you know the saying "if you want to make god laugh, tell her your plans"

I hear a whisper "let go, honey"
and i say "i fucking can't"
She knows that surrender is not an action
She knows that I can  not surrender by will
and with skill, she puts the pressure in the right places
-deep tissue work on my soul-
it's never been up to me anyway
i can rest

Blessing (in English, because I can't type the word in Chinese)

My heart will always remind me how out of shape I am.

Right now it's pounding hard.  I didn't do anything particularly stressful, I just got back from lunch with a new friend from Taiwan.  She had to get her rental car back to Boston, or I would have convinced her to stay in Northampton longer.

I taught her the word "spontaneous".   We were talking about heading to New York.  I almost decided to get in my car and follow her to Boston this very moment, but then that heart started to pound and won over spontaneity.  We are now planning on heading there on Christmas Day.

I just logged into CouchSurfing.org, the site that is responsible for our meeting yesterday.  I am sending her my e-mail address and beginning to look into places to stay in New York.

Coincidentally, we ran into my friend Anna, who I met this summer via CouchSurfing.org at lunch while we were discussing our New York options.  Anna grew up in Brooklyn, and only just moved to Massachusetts this summer.  She stayed on our couch while looking for an apartment.

"Do you want a ride, I'm going tomorrow?"

Wu Meng-Rong, who goes by Florence in English speaking countries, told me last night that she has been very lucky in her travels.  She just finished a two-month intensive English language course, so here and there we have to take time to find the words to explain ourselves.  I suggested that her luck may be contagious and spread to me with my travels.  I explained contagious.

At lunch I was about to write down "spontaneous" and "contagious" and then I ask our server what his favor vocabulary word was.  "You know, something slang, or maybe just a word that you Florence may not know yet."  He came up with "manifest."   This was right before Anna came to our table and offered us a ride to the city.

I like luck.  Luck is nice.  Blessings are nice.  Spontaneity is nice, too.  Contagious luck is nice.  Being responsible for a traveler having a good time in New York city is...  stressful...  But, I get to work in the word "manifest."

There's my heart pounding.

Anna is going to stop by my house in a little bit.  I had cancelled plans with her last night because Florence had an extra ticket to Rufus Wainwrite.  I planned on calling her after Florence left town today, but instead she was at the cafe we decided to eat at.   Now I get to hang out with my friend, and ask for her help in alleviating my anxiety about New York.

I used to take the bus to New York alone.  I don't know what the big deal is.  I think it's just that I don't know the city quite well enough to show someone around for her first time.  Whenever I go, I am either visiting friends or family, or spending a solid day at the Met.  Just the Met.

------

Anna came by shortly after Florence left.  We had pumpkin cheesecake and skullcap tea and talked about "important things", her new love, my resistance to romantic relationships, her discipline and life changes, my ever-evolving travel plans, our gratitude for everyone and every thing.  Our gratitude for being capable of finding gratitude.  She's engaged, and telling her family this weekend. She's knitting her mom slippers.

"If you're so stressed out about the city, are you sure that you should go."
"Yes.   My anxiety is always caused by the thoughts that lead up to an event, not by the event itself.  And, I want to travel for an extended period of time.  Soon.  It's really important for me to look at the possible fears and anxieties and deal with them now, as opposed to while I'm in a foreign country."

We got to talking about how we deal with stress and anxiety.  I told her about my use of the tarot, not as divination but as a meditation and reflection on the inner forces that can motivate us, or dominate us.    We both have a deep respect and interest for cross-cultural symbolism, and for spirituality that transcends dogmatic religion.  She is Jewish, and I was raised Catholic, and we both meditate and borrow ideas and practices from whatever inspires us.  I brought our my deck to show her.

We're both chatty people, so it took a little while before the cards came out.  "Oh, pick one."  I thumbed through for a moment.

I picked the Chariot.

Sweet Chariot.

I'm going to look up the Chinese words for "synchronicity" (which my spell check tells me is not a word, but wickipedia disagrees) and "coincidence."

After a while of looking at the cards and talking about our lives, Anna was off.  She asked me to wish her luck in announcing her engagement to her family this weekend.
"It's going to be perfect.  Hey.  Hug me!"

"Our friendship is such a special important part of my life, D."
"Anna, me too.  I'm so grateful for you."

Chance?  Luck?  Blessing?. Coincidence?  Fate?  Random assignment?  Destiny?  I don't know.  I ask myself these questions all the time, and I'll never "know."

I'm just grateful.  Even for this heart that still beating with a little more excitement than appears to be required. It's okay.  I could be numb.  I could be dead.  I could live a life where I never challenge myself at all.

Instead I'm going to New York City, on a whim, with a new friend.  In the dead winter, the spirit of travel and adventure has returned.

ships that sail..

My heart skips, then pounds.  I bat around my bed, sheets, blankets... phone.  It's only 5 am.  Go back to sleep.

I dream about a cafe, somewhere.  Somewhere else.

I check the phone again.  It's 6:27.

Sleep won't come to my right side, or my left.  I try my stomach.  I don't try my back.  It hurts too much to lie on my back.

Doctors visit at 11:45.  Could it be earlier?  Should I call and see?

I say a short prayer.  Something about being grateful.  My body aches, and I can't stay still any longer.

