REVELATION

So my emotions did a 180 today and I owe it all to Eat Pray Love.

I was thinking about how she picks up and goes. And how I want that. How I love that. How I crave that. How I am restless and despite the fact that I am trying hard (REALLY REALLY ACTIVELY TRYING) I am still restless.

And then I came across this quote.

"Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby--I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to -- I just don't care."

I realized that I don't need to pick up and move to *insert anywhere but North America* to see if I can find happiness. I already know that if I do I will find totally unencumbered joy there. Anywhere the plane should land. The type of ecstasy that makes you feel like your heart is too big for your body. I know that it resides there. It's easy for me. Your skin prickles with anticipation. On long train-rides to no-where, in run-down hostels with just a little latch to close the door. In the fumbling of foreign living. That feeling... it's the type of contentment that people write books after and others pay millions of dollars and days to find.

Hand me dysentery and discomfort. I don't care. It's mine and I love it. Hand me that colicky impossible baby. It's mine.

That's not the hard part. This is. Finding happiness here. Finding contentment in a place that brings me comfort but doesn't spark my skin to fire.

And that was all I needed. The identification of a new challenge.

So I made a happy list with a soy chai tea latte in hand. And then I decided to put my big girl panties on and own it.

Heartsnaps

I have this picture... I find it captivating. Perhaps because I can’t quite pinpoint the essence of its beauty. Is it the memory contained within its four corners, the accents of yellow and brown and hope? Is it in the blue balloon on the edge that turns you to look downward from the sky? Or is it the thousands of footprints in the sand that surrounded his unmoved waiting feet?

Whatever the reason for its charm, I have grown a profound love for it. It was not by my hands or eyes, but for some reason I feel as though a part of its beauty is mine.

Thoughts to Live By

Ohh city of expectations and fabulous blonde bodies, how you attempt to change my pace and steer my direction.

But no no, not so fast. Because I've got this nice little red leather book that has the more sane musings of out of Los Angeles Kristen. And damn she is good. Because she knows about the dark hole and the not so open skies and the pressing needs for one thing joyful. Each day. Just one thing joyful.

Because not all of life is a sleeper class train ride to inexplicable freedom.

When I left Ghana I wrote one of my most beautiful journal entires. I felt like I was being torn away from another world, an exotic universe in which I was able to become a beautiful version of myself.

But there are no "different worlds". Different elements, yes, different colors and rhythms and cycles of life. But just one world, and just one you. It's your own different elements and colors and rhythms that you're seeing.

It's intimacy.

So instead of spinning musings about the lifetime seemingly contained in the past 10 months (to be fair, I think "the end of Indian days" did the job) I had only simple thoughts when returning home:

I hoped to be well on my plane journey home. I hoped that my planes would arrive on time. I hoped to get home. I hoped to be able to eat when I got home.

And I hoped that in the months and years to come I remember that there is beauty in every crevice of being.

So in a month of Los Angeles living I have not found a job. I have not created a fancy-shmancy look at me go life. I have not met new people.

I have had a lot of tea. I have begun to learn how to salsa. And I have found ecstasy in the most exquisite samba class that makes your hips sing "damn, I feel like a woman."

And I wasn't sick on my plane journey home, my planes did arrive on time, I did actually arrive home (didn't believe it until I saw it) and I have been more than able to eat.

So I guess that makes for Life: 3.... Kristen: 7.

But as long as I am shaking my hips to a drum beat, who's keeping score?