something I've learned/decided as a result of traveling...

...I don't want to be defined by a place.

In a book I found a Mexican dicho (saying) that I could identify with:

"Donde es tu tierra? Donde la pases, no donde naces."

Where is your land? Where you pass your life, not where you were born.

I find myself once again in the snowy palm of Michigan. I swooped down from Montreal a few weeks ago, hesitant and impatient, excited and bursting with energy, stories, ganas to see folks that are dear to me. In Petersburg, there isn't much to do. That's where the beauty lies, I suppose. Simple and lacking charisma, my village of birth is seemingly unaffected by the development carrying on with neither rhyme nor reason in the neighboring village of Dundee. Yet at the same time that it seems so utterly far from "civilization," Petersburg is also an acute reflection of the political, economical and cultural changes taking place in the U.S.. It's not a place where decisions are made or where folks in suits carefully construct and orchestrate projects of massive size and significance. It does, however, change as a result of these acts, like a ripple in the pond, so far from where the stone actually lands. Farms go up for sale. One of the town's two gas stations closes. Dundee gets a Wal-greens at the expense of the small shops which used to make up the small, triangular downtown. Farmers shake their heads. Ex-factory workers sit around my kitchen table, angry about the white-collars that sit behind desks all day while complaining that retired factory workers don't deserve health care. More and more young people leave the state, leaving swampy Michigan for higher economic ground.

Kalamazoo, despite the obvious deterioration of its downtown, somehow retains that almost silly optimism about just about everything that is sometimes refreshing and other times annoying. At the same time that there are less places to consume in Kalamazoo, there are projects and ideas and music and art continually popping up, sometimes in the least-expected places. I like the idea of people investing in things that hold no monetery value: friendship, enriching experiences, brainstorms, collaboration.

I've started researching farming in Michigan, both organic and non- (to mix both reality and my ideals), with multiple intents: to understand the state I was born and raised in, to assess the potential for Michigan to become a major organic ag. state, to assess my own potential in starting a organic farm here some day. Plus, it's fun!

Kalamazoo is keeping me busy though. Potlucks and book swaps. Dance parties and house parties and birthday parties. Work shops and discussions. Bicycles and coffee and music music everywhere. When Abigail Kinas strolls into town, all will be complete.

I didn't write anything about Montreal, I've realized. Nothing truly out of the ordinary happened there, minus one intense instant in a metro station. I saw wonderful friends in the city that I'd known only in the out-of-doors, in the country. We spent many a night wandering the same streets of the city. I made Shephard's Pie for the first time with my hilarious, cribbage challenger JP, who loves Queen more than anyone I know. One morning I beat him 3 times in a row at Cribbage, but he still let me crash on his couch when I needed to. I danced. I sometimes pretended I spoke French in order to get people to repeat things to me, annoying them but fascinating me. I barely made it out of the city and had to remind myself again and again I'd be back if the time was right. It's not a bad city. It's a city. Next time I'd like to be speaking French.

A new project

To better organize my interests, I'm going to keep this journal for travel-inspired/personal writings and a new one that I want to dedicate more-focused energy toward.

It'll still be rather personal, as it's born out of my own desire to learn, study, create, to investigate and document and work on a plan for my future. It's about me wanting a farm, a community that is both local and global in its scope, some answers about how we can slow and stop the destructive forces on the planet. I want to ask questions and not find answers or judge, but still reach conclusions. I just wanna live and want others to be able to, too.

Hence: Radicals require roots

Sometimes I find myself with the incredibly difficult dilemma of having to justify my migratory ways to people who have grown up and accepted a sedentary lifestyle. Perhaps they don't see themselves as sedentary, but for me, having a permanent address that you actually live at is akin to having a chain wrapped around one ankle with the other end looped around a a large tree. True, the tree can be beautiful, with many birds and fruits, but for me the chain outweighs all the lovely things that may dwell in the branches; it also outweighs the roots.

I know other migrants face these questions: When is the time right? Where should I go? By which route? How long should I stay? Will I see so-and-so again? Money?

And migrants with privileges must ask: Should I take advantage of my passport and flee the country of my birth? Do I have any connection to the land where I was born, to the land where I am headed? Should I try to give up my privileges to live more honestly or try to use my privileges in a positive way? How do I balance freedom and responsibility?

For me these questions only further justify my need to throw the little things I need on my back and move, south then north then west then south, a lopsided circle, but always in a circle. Answers, to me, come in movement, in flight, in seeing the same places continuously through new eyes. If I stay in the same place, I stay the same person and it's difficult for me to learn that way. I understand this way of life isn't for everyone, but I think the world was made for many ways of life. And my way of life takes me to many worlds.

e pty

I guess we all should have seen the demise of Kalamazoo's downtown coming with the closing of Athena's Bookstore...but Dragon Inn? Come on! Now I've seen the financial crisis up close and personal.

It's time to head south again.

ciao

I think some people get the idea that the more you travel, the easier it is to say good-bye. Perhaps it just gets easier to evade them, but it's never easier to say them. But really I think we begin to realize that good-byes aren't necessary anymore, only "see you soon"'s.

pensamientos de los ultimos meses....