I get up and wander aimlessly.  I turn on the espresso machine, but I don't make espresso.  I take seven minutes to find my journal, but I don't write in my journal.  I stand at the mirror for a very long time.  

I can't even begin to imagine what the doctor could possibly tell me.  I don't trust doctors, generally, but I kind of like the one I've got now.  He's just always so damn rushed.

There is a woman in this mirror here.  I am certainly not seventeen anymore.  I  work hard and manage things, like my calendar and my budget and my weight and my alcohol consumption.  I've birthed dreams and I've buried dreams, and I will myself to dream some more.

Shortly after we broke up, my very close friend and now ex-boyfriend told me that his experience of his late twenties (Saturn returning) was "a lot like standing at a dock where all the boats are leaving."

Maybe I'm afraid of ships.  Maybe I've jumped from too many burning, sinking ships.  Maybe I imagined that my whole life would be on ships that then broke and burned and settled in splintered pieces into their dark watery graves.  Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself for delaying this whole ship-picking business.  Maybe I'm weary of that wild, uncaring sea.

I've already started to put money away for travelling.  I don't even know where I'm going yet.  I dream of Greece, Caracas, India, Prague, Rome.  I dream of siestas after large meals in small towns, and hiking to picnic lunches on Irish bluffs.  Old monasteries, broken empires, ghost hallowed fortresses, vibrant barrios.  I want to be a quiet stranger in the marketplace,  I want to see the "angels in the architecture".  Passionate people, simple-living people, socialites and monks...  People and places to blow on the embers of this fiery woman, subdued by heart break and cold fear.  

There's not much use in thinking about what I'll do if the doctor says this or the doctor says that.  I'm still thinking about it anyway. 

Another prayer.  I can still be grateful.  Infinite ships minus one or two ships still equals infinite ships.  

The Charioteer

The Charioteer is sitting, contemplating, holding the wheel of possibility and fortune in his hand.  He knows a stillness that survives war.  

"Swing low, sweet chariot, coming to take me home."

The name sweet Chariot came to me before I looked for the meaning.  While that seems backwards, it makes sense.  So much about this trip is in reverse.

For example, I have no idea where I'm going, but I've begun saving money and adjusting my life to leave.  I'm simply exploring.  The world, the people, and myself, and the connection between us all.

"Leap and the net will appear."

The Sweet Chariot.  A warrior, sitting in lotus position.  Armored, like the crab, protecting the soft and gentle nature within.  She holds the power to change her fortune.  She is unafraid.

"Swing low, sweet chariot, coming to take me home."  A home that comes with me wherever I go.  A home right in my very own bones.

Every single morning I realize that I've been dreaming myself into other cities through the night.  I'm a world traveler in my sleeping hours.

I meditate every day, and I pray every day.  Every day, I am grateful.  Every day, I say thank you.  

I've been forming travel plans based on prayers and daydreams and sleeping dreams that repeat themselves in themes and feelings.  I wake up every morning with the vivid dreams that won't let sunshine scatter them.

These dreams follow me through the day, singing and laughing and jumping and clapping and cheering.  Then there's the grand jam session of dreaming sleep, where the new ideas mix with the running plans and create a masterpiece of smoke and steam that is entirely unique to its moment in time.  Then I wake again, and like the previous day, dream-riff stowaways cling to my hair and play their songs around my ears throughout my wakeful hours.  Repeating and repeating, like catchy songs will, until their emulation and transformation into the next evening's dream.

All plans are like catchy riffs from the evening jam session of ideas and may or may not be used in the final composition.

Sister Elizabeth says, "If the dream escapes, don't worry.  If it is important, it will come back to you."

These dreams are serenading.  Determined to stick around this time. Winning my heart anew with every note that the play. 

The Sweet Chariot

And thus begins the travel plans.

I woke up one morning and found that an old dream had returned like a prodigal son.

Ten years ago, when I was 18, I had a pocket full of hand made Italian vocabulary flashcards and a dream of travelling.  And then I fell in love with a fellow, and we had a whole different type of journey.   It was valuable, but it didn't include backpacks at all.

The other long lost dreams must of caught word that I have so welcoming of my first prodigal child, because they've been returning to my mind so frequently it's a wonder I can focus on the present.  Sometime, an old dream, like an old lover, comes alone, gentle and quiet, and sometimes many come, like high school friends, like a crashing party, raucous and endearing.  They show up on my pillow and the spaces between my active thoughts. I adore their company, and I feed them and care for them and, a in short time, I've noticed that they are growing with me and on me.

I'm in Portland, Oregon right now, at the other side of my country.  In the next year I will connect with as many travelling souls as I can.  There's so much to learn from others, but what I'm looking for, I know, is in me, myself.

I will write more about my ever morphing plan as time goes on.  At the moment, I do believe it will begin in the U.S. with some volunteer work, some time in monasteries, and some time couch surfing and getting to know the cities and the city folk.  There will be a bike, trains, and monks.  I'll most likely make a lot of mistakes, and then I'll head to Great Britain.

For now, while I'm still listening to dreams that I had once sent packing, everything is subject to change.  Everything except the fact that I am going, and that I will be going alone.

I'll go in about thirteen months.

On June 15th, 2011, my lease will be over and I be on the road.