Horns In Our Garden

Henry Darger

Kissing Fish Girl

Nicoletta Ceccoli

The Union of Earth and Water

Peter Paul Rubens

One Day Rome

Impressions

Colosseum

Vatican Square

Tourist

Summer

Tourist

The Stain of Pomegranates

šipak

When I was a little girl I didn't like the taste of pomegranate juice like I do now. I just didn't know the value of the stuff. That's how it is when you are young.

When pomegranates were readily available and not expensive at the market we had them at our house.  My grandmother soaked them in the sink in cold water and then with lots of newspapers spread out on the kitchen table the two of them, she and my grandfather, would coax the pearly red seeds out of their fleshy home.  Into a bowl they went and then some sort grinding would go on.  After that, pouring and separating with colanders here and there and white cloth over  bowls and more pouring of juice with funnels. From this elaborate madness of mismatched cookware there would miraculously  appear six or eight or whatever, glass bottles of dark red stain - blue almost - so dark, the color of red.

In the afternoons, after nap time, the cousins from downstairs were called up and we would all sit in the tiny kitchen at the table with the secret drawer. Baka would put clean glasses onto the round tablet with her hands still stained and slowly she would measure out the scarlet liquid. She added ice cold mountain water from the faucet and carefully put our glasses in front of us. We drank, staring at each other, making faces and smacking darkened lips.  Baka looking out the window behind us, at the mountains, thinking to herself.

Little Boxes and Big

 I am sitting at my makeshift kitchen table with the mismatched Ottomans. Contemplating. The boxes behind the bakers rack have been piled up there now for more than a month. I plan to fold them up and put them in The Constant Storage for the next time I need to move. I will do this  because as lessons go, we learn that boxes, toilet paper, half bottles of expensive shampoo and all that 'crap' that you want to throw into the trash bin when moving so you don't have to schlep it around  - that crap costs money to repurchase. 'I have become money conscientious', I say to myself smugly. {My family who use me as a textbook example of wild abandon shake their heads collectively}

There is a subtler truth though. Zebra's don't really change their stripes, silly family.

It is this: even though I know it won't last long, I think I am muddling about in various stages of grief.

The scoop:
Recently we all moved out of the lulling Mother Home and my free spirit allowed itself to reawaken, giving in to my life long love of travel. Through my adolescence we moved to far flung places in the world with my dashing army officer father. During my 20's and 30's I made Europe and the two US coasts a priority. I opened up businesses, married,  researched, worked and had plenty of adventures. That was fun.
Now, more fun. Working the deep blue currents, taking care with family, dreaming and talking more than doing: that was over. The chance came. We moved. And the move changed everything.

But was temporary.
And we are back...home?

 I look at the boxes in my kitchen, so many I can barely get out the back door,  as sort of a talisman. For now, I am processing  'that which could have been but was not' and the boxes stay.  Everyday, a bit at a time, I guess, I will have to indulge in all the things that I experienced that brought me further along my path in the world by moving.  Soon, the boxes will get thrown away (I'm not really going to change my ways after all these years!) and eventually my emotions will have incorporated this constantly mentioned but still often unexpected motto: change must become second nature to an adventurous heart.

Be Where You're At

Back in town and trying to gauge what has changed since I left four months ago.

Everything.

Nothing.

 It's almost as if I  astrotraveled through the night and remained in my Denver bed the whole time, arriving energized and ...

Be Where Ur At

happy to be here.

I left what had become almost unbearable and leaving brought me full circle... here.  On my return I am in a subtle but synchronistic mode. When I left, I was swimming against the current, like Fishies sometimes do and I knew from experience that traveling would balance things out. Indeed it made embracing the flow easier.

For those of us who classify ourselves nomads, Third Culture or Global Nicher's, traveling is not only an acquired taste. It is what has defined us likely since birth or childhood. Moving 'elsewhere' is our refuge when we need to sort things out. Everyone has their own bag of tricks, moving is part of our magic. My friends @DisplacedNation explain it well in their 'Constitution'.

Going back to Italy this time was good and bad, frustrating, serendipitous, frivolous, scary, disillusioning, grounding, eye opening and life confirming  - not to mention fun freeking fantastic. Bureaucratic misunderstandings made staying impossible for now, but what a wow experience on so many creative levels - human and spirit!

 I re learned once again picking up, leaving everything and diving head long into an adventure in a new country that 'tutto il mondo e paese', like the Italians are fond of saying. In some very trite and familiar sense it is what philosophers, writers and zen teachers everywhere shout out from their book covers. You don't really need to move to find out what it is that you already know, but it is a lot of fun.

I feel this with a longing and a recognition that is deep, deep in my traveling soul -like the taste of a childhood memory of luscious fruit. For now, the memory is strong and the longing not yet critical, which is the best place to be to experience the moment.