaza of Salta, carrying signs, banging drums and occasionally blowing off loud pop guns. The plaza is surrounded by cafes with Wifi, restaurants, a beautiful cathedral as well as the symphony, Andean museum and a modern art museum.

 carry on to see the fruit vendors pushing their carts around the cars. One offers me a pear.

There's the Andean cooking school that specializes in dishes made with llama. Yes, llama, the animal. There's the santeria store. The motorcycle dealership. A whole row of places for haircuts. Why would they have 10 or so all on the same few blocks? Or is it just very American thinking to believe you'll have better business if you don't have as much competition?

Each time I walk these streets, I see more and more. An art store where you can paint and fire your own pottery. Camping supplies. The butcher and hardware store.

At what point, though, does the street become too usual to notice anymore? Does the walk become just the road between Point A and Point B? Is that when it's time to go somewhere new? Or perhaps, there's more of a need to refocus?

Ah, I have arrived.

How To Pay For Two Years Of Travel -- Part I

If this is your first time visiting my blog and you enjoy what you see,
please subscribe to my feed or subscribe to my e-mail list.

And as always, I welcome comments and ideas. Now, onto the article you came here to see.

*************************************

I'm asked this question often. Are we independently wealthy? Do we work along the way? Do we stay with other people?

The answer to all three questions is yes.

First, we gave up or sold just about everything we had before leaving the United States. Apartment, furniture, appliances, all of it. We only kept what we needed or what was most important to us -- art, books, music and all Lila's baby stuff.

Then we put aside a certain amount of money and said we'd travel until it was gone. It's enough as long as we make careful choices. We work along the way, sometimes exchanging work for a place to stay. We have home shared, couchsurfed and learned to travel cheaply.

It is not as expensive to travel as you may think!

Long term travel is not like a vacation. You have let go of everything at home and thus don't have to worry about rent, school payments, gas, electricity, water, and all the other payments that keep you tied to a needing a certain level of income per month. 

We have two bills we pay per month. One is a phone bill which goes automatically on our credit card. The other is our credit card bill. We pay them both online and with the exception of our months in Europe, our monthly credit card expenses rarely exceed one thousand dollars. Then add to that rent and travel expenses such as buses, airline tickets, car rental and gas.

There's a lot to be had for free or at least very cheap!

Food: Local markets are the best. You'll find the best food for the best prices. 

Don't discount street food. Along the way, we've had crepes, empanadas, johnny cakes, tamales, bunuelas, cupcakes, the best chicken sandwiches on earth, fruit, vegetables, and so much else bought for pocket change. Often, this food is home made or made on the spot, and the people making it are usually local so they know the best places to buy bread, cheese, fish and vegetables.

Lodging: One word: Couchsurfing. We've couchsurfed for approximately half of our two years traveling. Sometimes, the three of us squeezed onto a small couch in someone's living room. Sometimes, we've had an apartment all to yourselves. If this is something you plan to do, create your Couchsurfing profile immediately and start meeting people. The more people you know, the more connections and references you have, the more people will feel comfortable opening their homes to you.

There are other options as well. WWOOFing, for example. Where you work in exchange for food and a place to stay. There are WWOOF options all over the world. Some are best for singles, but many are even better for families with children. Imagine staying on a small farm in the Andes with a family with three children. You'll tend the garden, learn to keep beehives and improve your spanish while living with a host family.

In addition, you can check out Home Exchange, Hospitality Club, idealist.org and Voluntourism. These are just a meager beginning of the options out there, but they are a good place to begin your research.

Entertainment: We've never found a place that was too expensive to find something cheap and unique to do. Even Iceland, home of the 40 dollar hamburger -- at the time of our visit, anyway -- had many very affordable options. Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir hot spring area and Þingvellir National Park are all free entry. The thermal baths to be found in every city and village of Iceland are also very affordable, even if you plan on renting a towel or bathing suit.

The best, though, in Iceland was happening into Halgrim's Church in Reykjavik in time to hear the gorgeous Klais organ tuned and played in our own private concert.

In Provence, we found endless candy and perfume factories you could tour for free or almost nothing. The Florian Candy Factory in Nice gives free tastings in their gift shop after your tour.

We've found most of these things while just exploring places on foot.  The feria at the Mercado Municipal on San Martin in Salta, for example. Or get on a local bus and ride around until you see something you want to explore.

Paying for a night's sleep is much more expensive than paying for a month of sleep!

We stayed in Provence at Domaine de la Begude for three weeks at a much reduced rate in the height of tourist season. We also rented by the month in Buffalo, Atlanta, Buenos Aires and Bocas del Toro. All far cheaper than had we rented by the day. In Buenos Aires, for example, you can find apartment rentals for 500-800/month as opposed to the at least 75 dollars a night you would pay at a hotel.

You also have a kitchen, which means you save even more because you cook for yourself. You also have the benefit of exploring the food offerings of local panaderias, boucheries y mercatos where you'll learn more about language, culture and people than you will at the nearest tourist trap.

Coming next week!

When I began writing this article, I intended for it to be only one entry, but it turned out to be far longer than I expected.

See How To Pay For Two Years of Travel, part II in which I discuss:

• Where to stay when you have no choice but to pay for the night.
• How to find work along the way.
• How to find the most current travel information for anywhere in the world,
• And some basic travel advice.

