Ok, so after making my first step I made my first stumble. I booked my ticket to Guatemala with all the enthusiasm of a person who has finally gathered the courage to go for something, to go for ANYTHING. Just something! And then as I was sitting back and picturing myself on the sandy beaches of guatemala, taking a weekend trip to El Salvador, or maybe even Costa Rica, handing them my passport at the border and...
"MY PASSPORT!? Where the hell is my passport?
"I last saw it in my bike bag which is currently en route from New York to Charleston, South Carolina in my friend Ben's big (FREE) truck. But I KNOW that I grabbed it on that sleepless morning upon leaving New York, didn't I? It must be in my back pack, OK, my suitcase, NO?! OK, it has to be in my bike bag. HAS TO BE! I don't loose things."
I called my friend Ben in New York and he searched the bag for me.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO! It's NOT THERE!" I cried with dismay.
I tore my parent's house apart three times over looking for it. "Where in the hell could it be?"
I called every person I had contact with in the past few weeks. It was nowhere to be found.
I looked into an expediting service. I'm now scheduled to leave in a week. Over $300 to get a new one by then.
"NO! NO! NO! Ok, breathe in, slow and long. Exhale, ahhhhhhhh. Surrender to the Universe. Ahhhhh.
"Fuck this shit I want my passport! FUCK FUCK FUCK!"
I couldn't afford to spend $300 on a new passport! Especially since I had the feeling that it WOULD turn up somewhere eventually.
And at the same time my mother was REVELING in her victory. The first thing she always says upon hearing a new dream of mine is, "NO!" And yes, this does fuck with one's head, just a little bit. But by now I am use to it and it is to be expected. She was adamantly against my traveling to Guatemala. She was basically adamantly against ANYTHING that didn't involve me getting a job, getting married and having a child FOR HER.
This was a huge victory FOR HER.
This was when the bribes came. "You can put off the trip, I'll pay for you to change the ticket and we can discuss something ELSE for you to do. Wouldn't you rather go to France for a week? I'll buy you a Prius if you stay here. How about a condo by the beach?"
My, my, my the devil works in strange ways. "Let go your hold of my beautiful loving mother evil one!"
Her most successful solicitation was a week long mother/daughter retreat to North Carolina where we would transform ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually by learning how to "prepare delicious, healthy food and juices and enjoy exercise in the great outdoors and all this in JUST FIVE DAYS!"
"OK, I'll take your week long retreat and raise you one. If I do this, you have to do the Landmark Education Forum with me."
"Deal."
And there it was. I postponed my trip to Central and South America in order to (A) Obtain a passport, and (B) transform myself mentally, physically and spiritually in a matter of nine days (the Landmark Forum being four additional days of transformation). That can be done, right? I guess if I am to set out on such a big adventure I should do my best to get my reckless brain in working order.
I was further comforted in my decision upon receiving a phone call from Brock. He was slated to leave for Uruguay within the week. For those of you who are like, "Where the hell is Uruguay?" It is a tiny country south of Brazil and East of Argentina. Eco owns a house on the beach near the border of Brazil. He spoke with Eco and they both happily extended an invitation for me to join them there. They are turning one of the bedrooms in her house by the beach into a recording studio and their plan is to live simply, play happily, and be free for awhile while making music. So after my month or so of spanish lessons in Guatemala I will travel south through numerous countries, especially those with waves, practicing my spanish, on my own little adventurous odyssey. And I will eventually end up in Uruguay in a house by the beach with a drummer, a singer/guitarista, and a recording studio, and I will make more music.
"That's the plan and I'm sticking to it, Mom!"
Fuck, what else is this life for if it can't be lived?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
The First Step
Ahh, finally some peace. PEACE. PEACE. PEACE. The one thing someone needs in times of trouble is PEACE. Just to hear the wind blow through the leaves is enough to put one's heart at rest.
I'm staying with my teenhood friend Liz in St Augustine. She lives in this quaint little hobbit house in the woods behind a castle across the street from the beach. And yes, I said CASTLE. She lives behind a castle. It's the only castle I've ever seen in Florida so if you're from the area you know exactly where to find me.
