Shrapnel into the Ether

I've been writing a lot, albeit (obviously) not here. For the most part, nothing I've secreted away in a notebook - or, in paperless desperation, clumsily typed into a blank note on my phone - has wanted or needed an audience, even one as small as this. Nonetheless, I may as well shake off the dust here with a handful of bursts of thought and send a little unnecessary shrapnel into the ether:

The older I get, the dumber I feel. It seems contradictory to be hypersensitive of such a dulling, but there you have it.

Ginkgo trees are another contradition I'm struggling to reconcile. They are at once beautiful in their golden feathering and nauseating in their miasma. Every fall, they scatter their leaves in their ancient shape, tiny fans scalloping the pavement. They also drop their hell-fruit to be crushed underfoot, reeking of baked dog shit, or vomit rotting in the musty stacks of an old library. Sidewalks and shoe soles will only be safe come winter.

Adam took me to feed some spotted deer in a park. Their muzzles were soft and muddy and I felt the kind of joy I imagine must be typically reserved for Disney princesses when squirrels braid their hair and songbirds hang their laundry. Also, translated from Korean, their name is "flower deer" because Korean can't leave cute things well enough alone.

My anxiety is changing, and I've begun to recognize its old weight in the new guise. For years, it's felt like a bird sewn where my heart should be, with useless, beating wings and a burning for air. Lately, the bird has quieted; rather, it's been favoring the form of a wet stone, rolling just under the split of the ribs, scraping the sternum without the calm of a current. It's the slow turn of a river rock, worn smooth and cold by worry and want for sleep.

I feel myself quieting, too. I've never been one to command a room, but I'd always been able to hold my own in conversation. More and more often, my legitimate comment will go unnoticed to be posited verbatim by another for discussion minutes later, a joke slipped in only to be retold by another and laughed at the second time around. When I assert myself, I sound abrasive to my own ears; if I withdraw, I appear aloof. As a mumbler, I try to speak up, but I always doubt others' will to listen.

I fear being forgotten, and I have picked up the unfortunate habit of ostracizing myself even further when it happens.

I ran 100 miles in about 40 days. Now I don't want to stop.

If you want to pick a fight with me, try pigeonholing me as anything. If you want to make me happy, walk with me where there are trees. Or tell me I remind you of Amy Poehler.

Experience and age are not the bedfellows I believed as a child. Some people will have something to prove at any age, at any cost. I have met people who have covered enough empirical ground to understand that being a fully-realized person isn't a zero-sum competition those around them. Others navigate conversations like their own personal Hunger Games arenas, clutching their insecurities in one hand and wielding half-formed opinions like weapons with the other.

Months from now, I will be surrounded by elephants and I don't yet have a plan for what to do when my mind and body shut down from sheer excitement.

I would trade many things for some good bourbon, some good wine, real cheese, and my cat, but I wouldn't trade my years as an expat for anything.

The Threshers in the Grain

I am an anxious existentialist. I arrived here reluctantly, but am quietly resolute, without proud convictions or comfort in belief. I understand death as a kind of erasure, final and empty, a soft smudging-out, then nothing.

(I sometimes imagine death smells like cold perfume, at least at first - insistent, with designs to be subtle but cloying instead, like Easter lilies and alcohol. Maybe that's why I find the over-air conditioned shopping malls of summer so oppressive.)

I once thought people who subscribed to this brand of thought might live with a sense of freedom, a sort of resignation-come-liberation: if nothing matters, then there's nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, I am not one of this ilk (or maybe fortunately - I would most likely be an asshole). In fact, I do quite the opposite. I worry constantly. When I can't busy myself with distraction or am not tired enough after giving priority to the details of daily life, insomnia and fear of oblivion blend into a nighttime mental paralysis. I often envy the solace some find in their faiths, but sometimes I desire doubt. After all, reincarnation sounds so pleasant. An Elysian afterlife appeals to me enormously. But I can't accept them. I asked too many questions for my Roman Catholic heritage to handle and so I abandoned most of its trappings after my first Confession, although I have a lingering fondness for its rich ceremony and colorful aesthetic. (I wore St. Christopher around my neck when I surfed and sometimes even now, but only then for misplaced cultural longing, and now, out of nostalgia. I often wear a St. Benedict medallion from Mexico tied loosely around my wrist, dangling from a strand of clay beads the color of rust after rain, but I don't believe it will ward off evil - although I wish it could ward off indecision. Curios that catch my eye in crowded markets hold no special power; I imbue these trinkets with nothing to worship but second-hand sentimentality.) I don't have the confidence or selfishness to entertain solipsism, and I find most religions too myopic, too limited in scope to satisfy me. Instead, I pick and choose the values I find valuable and collect them as tools to navigate whatever I encounter, too practical or paranoid to harvest from only one crop. None of them, however, change the ending of the story.