So much has happened. Luckily I took to writing things on paper. Here are some bits and pieces, some all the way back from summer:

6 August 2008: A few nights ago, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was closing my eyes for just a few seconds and then opening them again. Robert Frost was right! Every time I closed my eyes I could see a jumbled mass of branches, laden with cherries. Each time the same, only the cherries changed- sometimes with long skinny stems, or in big, thick clumps, bright red or deep purple. Ah, cherries. I even dreamt of selling cherry tacos.

22 August 2008: Except for the few hours a week that I spend in the library, I spend all of my time outdoors, working, eating, playing, sleeping. It's easy to forget what hot water and a non-stiff neck feel like. Flush toilets and mirrors have a novelty to them that I hadn't known before. My picking barely improves because I am so distracted by the beauty of the mountains, the trees, the sun, this life. Also, it's impossible to believe that money is more important than these moments.

21 September 2008: The community of pickers, so small, is one of the most gossipy groups of folks I've ever gotten mixed up with. I suppose there's only so long you can talk about cherries or ladders or snakes and people are undeniably fascinated by the lives of others. Eh. I really like walking between Vialo and Dawson orchards: tall grass, endless amounts of fresh, organic apples to sample, a feeling of hiddenness and solitude, if only for a few moments.

23 September 2008: He said it was like looking into a mirror. I am caught off guard and slightly astounded by having found him and by the fact that we have so little time and then there's life. I hear a heart beat and can't tell if it's mine or his. How nice that there is no awkwardness between people who have never been strangers to one another.

28 September 2008: Fall arrived exactly when the calendar said it would. Leaves are browning on the trees and the sumacs are already bright red. Snow fell on the mountains, folks not used to the cold are getting nervous. Thank God I have this little toasty cabin.

29 September 2008: Last night Sergio and I made a real, sweet, picker soup: #2 butternut squash that I picked at the Mariposa, carrots that another picker left behind, ginger, garlic, chiles that Abraham won as 3rd prize in the annual chile pepper eating contest in Keremeos, cayenne, parsley + thyme + chives from Seth and Melissa's garden, a cucumber also left by a past picker and some coconut milk. Making it even more wonderful was that we got to share it with friends as we laughed and leaped and stumbled over language hurdles and stomped the cold out of our feet.

The trees here are old, with birds' nests and gnarled trunks. I'm much happier working in these trees than in rows and rows of pesticide-laden "fruit twigs," as Seth calls them.

3 October 2008: At first I was tired and not feeling social but by the end of the night they had to swear to me that it was the last ride leaving for Dawson to get me go. If there'd been more cumbias on the pub jukebox, I probably would have stayed anyway. The partying allows us to open our hearts and minds in extreme bursts where suddenly torrents of camaraderie and love push through us, like dams bursting and when the cruda comes, the down, we are unsure. For brief moments we are allowed an incredible freedom of expression but afterwards we are left with wild, tormenting, beautiful, vibrating emotions and thoughts, all dammed up again, we feel damned.

4 October 2008: I've spent a lot of my working hours pondering my place in the system of agriculture, the food system. System, system, that word always appears. I'm an agricultural work, a fruit picker, a migrant. We have a little community and we joke about our meager and ever-changing lives, we share stories of hitch hiking and bosses and the lives we've had in other places, in other times. We even laugh together about the discrimination we collectively face by local business owners and employees. We talk about our families, our friends, our homes, desperate to share company, we fall in and out of each other's arms, cry on each other's shoulders, dream together, taking every moment in our hands, taking each other's hands, swinging around, jumping, dancing, weeping, falling, always laughing, all the colors and the time passing so fast.

I am such a small piece of this agricultural mosaic. I feel momentarily guilty for picking only the perfect cherries that are sent to wealthy consumers in Europe and Japan while perfectly good cherries rot in odorous mounds. But my place is so small and here the sky is so big that, with the stars and the mountains, one can't really feel personally responsible.

5 October 2008: Hard work is a miracle cure for anxiety and despair. By the end of the day I just wanted to keep charging up my ladder, thrusting myself into branches, twisting my aching thumbs around stems, pulling down bag after bag of golden delicious apples. I became immune to the scratches and the bugs, completely immersed in thought.

The moon is perfect and crescent-shaped tonight. Snow fell on the mountains to the north. Everything looks perfect and blue and purple and smoky, the taste of winter on every breath we take. Work is becoming ever more unpredictable.

6 October 2008: Today the cold bit so hard in the morning. My fingers burned and ached, every apple was a struggle, I really wanted to cry. Every day is getting colder, things are settling and I feel like I have to resist in order to stay awake, stay on top of things. Otherwise I'll fall into a dreamy hibernation for the winter.

16 October 2008: A couple nights ago Melissa and I both dreamed of bears. Both of the bears were big and neither of us were afraid. I feel quite connected to this place now. And though I've been a week without work and stressed out, the sunset gets me everytime!