home

My heart pounded when we got to the front door of our condo. I felt as if I didn't know what I would see behind it, that was the strangest part. What kind of changes or surprises was I expecting? But we opened the door into our old home (and yet a relatively new home--we were newly moved right before we left to travel), and then it was with the greatest relief that I stumbled in and looked around at the scene we had so carefully set up before our departure. The furnishings and easy flow of energy were exactly as I remembered, so lovely to be home, such a stark contrast to the previous months' travel.

But when I woke up this morning, I felt off-balance in my own space. I don't know how to explain it properly, I was just out of my element being in my element. So many hours of movement and so many different beds and bus seats which had served as my bed and now I was still. I found myself oddly unsettled in my very own sheets, waking up to the blinding, buttery California sunshine bathing my bedroom. Why did it all feel so foreign? Musky air from my absence and incense on my shelves, they irked my senses as I awoke and started investigating my little spatial world. Thailand, only two weeks ago, a foreign place that had started to feel so familiar, and now I was back and reorienting myself to the sensory experience of being in a place that should feel like home, but didn't quite yet...

It was the smell of basil dishwashing soap, familiar and surprisingly delicious in its familiarity, that returned me to a surprising sense of stability. It awoke in me old habits of starting my mornings early with washing the dishes and cleaning the counters in anticipation of a new day and new beginnings. Basil dishwashing soap. Who could have guessed that it would be such a comforting and grounding sort of aroma? In fact all the smells I encountered this morning were amazingly affective, my senses waking up to the perfumes and soaps of my space, bringing me back to a real sense of belonging...I felt more animal than human as I investigated them all.

I brushed my hands over surfaces, straightened pillows, opened and closed drawers, reexamined old images from memories that seemed long past and continued--and continue--to come flooding back with the aggressive hereandnow of being home. It's not just reorienting myself to this space, it's coming to terms with the fact that I am at the end of something powerful, and knowing that the world is the same and not the same, and that I am different and not all that different, but I am back in a little world that is, for all intensive purposes, mine to settle into again. All that anxiety I felt when I stood outside my front door, wondering with nonsensical apprehension if I would know the space awaiting me inside, all that anxiety has been slowly slipping away as I wander back and forth through the inner doorways of my apartment. I am finally realizing and falling in love again with stillness. It is another gift from the trip, to feel peace at the end of so much movement, a savasana of grand proportions.

move

The last week in Thailand just disappeared... Back to the States. So strange. So exciting and yet so so strange. Even though we knew the end was coming and both Emily and I were actually looking forward to the change, it was hard to process how fast it arrived.

Naturally I became broody, and spent the better half of our last week battling my anticipation for home and my resistance to leaving. It was touch and go there as I did my best to stay in the moment rather than with my thoughts flitting around to the future and the past and back to the future again...until the last day when we arrived in Phuket. An insane drive through the city. One of the sharp turns and narrow misses we made in that van threw some sense into me (or knocked some sense out of me, depending on your views of that whole sort of thing) and I was absolutely present in Thailand. The sun was going down behind heavy wet clouds as the neon lights of the citystreets illuminated a smoky dome of neon glows and tourists and locals and bumpertobumper and a whole lot of bass, all rising from the streets under the tires of our windy ride. I felt nostalgic for the familiarity of that chaos.

The Phuket drive was a total throwback to a specific taxi drive in Bangkok, a moment that stands out to me now as one of things I love most about Thailand. A taxi drive making that much of an impact? It might not make a whole lot of sense, but the crazy spirit of the drive was full of everything I loved about being there. It caught me off guard and made me appreciate the present (which, I realize time and again, can change its tone from moment to moment).

We were stalled for thirty minutes in the middle of Bangkok waving down a taxi, while our time to catch a bus was slipping away with each denial. We were getting increasingly desperate for help. The guy who finally gave into my pleas, Buddhist bow, and promise to be the best passengers of his night (despite his reluctance to brave the traffic en route to the southern bus terminal), he was my favorite random friend. He swerved and sped and created VIP traffic lanes out of thin air, all the while filling the car with the best soundtrack for the spirit of our rush. He was the first guy who didn't try to get more money out of us than was fair (so we tipped him 50%). Fate denied us the other drivers who brushed us by.

And there in Phuket with another driver who took his soundtrack seriously but laughed at life in general, shouting out his windows, veering around cars in a way that should have made me fear for my life but instead assured me that we were in safe hands. It brought the whole Thai experience full circle for our last night there and I couldn't stop smiling.

But of course we realized only minutes after my romantic revelation that our real last night was the night before because, somehow, we had remembered the dates wrong. Our flight was in 6 hours. Ah well. 

We concluded our travels with an Indian dinner, a harried departure, and then an excruciatingly long day of travel. (Longest day of my life--no exaggeration--December 18th will have lasted for 31 hours for us when all is said and done. I consider this further proof that Time is no respectable unit of measurement and hours, minutes, and seconds as we know them are merely fantastical constructs of the human imagination.)

....I am currently in the 20th hour of December 18th and on the second plane, this time traveling from Seoul to Tel Aviv. (The flight paths laid out for us are just as nonsensical as the hours.) To think that only days ago I was simply worried about mini buses and ferries. 