Momento mori, and all that.

I have a long-held affection for Rosencrantz's simplistic, rambling thoughts on the matter (although, unlike myself, he seemed rather nonplussed about it):

"Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, laying  in a box with a lid on it? Nor do I really. Seems silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account that fact that one is dead. Which should make all the difference. Shouldn’t it? I mean, you’d never know you were in a box would you? It would be just like you’re asleep in a box. Not that I’d like to sleep in a box mind you. Not without any air. You’d wake up dead for a start and then where would you be? In a box. That’s the bit I don’t like frankly. That’s why I don’t think of it. Because you’d be helpless wouldn’t you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean you’d be in there forever. Even taking into account that fact that you’re dead, it isn’t a pleasant thought. Especially if you’re dead really. Ask yourself: if I asked you straight off I’m going to stuff you in this box right now– would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you’d prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You’d have a chance at least. You could lay there thinking well, at least I’m not dead. In a minute somebody’s going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (knocks) "Hey you! Whatsyername! Come out of there!" [...] Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory like that. And yet, I can’t remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we knew the word for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squaling…with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction and time is it’s only measure."

Quickly-derailing trains of thought like this are why I lie awake at night, fretting over nothing – or, nothingness. There are things my tiny human brain cannot ever comprehend, only entertain (like space - I can't even). I am not equipped with the ability to encompass such notions without a very primal fear kicking in, and kicking hard. Yet I kick back. I kick and scream and wish I could squeeze these oceans of thought – the kind thousands of better-qualified philosophers have pondered before me – into droplets small enough to seep in.

I am a scared little field mouse, wishing she couldn't see the threshers in the grain.

Try Not to Blink

Most posts like these hover closer to the turn of the calendar: heralding a New Year, pondering all it may portend while probing the experiences of the one so freshly left behind. Accomplishments are crowed and hopes are cooed, bearing the standards of our midwinter rebirths. The good is grasped tightly in writing so any bad beyond the horizon can't blot it out entirely when the world feels darker and colder. This post attempts these things, of course; however, it requires that I slide the scale a bit. My last and coming year are not framed by the beginnings of Januarys, but the ends. January 25 marks our anniversary of living in Seoul, where we've just signed on for another contract to end February, 2015. My year is therefore slightly shifted from the usual count, and my reflections are skewed accordingly.

'Expect the unexpected' is a trope of the traveler, and, as expected, the past year it has proven it true enough.

I've learned a new language - not enough to hold a conversation, but enough to form grammatically-correct sentences with a little struggle, and more than enough to survive. I learned to read and write a new alphabet in less than a week. I can navigate the subway and direct a taxi with the basics. I can peruse a menu and order the usuals, and while my vocabulary may not always suffice, I can at least amuse those patient enough with a decent accent.

I've tried to embrace the cultures that have welcomed me as a guest, even if there are times I've wanted to fold my arms and click my heels on the off-chance such a transplant doesn't require a tornado and a head wound.

I've visited three countries outside of Korea, four if you count a few steps beyond an invisible line into the negotiating territory of North Korea. Malaysia, Japan, and the Philippines have shown me glimpses of worlds to which I'd never previously given much thought beyond romanticized stories or fingers tracing a map. I've stared like a child at whale sharks and guarded my belongings from unscrupulous monkeys. I've sipped soju on rooftops and tasted corner store sake on my boyfriend's lips. I played darts with an audience of chirping geckos and learned how to shuffle cards like an adult. I've wandered through painted palaces built, burned, and rebuilt over thousands of lifetimes before mine, and I've spent several cumulative hours looking for a place to pee. I've collected prayer beads from cool-tiled mosques, shrines in caves, and temples on the edge of the sea. I've retraced countless steps and found my way before I even realized I was lost. I've confirmed an uncanny ability to know my way around by recognition of subtle landmarks, and I've thanked God for Adam's sense of direction in the face of my hopelessness (without a handy compass or the convenience of tree moss, I've accepted that I will never have those bearings - seriously, where the hell is North?).

