musical time capsules

i turned the music on when the kids left the classroom. and the current was rocking "wake up." i closed my eyes and was walking to school in india, the sun shining through the leaves, the fresh air and wet streets the only remnants of evening rains. the air fresher than anything i can describe with words. it's moments like this, small and fleeting, that i am so happy i could burst. when life feels like it is flowing in and out and all around and it's so full. the moment is not just that, but everything that led up to the present. i am sitting on my porch with josef and alousie. i am running on the mountainside, listening to brian play the guitar. i am walking to my classroom, talking with jamie. i am driving with the windows down. every emotion, every moment that i placed in that song doesn't expire, but the life emanates each subsequent listening. it's then and now. and it's why.

wonderful mourning, monday morning

as i aimlessly searched amazon.com for possible soul-shakers, i realized i am suffering from literary withdrawl. it happens each time a really wonderful book graces my day. the world melts away and personal contact with people seems secondary to completely delving into the world of the novel. as the pages dwindle, i always become cognizant that i will soon mourn and work, to no avail, to find a replacement.

this is not the first time it's all happened. jonathan safran foer, gabriel garcia marquez, jhumpa lahiri, j.d. salinger. they exist for our pleasure and misery. so. to fully mourn, in order to move on, i will give you, the people who may or may not be reading this blog, a top ten of books that are so good you will mourn their passing.

in no particular order.
1. unaccustomed earth by jhumpa lahiri. a.k.a. the latest culprit

how does she do it? specialize in little moments and phrases that make the characters not one-dimensional creatures but complex indivuals who denigrate opportunities and don't do the happily-ever-after dance. though all her books are incredible, this one is particularly noteworthy for its depiction of the individual's inherent solitude, and its beauty.

2. love in the time of cholera by gabriel garcia marquez

this book overtakes your life and embraces you into its bosom. ask anyone. if you want to think about love, its forms and follies, here you go. when the dust settles, you will absolutely need to move onto 100 years of solitude. and i feel like i am that kid at the end of reading rainbow... moving on.

3. harry potter and the deathly hallows by j.k. rowling

i cried like a child when this book ended. like a child. there's nothing more to say.



4. extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer

though everything is illuminated is a finer work, this look into the life of oskar schell is wonderful. the descriptions are touching (is there a less la la word? i can't think of it) and the viewpoint is fresh. if i could meet one character on a desert island, oskar would make the short list.

5. the heart is a lonely hunter by carson mccullers

truthfully told with a clarity of vision... you want to be able to halt the course of the novel, but knowing it impossible, the tragedy is oddly lovely.


6. nine stories by j.d. salinger

i don't know how he does it, but salinger is the king of clear, simple moments of humanness. the tale of the glass family, woven throughout his works, is somehow enlightening. really, any salinger would make the list.


7. their eyes were watching god by zora neale hurston

oh man. the precursor to morrison, walker and anyone else who has business writing about strong women.




8. the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera

this cover sucks you in, just like the rest of the book. the final scenes are incredible. the world outside stops, accordingly.

9. the winter of our discontent by john steinbeck

this book has such a clarity that it seems like it should be written now, not then. timeless, yes?



10. into the wild by jon krakauer

oh lord. that damn moose. this is beautiful, somehow.




11. beloved by toni morrison

honorable mention: the corrections by jonathan franzen, white teeth by zadie smith how we are hungry by dave eggers, the god of small things by arundhati roy, jitterbug perfume by tom robbins, breakfast of champions by kurt vonnegut, high fidelity by nick hornby, birds without wings by louis de bernieres

everything's coming up milhouse

when i found out i was accepted to depaul, i was in spain. the knowledge that i would not be forever living with my parents, teaching in shakopee, that the step would go down as a transition, thrilled me. i would be a student again, something i know how to do. knowing that shakopee was temporary didn't make the reentry any less shocking. nor did it change the simple fact that i am living with my parents at the quarter century mark. it's a funny thing, moving back home after 6 years. tom, my anthropology professor from olaf, spoke of his own return to his parent's house after graduate school. that we all regress to something different, a child, the parent of a teenager. and the striking reality is, it's no longer, really, our home. but we settle. we enjoy. we revel.

and, now, i know that that won't even go on much longer. knowing where i am going next year is that enebriatingly, exciting step forward. a few weeks ago i got an acceptance letter from harvard graduate school of education. and, after giving cambridge the once over this weekend, i sent in my deposit. so. to return, but differently, to the life of a student. heck yeah.

for valentine's day i bought new batteries

the woman's head almost exploded. she didn't expect the v-word. she was just acting out her role as a friendly starbucks drive-thru worker, asking me about my valentine's day. that's right. the vagina monologues, suburb style.

