Monday evening

Most immediately, I became aware of the fact that an island off the North Island of NZ which is a volcano, blew this afternoon, killing some people and injuring more. I saw some videos and read some news articles. It very well could have been me, as I'm a tourist. I just happen to be in the South Island right now and I was more monitoring the floods and land/rockslides that have rendered a large chunk of the South Island impassable due to the road damage. In particular, Franz Josef area where I spent some time last year. I feel more justified in having done my advanced directives at the very least, and intend to contemplate death and dying more as I continue to practice [meditation].

I've now felt my first several senses of community and they are sweet. But quite fleeting. The hostel (locally called a "backpackers") I've been staying at here in Nelson has a few solid folks who are long-termers and I feel very safe, comfortable, appreciated, and a sense of belonging amongst them. So I stayed for 5 nights instead of 4, and will be heading out in the morning to my first workaway, a family who owns a wine tour company in a vineyard-filled sprawling area about 2 hours south of here. It's rural, and I anticipate helping out with various tasks around the house, cooking, cleaning, and childcare for a little tot- not sure how old. I am looking forward to being in a real kitchen and having access to spices, oils, and raw ingredients. I hope. I have no idea what the dynamic will be, but I'll find out. I'll also relish being around a kid again and being able to engage in home-maintaining tasks, whatever they may be.

These long termers include a very bro-y mountain biker who is camper-vanning around from Squamish, CA, a bearded twinkly smiled Yang-gangster from Cleveland who immediately pinned me as American due to my Nalgene and Osprey (yup), a charismatic Brit named Callum who has a tattoo of Thing 1 and Thing 2 prancing on the inside of his bicep, a spunky German girl who's got a job at a local Italian restaurant and a French girl who is gluten free ("not by choice") and is also a solo traveler.

Part of me wants to really get into some of the emotional underpinnings to everything that happens rather than simply report happenings and remarkable circumstances. I haven't quite figured out how to disclose with grace and skill and measured boundaries rather than an unfiltered vulnerability that is not wise to have on the internet.

The beach tournament was challenging disc-wise, as the wind was so intense the entire time, except the 2nd half of the very last game on Sunday when instead of gale-force winds, there was monsoon rains. Very hard to complete any passes. Several games went by without any break points. It was more like an homage to ultimate than anything else. Communal-energy wise it was really great and I relished in feeling again, a sense of belonging and purpose. Being a part of something, generally accepted, and able to engage. I even reconnected with a few people I had met playing pickup here last year, and got that fervent buzz of a tournament when there is just so many hours in a 48 hour period spent amongst people that it's like a crash course in getting to know random strangers. At least for me, playing in a hat tournament in another country.

There continues to be ups and downs, disappointments, moments of pause, rapture at the beautiful nature, distress and resignedness, lament and shame. Doubt and wistfulness, glee and relief and longing.

And I left my cute little mini Dr. Bronner's bottle of soap I brought at a hostel in Auckland. So now I'm soapless.

*If you are reading this and have any questions about NZ, travel, me, or otherwise, feel free to comment and/or otherwise get in touch with me and ask, and I will address it in this blog.

First few days having reached the destination

I've been struggling a bit the last few days. Upsurges of emotion have swelled and peaked from seemingly miniscule catalysts, leaving me tossed and akimbo. There have been a few of these, and I found my responses to be even clearer than in the past. The qualities of these swells are fairly familiar and definitive by now. The sense of overarching foreboding, the irrelevance of time. Concepts like relativity, perspective, and reason are remote. My recent polyvagal orientation had me orient immediately towards reaching for co-regulation opportunities with people. Thank you to those of you who met me and showed/continue to show me love and stability. Being shown attuned love and steadfast presence is something I did not get as a kid and am working on internalizing the idea that it is possible.

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The one hitchhiking attempt I've made thus far has yielded pride and humility. Phil from Tonga gave me a ride that took 15 minutes and would have taken 2 hours on buses.

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Tempering assertiveness and practicing extending vocal interjections, rescinding hasty demands. The default for this body and persona is to defer, allow, assuage, quell, soften, assist, morph. Be malleable. Fill in, smooth.

Thank you Eitan for reminding me to give it a chance. I will give it a chance.

Podcasts Creeping Into My Life

Of course I've known about podcasts for years but similar to many things, I turn the other cheek and avoid the bandwagon. Sometime in the last 6 months or so, I finally got on board. I think it began in anticipation of some travel- an attempt at occupying myself on the plane. Or while I'd bike the half hour to or from the gym I had been going to in Portland. 