It's a green house. Warmed by fire, compost toilet, the hole deal and I love it. Half of the square footage is the wrap around screened in porch. The entire yard consists of passageways cleared through the trees, no grass, just passageways.
Already I feel better as I sit here in front of the fire I just made with cedar and look out the open door to the forest.
Maybe I'm not a city girl at all. Actually, I think I'm totally not. I find happiness comes so easy when I'm someplace peaceful and slow. Someplace TIMELESS. But when I'm in the city - I have to try so hard just to hold onto my sanity. I enjoy the culture, the busyness, the people, but to maintain a grasp on myself takes so much effort. When I was living in LA my perfect daily ritual for happiness was to surf, THEN do yoga, THEN go to work, and THEN - what time do you have left for music with a schedule like that? But I HAD to work. I HAD to pay the bills. I HAD to surf and I HAD to do yoga to keep myself happy in a world that was constantly trying to climb up some sort of social latter to some sort of heaven made of stars and botox. God, all that climbing. It was one of those things where you see everyone running for the hills and you eventually think to yourself, "Damn, should I run too?" I made it out alive but not with out some wounds. It's amazing what a year can do to you.
Yeah, so I'm officially NOT a city girl UNLESS it is (A) for a period of less than a month in the United States or (B) in a foreign country for lets say - maybe a year? Which brings me to my next topic of conversation.
I've finally made my first step toward... toward what? What am I walking towards? If only I knew. All I know is I just bought a ticket to Guatemala for a month. I found a spanish school there that is cheap and located on a black sand beach that is known as "Guatemala's most beautiful beach." Not to mention some of Guatemala's best surfing. I've been wanting to learn spanish ever since I moved to California and realized that it's the first language there. You may THINK California is run by actors like Arnold Swarzwhatever but you are so wrong. California is run by Mexicans. In fact, if they were to team up and go on strike for say, CITIZENSHIP, the whole place would shut down.
When I was slingin fish at Ocean Ave Seafood the whole kitchen was Mexican. At first I was a shy gringo unsure of how to communicate with them, and believing full heartedly that they had no interest in communicating with me. But soon we were the best of friends and they took me on as one of them. They even called me "Paesana" which meanst in less than so many words "fellow mexican." This was my first immersion into the spanish language and they took me on as an apt pupil. In fact, to make the restaurant job a little easier on my soul, instead of saying I was going to work I would say, "I'm going to my spanish lesson."
They taught me very useful phrases such as "Tu eres mi swano mexicana," (you are my mexican dream) and "Essez es mi estylo," which means "That's my style bitches." As useful as these phrases were, I was ready to hit the big leagues.
I found a program that is so insanely cheap. It's cheaper for me to stay there, attend twenty hours of spanish instruction, and eat three times per day than it is for me to pay rent just about anywhere. That's my kind of place.
So I'm going to chill out by the ocean for a month, possibly longer. Who knows, maybe I'll keep traveling south. Until it turns cold and then head north again.
Hasta la vista! (does that make sense?)
I'm staying with my teenhood friend Liz in St Augustine. She lives in this quaint little hobbit house in the woods behind a castle across the street from the beach. And yes, I said CASTLE. She lives behind a castle. It's the only castle I've ever seen in Florida so if you're from the area you know exactly where to find me.
It's a green house. Warmed by fire, compost toilet, the hole deal and I love it. Half of the square footage is the wrap around screened in porch. The entire yard consists of passageways cleared through the trees, no grass, just passageways.
Already I feel better as I sit here in front of the fire I just made with cedar and look out the open door to the forest.
Maybe I'm not a city girl at all. Actually, I think I'm totally not. I find happiness comes so easy when I'm someplace peaceful and slow. Someplace TIMELESS. But when I'm in the city - I have to try so hard just to hold onto my sanity. I enjoy the culture, the busyness, the people, but to maintain a grasp on myself takes so much effort. When I was living in LA my perfect daily ritual for happiness was to surf, THEN do yoga, THEN go to work, and THEN - what time do you have left for music with a schedule like that? But I HAD to work. I HAD to pay the bills. I HAD to surf and I HAD to do yoga to keep myself happy in a world that was constantly trying to climb up some sort of social latter to some sort of heaven made of stars and botox. God, all that climbing. It was one of those things where you see everyone running for the hills and you eventually think to yourself, "Damn, should I run too?" I made it out alive but not with out some wounds. It's amazing what a year can do to you.