My ability to endure spicy foods has grown to a point at which I am not filled with dread to try a bite of something new (and instead, every so often, I'm filled only with mild regret and temporary pain). I saw Basquiat's art and remembered to try to make some of my own, too. I nursed bruises and scrapes from a Spartan Race and hunted mosquitoes with vengeance. I explored with my parents when they came for a surreal visit. I climbed a mountain with terrifying, humbling views, afraid to reach the top, but more afraid not to. I was caught by the monsoon in the park when we lingered too long for the summer sun's liking. I cried under cherry blossoms and laughed in the glow of thousands of lanterns floating through crowded streets. I played in the mud, sang in sweaty bars, and fed neighborhood alley cats in the rain.

I've fallen in love with teaching and had my heart repeatedly broken by dozens of unfairly-adorable 6-year-olds. I encouraged sarcasm in a couple third graders, fanned infant flames of feminism in a few others, and asked "Why?" a million times.

I've forged new friendships while aching for the ones on the other side of the world. I've seized opportunities across oceans while missing milestones at home - weddings of dear friends, the birth of my nephew, my cat learning patience - and knowing there will be more. Technology helps to soothe the pangs of these particular casualties of my time here, but sometimes the sense of removal is strong and homesickness flairs when I can only celebrate these occasions via Skype. I also feel these things knowing that one day, I will feel the same for my life in Seoul. There is a certain peril with this brand of adventure: the heart-seam-ripping feeling of longing for home and longing for hazard abroad, as if one can be ignored or made dormant while the other is satisfied. This longing exists, dully, just under my ribs, with semi-frequent  bouts of acute immediacy. It has taught me that Home is not where, but with whom (which seems to make things infinitely more difficult), and it spurs a selfish desire to transplant everyone I love to wherever I happen to be.

I've been reminded over and over again of my luck, that I get to share all of this with someone I love in ways I never knew possible. He has taught me more about living - and about myself - than I'm sure he ever intended. I couldn't ask for a better partner (or a better travel buddy, to boot). I wouldn't be where I am without him, physically and otherwise, and I'm excited for our next year together, and the year after, and the years after that.

I've felt unsure more times than I thought tolerable. There were stretches when depression stole the throne, as it does from time to time. I've known discomfort as a constant shadow, and I've let fear drive discovery.

I've been happy.

Altogether, 2013 delivered more than I could have imagined; I'm sure this year has much more in store. I'll look forward to good things - expected and unexpected - and try not to blink.

The Shock of New Air on Naked Growth

Tomorrow, Adam and I leave for a year on the other side of the world.

Embracing the unknown (or at least letting it embrace me when the scary begins to overtake the exciting) is a rare and powerful means of experience, and I need to remember that now more than ever. Frightening, yes; after all, feeling the tremors of terror over the thrill isn't weak, but human. Who is the person who feels no doubt, no great discomfort when uprooting themselves to a new patch of land? Whether my feelers are thick-strong and long-sleeping in California or sprouting in Seattle, earnest and easy, I know there will always be the shock of new air on naked growth.

(Enough with the plant metaphors; I am no tree.)

Like others before me, I will shake and reel and learn and live and throw myself into the world, where I will breathe color and light into the stories that will one day be all my own. Adam and I will find our footing and lengthen the strides of our baby steps one day at a time. We will struggle with a new language and discover a new life, but love won't be lost in translation. And in a matter of hours, it begins.

The next post you see will have been written in a new hemisphere and in travel-numbed awe.

Everything Is So Much

Dreaming by David et Myrtille

This is not a real post. Rather, this is as disjointed and unfocused as my general thought process has been lately... so at least it's accurate?