Also, some upcoming topics:

• What To Keep In Mind When Traveling With A Child
  
• Women Traveling Solo
• What To Do In Case of Emergency

In the meantime, feel free to email with any questions or leave your comments on the page. As always, subscribe to my feed to be informed when new posts go up.

So then, until next week....

Quick Update: Where Are We Going Now?

So Lila was sick for a couple days. Then Noah and I caught whatever she had, so we've all been taking it easy.

All in all, we've spent a lot more time inside lately, which also happens to coincide with some particularly hot weather.

The timing of this has been perfect. While cooped up in the house, we've been planning the next few weeks. We were able to extend our stay in Rony and Michael's apartment for another week. And while I'm happy to be heading to the country soon, I'm also happy to have a bit more time to do things in Buenos Aires. After the 15th, we head to Salta. How we're getting there? We'll either fly or take the bus. What we're doing when we get there? I dont' know yet.

All I know is we go to Salta on either the 14th or 15th. Will spend a few days in Salta. And then will head to the Jujuy province. I've heard it's hotter there, but beautiful. That's what everyone says. "Oh, muy caliente." Then i think they see our faces. "Pero muy hermoso."

What's happening in Jujuy? I'm not really sure.

In the meantime, I've been writing a lot. I've also just started a writer's group with three other people, all other Couchsurfers. Two of us write in English. The other two in Spanish. We meet at a cafe near to hear, one of the few with outdoor seating that's not so close to the road you feel you're drinking your cortado on the West Side Highway. And it's been wonderful to be working and talking with writers again.

I hadn't realized how much I missed it.

Now If You Could Just Release Your Grasp From My Pantleg

I went to NYC for Halloween weekend to finish the translation with Ali. It was a wonderful weekend.  The perfect mix between work, seeing old friends, parties, dinner or drinks, and time alone.  

It was odd not having two other people around all the time to consider before making plans, choices, thoughts. When I was ready, I went where I wanted and did what I desired.

It felt empty at first. Noah and Lila walked me to security, waved and waved as I walked beyond the point where they could go and two minutes later, I was alone. Well, I suppose as alone as one can be in an airport surrounded by thousands of people. But nonetheless, something was missing.

Soon enough, I began to enjoy the extra space, even as much as I loved my nightly calls with them. Lila took the phone, gave me an air hug, then rubbed her nose against the phone for our traditional nosey-nosey-nosey goodnight. “I love you because I miss you because I don’t want you to go and I want you to stay with me,” or some version of that she’d say.

Since I’m almost always with Lila, I rarely hear her on the phone. When I do, I’m struck with how much she sounds like Rebecca, Noah’s youngest sister. Rebecca and I used to spend a lot of time on the phone, mostly when she was in high school and college. Now that we don’t have those conversations anymore, it is difficult to hear Rebecca’s voice when I talk to Lila.

My weekend on 110^th and Broadway revived for me the days when Noah and I lived uptown our first year of marriage and the years before we got married. Halloween, I joined my mom friends in Brooklyn for a post trick-or-treating party. It was perfect. There, I saw all Lila’s old friends, all so grown up and mature, and met their little brothers and sisters, who are now the age Lila was when we left NY.

The same nostalgia poked at me as I walked through Morningside Heights. So much has changed. Grandma’s diner – where Noah and I ate grilled cheese with hot chocolate the night we got stuck downtown without money and had to walk 50 blocks in the freezing snow – is long gone.

Our last few trips to NY have been so unpleasant and exhausting, so it was nice to be reminded how lovely so much of my life had been. But it also made it all the more bittersweet knowing that in less than three weeks, we fly to Argentina and once again have no idea when we will return. If all goes as we hope, it could well be a very long, long time.  

I waded through a NY soup of memory until my friend Levy pointed out I was fighting with ghosts. “Why attach to things that no longer exist?” he asked me. Particularly, I thought to myself, when these memories fill my present with that slight sense of loss. Who needs it? And I tried to let go and enjoy my time.

Noah and Lila met me at the airport where. I saw Lila’s sweet smiling face first. She grabbed me and hugged me and didn’t let go for a long time.

Slowly Learning How To Let Go

This morning I got up early and went out to do yoga on one of the enormous rocks that make up the beach in Riomaggiore. It was beautiful, amazing. Just me, the rocks and sound of the waves.

That's when it hit me. I didn't want to leave. I wanted more yoga mornings alone on the beach. More time to explore the area. More evenings walks by the water with my husband and child. More.

Then I pulled out of this swirl of thought and back into my yoga. That's the thing about practicing yoga. It is all about experiencing the moment and letting go of past and future.

Allan Watts, reknown Taoist scholar says that it is the person who lives for the future who is truly lost. The past is gone, but at least it once existed. The present is ours. It is all we really have. There is nothing in the future but what could be. While there can be great hope for the future, it is not real. To count on it is to chase shadows.

As I sat there in lotus, I pulled myself back from worrying about whether it is a mistake to go back to France instead of remaining in this place I love so much. Pulled myself back from wishing we had come here earlier so we could have had more time.

The sea spread out all around me and aside from the waves and early morning sun burning the previous night's fog, all was quiet and airy.

So I am thankful that we are lucky enough to have had our days in this place, for my two hours of the most perfect yoga ever. Thankful that we have found a place to which we want to return, maybe for a while, maybe forever. Who knows? It doesn't really matter anyway. That is for the future and wasn't this trip always supposed to be about traveling the world one day at a time?

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile