Here I Am

everybody wants to be ugly

2011-07-13T01:43:00.000-07:00

"Every body is beautiful". It's a feminist mantra, it's Dove's advertising campaign, it's the promise made by mothers and cosmetic companies and new age spiritualists. But I don't want to be beautiful anymore. I want to be ugly.

I want to be ugly because I want to be honest. I want the freedom not to be pretty. Not to be cute, or sweet, or interesting. To be tired, or frightening, or plain. To be blatantly, nakedly, ugly ole me. When I talk to people I want to hear their struggles, their challenges, and I want to tell them the truth: that I don't always want to meditate, that traveling alone is often hard and boring and frightening, that I argue with my husband and that I miss smoking cigarettes.

I can't tell everyone I meet everything. And in the online realm, I can't present it all, either. But I aim to maintain digital honesty - the rough unedited rawness without a braying for recognition. When I create blogs or profiles, I open myself up to interpretation. I have a responsibility to decide how much I share and with whom. But I also have a responsibility to be honest.

I allegedly blog, post, Facebook to convey truth, and yet I often strive to share a polished picture of myself. But I also work against this, to make sure my ego's sense of my beautiful self doesn't get out of hand.

Contemplating my relationship to nakedness and beauty led to an exploration of ugliness.

Publicly posted photos have unwritten rules that dictate a sliding scale of acceptablity. Those of pulled faces and intentional blasé are at the top of the pile...

...followed by those we defiantly upload to prove we don't care how we look in fancy dress or ridiculous head garb:
Then there are those posted by friends who we wish had captured us at a better angle. But to ask to remove the photos would be admitting our vanity. (See below for eg1. Smooshed Smile and eg2. Frantic Face). We experience the internal struggle: to Untag or not to Untag.

Next are the unflattering ones where we're caught with a mouth full of food:

And then there are the old selves. Perhaps we've taken them down, telling ourselves they're out of date. But that doesn't explain why our sixth grade photo stays up without an eyelash bat. Perhaps we can see too clearly how we were with ourselves, how we stood and how we looked at the camera.

These are who I was at that time. I remind myself as I write this how I look shouldn't matter.

So what happened when I originally posted all these unflattering photos? Not much. No one cared. There are too many blogs, too many posts, for people to notice a few bad photos. Internally, though, I react to every one. With loathing, with embarrassment, with affected nonchalance, but rarely with an honest equanimity.

They all make me squirm on some level, but they're not exactly ugly. So then I wondered...what if I purposely posted ugly photos?

And there, hiding behind the very thing I thought I was trying to avoid, I found liberation. I found freedom to not just allow my bad angles to be broadcast, but to actively, honestly, try to make myself ugly.

If people see me at my worst, I can stop trying to look my best.

I started looking through my photo archive to find photos of myself looking ugly, seeking to make a horror face horror show. But I couldn't find many.

I'm blindsided so often by billboards and magazines and even friends' cooing encouragements that my standards creep up to photoshopped airbrushed heights. But when I brought myself back down to the realm of normal, I could only classify a few of my past pictures as bordering on bad.

So I tried to take some. Then came the second revelation. I realised: it's actually quite difficult.

I've been so worried about trying to get the right angle when someone takes out a camera that I forgot that it's an effort to be ugly.

As I found more pictures, took more photos, contemplated what I need to do to make myself ugly...
...something unexpected happened.

The next time I looked in the mirror, I didn't see my imperfect skin or my warbling tummy. I saw a reflection of a body, with all these bits that on their own are fascinating. I have two legs, two arms, a waist, a neck. I'm not eating so I don't have to look. I'm not starving or starving myself.

I had to work pretty hard to get ugly.
Most surprisingly, I found it difficult to be ugly naked. I wonder how to digitally bare my base self? Reading a book naked, even with a paper bag over my head, didn't add up to ugliness.

Now when I get out of the shower, or fold over in yoga and see my tummy rolls stack up, or see my skin in a bad light, I don't sigh so loudly. My body is amazing.

Not beautiful, not cute, not pretty, not skinny, not curvy, not special. It might be all of those things. But taking on being ugly means I've taken it apart. And it isn't a sum of thigh measurements or swimsuit sizes or paper bags or Facebook photos. If I can be everything I've been on this page, then I have the freedom to become anything I want.

where I write

2011-07-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

I write in the small soft space between bedcovers and eyelashes, in the place you settle into before you drift off. My favourite place to find words is in the sunshine on my duvet, but second place is between the raindrops on the window I see when my head’s down on the pillow.

From my bed, I reach my dictionary and diaries off the shelf. I sit cross-legged with notes and rough drafts spread across the comforter. I sprawl on my stomach to tap on my laptop. I sit up against the headboard; the room becomes my head space; I slip into the dream story world. I glance up through the windowpanes when I need freedom from lower case thoughts, but then burrow back into tender down-filled definitions, before finally slipping book covers and laptops shut to go to sleep.

I write naked at the kitchen table, towel turbanned on my head to hold in words so they only escape into laptop keys and Moleskine paper.

I write in between places, on the subway and sitting down on bridges. I grab words that whizz by like tube stops and slam them down onto the paper before they zoom away again.

I write up down staircases. I sit on the side and squish against the wall so when ladies walk by with their dogs they become the next character in my stories about shoes.

I write in secret sunshine places, following the light from park benches onto balconies and the roofs of neighbours' houses.

I write in refracted rain, with the silhouettes of the light inside me reflecting on the windowpane and the shiny screen.

I write on cold park benches beside bamboo, where coloured pencils colour my words. All the adjectives are in pink and the nouns bright green. It takes me longer to get it all down, but colour coding helps me remember what I meant.

Confessions of a Buddhist's Celebrity Crush

2011-02-25T10:04:00.000-08:00

So I am a Buddhist, and I'm married, and I have a crush on a celebrity. Like most things that come up for me in my practice, I am surprised. I assume that because I practice the Dharma, I should be immediately released of all worldly emotions, including impatience, doubt, and of course, craving and lust. I also assume I should declare my renunciation of material things, including new clothes, electronic gadgets, and television.

But in reality renunciation comes in degrees, and I must confess. I do buy clothes, but mostly from charity shops and not as often as I did. I own an iPod, but it's a 2G Nano. And I watch 'television', but only DVDs, and only one boxed DVD at that: The Office.

When I started watching The Office back in 2007, it was already long past its debut on NBC. I watched my roommate's DVD collection and made it half way through season four without a break or any cliffhangers. Pam and Jim were my main reason for watching, and I quaked each time he reached out to her and deflated each time she rejected him. When they finally got together I felt Halpert's personal triumph as my own.

I relocated to England in March of 2007, lived without a TV for months, and forgot about Dunder Mifflin for a few years. I was busy discovering the Dharma and getting married. When I told my new husband Tom about my past obsession and showed him Jim's impersonation of Dwight on You Tube, he bought me Season Four and Five to satiate my craving. I watched them in rapid succession and it was during season five, somewhere around his proposal to Pam, when I fell for Jim Halpert.

I awoke this morning in a sweat thinking I'd cheated on my husband with Jim. I had all the guilt, fear, and shame of breaking up TV's favourite couple and my own relationship in one lucid dream. Let me be clear - I'm in love with Jim Halpert, not his equally aesthetically pleasing but not as adorable alter-ego, John Krasinki (although this picture tempted me to change my mind). But no, Jim's not so suave, not so certain. The only thing he knows for sure is how much he loves Pam.

At first I thought it might just be my identification with the character. Watching Jim woo Pam brings back the visceral feelings of unrequited love of high school crushes. I pined from afar, wished and hoped and prayed the one I loved would notice me, I dreamed up elaborate plans and stories to fuel my infatuation. Jim's pursuit of Pam reminded me of the sweet suffering I made for myself, but also convinced myself I couldn't avoid. The dramatic ideals of love at first sight and never giving up played out in their courtship as they did in my adolescence. So while I recognised in Jim my tendencies to inflate my fantasies and pursue the unattainable, I recognised in Pam the girl I desperately wanted to be.

The crush taps into the idealism of youthful virginity, to the times before anyone had broken my heart, when a boyfriend would solve all my problems, and when all I needed was the right guy to smile at me. Forget compassion, companionship, and enduring love; I wanted passion, ardor, and lust. But I wanted them framed with soft pink roses and slipped between clean bed sheets. I wanted music to swell when I turned around to see him leaning on a door frame, I wanted to walk in the rain without having to mop up the puddles when I got home, I wanted to tumble into bed without worrying about the condom or about getting pregnant (yes, I know, I saw the last episode of Season 5 - but I can't get Season 6 or 7 over here yet, so don't tell me if it's actually true or what happens!).

And an imaginary lover in a soundtracked TV series can give you all those things. Because he isn't real, he never fails to live up to expectations. Isn't human, isn't falliable, but rather waits at the gate of your consciousness until you're ready to call him in. But he won't do your laundry, cook you dinner, leave love notes for you on the kitchen table or sweep you off to Paris in the springtime.

One of the Buddha's teachings is to "guard the doors of the senses". As we become more aware of what we react to, what we grab hold of and run with, we can choose what to expose ourselves to and what to indulge in. If I sold my Office DVDs and disconnected the internet, I wouldn't catch glimpses of Jim or watch spliced together montages of his and Pam's flirtations. And so then I wouldn't move on to the indulgent ideas of what it might be like if I were Pam, or if my husband were Jim. So really, for the sake of my heart and maybe my marriage, I should give up the show. Alas, though, I am no forest renunciant, and I can't make the break.

So what is the remedy? How do I remind myself that I love my husband and that no one, not even Jim Halpert, would make me as happy as he does? With small things. Recollecting my three-dimensional journey that brought me here, and how it wouldn't fit in a half-hour sitcom. How I did meet some guys who smiled at me, who I was certain were right - and how our actual relationships played out, ending in heartbreak, emotional blackmail, and bad poetry. Remembering how many things looked so good on paper and played out so inconsistently. How when I met Tom I learned you fall in love over ironing sheets and watching clouds, and how when I married him it wasn't a whim, it wasn't fleeting, it was a promise and a dedication and a commitment.

And how when he shrugs and smirks and puts his hands in his pockets, he looks a little like Jim.

going back to India

2011-01-09T03:03:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine leaves for India on 8 March, 2011. He asks me for travel advice. His request spurs me to slip back through the aperture of my digital camera, sift through my emails home, read back on my diary to reminisce about the culture shock and how I went to the subcontinent looking for a grand adventure, to find only myself.

When I asked people about India before I left, they used same adjective: "Amazing". But they couldn't back up the term with specifics. They flung out images and clichés: cows in the street, camel safaris, warm chapati at road side stalls and families inviting you to lunch in their homes. They talked as if reading from guidebooks or tourist brochures rather than recounting experiences. I visited India in September and October, 2007 with my sister, Tara. She introduced me to her budget travel rules:
1. Always spend time before money.
2. Never take a taxi when you can take a cheaper chauffeured vehicle (insert autorickshaw, becak, bajaj, tuk tuk here). Never take any of these when you can take a bus. Never take a bus when you can walk.
3. Never accept the first price.
4. Assume everyone is trying to take advantage of you and work backwards from there.
She shrugged: "There aren't fewer honest, helpful people in India. There are just fifty times the scam artists." We argued about the rules and our experiences over the next month, and came around to each other in some ways, but further distanced in others.

DELHI - The Capital City

A taxi to Paraganj in the middle of the night, collapsing into our hostel room with a mixture of exhaustion and jetlag. Walk around Chaudi Chok marketplace. Visit the Red Fort (and the Kahs Malal within it). National Gandhi Museum.