i hate valentine's day. not in an angry feminist sort of way. i hate it because of what it implies about love. that it must come on this single day. that it should be a large gesture, preferrably in front of co-workers, that will show your thoughtful dedication. that you will be judged. your remberance of this solitary, ridiculous day will vindicate us all of any expectation concerning loving gestures.

but i love the vagina monologues. LOVE. i love the topics; the discourse made possible through the project. i love the message of female beauty and wonder in our bodies-- those we so often detest. i love the goal of the performances-- to eradicate violence against women and children. and i wanted robyn to love it, too. and, to my pleasant surprise, it would be opening on valentine's day in prior lake, minnesota, population 10,000. the venue? a lutheran church. this seemed shocking. exciting. and it was.

i loved being surrounded by the 100 or so people and sharing their experience with the show. reveling in laughter and the heavy pauses of some of the monologues. chanting "cunt" as the red glitter letters spelling the word crossed the stage. sitting next to my mom during "i was there in the room," the monologue about birth. after the show robyn and i took our vaginas out for dinner. well, for blizzards from dairy queen. and when i got home, i gave myself a valentine's present. new batteries.

14 and clear in decorah

i am always surprised at the information that comes for free on the internet. you don't ask for it. it's just right there for your perusal.

when i got to work i figured i would be punished for past misdeeds. i am subbing for my high school choir director and am sharing an office with my junior high music teacher. for some reason i took out all angst regarding my teenage years on these two individuals. obviously i was still a degree of good kid. but, since i never atoned, i feel constantly guilty around them. for being the student that made them repeat a mantra. i am a teacher for a greater purpose. or they know not what they do. i have certainly told myself that this week, harkening back to memories of frazzled, shrill substitutes screaming and completely going bonkers. there's just so much prologue to each class period. the way their usual teacher behaves. where the kids wake up each morning and every single interaction they have before they arrive in class. i know ownership eventually is ours and we must choose our own behavior. but. after the stuff that i know goes on at home and in the hallways, i don't really expect them to completely internalize that.

the other day when i was at the middle school i wrote to cole, middle school choir guru, with the only proposition that got me through the final periods of the day. to run away with capes on with only a wagon full of treats. when i opened this picture the next morning, before my middle school science class, i couldn't stop smiling out loud. i remember walking out of the teacher's lounge at woodstock the first day that i was a full-time-- not student-- teacher. maria and i had gone shopping in the fashionable mussoorie bazaar. and i bought my teacher cape. i don't even know where it is now. but i needed it that day. and, still. sometimes you just need a cape.

barack my world

i've grown cynical with age. it's true. it started gradually. the explosion occurred when my thai host father woke me up to watch fox news, depicting the dawn of bush's second term. the rallies. everything. gone to waste. and 2 trillion dollars later, the united states is still present in iraq. my cynicism protected my core from becoming passionate about things. protected me from the horror of protesting the war, watching the bombing begin and attending the funeral of a friend who died in bagdad. my disenfranchisement with the united states was about self-preservation.

watching protests in turkey, discussing politics in tibet, and remembering the things that are unique about the united states excited me about coming back in time for the election. however, as soon as i got back, i've been underwhelmed. not unpleased, just not willing to proselytize for any candidates. the cynicism, still palpable, took a blow yesterday. after waiting in line for 2 hours with the most diverse crowd i've seen thus far in minnesota, jenell and i took our seats in the last row of the target center. small kids, adults, old ladies, all colors, all shades. i wonder if any other campaign has the ability to draw that kind of crowd. where gay and straight and black and white are discussed along side with the importance of education and healthcare. "OUR children, not THOSE children." it became goosebumpy. sharing the story of the his first day in washington, opening his desk, reading the names carved into the wood in the top drawer and writing his own beneath paul wellstone's. though no candidate is perfect, being a part of a 15,000+ audience for "change" was awe-inspiring. the walk back to the parking garage was a dream-like combination of minnesota nice and liberal elation. i think the little green bus is driving by. and i am going to get on.

p.s. i recognize this picture to be ridiculous. and i LOVE it.

today i am the cat lady

there are hundreds of cats staring at me. hundreds. what is it about cat people? not only are framed photos of their own cats sufficient, they need a wall of cat clippings. if i think too much about the cats, i get a little paranoid.

i am sitting at the desk of a cat lady. and, wandering around, looking for a paper to read while "my" students busily work away, i realized something. i am totally disposable. that's the idea of a substitute teacher. relationships can scarcely be more temporal than that of a student and a substitute teacher. the growth over a year is invisible. even though kids from past classes are excited to see my in the building, personalities boil down to single 50-minute periods.

transition.