I had heard of a few and checked them out, to minimal yield. This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, The Moth. I will admit there is something about knowing that a podcast is widely lauded that repels me. This is in no way based in logic. These days I've been listening to a fair bit of travel podcasts (unsurprisingly) in implicit and slightly sub-but mostly conscious ways of psyching myself up for this trip. These have been Dirtbag Diaries and Zero To Travel. And the occasional geeky avian or meteorological podcast by a kiwi to 'acquaint myself with the accent.' I mainly vacillate between travel/backpacking podcasts and trauma/somatic/attachment podcasts. Peter Levine and Gabor Mate are interviewed on a lot of them. 

I'm writing this from a king-sized clean and soft bed in Kailua, Hawaii. In an auspicious facebook post reply, I learned that an old friend from Boulder contra dance's parents live here and would be tickled to host me for this 24 hour Thanksgiving layover. It's the end of a long day that began with a 6:30 AM alarm, waking me up from a dream that vividly highlighted my ongoing challenge and practice with assertiveness. I cleared up the last of my room, made one final illegal-dumping run to a big trash bin at a neighboring apartment complex, and drank echinacea elderberry team with a splash of unsweetened vanilla hemp milk. Bye-bye Portland. 

Something that's been so profound thus far with this transition is the bringing to the forefront and recognition of communities I have become a part of, formed and fomented (I don't know what this word means but it belongs here). I have worked pretty hard to think through all the aspects of life that would need to shift and end, how that would go, and how to carry it out. A real executive functioning bonanza. I gave 2.5 months notice at work and stewarded that as best I could. It feels like a distant memory now, every Tuesday and Thursday since Oct 2015 heading down to Oregon City. Finding my favorite Mexican food ever, including that which is in Mexico itself, just 2 blocks from my workplace in OC - Super Torta. 

Communities... I went to the Tuesday night contact improv jam one last time. It's been maybe 2 years since I've attended regularly, but I must have gone enough that I know a critical mass of people, made an impression, and got some love and care when I announced by departure. I've had some extra special one-on-one hangouts with people over the last week, mainly from Aspen Grove. Really cherish my one-on-one sits and hangouts with sangha members. Even though it took us a year+ to finally make it happen. Even at home, my relationship with my community members [affectionately termed 'fostervillains'] has taken on a sweet and more authentic and deliberate texture in recent days and weeks. 

Writing this is a bit laborious, because I'm doing a lot of considering of who might read it and what they will think. That's unnecessary caretaking. It's also clarifying, and I really doubt it'll last through this trip, but I am still on board with the idea of going for it and seeing how it unfolds. I have a desire to connect with people in my life, express myself, share and be shared with, see and be seen. And heard. This could be a platform for that but it also begs the dichotomy blogs often split upon: sharing the narrative details, or sharing my emotions that undercurrent the observable aforementioned? 

Tomorrow I leave on Thursday morning. Thanksgiving. After a 9 hour flight to Auckland, I'll be arriving about 10 PM Friday night. I guess this is how you miss Thanksgiving and Black Friday. 

PS: The plane to Honolulu was so empty I got a row of 5 seats to myself. 

Hi folks,
I managed to both locate and dust off my old blog that I created and populated back in 2009. I was an undergrad at NYU and wrote some cringe-worthy missives. It'd be silly to delete them though; posterity reigns. Ten years later and I'm still lexically oriented, and heading to New Zealand for some unknown amount of time.

A few people asked me if I'd be documenting my trip in any virtual form and my answer  has been a shrugging "no" thus far. But I'm socially porous and sway, so I'll take this stab at a new routine and see how much traction it gains. It's 3 days before I leave Portland and I want to kick this off by memorializing a handwritten poem I've hung on to for a few years. I'll recycle the paper and type it here:

Tooth Care

Thomas and I have been discussing

in a most heated way

The pros and cons of our flossing methods,

respectively

Right to left, top to bottom

middle to outside

before the brush, after, before + after

Disposable pick

length of string. Dial it back

waxen, flaxen, everlasting

What a time, if we could all

freely share our true flossophies

On the back of the page I wrote this poem. A different energy to be sure:

Entering closed

bound up, a taut hotel fitted sheet

foundation intact

passed all inspections

I guess I have to socialize

what does that mean again?