Delhi alone can be alienating, and the fear of being taken advantage of can keep a wall up. The Indian belief in "baksheer" - money: either tips, bribes, alms, or padding the bill - shows up even in temples.

We walk past a man hunched over on the cement of a curb, his beard in tufts, a raggled shirt collapsed on his shoulders. His left elbow rested on his thigh, his hand hung between his legs as he groped over what the cloth wouldn't cover. We tried not to look at the open gash below the bend in his arm, an open sore almost to the bone. Unsure even if we were walking the right way, we passed in a confused shock. Later, I wondered what Gandhi would have done, or another traveler, or our parents. We questioned the human, the rational, the realistic as we wondered that biting conditional of "should". Self-admonishment for a blind eye gave way to a helpless "but what could we do?" and worries about our own safety, nevermind his. I saw us in the waiting room of a hospital, flies collecting on his arm, on ours. Did he come from one, a hospital waiting room that couldn't afford to keep him? If I helped him, who else was I to stop and help on this, my vacation time? I told myself I can't help them all. The truth was I don't want to help this one.

That guilt pervaded all my experiences, the coin cans in the hands of mothers jangled at the sides of my conscience. I never reached a resolution, of who to give to and what to give and what I owed for being there. So in the end I give nothing.

We decide to see only one state, confining ourselves to Rajasthan, a place of sand and kings, where the bolts of fabric made up for the barren landscape, where I learned to do nothing and think less than that. We embarked on a triangle journey to bring us full circle back to Delhi in a month's time.

AGRA - The Taj City

The insanity of Delhi fed into the overbearing tourism of Agra, a city built on the rupees brought in by the draw of the Taj Mahal. Taj Ganj, the area immediately around the world class monument, stifles with artificiality as it caters to every palate and cultural paradigm and thus robs itself of any authenticity.

After taking in the Taj at sunrise, I conceded it lived up to every expectation, picture, quotation. The Taj Mahal dwarfed even my conceptualized ideal. It is just as white, as majestic, as pristine as every postcard and every recollection you've heard. I watched the sunrise over the white marble and marveled at the stones inlaid in the "teardrop on the face of time". The inlays of mother of pearl and semi-precious stones reflect the light off the polished marble, and every one of the 20,000 workers and elephants who chiseled, carved, bricklayed, and otherwise toiled over 22 years leave a bit of themselves behind in this tapestry of talents.

I visit the Taj, the Baby Taj, and Agra Fort, sidestepping cows. They're docile, sacred animals, and wander where they please. I wonder who owns them, who feeds them, what happens when they die. I only know they're not eaten. While "non-veg" restaurants serve up chicken and sometimes lamb, there is no beef here.

I stopped beside a fruit stand to handle a mango. In the shop beside it, two sheets hung and as the breeze parted them, I peered in to find a skinless, headless carcass hanging, separated from me by only an open gutter. Don't eat the meat.

The couple next to us in a restaurant shared Purell: he uncapped it and squirtted it into her hands, held out and cupped expectantly. The disinfectant smell wandered over, familiar to tourists in the same way the wafts of fried pakora and samosa batter slithered up the local streets.

India is, at first, exhausting. And for reasons which surprised me. Traveler propaganda promised an experience unlike any other - a rush of exciting happenings, Incredible India. The reality is less epic.

Autorickshaws pursued me for blocks and many minutes, no matter how many times I insisted I would rather walk. At first, a sense of humor armoured me against their eyes, and I laughed through each new approach. But then I became unsure if they were humoured in return. It was unnerving, and I brought my back up instead of relaxing into the culture. Who am I as a tourist with the same colour skin and heritage as past colonizers to suggest how I should be treated? Instead of answering I look away, at the temples and the palaces and the cows walking down the street.

JAIPUR - The Pink City

But later I resolved to stop being a cynic and embrace happiness. Despite all the propoganda on scams and tourist traps, I realized most people genuinely want to help, or at least just honestly do business with you. In Delhi and Agra, inflated prices and bargaining are a way of life, but in Jaipur people charged the going rate - the tourist rate, yes, but straight-up nevertheless.

There's an upside to politeness. It's not false or phony or disingenuous. It opened up opportunities and left a sweeter taste in my mouth. Tara and I both got colds: it's the dust in Rajasthan, that desert state. I had the sniffles and a bit of a head cold, while Tara was virtually incapacitated, and a little feverish. She regained strength after a few days and copious amounts of tea with lemon and honey.

Jaipur bustled with old bazaars and new money, the old walls of the crumbling Pink City hankering down against the 25 million population outside.
I visit the Birla Temple, white marble glowing in the sun. The bazaars full of fabric and bags of spices, the Hawal Mahal, the City Palace. The Jantar Mantar is an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque collection of architectural astronomical instruments. The Raj Mandir, world's most gaudy cinema. The Amber Fort outside the city.

PUSHKAR - The Ghat City

In Pushkar I rejoiced in the tranquility of a lakefront town - or rather, pond centred. Towns like Pushkar are more laid back, and it's easier to enjoy the views of pilgrims bathing on the ghats.

We sat on rooftop restaurants and watch sunsets over the water.

I started to notice my judgment of other travelers. I looked at them and decided who they were, what they were doing in India, without knowing a thing about them. I didn't think to compare them to me - I couldn't possibly be one of them. The ones wearing American Eagle t-shirts are fearful and unadventurous, new here, greenhorns, they order toast and Marmite at breakfast

and sandwiches and spaghetti bolognese at night. I wonder why they came to India if they never wanted to leave home.

And then we found "Honey and Spice", a shop that sold tofu and toasted nuts and espresso instead of heavy gravies and Nescafé, and I ate there every day. I had to cede defeat on the above point and let go, once again, of my tendency to We go also go on a bike ride and climb a mountain.

UDAIPUR - The Lake City

Udaipur threw the net of its tourism close to the famous Lake Pichola where Octopussy was filmed, but when we struck out into the city itself we couldn't find a vibe to define it. The city's stagnation mimicked its lake and my mindspace, so that I could drift quietly among the algae and collect my thoughts to bring them together and sprout a lily.

We arrived the night of a street festival, with lights hanging above the city and kids smashing hand-held sticks together in celebration. We ate overlooking to famous lake. We visit the City Palace.

A havali beside the river housed clothing exhibitions and we returned in the evening for a traditional dance performance. I posted home two packages from the local post office - set aside a day to do this, and I was told to resign myself to possible never seeing anything in them again. Despite my misgivings, the packages actually arrived home before I did.

JODHPUR - The Blue City

Jodhpur leapt out as our favourite, laid back and liberal whilst still catering to our palates and our desire to blend in. Atop our guest house after the sari market and a plateful of Indian sweets, we reflected that the atmosphere here is laid-back, less frenetic. Tara says it's more liberal, less touristy; more acceptance, less hassle; more strolling, less gawking. We visited the sari market where women threw bolts of silk and embroidered chiffon at us for 50 rupees a piece. After five swathes of fabric I pulled back,

scampering away from the insistent women who wanted us to buy their wares. Accustomed to forward pushes by men and rickshaw wallahs, my first

experience of overeager women overpowered my stamina for resistance and forced me to withdraw. I worry I should have bought more, should have found a use for another three or four.
The palace sat above the city in a walled-in fortress. When we looked down from above, the blue buildings of the Brahmins glowed up at us. We visited the fort, the market (full of cows and saris), a mausoleum, and the palace. We drank saffron lassis - rather we ate them with spoons, tasting equal parts citrus, cream, saffron, and sugarcane. The thickness of the yogurt rolled like ice cream over our tongues and mingled with the sweet bite of sugar.

JAISALMER - The Golden City

Or the Sandcastle City. When we arrived here wallahs attacked our bus trying to drag us to guest houses - business seems to have been slow. We evaded them and found our own, walking through the dust and sand.

In Jaisalmer I woke up exhausted by India. I'm not sure if it was the heat or the desert or Tara's insatiable desire to explore, but the idea of walking, or doing yoga, or taking a picture, all seemed too much to begin to attempt.

I continued to renegotiate my travel ideals. "Experiencing India" for me must be, very specifically, a white tourist experiencing tourist India. My brief encounters with the locals were only that, and generally operated in the defined roles of buyer and seller. Gandhi would say, attack the system, not the individual. And unless I want to take on the reform of India's tourist trade in any constructive sense, I decided I may as well play along.

While in other cities the fort is only for show, here people still live within its walls, and the sanitation and growing infrastructure wreaks havoc on the foundations. I visited the fort, the castle inside it, as well as a Jain temple. I paid 50 p to get my hair cut and end up with one side an inch shorter than the other. From here we ventured into the desert for our camel safari.

Being out there on the sand, barefoot and hair full of campfire smoke, reminded me of every solitary beach I'd sat on and every camping experience I'd attempted. I wonder if I experience things only to put my past experiences in some kind of context. I travel to bring into relief the changes in me, the truths, that are usually submerged in normality and routine.

BIKANER - The Last City

Sitting on a train to Bikaner from Jaisalmer, we looked outside to the ornate sandstone benches, carved with intertwined flowers and curlicue, and resisted conversation with the solitary local who wanted to practise his English. The train station formed yet another paradox, where its immaculate construction and cleanliness, absent of grime and urine, seems a crater of cleanliness with all the culture and vivacity scooped out.

In Bikaner, crazy drivers careened around motorcycles and shouted at pedestrians. After a month I thought I'd grown accustomed to the pal-mel driving laws, but India continued to surprise and shock.

We go to the palace and the fort, and we ready ourselves to go home. Our tour of the Rajasthani triangle, the desert cities of Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaislamer, and Bikaner reveals in each a fort and a palace, but also with their own definitive style.

back in DELHI
We visited the Ba'hi temple which

inspired me with its description of inclusion of all faiths, but when I arrived I felt an emptiness and lack of cohesion in the high ceilinged empty hall.

We found the place of Gandhi's assassination. I knelt in front of the shrine and made an offering to atone for my being there without understanding why.

India holds fragments of deconstructed colonialism, with leftover English grandeur and attempts at modernity. All the cities make it harder to imagine another life - I'm still not sure if this is the India everyone falls in love with. Gandhi wrote a commentary on the Western man's difficulty in accepting a culture so different from their (our?) own: "Our different ways of living, our simplicity, our contentment with small gains, our indifference to the laws of hygiene and sanitation, our slowness in keeping our surroundings clean and tidy, and our stinginess in keeping our houses in good repair - all these, combined with the difference in religion, contributes to the antagonism."

For all the garbage strewn about the cities, and aside from plastic bags, an Indian probably produces as much waste in a week as we do in a day. There was a simpleness, a way of living that does not strive to emulate the West. Statues of Ganesh, identifiable by his elephant trunk, sat in shrines adorned with strings of pink and orange flowers. Men prayed to him as others stepped next door into open public toilets, where only a crumbling wall of tile separated them from my sister and I passing on the sidewalk. If a toilet isn't to be found, people squat on the side of the street, or urinate on fences. Urine trickles and pools in dust, the smell swirls in the heat.

As I squatted over a toilet in a stall without a door as shit fermented in a pile beneath me and a woman in a sari squatted across the room, I repeated like a mantra, "Just piss and go." On my way out a boy and his sister sat on their haunches in the hallway, and I stepped over the trickles of their pee. Out on the street, I walk past a water pump, and further on a trough of open taps to rinse and clean men's hands and necks while urine drips down around their feet.