In fact less than a week ago, Emily and I were squeezed into the umpteenth mini bus of our trip, traversing the jungles and en route to another island. The islands of Thailand were languid and delicious but molasses-slow, slower than anything else we saw in Thailand (and slower than anything we're getting into now, on our way home). There was also the rainforest, and that was a world away from anything else, a destination outside of Thailand, deep in Thailand: tree temples, hidden stone chambers, sparkling walls glossed by watery sheets pooling into a rushing stream on a cave tunnel floor. We trudged through mud and over fallen logs, until we were waist deep--chest deep--neck deep in chilled water from the jungle. Another world--and we were only on the edges.

But no matter where we were, the trip always moved on before we were settled, much too little time for all that we wanted to see. Emily and I ended the rush and noise of the trip with a quiet oasis of an island, bringing everything down into a low hum. Maybe it's because Koh Lanta was our last destination, but our time on the island felt much longer than any other portion of our trip. Time swelled into a silent calm. We rode bikes down the main street (as far as I know, the only street) of the island, slicing through red puddles of mud as the rain soaked our clothes through to the skin. What else is there to do when a warm rainstorm is crashing your plans? It was exhilarating to surrender to the elements and another opportunity to laugh at our misguided planning. After so much excitement, our closing ceremonies took place with books, wine, and rain.

In retrospect, better to end on that sort of note...the rain washed away anxiety, the stillness prepared me for the silent meditation of transition, and then hours later...still writing on the same piece...I'm seamlessly in another country in another time zone (and in hours I will be in yet another). The transitions are neverending, but the most important movements are happening within. Words seem a bit superfluous at this point...

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances.
That's not for human beings. Move within,
but don't move the way fear makes you move.
--Rumi

here

Warm wind swirls brown leaves off the ground and carries the laughter and songs of a wedding celebration over Jaffa. The live music is bright and joyful, but there is also a nostalgic quality to its tone, haunting and beautiful. Stray cats leap from stone steps stretched out around us. The city lights across the way contrast with the dark ocean below the hill. This is our first night in Tel Aviv and the city has already swept me off my feet. 

Our tour guide, Yoav, tells us that even though he expects we will have lots of questions throughout the ten days of Taglit-Birthright, we should expect more questions and less answers. "You'll find a way to answer questions later."

***

The first night in Tel Aviv felt like a meditation on what was to come, a moment to reflect on how much I still have to learn about my Jewish roots--and about identity, community, and spirituality in general. My experience of being human is part of an unfathomably larger fabric of history. Perhaps in understanding that history better, I can come to understand my small part better. Israel is so rich with stories of the past, it feels consequential to simply stand on the soil. But then my exploration will also extend beyond Israel and take a turn into complete unfamiliarity in South East Asia. This is a testament to the even greater community of being human that extends beyond myself and my family and my notions of spiritual awareness.

My intention prior to leaving the USA was to find "clarity," to obtain a sense of security in my spiritual and emotional faculties. This seems more like the analytical agenda of my rational mind. The type of clarity I am really seeking isn't about feeling secure and placid, nor about finding answers and making conclusions. Yoav assured us that the more we learn, the more questions we will have. That sounds more like spiritual and self-exploration, doesn't it? Life is messy and expansive. True clarity, then, should light the way down the infinite path of exploration, so as to continue the search.

Before leaving, I put so much weight on this trip, as if it were to be the literal manifestation of my allegorical exploration of life. True, traveling, at its core, is always something like that. A person shakes off all the familiar and sets off into the unknown--that desire to shift scenery must come from a deeper desire to expand. But if I put too much emphasis on searching for clarity or finding answers, I might just miss the point. Much better to be here now.

The beginning of this trip kicked off with my 25th birthday. It feels like starting fresh, like a new phase--and I can't imagine a better place to begin than in Israel. This country is very special. Such a heavy past and so rich a culture, yet the atmosphere is welcoming and light.

We've been here only three days, but my Birthright group generally agrees that time is irrelevant--it might as well have been weeks at this point. So far our stay has been a fantastic blur of hummus, bus rides, political and religious discussions, hot thick air, dust, hookah, and fast bonding. The relationships we are building as a group--superficial as they might be after what is in actuality a very short time--feel surprisingly easy and organic. These are good people. Everyone is so open, they just come as they are.

I'm finding myself more grounded and clear-headed than I've felt in a very long time. I think it has something to do with the welcome familiarity of living out of a backpack and definitely from the laid-back group of people with whom I am lucky enough to travel. I feel free to be myself, passionate and curious and messy as ever. All my heavy expectations about what this trip could be are dissolving into the reality of what it is: I am in a magical place with a little community of beautiful people, waking up every day to wildly different experiences than I have ever had before.

Just yesterday we hiked through the Golan Heights. We ran up rocky paths and found shade from the sun in a cool tree tunnel arching over a stream. Later at Mount Bental, we stood on top of an old bunker and waved to Syria next door. Then last night, Emily and I led a mini drunken yoga session under the stars. Emily learned how to salsa dance and count to ten in Hebrew. Today, our entire group of forty-five sang together in an echoey, ancient citadel in Safed. Emily and I drank fresh squeezed pomegranate juice and ate our third meal of falafels.

And tonight, we are in Jerusalem. It's only day three....I'm in total bliss and blowing my mind.