"you're living in transition, don't worry about it." that addage only works for so long. really, what isn't transitional? for some reason, with 15 minutes left of the school day, i've allowed my mind to slip into the seemingly weekly existential crisis. where is the purpose? i like the fact that there's decreased responsibility in this floating ms. humm business. but, like so much else in my life, i am waiting for it to stick. joanna summed this up perfectly on her blog. "it is sort of depressing to be surrounded by photos of people you may never see everyday ever again."

so. for now, i am the cat lady. tomorrow. good question.

the pilgrimage

when i saw the exit sign for olaf, i began orchestrating the moment. i had to. i live for that shit. i dug in the cds under the passenger seat and exalted beth for the college series, volumes i-v. dave made his glorious return on the car stereo. of course, the tears followed. i slid around campus, deeply nostalgic, repeating the mantra, they're not here, they're not here. since i returned to the states i've been dreaming about other times in my life, as if the past 3 years were the dream rather that the reality. waking after one of these dreams is the pinnacle of unsettlement. a dream challenging anything that i've become or learned since college.

yesterday i substitute taught for a middle school science classroom. while i was at school, i visited my sixth grade teacher. i visited him throughout junior high, high school and college. somehow, he has always reminded me who i am. since i've returned to the states i've been confused. i've felt helpless, childlike; a feeling characteristic of my time abroad but completely foreign to my life here. as if whoever i am was forgotten somewhere half a world away. that nothing made sense anymore and everything, even the united states, was foreign. indeciperable.

when i walked into mondays the waft of scones and coffee and goodness enveloped me. home. i always used to say that i wish i could hear english spoken as if it were not my native language. and, though that never happened, the united states became a completely foreign land. it's like a song that you haven't heard for a long time. you recognize it, smiling to yourself. and, after a verse or two, you remember the words, too.

it's all good.

it feels good when stuff fits though time elapses. the same cannot be said for my pants.

non-fat sugar-free caramel latte

no. i don't know what it all means.
yes. i am back in the united states.
no. it doesn't seem normal.
yes. it is overwhelming.
no. i don't have health insurance.
yes. i do have a cell phone now. i think it's some sort of requirement.
no. i don't have life wisdom to offer in little snippet conversations.
yes. it seems like a time machine where i left and the same woman works at dunn brothers. and the same person tells me the news.
no. i don't regret anything.
yes. i am ms. mad-eye moody emotional sally.
no. i don't like waking up and feeling it was a dream.
yes. it feels more normal to live abroad and constantly move than to clean the room i grew up in.
no. i didn't think it would be this hard.
yes. i did.

me encanta espana y mis padres

this seems like another life. here's a tip. go to spain. see la sagrada familia. they've been building it for over 100 years. drink sangria and mojitos and eat seafood and paella and tapas. watch flamenco. live your life like the woman at the center of the flamenco picture. with extreme passion and the conviction that you are something to write home about.

hey, we haven't eaten for 20 minutes! let's get gelato (subtitled: three americans go to morocco and never stop eating)

there were hamams, couscous, tajine. henna, mosques, kind children doubling as tour guides. street performers, world heritage sites and museums. fresh-squeezed orange juice, camels and sea-breezes. but, mainly, there was food and the card game grass. and it was glorious in it's splendor.

t-minus one month til re-entry

two nights ago i went out to dinner to celebrate my 5 month anniversary of being on the road. the ethnic food of the moment in budapest is apparently indian, so i obliged. two hours later, in the fetal position in my bed, i reveled in india. it tastes good going down, oh so good. but just wait.

now i am sitting on the floor of a packed coffee house. yesterday i found out i got into depaul. the thought of it still makes me feel a bit giddy inside. sometimes in the past 5 months i've woken up in the morning with an unnerving feeling of panic. one worry broke the dam and opened the floodgate to let each insecurity and inevitability in. but now the knowledge that i will be a student, a role i actually know how to inhabit, gives me some footing in the present. funny how the future can do that.

now i return to the also-comfortable habit of procrastinating the single thing on my to do list. today, in a sea of people getting on the metro, i heard a girl speaking english. i froze and almost ran into someone. i wanted to eavesdrop, listen, overhear. it was so foreign, this intimate connection forged with a stranger. the free entertainment of eavesdropping. what's going to happen to me when i get home? when i would rather shut it out for the romantic cacophony of exoticism? when i'll long to return to the world of courtney amidst thousands or millions of others. where i am a child, dependent on kind strangers, void of responsibility, floating.