India took my breath away: it is an amazing, vivacious country. Vivacious and exhausting in equal measures. My introduction to the subcontinent was like a torrid one-month affair, pulling me in and pushing me away in equal measure. My subsequent analysis of it was just as complicated. The culture clash, everything from the predominantly sexist gender roles to the ubiquitous vegetarianism to the car honks and cows on the road, at first overwhelmed and then swept me away as I resigned myself to just ride the wave.

the tea ceremony

2010-04-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Pain in slivers.
It shoots out of my leg like
Leaves off a branch
before they're picked.

A white sheath of white rises up and then
falls away in pieces
like petals on a buckthorn tree.

Boredom.
And then a shiver of interest
In a thought or a pot
Of tea.

Discomfort quivers up
like a lazy tea leaf
opening in hot water.

The edge seeps out
diffuses into a mellow brew of unrest
that rivers through me

and then it builds again
bubbling over with the power on high and as it comes to the boil it could be
ecstasy

I am intoxicated.

Doubt

2009-11-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

There is a teaching that lists everything that goes wrong in my head. They are called the Five Hindrances, these emotions/thoughts/vedanas/tendencies that interfere not only with my meditation, but with my spiritual progress. Sloth and torpor, restlessness and anxiety, desire for sensual experience, hatred, and finally doubt. They are all children of my mind, born from thinking. And they come back again and again, when I sit on the cushion or talk to my parents or browse in a bookstore or share in a meeting. They are relentless.

Right now it is doubt. I am doubting everything; my faith in Buddhist teachings, my belonging in the rooms of AA, the ability of my mind to solve everything, the desire to rely on anything but. I know my mind makes me crazy; Bill W. called it insanity, the Buddha said we are all mad. Right now I want a way to reconcile my spiritual beliefs with my sober life. And this is the first time they've come to such a head.

I used to believe in god because it was easy. And what was wrong with that? It made me happy and I believed it to be true, this higher power and benevolent force whom I could appeal to for solace and guidance. And when I realized the fallacy of it I knew I could never go back. Like an alcoholic who knew she could never drink again with a clear conscience, I knew I could never again turn it all over to something else and let them take care of it.

But now I am at that point: do I have to believe in god to stay sober? How do I choose? Delusion over happiness? Would I rather be right or would I rather be happy? At least in the short term?

So Bill W. says:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

and what would the dharma say?
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that by going for refuge to the three jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, we could restore our sanity.
3. Made a decision to let go of that which we cannot control and to take up a spiritual life.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, or acknowledged "all the evil we have heaped up through our ignorance and foolishness - evil in the world of everyday experience, as well as evil in understanding and intelligence."
5. With the ideal of enlightenment in our mind we "confessed our faults" to ourselves and to another human being.
6. Were entirely ready to release all these defects of character, "with our hands raised in reverence and terrified of suffering".
7. Humbly admitted, "just as it is, with its many faults, that what is not good, we shall not do again".
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed (practiced confession) and became willing to make amends to them by acknowledging our actions and striving to rectify them.
9. Made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it (practiced confession).
11. Sought through meditation to deepen our connection with the three jewels and to see and accept things as the really are.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

August and everything after

2009-09-08T01:57:00.001-07:00

We spent almost as much of August away from Norwich as we spent in it. First came our trip to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. My first time in Scotland, first time in Edinburgh, first time that far north, first time to the Fringe. After only seeing Albertan Fringe Festivals, to be in the city where it all began some 60 years ago demanded another level of awe and respect for the organization needed to produce a Festival of this magnitude. Hundreds of venues spread over the city centre, weaved into castles, churches, assembly halls, downstairs pubs, restaurants, and city streets. Seventeen hours of theatre in 72 hours. We stayed with Tom's friend Simon, a filmmaker living in the heart of the city, so we could walk to all the venues. I occasionally ran - twice I sandwiched a show in between two others, so I needed to sprint across the city to ensure I made it to the next one in time. We ate a lot of meals "on the hoof" ("on the go" to us North Americans) as we wove through the majestic city of stone in the (mostly) good weather as vast green hills loomed up from in between and behind the buildings. All this running around only added to the frenetic energy of the festival. Tom's friends put on a musical called Barbershopera II, the second collaboration of their barbershop-quartet-inspired musicals. Two of the cast also starred in Afternoon Delight, an acoustic guitar performance of comedy songs from "The Dinosaurs Were Gay" (an explanation of why the reptiles really went extinct) to "Man Boobs" (a lament of one of the guy's issues with his large-ish mammary glands) to "Green Party, Get Sexy" (an appeal to a national political party to stop wearing socks and sandals so as to appeal to younger, hipper, constituents). Hilarious. I also saw Janeane Garafalo do stand up, but that was mostly to satisfy my adolescent nostalgia from watching her on Reality Bites. One of my favourite pieces was a one-woman show that told of one woman's experience of four morning-afters: grating, bracing, and honest. But my number one was a dance/movement piece called The Chair by C-12, a four person company (http://www.c-12dancetheatre.com/). It told of a black man's childhood of abuse and relationship with his mother, his later affair with a white woman, and his subsequent imprisonment as he looks back at his life and forward to the future he's lost. They told the story completely through movement and a soundtrack of 30's/40's ragtime juxtaposed with evocative piano solos. Stunning. After sixteen shows in three days, we kissed Edinburgh good-bye to go home for a solid week of work before journeying to...

Snape, a village in Suffolk, the county south of us. Snape was once home to a maltings, a collection of buildings that soaked and dried barley to transform it into malt for beer and whiskey. As the production of these goods became more consolidated, maltings closed up and down the country. Most are derelict and unused, but this particular maltings was restored by Benjamin Britten, a British opera composer, who transformed the main building into a music hall. Now it hosts the Addleburgh Music Festival and Snape Proms, the name for their own little festival. Tom and I spent two nights in a cute little B&B. During the day we walked in the fields and on the marshes, perused the gift shops and nibbled at the cafés at the maltings, brought the median age down by about twenty years, and ascertained that even though we were probably on the smallest of incomes we seemed to be the only ones not complaining about the prices or the food. On the first night we saw The Puppini Sisters (http://www.thepuppinisisters.com/) whose CDs are amazing with their updated versions of wartime classics and their doo-wop adaptations of modern pop songs (check out their Walk Like An Egyptian cover). The performance, unfortunately, didn't quite live up to our expectations. They had terrible sound quality in the first half, and their on-stage schtick faltered because of it. Still, their energy and vocal proficiency astounds. The second night we heard three poets read their work: South African Finuala Dowling, Briton Alan Brownjohn, and American Sharon Olds. I could take or leaves Brownjohn, but Dowling mixed the hilarious with the hearwrenching with aptitude, and Olds cut me to the quick. She described the book of poetry she wrote about her father as "poems about my relationship with a...difficult man." This piece grabbed tears from my eyes and wrung them down my cheeks.

The Race by Sharon Olds

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you'll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle's eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people's hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.

After the frantic pace of Edinburgh (and that poem), the calm of Snape, plus the two hours of languid train journeys, put me in relax mode. Home in time for one night in our own bed before I packed my tent and my sleeping bag and headed off to...

Buddhafield East, also in Suffolk, but only a 25 minute drive away. I went to the same event last year as a cautious Canadian in England on a visa who found meditation uncomfortable but essential and who wasn't sure about all this Buddhist stuff. This year I arrived a married Buddhist (with leave to remain in the country!) who still found meditation uncomfortable most of the time.

I pitched my tent, rolled out my sleeping bag, set out my Wellie boots, and went to sit by the fire. Last year it was rainy and cold, this year was sunny and toasty (helped by the duvet I brought with me this time). Last year I oscillated between wanting to belong and demanding to be left alone, between feeling needy for talking to people and feeling stand-offish for taking refuge in my tent; this year I jumped in with two feet, and when I wanted to talk to someone I started a conversation, and when I wanted to be alone I went off on my own. No guilt, no second guessing, just being myself and resonating with my choices. I sat in workshops on Non-Violent Communication and caught a glimpse of how to talk to people I don't like or don't want to connect with in a way that doesn't exacerbate those sentiments. I woke up to meditate at half seven every morning (except Sunday). We had a puja (ritual) every night. I practiced yoga under the sky. I met inspiring order members as well as non-Buddhists. I got an English tan. But what transformed me, what made everything else seem like candles against the light of its fire, were the workshops by Vajradaka. An ordained member since 1971, he articulated and explained the Mindfulness of Breathing and the Metta Bhavna to me so that I felt I meditated for the first time in his workshops. Now I meditate with curiousity, with excitement, with alacrity. My practice is now usually joyous and fruitful - and always worthwhile.

So now I am at home, at rest, and ready for the next bit. May you all be well. Lots of love, namaste, Andrea

from the moon of honey to three people in a two-bedroom house

2009-09-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

We came back from honeymoon on a high of Italian sunshine and honeymoon bubble bliss. We left for Paris the day after the wedding, so we'd left all our friends on 'pause'; we returned to excitement and congratulations, prolonging our giddiness and the newness of marriage. We reveled in introducing ourselves as 'my husband' and 'my wife' - each time I say them I remember we belong to each other, that we're committed to a shared vision of our future. When I'm asked how it feels to be married I say amazing because something has shifted. Sure, 'married bliss' exists, but like all bliss, in handfuls and fleeting flashes, like sunsets or candles on a birthday cake. I'm surprised at the subtlety of changes - when I imagine the future, when I see me walking through Venice or eating at a café back in Calgary, Tom is there with me, not specifically invited but there because I know he will be. We set up a joint bank account and realize I can let go of the idea of 'mine' as it seeps into the concept of 'ours'. I still have 'my' account - can't let it go all at once - but I'm recognizing that there is no separateness in the same way. When I leave one job (at The Green Grocers) to start another (as the Fundraising Coordinator at The Buddhist Centre), I need to ask about the ramifications for him of more hours and greater investment. We learn how to weave co-dependence into our strong senses of self.

After the ecstasy comes - well, perhaps not agony, but a diluted version. Being back home for awhile, we found ourselves on, as Tom calls it, "the comedown express". After all the energy of planning, entertaining, marrying, and honeymooning, this is it - back in Norwich, in a two-bedroom house that we share with Ben, Tom's brother, in our jobs and in our lives. I found myself irritable, playing the part of a long-suffering wife after a few weeks at home. I felt frustrated and claustrophobic. My practice faltered - I no longer meditated at home, and my study groups had finished for the summer, so I felt disconnected. It scared me that after so much happiness could come so much heaviness. But I could see that was partly why it felt so heavy: because of the ecstasy of the previous month. How could June live up to May, with her weddings and family reunions and Italian escape? So, we took action. We visited Mair and Dad as they came back through London at the end of June. We had sunshine picnics. I looked at Norwich anew. I snapped new pictures of familiar things, like the rubbish bin I walk by every day to work that someone left a dismembered computer beside. We celebrated our one year anniversary of togetherness - a month after our wedding. We booked our trip to Edinburgh in August to visit the Fringe Festival. We decided to go to Suffolk for a posh music festival. I signed up for Buddhafield East, a gathering in a field full of yoga and meditation and practice and communal living for the last five days of August. And life loses that tinge of melancholy as it fills with the prospect of newness.

the life of a Campbell and a Loudon...from me to we

2009-07-08T01:22:00.000-07:00

I couldn't stop there; it's not really complete if I tell you about all of this without all of Tom. Let me begin again, at the beginning. I'll go all the way to the end (of May, anyways). And then I'll stop.

May, 2008
Tom and I meet at The Greenhouse, the vegetarian cafe where he works as a Volunteer Coordinator and Project Developer. I think I met him for the first time on the evening of May 31, when I came to The Greenhouse for an evening dinner, and he thinks I had come to The Greenhouse once before to ask about volunteering. Maybe we'll never know.