Yeah, so I'm officially NOT a city girl UNLESS it is (A) for a period of less than a month in the United States or (B) in a foreign country for lets say - maybe a year? Which brings me to my next topic of conversation.
I've finally made my first step toward... toward what? What am I walking towards? If only I knew. All I know is I just bought a ticket to Guatemala for a month. I found a spanish school there that is cheap and located on a black sand beach that is known as "Guatemala's most beautiful beach." Not to mention some of Guatemala's best surfing. I've been wanting to learn spanish ever since I moved to California and realized that it's the first language there. You may THINK California is run by actors like Arnold Swarzwhatever but you are so wrong. California is run by Mexicans. In fact, if they were to team up and go on strike for say, CITIZENSHIP, the whole place would shut down.
When I was slingin fish at Ocean Ave Seafood the whole kitchen was Mexican. At first I was a shy gringo unsure of how to communicate with them, and believing full heartedly that they had no interest in communicating with me. But soon we were the best of friends and they took me on as one of them. They even called me "Paesana" which meanst in less than so many words "fellow mexican." This was my first immersion into the spanish language and they took me on as an apt pupil. In fact, to make the restaurant job a little easier on my soul, instead of saying I was going to work I would say, "I'm going to my spanish lesson."
They taught me very useful phrases such as "Tu eres mi swano mexicana," (you are my mexican dream) and "Essez es mi estylo," which means "That's my style bitches." As useful as these phrases were, I was ready to hit the big leagues.
I found a program that is so insanely cheap. It's cheaper for me to stay there, attend twenty hours of spanish instruction, and eat three times per day than it is for me to pay rent just about anywhere. That's my kind of place.
So I'm going to chill out by the ocean for a month, possibly longer. Who knows, maybe I'll keep traveling south. Until it turns cold and then head north again.
Hasta la vista! (does that make sense?)
Monday, November 3, 2008
All or Nothing
It didn't take long for the newness of Florida to wear off and for my brain to go back to its usual questioning, "What's next?"
The reason it was asking this so fervently was because I found out that the Ginger NInjas wouldn't be touring again anytime soon. MAYBE in January. Maybe not at all. Maybe not with me. There were a lot of maybes happening in my life. So I spent a shit ton of money to end up right back where I started, once again. And (once again) my future was so wide open I could throw a stadium through the hole of it. This was pretty much the most wide open I'd ever found myself. There were a million things I could do of course, but which dream to run with?
What is it about us humans that makes us so uncomfortable with that wide openess. There was a time when I basked in it. Loved it. Wanted it to always be that way. But now I wanted some kind of security. Was it because of that dirty number thirty that'd crept up on me? I felt like I had aged ten years in two months.
These were the things going through my head as I laid awake not sleeping when all of a sudden an idea floated through the chaos: What if I just spent the next year fulfilling EVERY dream I'd ever continued to have? Lets see: Live in France, play music in London, meditate in India, learn spanish, surfing in Costa Rica, become a rock star, write a book. Those were the main ones. What would it take to do something like that? Probably more money than I had, but if I really, truly believed in this whole MANIFEST YOUR DESTINY thing, if THE SECRET was really out, I should be able to accomplish it all. I could take what money I had and go on the adventure of a lifetime with TRUST as my career. I should be totally fine, right? Somehow everything I needed would be provided at the right time and place, right? I could travel around the world on TRUST. The ultimate trust. Just me, my backpack, keyboard, computer and TRUST. It would be like the movie Into the Wild except I'd be living large in Europe (maybe not large) and totally appreciating human companionship and I DEFINITELY wouldn't die of starvation at the end. If anything I would gain a few pounds because this is an abundant universe. OK, so it would be nothing like Into the Wild, you're right. But WILD it would be.
I felt like just saying fuck it and traveling. Steppin out the door of comfort zone, USA with a pocket full of trust and heading out into the wide open Universe. There's so much out there and there is this thing in me that feels the need to see, be, and DO everything. It'd probably be much cheaper to go to a psychiatrist but why not just try going for it. It would be a lot more fun and it would probably put me in a far better place than any professional mind washer.