Every time I lock eyes with a definition,

the pieces shift

your gaze evades me

bite my lip

gnaw on my nail

dissociate

                                    Thank you,

                                              I trust you to

                                             bring me back

Crumbling Inhibitions

My walls are crumbling. As the hours pass, I am losing my anxiety that is so deeply rooted and my innards are exposing themselves. It feels so swell. I have been more present, and that is what allowed me to dive for so many low discs in the freshly mown grass as thrown by Ben, mowed by Just, just this morning. The grass is so supportive, and I always roll out a couple times round my hips. For gratuitous good measure. So we got mad sweaty, and then went to the quarry. Me, Ben, and Emily. "Clothing optional." I kept my pants on, because I am a boy, and can bare my chest. When we went out to toss, one of the salsa dancers was "sun-dipping-skinny-bathing" as Ben described it. I jokingly made a comment along the lines of "she wants you" and surprise of all surprises, Ben took off his shirt and said "bring it on!" heh. well. what a lookcomer. After throwing and cutting and laying out and general bliss, we winded down, and went to the quarry for a swim. Which i mentioned. Above.

Another instance of crumbling inhibitions:

I wandered into the kitchen where chocolate chip cookies were being made. Keren spontaneously danced, and so did I , and so did Just. I could describe it in detail, but I don't want to. You want to. Maybe I should consider this lifestyle. Maybe I shoulld consider more fads, like Obama.

Autism and nature.

This is an excerpt from an email I just wrote to the father of one of the kids I tend to/teach/ hang with.
I've been feeling like there has to be more similarities between me, and the other people here (inasmuch as we have communicated these enlightened and mutually understood feelings) and people with autism. I don't know what is different between us, but someone who acts in such a bizarre way as Alex does, must have something ese going on. I don't think it's a quanitity issue, but rather a difference in flavor, or even language. But the difference from an actual language, is that thus far, the various "autistic languages" have not been thoroughly uncovered.

Time for lunch and a staff meeting in a house made of twigs. Here is the excerpt:

"anyway it has me thinking, about alex. Mainly prompted because the head chef has been playing that bob marley album when he makes the meals, and ive been helping him. So it's really different here, obviously it's the wilderness. I think it is worth a try for Alex, as much or little as anything else, and it might even be less costly than some pie-in-he-sky medical treatment (im not meaning to discount anything, just to paint what i am saying in a positive light.)

I mean, you can see stars here. And when it is dark, it is so dark that you cant see even the darkness. It's thick. I'm sure you have felt it sometime. And there is so much less stimulation, and distraction. I mean, there is the inside, where it is simple, and we cook the food. And the outside, where there is grass and trees and woods and a quarry (water). I guess I have 2 ideas about why this might be good for alex : the obvious, calming, meditative, therapeutic of being in nature and away from all the things that are simulated in the city. I mean, let's face it - Alex acts pretty primal. The inhibitions just aren't on his radar, and things are more like that here. I'm not saying we eat with our hands caked in mud, but there are readily available reasons for doing everything we do, and none of them are related to disipline, or chastising for being physical with someone else (that said, there is respect and this is a dancey-yoga-ish place, but im thinking that maybe there wo
uld be less stimuli for Alex's meltdowns over here, since there is less stimuli to begin with.

2nd point: It is humbling, deafening, and beilttling. I feel beittled being around all this nature,because i am reduced to being a thing / creature of nature as well. especially at night, with the stars - it is scary, but because it is "the way it is" - there is nobody to go to to request a light be turned on. When I let that notion sink in, then it becomes more calming than scary, because it is just howthe world is supposed to be. I don't think that everyday life for a kid in the city, especially an autistic kid, is anything how life is 'spposed to be'. I mean, everyone has to be able to wait in lines, but where there are naturally fewer people, there are fewer lines. That is just a tiny example. I also read this book where this teacher/mentor went camping with an autistic nonverbal boy for a week and didn't feed him until the boy made the correct hand signs for the food, and other neccesities. I am not saying that you should dump Alex on a wagon with some gluten free pretz
els and a chew toy and call it a vacation week, but as far as a real transformation happening, it might be beneficial, or at least worth trying, a huge environmental change. Arguably, the insides cannot change no matter how much environmental altering and enhancement goes on. But the try. At the very least, he will be aware of his limits in relation to the greater natural forces out there.

EarthDance

I am spending a week at earth dance. earthdance.net. It is 45 minute drive away from the nearest town (Northampton) and thus it is different from anything I have ever done. I am not really doing it. I mean, I am doing it. I just went to the creamery. a little shoppe. down the road, a lot of miles. we picked up an order of yogurt from sidehill farm in vermont, where we get our yogurt [apparently.]