June, 2008
After a few bumping-into-each-others at The Greenhouse and a live show at a local pub, I end up at his house for dinner with his brother and another friend. A few days later I make him dinner (in his kitchen, of course) to say thank you. And then we lay on his back lawn and watched clouds roll by.

July, 2008
We tip-toe through our first month of couple-dom, dodging boy- and girl-friend questions and stealing kisses. We make each other meals (vegetarian, dairy- and chili-free) and visit art exhibitions and talk and not talk. I tell myself I can't take a picture of a man I've only been seeing for a few weeks...but when his parents visit for a few days we spend some time in each others' company. I think they approve. Of me. Of us. In the preliminaries.

August, 2008
Katherine Cofell's leaving do at an Indian restaurant and an English provides the excuse for picture taking. Our first couple shot, with hands gingerly placed on shoulders and chins dipped in shy excitement.

I visit a field in Suffolk for Buddhafield East, a gathering of meditation, yoga, communal meals, and sans Tom. He welcomes me home with a chocolate nougat cake, the same one he wooed me with on the night we first kissed.
And then later in the same month, our tentative two month anniversary celebration with dinner at Cinema City. I bought him a box for his collection of teas, from green tea with echinacea to lemon and ginger to nettle to Malay rooisbus chai.

September, 2008
Our first vacation - all the way to Brighton on the southern shores of England. I say to his mom, Bridget, "It's one thing to be living together in the same city in your usual routines, but if we can travel together...that's compatibility."

Walking on the pier I play him Artists Are Boring by Kingdom Flying Club, skipping and dancing with one earphone in each of our ears.

On the beach I play him Peter Bjorn and John's Paris 2004: "I'm all about you, you're all about me, we're all about each other"; "While I'm sleeping/You paint a ring on my finger with your black marker-pen";

"We need this precious time just to comprehend."

October, 2008
I go on my first Buddhist retreat at the beginning of the month, and celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in the middle. With a collection of Buddhists and Brits (not mutually exclusive labels), we have a bring-and-share/pot-luck dinner with vegan perogies and cabbage rolls for my Ukrainian roots and steamed green veggies and potato bake for my new English ties. Bridget and David come back to Norwich for a visit, and the four Loudons (brother Ben, dad David, mom Bridget and my dear Tom) plus this Canadian kid head for dinner to The Last Wine Bar. We all approve of each other.

November, 2008
I always think of it as my month because my birthday's in here, but this year I share it. Tom organizes a trip to London - dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, museum visits, drinks at a pub with all his old friends, now to be my new ones. He buys me a most perfect green coat for the winter that's hinting hard at coming on soon. We head to Whatton, his hometown, for down time with the folks and English countryside walks.

December, 2008
A mixed bag, really. A retreat finishes at the beginning of the month and makes a better impression than the first, but I'm still not running to sign up for my next one. Another trip to London peps me up: this time to see Les Miserables, Tom's favourite novel brought to stage in his guilty enjoyment of a West End musical. We make up for it by viewing the indie production of Barbershopera, the creation of Tom Green and Rob Castell, two of Tom's classmates while he was doing his playwriting MA. (You can join their Facebook fan page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbershopera/155504540230). Then comes Christmas in Whatton - the family of five is four for a lot of the time due to fractured pelvises and hospital stays, but we triumph over the wintertime blues, Bridget roasts the potatoes in oil instead of goose fat, there's turkey for them and a mushroom tart for me. Happy English Christmas.

January, 2009
We spend my favourite New Year's in 27 years at Frank's Bar with all my workmates and their significant others and a whole lot of other super significant people (most whose names escape me). We dance; I drink Dandelion and Burdock and remember there's too much sugar in it for me half way through the bottle and then switch to coffee; we come home at half two and watch It's A Wonderful Life; I wake up at seven and practice yoga in the garden as the world wakes up to a new year.

At the end of the month we venture to Cambridge. I forget my camera, or my camera runs out of batteries, so there are no pictures of the day we got engaged. There's sunshine and a picnic and a reading of Alice in Wonderland, but none of them really have anything to do with each other. But "yes" means telling people, and so to make sure we're not kidding we walk straight from the train station into Frank's Bar, tell everyone who's working, and have elderflower cordial with sparkling water to celebrate.

February, 2009
On the second I turn five and he knew it was coming so he bakes me a cake: all organic and all sugar, with beetroot juice to make the icing pink. We head back to London for Avenue Q in the last days of its run at Noel Coward Theatre, and then head up to Portobello Road in search of a wedding dress. I have a vintage prom dress in mind, but instead we find From Somewhere, a shop which "up-cycles" clothes by sourcing discarded material from the garment industry and sewing it into new creations. The girl in the shop shares her enthusiasm for the fashion and the ethos, and we're sold - on the concept and on a knee-length dress coupled with a cape.

March, 2009
We begin the lead up to the day. Emails, invites, cupcakes, Certificates of Authority (required for foreign nationals to marry British citizens). Tom books honeymoon train journeys.We take solace in days of walks in spring sunshine and bringing old friends back up to speed with our new life. In a lot of conversations and emails in which I tell people I'm engaged, they answer back, "Congratulations! To who?" We revel in the aloneness, but the planning frenzy seeps into even the most well intentioned laid-back, eco-friendly, low-cost affair. We enjoy Norwich's cinema offerings, 103's dinner menu, Take 5's crypt entertainment. We say so long to our good friend Cat Spurden who goes off to seek her fortune in the Youth Hostels of the UK. I take off in the last week to Taraloka, a women's retreat centre on the Welsh boarder, and come back refreshed.

April, 2009
The last month of singledom - and sanity. We keep saying "we're basically done, we could get married tomorrow", and it's kind of true. At the end of the month, Jackie and Sam visit from Tokyo and we get to have a trial run at showing off Norwich before our families descend in a few short weeks. My first experience of my worlds colliding in over a year - not just those of past and present but of fellow partners and housemates. Between the delicious meals, hanging out at home and on the streets of Norwich, in the sunshine cobblestone streets and the grassy knolls of the Plantation Garden, outside the boxes of crossword puzzles and on top of the squares of a giant chessboard, we managed to all get along just fine.

May, 2009
A few months ago I asked to become a mitra at the Buddhist Centre, and Tom lovingly accepts my invitation to attend and share this important public commitment to my practice. The following week we celebrate his birthday with a trip to Sheringham and a choo-choo train ride to Holt, with lunch at the famous Byfords and a surprise chocolate cake waiting back home at Frank's Bar. We count down as the family arrives - Mom and Tara via London on Wednesday, May 13 and then Mair, Dad, Bridget and David on Friday, May 15.

May 18, 2009
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=campbell.andreal&target=ALBUM&id=5350124776838649185&authkey=Gv1sRgCPj2wJu7-qLwhgE&invite=C PL85qAK&feat=email

post-May 18: honeymoon highlights
In Paris, at a sidewalk cafe
somewhere along our 26 hour train journey to Sicily

on the ferry to Milazzo

the view from our apartment on Salina

our tans beginning to darken...

...mine a bit more than his

the cove we found on the west coast of the island

at one of our many pasta dinners

practicing yoga and Tai Chi

view from a the top of a mountain

through Rome on the way home

...it's not a honeymoon without Paris

home again

Much love to all of you. I don't know if I'll ever update this regularly, but I'll try to let you know periodically when I do. Otherwise, drop me an email or find me on Facebook. May you all be well and full of life.

Namaste, Andrea Lauren (Loudon) Campbell

2009-07-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

So, to pick up from where I left off. This is the life of me. With pictures. A pictoral representation of a year in the life of me. A retrospective perspective. Of me. Just me. Of course, I did just get married - of course I did. I married the love of my life. But I am still just me, the same me that was un-married until May 18, and who is still just as much me when I am alone, in meditation and in baking cakes and in coffee houses and gardens and inside my head if not my heart. And I had to do it alone, I didn't ask anyone (any-you) what you thought because I had to know it was for me. For me, just me. And these pictures bring me closer, and now bring some closure, to that girl.

May, 2008
I arrive in Norwich from London to Couchsurf on the couch of Katherine Cofell, an American living in Norwich with her British partner Bill. They take me out to Reepham, the village where they live with Bill's Mom, and I glimpse the grass-scented sheep-filled countryside life, step on some stinging nettles, and walk through a farm field. Back in Norwich, I visit The Greenhouse for a meal and then as a volunteer. I decide to stick around for a bit.

June, 2008
I spend Summer Solstice at Stonehenge with the London CouchSurfers. I come back to Norwich and then take the train up to Sheringham for a day in a seaside town on the north Norfolk coast. I picnic in a park with my new workmates at Frank's Bar and come second in an English pub quiz.

July, 2008
I work at Frank's Bar on Bedford Street. I get a job at The Green Grocer on Recreation Road. I live at 105 Earlham Road, but I bake a cake at 63 Alexandra Road with hazelnuts and beetroot and topped with rose jam. I practice yoga in Chapelfield Gardens as under age kids drink beer and make-out in the afternoon. I bake cakes and make salads at The Greenhouse.

August, 2008
I attend Katherine Cofell's leaving do at Spice Paradise, the Indian restaurant where she brought me to meet Bill's family on my second night in Nowich. I bike up to Mousehold Heath and watch the sun set over the city before I get caught in the rain and come home soaking. I go to Buddafield East, a 'gathering' in a field in Suffolk where we camp, use compost loos, eat communal meals and chop communal onions. I meditate (almost) every morning and chant in a puja every evening. I tell myself emphatically that I am not a Buddhist.

September, 2008

I work more at both my jobs and I spend more time at the Buddhist Centre more often - more meditation, more yoga, more volunteering on the front desk. My life is more full. I go to Brighton, the popular southern seaside destination for Britons. I walk on its pier full of carousels and skee ball games, soft whip ice cream and sugar dusted deep fried donuts. Fish and chips without the fish. Vegetarian restaurants galore. Just enough sunshine for September.

October, 2008
The second of the month sends me off on my first Buddhist retreat, to the Burnham-Overy Windmill just past Wells-Next-the-Sea. I squirm and go all claustrophobic, but I grind my teeth and breathe with it and make it home in one piece. I celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with a gander of friends (but no goose) at my new temporary accommodation on Press Lane in Norwich. I make perogies for the first time, in two batches; one is vegan. We sing 'Johnny Appleseed' in call and response.

November, 2008
I turn 27. Mair and Dad arrange a cake from across the ocean and Mom sends me pink roses. I go to London and see Annie Leibowitz's exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and spend my birthday night at The Peasant pub. Later it's Whatton, a village in Nottinghamshire, to find a pile of horseshoes and a few castles on a handful of hills. I venture out to another retreat at the Windmill and almost enjoy the weekend.

December, 2008
Back to London to see Les Miserables for the second time in my life. I can't remember if I enjoyed it more or less than the first. I do think Eponine's On My Own has taken on a mythological tinge in my head that no earthly rendition can match, that she can only perfectly balance dying and hitting the high notes in A Little Fall of Rain in my head and not on stage. December the 25th in Whatton: a tree and a mushroom tart and an English Christmas for me.

January, 2009
The New Year rings in at Frank's Bar in my fancy frock. I read a horoscope that tells me a new occupation is on the horizon, so I apply for an administrative position at an NGO called BananaLink but it passes me by. So I hang up my suit next to my party dress for another day and keep loving waitressing on the weekends and stocking grocery shelves one day a week. I start the Foundation Course, a one year survey of Buddhism, at the Buddhist Centre.