10 points/observations/odds and bodkins of the last few weeks as my life is gradually turned on its head:

1. Our apartment is empty save for the boxes and last-minute items for packing cluttering the corners. The walls look bleak without my canvases, our collection of streetlight-stolen concert posters, the Haitian, papier-mache-with-pages-from-old-newspapers-in-French taxidermy giraffe head. We've sold, donated, or given away most of our belongings, and our few remaining pieces of furniture have been promised to friends. Most days, I feel good about our progress and our contained chaos, and I can keep my emotions at bay. Most nights, however, I feel overwhelmed and my emotions sweep back in with the evening clouds. I expect this cycle to continue with greater intensity in the coming weeks.

2. To provide a bit of distraction during the more tedious tasks, I watched both White Christmas and Holiday Inn for the first time (thanks to Stacy for the recommendation years ago). I enjoyed both, but I think Holiday Inn was my favorite of the Bing Crosby-fests (barring the atrociously racist black-face routine commemorating Lincoln's Birthday. Yikes, you guys).

3. Speaking of Christmas movies, Adam and I will continue our tradition of watching our perennial contradictory favorites, Elf and Bad Santa. Unfortunately, we won't be able to spend Christmas proper with each other this year, so we'll be having our 4th annual Elf/Bad Santa Christmas tonight with the only officially appropriate pairings: cookies and candy with Elf and whiskey with Bad Santa. Obviously.

4. Against the odds of the holiday season and moving stress, I'm finally developing a 6-pack. Well, right now, it's the top 2 with the middle 2 about half-defined, but I'll take it. We'll see how long it sticks around with all the empty Christmas calories destined for a home in my thighs (see #3).

5. While alone in the kitchen, I was curious to see if I could fit inside the box in which our suitcases were shipped. I climbed in and curled up, and the results were twofold: (1) Yes, I could totally fit, and (2) I am a child.

6. All I will say about Newtown is what I said on Facebook, without mention of sociopolitical policy issues: We can't do this. I cannot bear the trend of waking up to news of such baffling, senseless violence every few weeks. The emptiness of devastation, the fruitless attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, the dread and rage and sadness all waging a renewed war in my stomach - I can't accept this. I'm so sorry, Newtown. I'm so sorry, children.

7. I truly love my usual process of making/purchasing thoughtful gifts for my family and friends, but this year simply hasn't allowed it for a number of reasons. However, I was able to at least frame up a few little pieces for my mom and brother and sister-in-law. I'm pretty satisfied with how they turned out, and I'm especially tickled about the idea that sprang to mind for my brother and sister-in-law in Long Beach, CA (that's a peek at it below, with the west coast making up the left outline of the heart). Not gonna lie, I think it's pretty damn clever, and I'm going to be smug about it. So there.

8. Last Friday, I donated blood - something I do as frequently as I can (every 56 days) - and as of that donation, I have given 2 GALLONS of blood to the Puget Sound Blood Center, contributing to hospitals all over the Seattle metropolitan area. I'm proud to be able to do this small thing, literally giving of myself to help others in such a uniquely intimate, human way. After all: give blood, get a cookie! What I'd really love to do is join the national bone marrow registry - I've been wanting to for years - so when I get back from Korea, that's one of the first things I'll be doing.

9. Roasted cauliflower with curry powder for dinner. Do it. Your mouth and belly will high-five each other.

10. As Joy the Baker said, the best way to describe these days and the ones ahead is, "Everything is so much." But as she also said, it helps to think of newness as to distract ourselves from the temporary shortcomings of nowness. I can't help but take this advice and see it as the wisdom it is in times like these. So in the breathlessness of Now, let's refocus on the coming new, shall we? Beyond Now, in the coming new year, lie infinite new adventures, new loves, new losses, new everything. What is Now but groundwork for the road ahead? Celebrate the Now - especially this time of year - and with it, celebrate the Nows that were and will be. They're fleeting, and they're all we've got.

Half a World Away (Happy Blogiversary)

Happy First Blogiversary, friends.

It's been quite a year. I haven't posted as often as I would have liked, nor have I made much progress toward establishing what exactly this blog is, but having a space to write and share of myself has been refreshing, especially after so many years without. Even if I can't be sure who is reading or if there's even an audience who cares outside of my parents, it still gives me room to breathe, whether I'm at my most eloquent or my least coherent. A Blog of One's Own might not be quite what Virginia Woolf had in mind, but it does the trick.