This week is different from most weeks here at Earthdance - its salsa camp/week/ convention. 50 women are here from all over the world (I know this because a handful of them don't speak English, and I can't understand when they try to request butter knives or spare towels or jugs of water, or an amalgam of the 3.) So I am a staff member here, and that entitles me to be here. I have a shift or 2 or 3 a day, cleaning, sweeping, taking out the trash, cursory bathroom cleaning (obligatory grimace) and burning the burnables! In every bathroom there is a bin for burnables. It means burnable things. Like toilet paper rolls or paper towels used to dry off your hands. No bodily fluids, please! Those are NOT burnable here. So this morning, Ben (head honcho-type) and I headed off through the woods to the furnace/sauna / quarry place and lit some fire in a fireplace-type-place and kept stuffing the burnables in and watched their edges curl in iridiescent orange flamules, as they became ash and char, making way for the rest of the burnables to burn.

I have been asking a ton of questions here, becuase I am not afraid to ask, and I have questions. Nothing that goes on here is typical of the supposed world that I was brought up into. I helpedCalyan, the head chef, make dinner last night. from 4-7 pm I chopped, peeled, diced 'n' sliced veggies, and then stir fried them in a wok, which all resulted in a sore arm and fingers, and a small sliver of skin sliced off of my left middle finger, and a hot splash of safflower oil on my wrist. But all is well, and we created a mean meal for 65 people. 50 salsa dancing women and 10 staffers. Fish chowder, Sweet potato Lentil stew, kale, veggie stirfry, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now. Everything is made in these huge bowls. Late last night Calyan came into the kitchen and made granola from scratch. I watched him make it. I don't think he is terribly fond of me, as I was asking him lots of questions and every time he said something to me I had to say "what?" because it was hard to hear his soft lyrical voice over the bellowing vocals of the tribal celtic / what-have you alternativish music blasting from his arcane laptop perched directly about the 10-burner oven. So calyan made granola. So much granola. We ate it for breakfast this morning. I had it with milk and maple syrup and cinnamon. Heavenly. I want to do some intense outdoor manual labor and frisbee today. I was teaching this woman who is bou 34 years old but certainly feels more like a 12 year old jumping around in a freeing new world, how to throw a flick. I was kind of impressed at my frisbee throwing knowledge, I suppose in comparison to the layperson. We got sweaty, we cut for each other, we climbed trees. There's a guy here, he made a commitment to live here for a year - he is the "buildings and grounds" guy, his name is Justin, but people call him "Just" or "Just one". Yesterday I pulled out weeds with him around this apple tree for an hour and a half, and we had a nice, albeit a bit forced, chat. He told me he has a younger sister who is 28 with special needs, and about a place he has been considering for her to live once their mother is no longer able to care for her. It's called ploughshare farms, and apparently its a self- sustainable community based heavily on the tenet that it is a bunch of people living together, and not in a hierarchical way - the people who need the support of the neurotypical "Staff" are meant to feel equal to said helpers. Would I maybe want to spend sometime working and living in a place like that? Maybe.

The more I think about it, or allow myself to submit to the different way of life here, the more I realize that I don't always have to be busy. I just wrote "busty" - I also don't always have to be busty, but that is less in my control than my business. It is quite a frightening sentiment, to have free time, and be in a rural place, as I have been used to the opposite for so long. This summer went pretty much like this for me:

Take care of kids, fret about various issues surrounding the respective babysitting jobs, play sports, think about the sports and the pickups and the people and myself in relation to everything else going on, take lots of subways, and play more sports on weekends, and spend time with friends. Oh, and fend off / appease the family. But I must say, my nephews and niece are definitely the sweetest, cutest babies ever. Albeit every baby is the sweetest and cutest. But really, the soft skin, the undifferentiated eyeball pigment, the wispy thin short hairs, the barely shaped nose, the limbs that flail arbitrarily and get more padded week by week from suckling just milk. It is all of those things but also, and most key-ly, the idea of a baby that is so powerful. The whole responsibility, extension of self, amalgamation of 2 people in love (sometimes), the we-made-this-life, or God-made-this-life-through-us thing... kind of makes someone with an ounce of sense just shut their mouths. Not me though. I can't shut my mine, apparently. It is time for me to do a cursory cleaning of the bathrooms here in the main Earthdance Farmhouse.

Needless to say, I am proud of myself.