February, 2009
The English winter still looms. I turn five (years sober, that is), and get a devishly sugary pink iced cake for my efforts. I go to a meeting, and while it's comforting to sit in a room of people who understand what five years means, I don't miss anything I found there. Later in the month it's London town again, this time for the New York musical Avenue Q and a walk down Portobello Road for the first time since this time last year.

March, 2009
My first week-long retreat. I drive with two lovely ladies out to Taraloka, a women's retreat centre on the Shropshire-Welsh boarder. I absolutely, positively, heartfeltfully, and magnanimously enjoy the collection of moments that made up all those seven days. I chant and cartwheel, meditate in the shrine room, talk the Dharma, sit in the sun in a tank top with a colouring book and rejoice in the spring to come. I ask to become a mitra, a bonafide friend of the Western Buddhist Order.

April, 2009
I spend most of the month enjoying snatched moments of domesticity and Norwichian relaxation. A walk to University of East Anglia and the art exhibit China! China! China! at The Sainsbury Centre. Then the month culminates in Jackie and Sam's arrival from Tokyo. After ten years of no communicado, Jackie and I reconnected in Japan in '07, and now it's her turn to visit me. We walk down cobbled streets, have coffee in cafes and dinners out on the town, wander through the Plantation Gardens and play chess on the lawn outside the Assembly House.

May, 2009
I finally, officially, stop with the me and become part of a we. I can't really look back at the last year without him; I have to eliminate pronouns from sentences to pretend he hasn't been here all along, not in the background but alongside me. I'm still here, still me, still the same as I've been, but everything I do is reflected in his choices, and my life isn't solitary, can't be, won't be, doesn't want to be. I'll tell you all about us in the next post, and you'll see what I mean about me and Tom.

2009-05-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

Tom Loudon and I got engaged at the beginning of February. I didn't get down on one knee, he didn't have a ring, but he said yes and I said sure and so now we are. Getting married. On May 18th, 2009 in Norwich, England.

A green, low-cost, modest affair, here's a brief overview, copy-and-pasted from our email invite.

the wedding of

Thomas Alastair Loudon

and

Andrea Lauren Campbell

Monday, May 18th, 2009

3:15 pm - our ceremony at the Norwich Registry Office.

4:00 pm - our small reception at The Greenhouse featuring a filling vegetarian meal and dessert. Have an early lunch or a late breakfast, and bring stories and cameras.

8:00 pm - 12:00 pm our large(r) reception at Frank's Bar featuring dancing and cupcakes! Nibbles will be out at 10:00 pm. Bring your dancing shoes!

Some of you have graciously asked what you can give to us to celebrate our union. Our first choice is for you to give a donation to The Greenhouse, the place where we met, which fostered our relationship in its early stages, and continues to play a key role in our professional and personal lives. Both the place itself and its ethos are close to our hearts, and investing in its future is synonymous to investing in ours. We invite you to visit The Greenhouse website at http://www.greenhousetrust.co.uk/ to read about this exemplar of sustainable living. If you'd like to donate before the day, you can print off, fill out, and post the attached form.

Much love, English kisses and Canadian hugs,

xoxo Andrea and Tom xoxo

Here I Am

2008-07-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Norwich, East Anglia, Southern England, United Kingdom.

I work at a kitschy cool bar on Bedford Street called Frank's Bar. There are board games and fairy lights (a.k.a. Christmas twinkle lights), teapots and ten-year-old National Geographics, Alice in Wonderland and a rocking horse.

I also work at the Green Grocers, a local, organic grocery store run by Tim, Tom, and Ben. I stock shelves, work at the till, and get free food when I play my cards right.

I volunteer at the Greenhouse, a charitable trust dedicated to publishing information on self-sustainable living. The cafe sells vegetarian organic goodness that I help to cook and bake. My friends Tom and Mark both work there.

I also volunteer at Oxfam Books and Music, where I realphabetize books and rearrange postcards.

I hang out at the Buddhist Centre, where I work on reception or clean or sit in a group meditation session and practice metta bhavna or mindfulness of breathing. My friend Tom works here.

I order pizza at friend's houses and watch My So-Called Life on DVD. I ride my new (to me) purple bike everywhere. I buy spices from the spice man in the market. His name is Gareth. I do yoga in Heigham Park. I sit in the sun in Chappelfield Park. When it rains I stay inside, but sometimes I'm on my bike or walking home when it starts falling so I get wet. I make chili or risotto for my housemates with leftover food from the bar or the grocers.

This is one of my friends. His name is Alex. We went to Sherringham, which is by the sea.
I want to visit more places sometime, but Norwich is quaint and full and I'm happy just being here right now.

My house is full of students and writers, girls and boys. Here are girls being girls:

and boys being boys:

I write stories and read my friends' written words. Alex just finished a novel. Tom writes plays. Which Tom, you ask? Excellent question! All English men are either named Tom, Ben, Paul, or James. Unless they're named something else.

letting it all go (I know the truth about you)

2008-06-25T13:06:00.001-07:00

On the train to Salisbury I read a book that convinced me to stop trying to escape fear. There is nowhere better to be, no other time than now, no one else to become. There is an alternative to seeking refuge from fear. I believed for a long time that if I just made it through the moment there would be a better time to come. "This too shall pass" translated into "This is unbearable, but hold on, it will get better." This is true, but also true is that this will return, in another moment, at another time, around the next corner. So, this book suggests, stop trying to escape it. Stop trying to deny this fear, stop distracting yourself, stop pegging your hope that something bigger than you can bail you out. There is no bailing out. Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin, and I want to stop flipping it over and over in my palm, always wondering or worrying what's on the other side. The same dual emotion I felt when I first stepped into the rooms hit me: a parallel of certainty and terror that this is the way and the place to be.

Stonehenge was interesting. A hodge podge of pagans, druids, bagpipes, drunkards, and CouchSurfers, all getting progressively soaked as the night wore on to the 4:18 sunrise. I practiced sun salutations and meditated in the rain. In my new "accept all as it is" mind set, I sought to accept the damp and not try to change it or wish it to be something else. I succeeded for a few hours until my soaks soaked through, and then I said stuff this and went and found a barrel of coals to warm myself by. Enlightenment still alludes, apparently.

I danced in the centre of the stones, touched the moss growing on them, smelled the sweat and wet hair and pot smoke emanating from all the bodies and lungs crowded into the circle and pummeling against each other and the ground to the beat of tribal drums. I sat aways away on a mat and crossed my legs and wondered if this (or me or them) is what spiritual looks like. I slept in a fetal position under a broken umbrella for twenty-three minutes. I walked through a field of pissing men in the pissing rain. I loaned my sleeping bag to a cyclist who rode from London to Amesbury to watch the sunrise. I did not find god. In fact, I may have lost him somewhere on the way.

On anger:
I spent the next two days in London at a friend's flat, walking back and forth to Tesco's and the park down the road in Kensington. I visited a homeopath, I watched some films. In one film, a man murders a child abuser, and wrestles with the guilt of killing another human while being simultaneously congratulated by friends and colleagues. My friend was aghast at the accolades. I sprung to the characters' defenses, justifying their reasoning for rewarding someone for murder. I sprung passionately, angrily. I am so surprised at my reaction - first the anger, and second the side I took. I thought I found killing indefensible, in any case, under any circumstances, and yet I was defending the idea of a justified murder. And I thought I didn't use that kind of angry passion anymore, that speed to jump and attach to a belief. A few hours earlier I read about tonglen, the practice of breathing in fear or pain or anger, of identifying these emotions as human and empathizing with all who feel them, and then breathing out calm and relief and serenity. And how quickly I forget what I read and how it is constant work to practice my beliefs.

On giving up:
So I have too many jobs, too many commitments, too much to do. I have a bank account and applied for a National Insurance Number. I'm going on the books and I'm buying into it all, again. I had some plans about a farm and moving away from everything that I've ever known, but I find myself once again surrounded by familiarity. And before I left I resolved to just stop. I'm never going to find something I keep looking for, so I'm going to stop. Stop changing, stop seeking, stop wondering if maybe I should look over there or maybe I should change that here. The inevitability of change doesn't need me to catalyze it. I can just sit back and be so present doing everything I am, from yoga in the park to buying local strawberries to washing dishes in my kitchen to clearing tables in the cafe. I noticed myself at peace today, I noticed myself being grateful, and for the first time, I distanced from that, too. It's easy to identify with calm and serenity because they feel good. But my work is to realize that they are also transient, that 'good' moves away with the same speed as 'undesirable'. So for the first time, as I smiled in the sun and loved this beautiful day, I admitted that "This, too, shall pass." And I let go a little bit more.

2008-06-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

There is a Calgary sky here tonight. England (the London and Norwich that I've seen) generally have dreary sunsets, where the cloud cover replaces the "set" with a "fade", gradual and unseemly and unnoticed. Tonight, tufts of cloud honed hues of rose and orange. Violet and indigo curved around the outlines of each cloud, giving them dimension rather than just the opaque grey of most English evenings.

I haven't felt homesick at any point in my travels, because the word insinuates that I would rather be somewhere else. I don't have a home anymore, not Calgary or Canada, really. I have things collected in a basement, and family members and friends in this certain place. And after spending so many years there I associate memories and colours of the sky with this city. But I do not miss it in the way I have at other times, where I yearn to be a part of it again, to be privy to its happenings and those of the people in it.

But I am seeking to be away from this moment, and this one, and this one. I am constantly and consistently terrified of where I am: no, not Norwich or England or the UK, but inside this body and this mind. Nothing is particularly terrible, I just know that I am running and hiding from things. My body is telling me with its aches, my mind is signaling, but I am afraid to sit still and wait to hear what it is saying.

I set up a schedule again so I don't have to deal with myself: my ego is very proficient at keeping busy and keeping me from noticing that it is controlling me. I don't know what to extricate myself from: the three jobs and three volunteer commitments, or the mind-set that is telling me I can't possibly keep this up. I know that to set myself the task of decluttering my life is just to give my ego something else to do, something else to think will cure me of suffering.

The moon is up now, a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. I'll be at Stonehenge for the summer solstice. Some time out of town may widen a perspective the Buddhist Centre and a shiatsu massage have offered.

Namaste.

external irrelevancy (redundant only until you realize it yourself)

2008-06-05T01:14:00.000-07:00

Other things I'm realizing:

The external world is irrelevant. For awhile I thought this meant that I needed to rid myself of all worldly possessions to find inner peace, but I realized...with a little or with a lot, both are just states and therefore erroneous. My revelations are on hyper-speed, it seems. I thought I was moving towards a hippie commune at the edge of the world, but it seems I have supplanted my life instead, creating jobs and schedules and using my Google calendar for the first time in three months.

I thought for a moment this was backtracking, this was falling back into something, but I realize now it is just a continuation of the journey, because it is evolving as it is, instead of me forcing it a certain way.
This applies also to my body, the house of my mind and spirit and soul. Added inches used to mean to me added worries, I thought my body was a reflection of my inner state. I still think this is true, but I realize now that being in my body is more important that being out of it. Gorging or starvation are both extremes, are both distractions. The outside manifestation indicates, but doesn't explain. So while I have had more scones than courgettes or aubergines (zucchinis and eggplants) and now have a delightful little roll again, I realize this just reflects a different state of engagement with food and nourishment, and is neither positive or negative or healthy or hurtful.

The more I learn the less I know. I keep thinking I'm coming to the cusp, that over the next bend I'll be at the top and see everything below me laid out clear, but I'm realizing I'm actually walking deeper into the mountain range, further into the forest. Nature is waiting out there for me someday, but not right now. Right now it's Buddhist Centre and Greenhouse cafe volunteering spotted with cafe and catering work. Good thing I kept my black uniform just in case.