perhaps the most interesting aspect of returning home after spending the majority of the past 3 years away will be finding the fittingness. that's always the question, i guess. you know when you bought a fish for a tank? you never put it directly into the tank. you left it in the little plastic sack, submerged it in the tank and then opened the sack and let it out after like 20 minutes. that's how the fish finds the fit. but how the hell do we do it? in a way i thought traveling for 6 months would do it. to an extent, it has. however, it's also created a world where i am even more firmly an outsider to everything. i've thought about loneliness, and i think what it really is is when no one can fully understand your experiences. in a way, that's fine. as long as i don't expect anyone to. maybe that's the biggest thing i've gained. comfort with solitude.

time in my sack, looking at the other side, has made me wonder what i will be like when i emerge. will i keep the new habits or will i return to u.s. laziness where i would go days without walking further than to the car (that's mainly in the winter, but still)? somehow, it's all more exciting than frightening. it's like a conscious fresh start. but, for now, i am going to revel in my last moments in the plastic. looking in.

blizzard in belgrade, thanksgiving in sarajevo

hi,i'mcourtneyitaughtataninternationalschoolinindiafortwoyears.yeah,i'mtravelingforsixmonthsonmywaybacktotheunitedstates wherehaveibeenwell,ididsomehikinginthemountainsinasia,thenontobhutan,morehikinginnepal,tibet,ghana,andnowturkeywhereamigoingnextwell,afterserbia,ontobosnia,morocco,spain.yeah,it'sbeengreatexcitinglifeenrichingblahblahblahblah.lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala. it's just filler. over the past months i've had this conversation countless times. it's the conversation that establishes the basis for any real communication. and the monotony of the conversation i could recite without thought single-handedly fostered some introversion in my generally extroverted demeanor. during each introductory conversation, i held in the back of my mind the rememberance that there are people in this world who know me and don't need the 5 minute speil. for that reason, arriving in mussoorie, ghana and serbia have all been like coming home.
waking up in the morning with ethan singing songs, jamie and i cutting veggies and fruit for breakfast and drinking coffee brings me back almost 2 years to the days of yore at mt. hermon. we picked up like cogs in a well-oiled machine, talking politics, literature and other dorky topics while we are pizza on a river barge the first night. last saturday we awoke to a blizzard that didn't abate until monday, cancelling belgrade international school and fostering snow hikes, sledding, "ghetto" skiing (on beer crate handles), snowman building and kuvino vino (hot, spiced wine) consumption. on monday night we staged a belgrade thanksgiving blowout, complete with a christmas tree, homeade pumpkin pie, rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and the charlie brown christmas.


after ethan and i patroned "grill uno" and consumed the "inevitable" gigantic beef patty, we took a snoring, freezing, boiling overnight bus to sarajevo on thanksgiving. sarajevo and belgrade are both cities i could not get my head around until visiting them. the site of the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand by a serb in sarajevo, resulting in world war i. the sites of two of the most recent confirmations of ethnic cleansing. and the dying battles of yugoslavia/ "a greater serbia" involving serbs, bosnians, croats, muslims, catholics and orthodox christians. countries where people my age lived through a war whose mark is still made clear in the bombed-out skeletons and bullet-pocked exteriors of buildings.

during a tour of sarajevo we heard tales of the almost-four-year seige of sarajevo from our twenty-three year old tour guide- men who left the city to fight against the bosnians returning post-war, sniper alley, civilians darting across streets to avoid fire, underground tunnels burrowing to the airport to move supplies, 5 euros for a single egg, a grenade exploding on her pregnant mother in her backyard (but who was only slightly injured), the two million books burnt in the bosnian national library, whole cemetaries dedicated to the 1992 and 1993 deaths of muslims in mostar, bosnia. but, despite everything, as seems to be the consistent case, the people remain kind, helpful and friendly in the face of the worst possible scenarios. men play chess with gigantic pieces in a sarajevo square. a rowdy cigarette-smoking crowd forms around the two players, yelling advice at every turn. others greet us and chat in whatever english they grasp.


somehow the sadness of the war in the 90s is heightened by the fact that sarajevo was home to the olympics in 1984. jamie, ethan and i spent a day skiing at jahorina, the site of olympic skiing events.
the mountains and countryside in bosnia are incredible. and of course, the skiing is outstanding. driving to mostar from jahorina we happened upon the shell of a building on the hill. against the warnings of the lonely planet (which we only read later) we walked through the crumbling structure. we found geometry and physics equations in the walls and graffitti of jesus on the cross on others. houses like these were typically used to denote the bosnian serb enemy lines and inhabited by snipers who fired at sarajevo below. as i left the building on the dilapatated stairway, i happened upon this little tree, rising out of the rubble. take from it what is to be taken. hopefully that's hope.










oh! also, thanks to jamie and ethan for a fab time in the east side (of europe, that is). you two are the craziest cats i know. i only aspire to your greatness.