Un nuevo ciclo...

Wow, I had a great time in Texas, mil thanks to Angie who made my stay not only enjoyable but pretty amazing. Salsa dancing was fun, even though there was no one to dance with who actually knew how to dance. Thrifting and ice cream and tearing up the garden was all made even better by the sweet, warm Texan air. I found that with the sun and warmth, I didn't even consider needing a cup of coffee in the morning. Even though I missed my city bus that was to take me to my Greyhound bus, a friendly bus driver and Greyhound attendant later I made it to my bus just as the last boarding call was announced. I should be more careful, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of a "washateria" a few blocks from Angie's house and that's exactly when the number 4 rolled on by. Ah, well, things work out.

The bus trips were long. 14 hours from Fort Worth to Monterrey, typical Greyhound nonsense, mainstream media in dirty, overcrowded stations, dehydration, no stop at immigration, comical border crossing, all that. Another 11 hours from Monterrey to Leon and then a short 50 minute ride to Guanajuato, where both Abraham and Jonathan were waiting. I tried defying the exhaustion and dehydration (me vale!) and went with Abraham to Bar Fly. But after 2 beers, I just couldn't anymore and we went back to a friend of Abraham's place to crash. Still, it was nice to be received with hugs and kisses from my very favorite bartenders in all of Mexico.

My tongue is still trying to wrap itself around Spanish words. It's a process, but it's going well. At least I'm confident that there's no going back into not understanding and speaking just requires practice.

Yesterday Abraham and I hitched to his house in Celaya. My, I love Mexican families, everyone joking with each other but in very loving ways, a complete sense of security and warmth, beautiful. Mom made us rice and picadillo and Dad was curious and asked me a lot of questions about the food in the United States. One sister kept talking about my eyes and the little brother showed me a new trick he learned with some magnets he bought at school. After a completely necessary nap, we went to Irapuato with a friend of Abraham to their african percussion ensemble's practice. I was practically muerta of exhaustion but the music was great. It let me meditate for a while, made me even more intrigued by rhythym, tones, the songs. I met a Saudi Arabian fella at Bar Fly last night who gave me a necklace with a little clay djembe on it. I told him it would be my inspiration to actually learn some drumming. So, today I called Abraham and told him if he would give me classes, I would take him to Morelia to visit some other drumming friends and it looks like we'll go tomorrow. Good, good. Todo va bien.

Resolute.

One day all the snow in Kalamazoo just up and melted. This year I didn't get to go sledding. I did, however, discover new and old friendships, dance a whole hell of a lot, conspire, derive epic poems from our lives, capture some images, listen to my friends play beautiful and silly and loving music, bang on a drum, eat breakfast at the Blue Dolphin not once but twice, experience multiple slumber parties even at the age of 24, free wrestle until I couldn't anymore, and become reacquainted with a town I wasn't sure I loved anymore. I spent a lot of time at the new coffee shop Dino's, as well, and felt quite at home.

I met so many new, great folks and I am looking forward to developing even more meaningful friendships with them. Old friends are everything that poets say of them. How can a gal be so lucky to know so many talented, lovely, damn cool folks? Of course, no one's perfect but in my friends' faults I see the things I want to change about myself and if I can't change myself, I've got no right to tell them so, no?

My family was also amazing and frustrating and I am happy I stayed longer than I had intended. All of my friends from Mexico were saying, "How can you just leave your family if they want you to stay?" They were right, of course, another lesson from the south. One thing I've noticed among travelers is a disconnect, whether by necesity or choice or simply neglect, with their families. I don't want that and in fact, I consider it an abuse of the privilege of coming from a culture where youth are not expected anymore to maintain ties with their family, especially if they might compromise one's "freedom." Chale. If I'd listened to my own, selfish desire to take off, disregarding the folks who gave me a life and home, I never would have gotten to dance polka with my grandma. How silly I can be sometimes.

My last night in Michigan was spent with some truly incredible folks in a yurt on a farm in Bangor, MI, a very nice transition from the city to the solitude of traveling alone on the train. Thank God there was a guitar and the dinner was amazing, the poems and the stories and the smiles and the laughs and our dear little Forrest.

The train ride to Texas went surprisingly fast. Now I'm wondering if I need to find an even slower way to travel. Hitching, I suppose.

I did have a bit of time to think, though, and I'm getting close to a clear formulation of my resolutions for the new year. They involve a continuance of last year's theme "honesty," a new theme related to assertiveness or being very aware of exactly what I want and how to communicate it, and investment in people and places. Many other things, too.

Now I'm in Fort Worth, Texas with Angie, who I met and lived with in San Cristobal. We caught up on our ever-dramatic lives, ran around the FW Botanical Gardens, drank margaritas and rode bikes, played tag (normal and freeze) and danced- all in one night!

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.