Instead of freedom comes fear. Just as when I realized it wasn't money, then when I realized it wasn't security, so now when I've realized it's not the lack of any of those things, either...then what is it? Being. Vadra Gupta, a teacher at the Centre, said when people begin to meditate they rarely find what they're looking for. They find themselves, and that's never what they want.

So I'm still finding myself, but finding that doesn't mean realizing I'm a "writer" or a "yogi" or that I need to go back to school. It means sitting or standing or lying or leaning wherever I am and saying exactly that and not trying to move or change or be anywhere else. This is my most daunting work.

Namaste,
Andrea

2008-06-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

My life and head are equal parts full right now.

The house where I sit on the floor is filled with writers who take their masters in Creative Writing at the UEA, the University of East Anglia. Musicians play guitars and accordions and use megaphones in the sitting room and they sound like a band I used to know in Victoria, BC called Colourbook.

In the town with no jobs I've managed to find three plus an interview, one at a place I want to work and another at a place that will do.

I continue to live on the kindness of strangers and find myself amazed at generosity.

I found a Buddhist Centre instead of a yoga studio, where I volunteer in exchange for participating in group meditation sessions and shared coffee with a lady who described meditation in a way I've only heard people speak about AA meetings: if she can't make a session one week, she finds she misses it.

Every morning I wake up in a state of fear. It's not debilitating, it doesn't keep me from getting out of bed (yes, I have a bed, it belongs to someone who doesn't sleep here often, so for now, I can), but I spend the rest of the day reminding myself I am so fortunate for being exactly where and when I am right now, until I go back to sleep with the vague thought that this might all be over in eight hours. It never is, it only gets better, but I forget that every night.

Honesty rose to the top of my list of desirables somewhere along the way, beyond valuing knowledge and truth. Now I want to say what I feel in the moment even if I sound wandering and wavering, which I do most of the time. Things I know: it will always be okay. I will always sleep, I just don't know where. I will always eat, I just don't know what. Money, either a lot or a little, is irrelevant to an inner state. This too shall pass. A little about a lot of things and a lot about nothing in particular. I'll never get there because I'll just be here all the time. Things I believe: fear feels a lot like loneliness. Everything else is a guess.

I also volunteer at the Greenhouse, a cafe and environmentally sustainable business. I met Alex, a fellow CouchSurfer, who teaches me about Kafka and recipes for bad poetry (for analytical, not creating, purposes).

It's amazing what grows when I plant a seed of intention.

Norwich makes my socks squelch

2008-05-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

I sit on the top floor of a three-story house full of creative writing Masters students in an incense-laden room with a tiger poster on the wall and a skateboard for a shoe rack.

Trees line streets and the rain follows the cobblestones. It's Victoria without the hanging flower baskets and with a few hundred year old stone churches (insert hyphens where you will).

They have yoga and vegetarians and a farm outside the city.

I don't know where I'll work and maybe I won't but maybe I'll stop awhile and see.

It's the first day of the rest of my life, and what do you do with a cliche but peg it as such?

continuing on to someplace semi-permanent: Norwich, anyone?

2008-05-29T01:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, here I am.

I disappeared for a bit, read emails and sometimes replied, signed on to Facebook to upload photos, but otherwise dissolved into being somewhere else besides in front of a computer screen.
Someone told me about an article on bloggers who became famous for their writings and then suffered mental and emotional breakdowns under the pressure to be consistently interesting. Maybe I didn't want to suffer a similar fate.
I reunited in London with my laptop and my suitcase full of clothes that belong to someone else, or rather an old part of myself, I think. I'm not sure what to do with the high heels and tight pants, but I'll lug them around a bit to see if they'll fit again once I settle. But I wonder how long you hold onto things until you discard them altogether, and resign to finding something new when it suits me to do so.
Too many metaphysics for a blog post, perhaps. The specifics of time and place for you: from Malaga in Spain to Manilva, where I met my Stone Knight Diego, a kindred spirit and later travel companion. Then I went to Canos de Meca, a sleepy beach town where I spent my time weeding in a garden and lazing on the sand next to the Atlantic ocean. Up to Cadiz, the oldest city in Europe...something about Phoenicians. Then a quick trip down to Tarifa, a surfer stop that reminded me of Byron Bay: full of organic veg restaurants and Billabong shops. I met up with Diego and we road-tripped to Portugal, stopping in Abufeira of the touristy English bars and restaurants (do not go there, ever) and then on to Lagos, a backpacker town of choice. A day trip out to Sagres, the edge (or end, I could never be sure, but both apply) of the world, the farthest tip on the Portuguese coast. I waved to North America. I spent my last days in the continent doing yoga in Lagos, exploring the grottoes in kayak and on foot, and trying my high kick at capoeira, a Portuguese dance/martial art combination. I also met a yogini named Amber who hailed from Norwich, England, and the way she spoke about her city interested me.
I flew back to London and connected with the Couch Surfing community here. I sat at Somerset House for Pangea Day, an intercontinental event with stages and screens in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Sydney, and other cities across the globe. A live video feed put us all in touch with one another as we watched four hours of films, musical performances, and conversations between ex-soldiers, activists, and environmental activists. I caught up with old friends, met new ones, and then jetted to Austin, Texas.
My new CouchSurfer picked me up from the airport (thank you, universe and CouchSurfing!), and I stayed with her and her roommate while popping out to attend wedding festivities of Miss Lindsay King, an old old friend from my junior high days in Jakarta. I also saw the Alamo in San Antonio, played croquet in the Texas sun, and hung out in the downtown live music scene of Austin.
I contemplated sticking around North America, but a cheap one-way flight back to London cemented my decision to hop back across the pond. Now I am back in London, shaking the Dalai Lama's hand by proxy, getting rained on, and feeling like I want to get back to a bit of nature, but I'm not sure what that means.
I thought I only needed a break, a few months of globetrotting and then back to reality, a job and a flat and income on the front burner. Now, after being in London a little over a week, I want to try something completely different. I want to live with people who think about how we can contribute to each other's lives, not only in our immediate vicinity but all over. I don't want to join the Peace Corps or build houses in Africa (well, not right now), but I'd like to work in a community where money is not the first factor when considering what, when, or how to do something. I'm not sure if I can find a place where I can continue to live in the moment, every moment, that I can continue to cultivate a life of meeting new people and new ideas, and maintain my idealism in the generosity inherent in all of us, but I would like to try.
So I am going to Norwich, because I really enjoyed the company of the girl in Lagos who mentioned it to me. I have no real expectations of the place in the way I do about Edinburgh (another consideration about where to settle), and no real reason to go, except that it occurred to me, and it makes my heart light and my shoulder relax when I think about going there. I want to continue making decisions the way I've learned to in the past few months, I don't want to change just because I am going to stop moving for awhile. The shoulds and the ego and the societal belief that there is a set way of doing things is still present, but I realize I have a choice to listen to these things.
I want to follow something else for awhile, even if I have no idea where it goes. Namaste.

oh, Spain, where have you been all my life?

2008-04-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

I´m now in Malaga, on the south coast of Spain. A quick itinerary: I flew from Paris to Barcelona (I first spent seven hours in the Beauvais airport, an hour out of Paris and away from everything. I spent my time there getting to know a Belgian-born Tullio who grew up in Ibizia and now lives between Paris and Barcelona, wandering through the village Tille, and writing a short short story); after six sun-soaked days staying in a hostel in Barcelona, I took an overnight train to Granada, finding out six hours before I left that I had a CouchSurfer to stay with when I got there. Upon arrival in Granada, our hosts took me and four other arrivals (US students who study in Barcelona) to their mountain home in Quentar, a half hour out of the city. The next morning we headed to Sevilla, and two days later (which is to say, today) I find myself in Malaga, Spain at another CouchSurfer´s gorgeous flat on his even gorgeouser Mac computer.

Between all those pin points on a map fit many new faces and even more emotions. I hit a wall in my first days in Spain: I contemplated loneliness in a country where I didn´t know the language, witnessed the death of another part of my ego, almost went insane contemplating what it means to disidentify with everything I thought defined me. The universe sent me Daniel, an Aussie who calmly listened to my philosophical meanderings and kept me on an even keel. I said before I left Canada that I´d go to an meeting when it occurred to me to do so, and sitting in sunny Spain and not knowing what else to do, asking for guidance brought me to a webpage with clear instructions on how to get to a meeting. International AA is amazing (of course, of course) - in the four meetings in four days I met travelers, locals, and expats, some residents some visitors, and I found my serenity again. I realized the pride was keeping me from finding what I was looking for, so I got humble and...surprise, found what I needed the moment I admitted I didn´t know it all, after all.

From that moment it´s been a watershed of amazing people and open hearts. Two Singaporean girls and I trekked up a mountain overlooking the city, and Daniel and I wandered the gothic quarter and Gaudi park. Kirsty and Issach, a Kiwi couple who just finished working on a yacht (a big industry in the port cities...a great way to make cash and travel the Meditteranean. I just have to sell my soul to ultra rich yachters, and I´m not sure if I´m ready to make that leap yet...) introduced me to the Barcelona wax museum and another Aussie named Nick who drove me to the train station and saw me off to Granada.

The next few days were a whirlwind: Axel and his family welcomed us to his mountain home, and Sara met us in Plaza Einstein, took us to eat borscht in her flat, invited us to a Spanish fiesta in a friend´s backyard. Diego and David and I (the bickering boys from Barcelona) trekked up to the gypsy caves overlooking the Alhambra and ate tapas to get out of the rain. Even though I don´t understand Spanish, I´ve been lucky enough to find locals who speak English or travelers who speak Spanish, and I´m trying to pick up "un pequito" so I can come back here and live forever.

From Granada to Sevilla for feria, a festival that reminds me of the Calgary Stampede: fairground on one side, complete with overpriced rides and candied apples, and on the other, a remnant of semi-forgotten tradition. In Calgary it´s rodeo, in Sevilla it´s the Sevillana dance (strongly influenced by flamenco) done in the casetas (tents that line the fairground rented out by families and companies). Strolling the grounds with Sarajean and Candace (the other half of the Barcelona foursome) gave me a taste of "traditional" Spain, with horse drawn carriages and girls in flouncy dresses and men in suits, however superficial it may now be.

Last night we prepared to camp out in the bus station until Sarajean got a call from a friend of our CSers in Granada who offered us their flat and a delicious dinner. Thank you, universe. I sent a random email to a CSer in Malaga who answered immediately, so this morning I hopped a bus, met Carlos, got on the back of his motorbike, and slept on his couch as he prepared me a traiditional Spanish lunch (eaten here at three or four in the afternoon) of green beans, potatoes and olive oil, and cold tomato-based soup (gazpatcho). All vegetarian, all deliciousness.

If India taught me how to let go, Spain teaches me to relax absolutely. I´m not sure if it´s the new headspace I found after my old one died in Barcelona, the people I´ve met, or the place itself, but the combination makes this country my favourite yet. I say that about each place I go, but if today is the best day of my entire life, then I can´t wait for tomorrow.

This life, this life: so beautiful and ebullient.

since then and until soon

2008-04-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

I haven´t put up any updates until now because I started to view them as an inconvenience instead of a joy...and I don´t want to live that way anymore! I´m only going to do things either a) when it occurs to me to do them and they make my heart light or b) when the universe tells me it´s time to do them.

This is category b): I´m in an internet cafe surrounded by my new friends´ backpacks, and since they´re not back yet and I can´t carry them all, I will await their return with you. When the arrive I hit "post", so a mid-sentence truncation may follow.