Since I started writing here a year ago, a lot has changed -- in fact, had someone told me last November where I would be today, I would have assumed that this someone was crazy, or at the very least, that one of us had been drinking. Last week, I hinted at some big news, promising that today I would "post something Blogiversary-worthy and wear some fancy shoes." Well, I've slipped on my shiny, 4-inch heels, so here's my news.

Adam and I are moving to Korea.

In January, we will be making the 12-hour flight half a world away to begin a year in Seoul working for an English school for children. I will be teaching immersion classes ranging from preschool- and Kindergarten-aged children to fifth grade students, all based on the American elementary school model. While I'm in the classroom, Adam will be working primarily in research and development for the school's textbooks and curricula. My contract doesn't begin until a few weeks after Adam's in February, but the school has been amazing enough to work it so Adam and I can fly out together; I'll just have a couple extra weeks to get acclimated, playing homemaker and taking exploratory runs around the neighborhood in the cold, eyes wide and mind blown open.

Our certifications in TESOL, our quiet head start on paperwork -- before we even had interviews -- back in September, our lifelong loves of language and travel and adventure - everything has been leading up to this. To anyone feeling like we've been exceedingly quiet and unduly keeping secrets, please don't feel unimportant -- we simply didn't want to risk very public disappointment had plans fallen through (and Adam only just put in his notice at work today). The littlest hiccup could have blown this ship off its precise, delicate course; honestly, it still could. Between getting fingerprinted, applying for and awaiting results on FBI background checks (good news: we got them back Monday and neither of us has a record of arrest! Surprise!), collecting official transcripts and letters of recommendation, getting diplomas notarized and mailing documents across the country and back for various government apostilles... we're still diligently peeling back layers of red tape. If everything goes smoothly enough, we should receive our visas from the Korean consulate come Christmas. We won't know the exact date we leave until we've secured our visas; until then, we're learning a little Korean and busying ourselves with the gradual task of packing up the few belongings we'll keep from our beloved apartment then getting rid of the rest.

(One thing's for sure: preparing to move to the other side of the world challenges my notions of materialism and puts the details of daily life into perspective. As I get older, I'm growing more sentimental about collecting memories and becoming less attached to Things. Some Things have significant sentimental value - books I just can't part with or souvenirs of time and life that I love and know I won't really be able to find again - and those are the Things I will keep. Everything else can be replaced when I'm ready to settle into a sense of home that feels a little more permanent.)

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

All in all, I am excited. Scared, anxious, overwhelmed, and excited. I am absolutely heartbroken to be leaving Eliot behind for now, but Adam's brother and sister-in-law are generously welcoming him into their family while we're gone, and I know he'll be happy and well-loved -- that is, if he survives my sobbing, snot-covered cuddle-squeezes when I hug him goodbye. I will miss my furry baby terribly, just as I will dearly miss my family and friends. I will miss Seattle something fierce and everything about it that makes it home, but I am hopeful that after a while, we'll start to feel a little at home in Seoul, too. And I know we'll be returning to Seattle someday, and to our loved ones, furry or otherwise.

Ready or not, life is only going to get crazier from here on out. The holidays are upon us and our departure date will be here before I know it, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving (tomorrow already? How did that happen?) and my first Blogiversary: thank you, everyone. Thank you for reading, thank you for holding me accountable, for holding my hand, for letting me word-vomit all over your interwebs every so often -- thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll keep posting here as this adventure unfolds, and next year, I'll be blogging Gangnam Style.

So Happy Thanksgiving, friends, and Happy Blogiversary. Here's to throwing off the bowlines, sailing away from the safe harbor, and hoping you'll come along to help me anchor this unmoored life.

Diving into a pile of leaves

"Matt Pond PA on repeat in my headphones, a scarf pooling around my neck, and my cheeks chilled to a familiar pink from the walk home. Fall is here."

This time last year, I dashed off that quick line capturing my personal heralds of autumn in a very tangible moment. This year, as autumn begins to saturate everything from trees to bakeries to the air itself, I'm taking more time to let it saturate me, too.

Seattle was made keenly aware of the end of summer last week as we were suddenly greeted by colder, gray-clear mornings and the dry, papery whisper of leaves on concrete, a sound as identifiable with fall as sleigh bells are with snow. I pulled on boots instead of slipping into flip-flops. I sheathed my fading summer arms in sweater sleeves, armed myself with coffee and good music, and walked a little more quickly than I had in a few sun-slowed months. 