Of course I've pictured myself doing exactly what my parents have been begging me to do ever since I first quit my last real job: GET A JOB, like a real one - with benefits and a paycheck that comes once every two weeks. But something about this vision made my stomach hurl. Something inside me kept saying that I had so much more to give to the world by living the way I DO live. Like maybe if I kept exploring I'd stumble upon SOME gem SOMEwhere. Believe me when I tell you that it's not easy. I envy the people whose biggest worry is getting their kids to the soccer game on time while still putting a healthy meal on the table. The idea of really going for it scares the hell out of me. So much so that I was hesitant to put this blog out. If I did, would I actually have to go for it?
"What if I change my mind? Maybe no one will read it and I won't be held accountable to my own dreams."
All of these dreams, all of these questions, all of these things, had been weighing on me. My chest felt like at any moment it would hit the floor. Then all of the sudden, the clouds parted and the next step could be seen so clearly. Finish and release my second album. (Just ONE more album!) then travel the world promoting it. Duh.
(but don't be mad if I chicken out)
The reason it was asking this so fervently was because I found out that the Ginger NInjas wouldn't be touring again anytime soon. MAYBE in January. Maybe not at all. Maybe not with me. There were a lot of maybes happening in my life. So I spent a shit ton of money to end up right back where I started, once again. And (once again) my future was so wide open I could throw a stadium through the hole of it. This was pretty much the most wide open I'd ever found myself. There were a million things I could do of course, but which dream to run with?
What is it about us humans that makes us so uncomfortable with that wide openess. There was a time when I basked in it. Loved it. Wanted it to always be that way. But now I wanted some kind of security. Was it because of that dirty number thirty that'd crept up on me? I felt like I had aged ten years in two months.
These were the things going through my head as I laid awake not sleeping when all of a sudden an idea floated through the chaos: What if I just spent the next year fulfilling EVERY dream I'd ever continued to have? Lets see: Live in France, play music in London, meditate in India, learn spanish, surfing in Costa Rica, become a rock star, write a book. Those were the main ones. What would it take to do something like that? Probably more money than I had, but if I really, truly believed in this whole MANIFEST YOUR DESTINY thing, if THE SECRET was really out, I should be able to accomplish it all. I could take what money I had and go on the adventure of a lifetime with TRUST as my career. I should be totally fine, right? Somehow everything I needed would be provided at the right time and place, right? I could travel around the world on TRUST. The ultimate trust. Just me, my backpack, keyboard, computer and TRUST. It would be like the movie Into the Wild except I'd be living large in Europe (maybe not large) and totally appreciating human companionship and I DEFINITELY wouldn't die of starvation at the end. If anything I would gain a few pounds because this is an abundant universe. OK, so it would be nothing like Into the Wild, you're right. But WILD it would be.
I felt like just saying fuck it and traveling. Steppin out the door of comfort zone, USA with a pocket full of trust and heading out into the wide open Universe. There's so much out there and there is this thing in me that feels the need to see, be, and DO everything. It'd probably be much cheaper to go to a psychiatrist but why not just try going for it. It would be a lot more fun and it would probably put me in a far better place than any professional mind washer.
Of course I've pictured myself doing exactly what my parents have been begging me to do ever since I first quit my last real job: GET A JOB, like a real one - with benefits and a paycheck that comes once every two weeks. But something about this vision made my stomach hurl. Something inside me kept saying that I had so much more to give to the world by living the way I DO live. Like maybe if I kept exploring I'd stumble upon SOME gem SOMEwhere. Believe me when I tell you that it's not easy. I envy the people whose biggest worry is getting their kids to the soccer game on time while still putting a healthy meal on the table. The idea of really going for it scares the hell out of me. So much so that I was hesitant to put this blog out. If I did, would I actually have to go for it?
"What if I change my mind? Maybe no one will read it and I won't be held accountable to my own dreams."
All of these dreams, all of these questions, all of these things, had been weighing on me. My chest felt like at any moment it would hit the floor. Then all of the sudden, the clouds parted and the next step could be seen so clearly. Finish and release my second album. (Just ONE more album!) then travel the world promoting it. Duh.
(but don't be mad if I chicken out)
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