From Brussels to Bruge, a touristy town that is quaint and cute and a UNESCO heritage site. I spent the day meandering and eating fries. I spent the evenings with Marie-Louise, my second CouchSurfing host, and I once again sit amazed and gratified with the kindness of strangers. A train back to Paris and then a meeting with Florine, a French girl with a culinary flair and a zest for all things interesting. I stayed in her one-room flat for two days and two nights - we visited Giverny, Vernon (Vair-none, not Ver-nOn), and of course the opulent palace. We, along with Susan from Norway, talked about France, Canada, and Norway, about the different ways to say I love you (you can´t say "I like you" in French: it´s all or nothing, whereas in Norway you can choose between two, depending on whether you´re referring to familial or romantic love), about Marie Antoinette, about chocolate. Florine grabs experiences and runs with them, expresses everything with certainty, whether optimism about the future or her absolute detestation of people who don´t read CouchSurfing profiles.

CouchSurfing.com has changed my life. More than a place to stay, more even than a way to meet someone who knows so much you don´t know and wants to tell you all about it, this community revitalizes my faith in

Flemish + French = Fantastic

2008-03-30T03:48:00.000-07:00

I walked off the train at the Gare du Midi in Brussels, my eyes still a little bleary from the half-sleep past pastures and silhouetted trees. Kim has dark hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead, and she should be standing under the yellow neon that reads "Sam's Café". If that description and those instructions don't match whatever I find at the end of this platform, then I have to figure out where I'll be sleeping tonight.

But she's there, standing with her hands in a checkered coat's pockets and mirroring my own mix of excitement and trepidation. To agree to have a person stay at your house for three days after the exchange of two emails on CouchSurfing.com is silmultaneously crazy and altruistic. But by the time we walked the seven minutes from the train station to her and her father's home beside the printing factory he owns and in which he works, I knew that my visit to Brussels would be worth every Euro I paid for the ticket.

When I meet a woman like Kim, I feel that I've found an alternate versions of myself - she is who I would have been if I'd been born in Brussels and gone to theatre school, and I am maybe her if she'd spent four years in an office in Calgary and then decided to fold up her life and travel. At ninteeen, she can speak English, French, Flemish (a variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium), and German fluently - her English she learned almost entirely from subtitled television, so her accent is a lovely refined North American lilt - and she is learning Spanish and Italian. She spends her days in theatre school, her nights discussing art and cinema over wine and dinner with friends. In the last forty-eight hours wandering through the Grand Place in the middle of Brussels, having coffee with her dear mère, sharing pastries in the little boulangerie et pâtisserie beside her house, eating crèpes with cheese and honey and olives (oh yes and oh my) in the Sunday market by the train station, and staying up until one o'clock in the morning after her friend Noortje shared a dinner of pasta and vegetables and desert of yogurt and nuts dipped in Nutella, Kim explained the difference between playing and acting, wondered with me the worth of a moment, how the context of an experience changes the experience itself, and gave me the word that sounds so much better than our "travel bug": reiskriebel. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this person and her family, and I am devasted to have to leave so soon. Four days ago I didn't know where I would be sleeping for these past nights, and instead of just a bed I've found a friend for life. This universe grants me amazing gifts if I let it.

Namaste to all of you and so much love from my heart, Andrea

It must be the beret

2008-03-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today marks the seventh time someone has come up to me and started speaking French...I assume they're asking for directions. But I can't get past the first syllable of "Pardon" before they're smiling apologetically and saying, "Je m'excuse..." Still, my ego ruffles each time I'm mistaken for a Parisien, however short lived the assumption.

I did converse with a woman who sold me my panini (filled with mozzarella and a somewhat overripe tomato), and she asked: "Tu aime Paris?" I replied that yes, I loved Paris, and the French were so - nice? Happy? I'm not sure what adjective I sputtered but she seemed pleased. When asked if I'm staying in Paris, I said no, not for long, but I will return another time. Perhaps as a student at the Sorbonne, I'm now wondering.

The friend with whom I'm staying has company coming over the weekend. Attempts to make alternate arrangements to stay in Paris left me floundering, so I decided to skip the whole ordeal...and just go to Brussles for three days instead. Now I have to find out where I'm going to stay there, but I have been introduced to CouchSurfers.com, an online community of people who open their hearts and homes to those traveling without the latter and lots of the former. I have faith this community and the universe will get together behind the Veil and conjure up a grand solution for me.

The day began when I shut the apartment door at 5:30 to make it to the Sacre Coeur for sunrise. Sitting on the steps of the massive church atop the neighbourhood of Montemarte, I watched pink creep up the skyline and fade into the dusty gray of the clouds, suffusing the piles of buildings and squares with a dull glow. The walls of the city seemed lit from within, as if made of a transluscent material instead of the white plaster covered with the gray of years. Thirteen hours later, I close the door of the same apartment after traversing the entire city on foot; from the Musee d'Orsay (I bought a ticket for tomorrow to avoid the line up) to the Montparnesse cemetery to the Bastille and now - to a couch with my name on it.

Love and namaste - thank you for thinking of me and bringing all this loveliness into my life.

for the love of travel

2008-03-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves to travel these days, but meeting someone who makes such a proclamation doesn't translate to them loving it in the same way I do...or do I?

I spend days inside looking out the windows to the rain and reading books and writing, postcards and blogs and other words. I don't need to be doing something every moment, because I know all that I need to see will find it's own way into my line of sight.

Listening to "Ola Kala" by I'm From Barcelona reminds me that everything is going to be okay, as well as reminds me of my next destination as of April 3. I want to make it out to Monet's garden at Giverny before I head out out out to Spain, and the garden doesn't open until the 1st.

Tomorrow I'll watch the sunrise from Montemarte. Maybe.

I took this picture in this beret in Paris fourteen years ago. I'll take it again each time I return, I think.

Colours de Paris

2008-03-23T13:07:00.001-07:00

A pastry shop window. The streets are lined with bakeries and crepe stands. Everyone eats often but not too much.

A kaledescopic perfectimundo. This segues into my suggestion to read Bee Season by Myla Goldberg.

The Mirror of Love in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. We perused the two floors of carefully disorganized literature and I eavesdropped on a writing group meeting in a room at the back. Cots for writers in need of a place to sleep tucked into the corners on the top floor, a pair of theatre seats made a make-shift reading room, and a sign begged from atop a stained piano's keys: Play Me. I buy The Art of Travel and get it stamped with approval.

Ladurée is the Tiffany's of the macaroon world. Families, couples, trendy Pariesiens, and tourists waiting for a sugar fix stand in the two-hour-long line up for a table. Willy Wonka could only dream of this level of prestige.

Pqrisien 9or French0 keyboqrds qre different:::

2008-03-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

And so is this city. London pays tribute to its history; Paris celebrates hers. Every street is a shot from a movie, each store a gallery of art. I turn corners to find cathedrals looming, light reflecting puddles on the sidewalk like a Monet painting. Here you can have a chocolate croissant pour le petit déjeuner, une crepe avec Nutella pour déjeuner, et le gâteau chocolate pour le dessert après le diner. It only took me five minutes to write that sentence.

Notre Dâme, le Musée Picasso, et le Centre Pompidou avec mon amie Tess. It rains here, but the Paris drizzle gives my hair that tousled look.

I forgot it was St. Patty's Day

2008-03-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

The National History Museum takes my day, with the earthquake rooms and geological shifts and inner-earth demonstrations. The "What's Happening to My Body?" exhibit hasn't been updated since 1973, and the "Our Place In Evolution" is shoved in a hard-to-reach corridor of the third level. But entertaining to watch hundreds of primary school children run about and fill in the worksheets assigned to them before they left school that morning. My bus takes me back to Fulham and Munster and Wardo, and a delicious dinner of rustic Italian pasta with homemade sauce. Fa-Linn, photos for you:

muffins make a day great

2008-03-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

My last hotel morning and I'm a backpacker again. Down to Covent Garden to grab breakfast from Muffinski's, then a gander into the Photographer's Gallery. Four artists compete for a grand prize, and my vote goes to Jacob Holdt, a Dane who hitchhiked across the United States from '70 to '75, capturing his vagabondness with amateur shots.

The afternoon took me to Tate Britain. A two-screened performance of a belly dancer's performance in a crowded street market shows how romance and cinematic moments occur every day, but we miss them without the lights and the mood music. William Blake has a room of his own. The modern art incenses and pacifies me, depending on the subject.

Westminister and Wicked in the West End

2008-03-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

A lazy awakening, then a trundle through Trafalger Square, where A Festival of Resistance took up the entire square, with Marxists and Socialists and Communists and lots of anti-capitalists protested the war in Iraq and consumerism in general.

Michelle explored the interior of Westminister Abbey while I watched it from across the road.

We tubed to Notting Hill, but we passed by Hugh Grant's door and headed straight for Portabello Road, where I sang the Bedknobs and Broomstick's song, snapped along to some buskers, wandered in the rain, and ate a cupcake and a delicious bit of cheese (not in that order).

A bus back to the hotel, a change for the theatre, and a top-notch black cab ride to the Apollo Victoria Theatre on the West End, where Wicked waited. I originally thought this musical would be fluffy and full of superficial fun, but its subtlety and subtext sold me. A late dinner across the street of risotto and stuffed mushroom caps, we headed back to the hotel where I changed into my best dancing shoes (the runners I've been wearing all trip) and ran down to the Phoenix. Downstairs, Ian Watson's How Does It Feel to Be Loved? night ensures Belle&Sebastian and Camera Obscura and the Supremes all play so I can dance till a quarter to three.

parks and gardens, Covent and otherwise

2008-03-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

A joyous morning of walking through parks and reading in sunshiney spots.

The Canada Memorial scatters metal maple leaves, and in Hyde Park, the Joy of Life Fountain's figures dance.

Afternoon meet-up with Michelle in Covent Garden, a visit in the Coal Hole pub, and a wander through Trafalger before dinner at a little Italian bistro where the maitre d' kissed our hands and we dawdled till dessert - a delightful tiramisu.

plumbers followed by portraits

2008-03-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

The shower, broken and only able to with operate with a screwdriver equals Andrea waiting for plumber, part two. He arrives, he putters, he promises to get back to my flatmates, and I head to the National Portrait Gallery.

Highlights include Vanity Fair's exhibition, where Aldous Huxley stares me down and Virginia Woolfe wonders wide-eyed, Gloria Swanson readies to pounce through black lace, George Bernard Shaw gruffly hides his chin in his beard. Published from 1913-1936, it lay dormant until 1983 when it was revived and started printing pictures of pregnant Demi Moore and the annual Hollywood Issue. Gorgeous glossiness.

As I searched for these images, I found a dissenter:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3365432.ece

Bryan Adams has an entire hallway of photography: must say I prefer his snapshots to his soundbites. The rest of the gallery holds portraits from Elizabeth I to Paul McCartney, Hockney, Brontes, British greats, pictures and prints.

A quick pop into the National Gallery for some Sunflowers and the Execution of Lady Jane Grey, the sixteen-year-old queen for ten days. Then a lentil burger with tomato salsa and a wander through Covent Garden on the rainy way home.

Greenwich, Part II

2008-03-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Royal Teas, the Parisian run cafe in Greenwich, meets me and Amanda at 76 Royal Hill. Warm ginger cake with cool cream makes my day before the Maritime Museum and miscellaneous bookshops, butcher shops beside green grocers.

On the bus ride back to Wardo Avenue to wait for a plumber coming the following morning, I snap shots of bus stops and those that wait there, and notice the encroachment of superstore-like stores in place of the smaller stacked shops. The first Marks & Spencers, that upscale grocery store, doesn't show up until Tower Bridge Road.