Last week, I started my position tutoring ESL with the community college nearby, a few mid-morning to mid-day hours a week. The walk home is short and downhill, making it all too easy to get lost in a Think and arrive at my door before I realize it's been fifteen minutes. When the obligation following my tutoring session on Wednesday was cancelled, I let myself wander along longer route home. I stopped to sit in the bleary light in Tashkent Park, a tiny pocket of grass and maple trees hidden in a block of quiet apartments.

"Semurg" Bird of Happiness statue in Tashkent Park

My neighborhood of Capitol Hill is littered with many such half-acres, each feeling like a discovery every time I visit them. On this visit, I was alone, and in the brick-lined silence, I felt autumn more fully than I had expected, and with it, a surprising combination of simple love, cold sunshine, and acute sadness. Confused, I looked up at the park's statue - a Tashkent boy flying on three Birds of Happiness, a gift from Seattle's sister city in Uzbekistan. I studied the boy's dull bronze features, followed the lines of the not-particularly-happy-looking birds, scanned the trees behind them, all the while searching my mind for a reason for the sadness. It didn't take me long to understand.

If all goes as planned, this will be my last autumn in Seattle, at least for the foreseeable future. I love this city; Seattle feels like home, and autumn is when I find it most beautiful and most... well, home. And as much as I am thrilled/anxious/excited for my next adventure, I am so, so sad to be leaving this place.

This year, I will throw myself into autumn like a child diving into pile of leaves. Pumpkin muffins and cookies will bake in my oven; their scent will fill my nose and warm my apartment. I'll soak myself in the everywhere-color and brush my fingers over the delicate geometry of dahlias and chrysanthemums. I'll wrap myself in too-long scarves and fill as much daylight as I can with walks down my street, the mornings gently spiced by the smell of crushed leaves under my boots. And I will miss it when I am gone.

The heart is no fool and the gut is its loaded gun

sadlyharmless on etsy

We face What We Don't Know with all sorts of weapons, whether designed for battle or negotiation. With grit, with grace. Through grief and grins. Through anger and exhaustion and whiskey and more whiskey. But through all of it - even despite and because of it - there we are, left with certain truths. With our bodies we feel truths so unimpeachably true that they make our bones shimmer in their light and make our cells swim in circles. Those currents of truth are as strong and subtle as electricity, and they can drown us as easily as the ocean's if we fight them. And so we best know these truths with our bodies rather than knowing them in our heads, the way we can lose ourselves in thought on a long walk and still trust our feet to find the way home. Our brains are small, and our minds are bigger, but our hearts are doubly so. We can trick our brains into believing something just because we WANT to believe it, but the heart is no fool and the gut is its loaded gun. The deep-pitted flutters down there are itches on the trigger, so pay attention to them. Epiphany does not always come with klaxon bells and intuition is quieter still.

I think the truth we seek is really clarity robed in spiritual light. For some of us, maybe it is simply self-resolution in a fancy hat. It seems so deliciously mysterious and desireable when we think of it as alien or separate from ourselves, because if we have anything to do with it, then it must be lesser. We think it is soiled if it is already inherently marked by the fingerprints of the very person reaching for it (if we're fucked up, it must be too). But I don't think that's the case. Instead, I think our truths are long buried beneath muscle and memory, safely tucked away from harm as we corrode our more obvious parts with the daily acids of worry and doubt and restless ambivalence manifest in mental anxiety.

It can, of course, relieve some of this anxiety to analyze and overanalyze and make lists of pros and cons. Plans and theories often help us see a little further down the path of What If when we aren't ready to trust our feet to lead us past uncertainty. But just as often, these plans and lists only tell us what we already knew and felt, revealed in a tangible denouement of ink or type. I'm finally learning to do as we're so often told: Trust your instinct. Go with your gut. Maybe I'm finally old enough to listen to the flutters and young enough to have time to follow their guidance. I will make up my mind but let my body have final say whether the choice is right or wrong. Our small brains are useful tools for mapping unilluminated terrain, but our bodies are the compass that has ultimately been pointing us North all along. 

It's a Dangerous Business

Oh dear. Is it August already?

I'll spare you the usual laments about being so busy that time passes unnoticed and all too quickly, but I will say that I am a little exhausted and, obviously, shamefully remiss about posting anything here. I've been consumed by longish days of teaching (read: singing to/coaxing developing motor skills out of) tiny children and reassuring (read: easing fears and worries which I have no right to ease in) their parents, followed by intensive, 3-hours-a-night, 3-nights-a-week TESOL class. Sprinkled into the mix has been a quick trip to Long Beach and San Diego, a physically-exhausting but soul-satisfying day slinging cherries and peaches at a farmers' market, and some rarefied afternoons in the Seattle sun. There has been a wink at painting (2 whole paintings! 3 if you count a 2-canvas piece!) and a nod to the Olympics when my heart and hands are not otherwise distracted by what Adult-Kait deems "more important" things.

Admittedly, some distraction is acceptable - welcomed, even. Last November, in the inaugural post of this humble, stumbling blog, I wrote about transition and the fear that is transition's constant shadow. Distractions keep my head comfortably in the sand until I am ready to face the discomfort of Change - the Change happily building sandcastles and tearing down others in the lives surrounding mine, patiently waiting for me to meet its eye. Maybe by the time I'm in my seventies, when the hours I waste worrying now will have added up to regretful years, I will finally have learned to accept change gracefully, to relinquish doubt graciously; for now, I will continue to know the familiar fear of change when the distractions fade. For now, I'm shaking grains of distraction out of my hair because things are changing for everyone, and my nervous hands and restless sleeps are tell-tale signs Change is coming for me, too.

Killian and Daniel have moved temporarily to Portland this month before making the staggering, still-temporary-but-longer-term move to Oxford, England in September. Stacy and Jon just moved to Orange after transitioning through the Bay Area from Seattle last year. Friends are getting married left and right. Molly is having a baby (okay, I don't actually know her, but when she has her child, I'm praying she brings the little Orangette-blossom to my work in Ballard - it's her neighborhood, after all!). Lauren has taken the exhilarating step of quitting her job to write and blog full-time, giving herself a year as a trial period before reassessing her decision (again, I only know Lauren as an admired blogger and interwebs-friend, but I am thrilled to hold my breath with the rest of her blogstalkers as she takes such a thrilling plunge into what will surely be further success and continued brilliance). Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes are everywhere, and they aren't stopping anytime soon.

As for me? This week - tomorrow, actually - Adam and I will be certified in TESOL. Our names will be recommended for candidacy and we will receive our basic certificates within the month. Upon completion of the grammar-specific course in December, we'll earn the Advanced 100-Hour certification, but really, with the basic certificate already in hand, we could find a contract next week and move half a world away next month if we wanted to and start teaching. That's not happening, though, and yet - even thought I know we're not moving anywhere for a while yet - it's still a scary prospect, even if excitingly so.

What amplifies the fear is the unknown and our progress in spite of it. We don't know where teaching will take us just yet; we simply know we are continuing our forward motion anyway, into the dark, lighting our way with a torch fueled by the earnest cocktail of love of language and wanderlust. Should we be practicing "good morning" in Vietnamese? Are we slouching toward Bethlehem (I hope not)? We've been passively eyeing a few countries in South and Central America (our background in Spanish would be a linguistic comfort blanket), but we're excited about the possibilities of countries like Thailand and Cambodia in the Asian arena and Eastern European opportunities in Croatia and the Czech Republic, as well - again, we haven't even begun testing the waters, so we have very little idea where we want to dive in the deep end.

My home-loving Hobbit ways have always kept my dreams of adventure safely tucked in the folds of my brain's fiction section. After all, such dreams can never become nightmares when they are lived only vicariously through Jim Hawkins or Indiana Jones. I know adventure is out there, and I am feeling and fearing it now more than ever. To paraphrase Tolkein, it's a dangerous business, going out your door; you step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. But for all the dangerous business of Out There, I can't ignore the need to explore it, and I can't very well do that if I don't find the courage to leave Here. I reassure myself that the tiny shard of excitement I do feel buried somewhere in my chest will eventually work its way to the surface to splinter the fear and worry.

Transition will happen, and I will be ready. Until then, I will enjoy my time left in the sand - it is still warm there, but the weather is changing.