At Fulham Broadway, I walk the wrong way and stumble into a Chelsea Football crowd rivaling the Red Mile. Before getting swept up in the fanatic fans I reroute and regroup and find my way.

Michelle at the Montague

2008-03-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

I awake and pack: I came here with a backpack and suitcase, but I must now reduce and reconfigure everything I own so that it fits in the backpack only. Hoisted on my back, I wander to the bus stop, wondering in the rain if I should cave and pay 12 dollars for an umbrella. I'm still converting because I've still got all Canadian dollars. When the bus halts eight stops too early, I realize you must ask drivers if they are going all the way to the end of the line: because sometimes they stop short. I find another, disembark at Tottenham Court Road tube station, meander down Great Oxford Street, and find Montague on the Gardens, where I'm meeting my cousin who's flying in for business for a few days. The staff opens the door, stands in front of me, and asks, "Are you looking for the museum?" My battered running shoes and yoga mat strapped on my backpack suggest the hotel might not be my usual choice of accomodation. When they realize I am staying here, or know someone who is, they let me in to knock on the door and come in to swanky four star style. Michelle and I laze the day away and then head out for Italian at Ask, a restaurant that appears to be quaint and family owned but is actually a subsidiary of the popular ubiquitous "Pret" deli. The pizza is still delicious, and big enough for me to save it for a meal tomorrow.

there is no March 10th

2008-03-10T00:34:00.000-07:00

the squares and a circus

2008-03-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

A bus ride into the City, we tapas-ed at All Bar One with chips and smarties, then swung by the Canada Store for a Tootsie Roll and a gape at 5 pound (the currency, not the weight) bottles of Clamato Juice. Wander past Leicester Square, through Trafalger Square, snap Big Ben, The Parliament Buildings, and Westminister Abbey, and then down the road to Buckingham Palace, before we jump on the Westminister tube home.

hometime and house parties

2008-03-08T12:34:00.000-08:00

Quiet times all around, except in my head, where the pondering gives way to pandering for the ego. Lounge about and then go out, to a house party in Clapham Common, via bus this time around.
Complete with DJ and muffins, I meet more imported Canadian accountants and go for a walk in the rain.The evening ends with a pound fifty for a McDonald's Cadbury Egg McFlurry. I'm not sure when the 51 pence worked it's way in between the 99 pence advertisement and the till, but it wasn't worth either amount.

from Freud's to heath in Hampstead

2008-03-07T00:34:00.000-08:00

A wander about the neighbourhood leads me to Freud's Museum, where I can view but not recline on the famous psychoanalyst's famous couch. I learn Freud was Jewish and Salvador Dali sketched a pen drawing of Freud's head as a conch shell, with a spiral inward and a distended forehead. I find Hampstead Heath, "320 acres of semi-wilderness with views of London skyline", and snap a swan and a father-daughter pair. A pub called The Holly Bush with wall paper yellowed from the cigarettes now banned to the cobblestones outside. The evening ends up down around Picadilly Circus, the bright lights of the Sanyo sign conjuring Times Square or Shibuya crossing in Tokyo. Whilst the boys find the Ship Pub and drink the night away, I grab some chips with mayonnaise and wander home.

editing

2008-03-06T00:34:00.000-08:00

I insist the day begins late, with a long sleep on the couch of my friend's flat and a tidy of my thoughts and things. Then I head out to meet my friend at Wood Green tube station, where we take a free shuttle in the shape of a double-decker bus to the Alexandra Palace. I watched a new band, The Editors, with an old friend and marveled at the venue, once a Victorian "environment and recreation centre".

Grand archways, double-ballroom-sized concert halls, glass domed ceilings. The venue grows grander each year, 133 and counting. The tribute to the combination of old-age and beauty you don't find in Calgary's tear-down downtown.

Time means Greenwich

2008-03-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

I broaden my transport possibilities by hopping the tube and jumping on the DLR, the Docklands Light Rail and think how the C-Train doesn't know how to do transit: here we have upholstered seats and doors between cars. I walk to Parsons Green, take the District Line tube to Bank, and transfer to the DLR, getting off at Cutty Sark. There I meet another Canadian friend who shows off her neighbourhood: I straddle Greenwich Mean Time, wander parks, take in astronomy galleries and take pictures. I wonder about working in Waterstones, a British Chapters. We split a two-meals-for-six-pounds meal at a gastro pub, and after the pasta I head home via "proper train", the National Rail, to Westminister, where the District Line takes me home again.

Union Theatre

2008-03-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

On the way out, I find a miscellaneous left hand glove on the ground. The lady who dropped it might be who I see getting into a cab, but at the risk of rebuke if I run right to her, I slip the glove on my cold hand and shove the other into my pocket.
Following clearly marked orange sign posts to the Southark tube station, I find a three-walled shop with a chalkboard outside advertising lattes for 80 pence. Affordable and quaint, I pause and ponder and then pay. The barista introduces himself as Mick, from Essex, a gardener by trade who's watching his son's coffee shop while his son does a play in Ireland. He moves like a house sparrow, darting from the coffee machine to the counter to a table to bow before a lady and pull out her chair. His glasses come on and off his nose; he leaves them beside the saucers, on top of the microwave, next to my novel. He fancies playing a Londoner during the week and then migrating back to his wife in Essex. People who don't like the country or conversely avoid the city waste their time not liking things by missing out on what they might enjoy. He takes the best of both.

At 7:00, the back wall of the coffee shop pushes back, like a sliding door to a veranda. The small barroom peers out, and so I find Union Theatre, a literal hole-in-the-wall company that charges me 12 pounds to see six one-act plays. "A Right to Choose" pits doctor against mother as she sends back her girl baby for the boy she genetically ordered, and "November" looks at the reaction of four women to the death of their son, husband, father, and brother-in-law. I meet Jenny, a London actress who will take the money her grandfather left her and go traveling because he never did. She's going to Beijing and New Zealand. She leaves tomorrow morning.

tearing up Tate Modern

2008-03-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

Entry into Turbine Hall walks you right up to Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth. A scraggly line cuts into the cement foundation, lines it with wire mesh, and "asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built."

A canvas divides into four quadrants, all of the same room with the same furnishings in the same place. In the first square, a man smokes a pipe and reads a paper. In the other three, the room is empty. Rooms created and decorated for a purpose that takes up one twenty-fourth of a day.

Pablo Picasso's Girl in Chemise captures insolence in adolescence.

V&A and me

2008-03-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

The Victoria and Albert Museum. A tube ride to ringside seats for art, instruments, and fashion. I found a carved wooden statue of Death amongst the 4 million exhibits. Portrayed as an archer instead of the cloaked reaper, his quiver is full, and he jaunts one foot forward, holds his bow carelessly, waiting to taunt. His smile is an illusion; emotion rips off a skull with its skin, so it seems to smile because it can do nothing else.

I stop into Marks & Spencers for ingredients for dinner and hear my name. I turn around just for kicks and find Sareeta, a girl I went to school with in Jakarta, holding a basket by the produce aisle. We haven't seen each other in fifteen years.

a pence for my thoughts

2008-03-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

The ticket agent's fingers shuffled over the keys as she clicked back and forth between screens, a scowl between her eyebrows. I stood across the counter, deciding if she was taking longer than usual, and finally asked, "Do I exist?", wondering if my Airmiles ticket side-stepped the United Airlines computer system to leave me marooned in Calgary.
"Oh, you exist," she assured me. "Your Chicago connection is delayed, though, so we're re-routing you through Vancouver."
I blinked and took a breath as I tilted my head and asked, "Isn't that in the opposite direction?"

From the waiting room at the gate, I look across the tarmac at the wind whipping the Albertan and Canadian flags to attention: they salute my departure from Calgary. The brown brick that compliments the golden prairie wheat gives way to Vancouver's cerulian coastline and lush green. The windowed concourse guides me through the airport's renovated glass and metal, where I sit beneath a mural of waves crashing on rocks and look out the window at the mountains, the clouds whisping around the peaks. Two hours later I board my flight across the pond, and sleep most of the nine hours and ten minutes to London-town.
Flying over England, I watch the villages crop up on the countryside and the parcels of land ripple outwards. The feudal system's roots still run under the crops and pastures; the lines of fields meander around rivers and pay no attention to roads. Calgary's farm land turns at right angles, the squares and rectangles reflect the abundance of space and the luxury to make it and take it as needed. Here, with finite space and hundred-year history, the land follows ancestry rather than city planning.
The city crawls into view. The football fields hold soccer players rather than CFL, and the river carries oarsmen rather than ice floes. The London Eye, a ferris wheel of observation compartments, circles above the bank of the Thames and Big Ben looms, keeping time over its city. The red chimneys jut out of the shingled roofs, the license plates stretch yellow with black lettering.The density seeps out of the one-lane streets, narrow houses, bricks stacked upwards instead of sideways. The airport neither seethes with the chaos they warned me to anticipate, nor says hello with any "Welcome to the UK!" banners. It could have been any hallway, any immigration line, where she nods and stamps and tells me to move along. After my last Asian adventure, to find all the signs in English and everyone speaking the same, I am anti-climaxically at home.
Following clear labels to the tube station, I buy an "Oyster Card", load it with a one-week unlimited pass for Zones 1 and 2, and hop on the Piccadilly line (making sure to "Mind the Gap" - an announcement still made due to 53 injuries last year, advertising signs proclaim). We travel mostly above ground on my way to Earl's Court. Neighbourhoods vary from grand expanses of parks with wrought iron benches to crowded tenements with rusted tricycles and bits of scrap collected in the yards. A man with a back bent like a cane's handle wobbles to a post box, a cylinder of bright red on a street corner. A family sits across from me and converses in French, or Russian, or German...whichever language holds both "cinq ans" and "da" - but none of the clicks of Japanese or the cacophony of Hindi, just a lilting exchange of letters. The tube aisles are narrow, and the two pairs of feet on either side need to pull back to allow my suitcase through. When I alight and find my way to Platform Number 3 of the District Line, I decide I've packed too much in my backpack and my suitcase, and vow to send some things home before I hop over to the Continent.My friend Ismail, whom I've known for over ten years and call Izzy, meets me wearing a jaunty London cap and a wide welcome grin. Two stops later at Parson's Green, we wander down Furham Street to Munster, stop at the Tesco to buy a half-loaf of bread and a tomato (no Costco cards or bulk purchasing here), and head down Wardo Avenue to number 60A, half a house with a blue door inlaid in whitewashed brick and crown molding. The kitchen and bathroom both double the square footage of the ones I left behind, disproving the notion that all things in England shrink and squish. A gorgeous walled-in garden sits at the bottom of a curving staircase, surrounded by a brick wall climbing with ivy. After a relaxing afternoon of egg and cheese on toast, a shower, and a nap, a collection of Canadians join Izzy, his two flatmates and me in the living room before we head down the street to Mudme, a Thai restaurant with tofu substitution options. The generous group treats the newbie to dinner, and by 9:30 I pass out on the hideaway bed.
Now I sit in the sunshine (yes, sunshine in London. It's glorious.) and wait for the man who's coming to fix the boiler. Then I shall have some museli and milk before I trod off to the collection of three museums at the South Kensington tube station (all with free admission). So where am I in all of this? I have no notion at all. For the past few weeks I've been putting one foot in front of the other, fulfilling last minute commitments and waiting for the moment when I'd be here. And now that I am, I don't know what. Elation? Exaltation? Exhaustion? For all the quaintness of the narrow streets and left-lane traffic, and especially in a household of Canadians, it's still a lot like home. I'm still waiting for my soul to arrive.