How it was supposed to go...

My bus isn't until 3am so I spend a large part of the evening drinking coffee & finally uploading my large cache of photos. I leave the hostel just in time to catch the last night bus, which will bring me just outside of Terminal 1 at the airport. That gives me about an hour to wait before catching the overnight bus to Barcelona. Nearly 12 hours later, I make my way to the hostel just as check in begins. I settle in, do a load of laundry, shower and nap. I wake up refreshed and ready to watch the Olympics opening ceremony over tapas y cafe con leche. THAT'S how it was SUPPOSED to go.
But I am still at the airport..in Nice..in France. I made it to Terminal 1 by 2am. Bus didn't leave until 3:15. True there weren't as many people as I was anticipating but I did spy a couple of people dozing near the door with backpacks by their side. And even though I was standing under a door with a stenciled picture of a bus and the same words that were on my bus ticket "Gare Routiere" in big block letters next to it, apparently, I was supposed to be across the street.
I really have to learn French.
So now it's 18 hours later and I'm still in this airport but now with a reservation on the 10:55pm to Barcelona which costs more than double what the bus cost. To be exact, because of a
Wifi/computer glitch, I have 3 reservations for this flight and as many charges to my debit card. I spent the afternoon practicing the phrase "si vous plait, je ne parle Francaise, parle vous Anglais" before being transferred to someone else and getting to practice some more bad French.
I am surprisingly non-homicidal.
I have had lesser deviations throw me on this trip. Maybe it's the fact that I've been working on my tan for the past 4 days or the utter absurdity of it all or maybe I am settling into the unpredictability of this trip. The best laid plans...what can go wrong inevitably will...the only constant is change...
I've had my moments today. After spending over an hour on the phone trying to sort out my reservation only to be told not to worry and they would cancel my reservation when they found it...(but how would they find it and let me know when they didn't take any info from me?)...I made a beeline for the newspaper stand and comforted myself with a can of Pringles & some Malteasers. But I got back up, dusted the crumbs of my chest and went back to the phones. Nothing has been settled. But I am here. And I have a seat. And I will get to Barcelona & probably spend some time at the airport there. It's been a long day and a hard day and it's not over. But I am here. And I'm not grumpy or angry or twisted up from the inside out. And that is a gift. It wasn't how it was supposed to go but it was a good day nonetheless.

LONDON TOWN

As it was the 1st stop on the European leg of my world tour and a city I have been longing to visit for a while, I took a lot of pictures in London...here is the best of what I saw.

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Mona Lisa Smile

I have saved my visit to the Louvre for the end of my trip in Paris. Mostly, I planned it this way but also I have struggled here in Paris (more on that later). Paris is grand in every sense of the word and though I traveled to large cities before; c'mon I lived in New
York for 10 years, Paris is larger than life and overwhelming and it's hard to wrap my head around it.
Nowhere is this more evident than the Louvre. It's huge and filled with more artwork than one can possibly contemplate in a lifetime much less a day. So I decided to break it up into manageable bites. And I go straight for the meaty center. That's how I find myself making my way past the throng for the first time at 5pm on a Wednesday; practically a week into my stay. I've come late in the day to see the "highlights", the best of, the top 10. Then tomorrow I can arrive and lazily stroll around knowing I won't miss any of the "biggies".
First up, obviously, the Mona Lisa or more properly, La Giaconda. I brace myself, literally & figuratively. I'm hoping there will be a small mob as opposed to a stadium sized crowd as I've come at the end of the day. Just a quick look to say I've done it and move on, I say to myself. I'm already geared up for disappointment. I mean, this is an image i have seen..who knows how many times. Also, Ive heard, in person, it's small and behind glass and you have to jockey for position among the hoards. All this is true, although it's actually larger than I had imagined in my head. Also, it's spectacular. This is an image I have seen hundreds of times in my life and think I know intimately. Even so, I am surprised when I see her. It's familiar yet completely new. I had often wondered why out of all the wonderful paintings daVinci did, and I have seen many, why was the Mona Lisa the most enduring? And then I stood in front of her and it made me emotional. All around me people were snapping pictures and I wanted to shout,"what are you people doing!" I have stacks of pictures of this image and now know no camera lens can capture it. And so I stand and I stare and she stares back. And I smile and she's smiling back. And even though the 20th person elbows me out of their shot, I feel like ML and I sharing a private moment, a secret and it fills me with emotion and I feel like if I let myself I could cry right now, let go the way you can with a good friend. Hello art, old friend. Thanks for the warm hug.
http://www.lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/monalisa.jpg

Hiding

Just finished walking through the Anne Frank house. I'm now in the cafe enjoying a warm cup of tea. Outside is cold and rainy. I'm grateful for the cafe at the end of the museum, not only for the shelter and tea but as a place to regroup, collect my thoughts and become human again after touring the museum. To call it it a museum is really a misnomer. It is a haunted house. That's the best way I can describe it. When you go to the museum you don't enter the house straight away. There is a space next door, connected, that you enter through and a small exhibit of artifacts from Anne's life before the war and before she went into hiding, as well as artifacts from the time. You know when you have entered the house. I am certain I would be able to tell even if I was led in blindfolded. It's cold. The air is thick. My chest closed up tight and it felt like I couldn't relax until I was out. Standing in line waiting to get in, the enormity of what I was about to see hit me. This is a real place. Real people lived, no, were trapped and tried to live here, for 2 years. The place is unfurnished, as requested by Otto Frank, Anne's father and the only one hidden to have survived the war. There are pictures and artifacts and moving video portraits but the emptiness pervades and lends a ghostly air. I wanted to weep openly but instead continued blink wildly, dab at my eyes, sniffle and keep some sort of composure. There were a couple of things that particularly moved me.
-A yellow star mandatory for all Jews to wear browned from time and frayed at the edges
-the wallpaper in Anne's room decorated with clippings of celebrities like Ginger Rogers & Sonia Henie and a picture of monkeys at a table
-a video of Otto taken in 1967 describing getting Anne's diary back by saying "After I heard the news that my children would not come back"
-And pages from Anne's notebooks; in her handwriting.
The actual diary is not here; just a replica. The original is somewhere safe in a temperature controlled environment. Everything else remains protected behind glass. Still I couldn't help but reach out and touch the glass; the need to connect, feel, have contact with this story and with the people was so strong in me.
Standing in the middle of these tiny rooms I tried to imagine the daily life of being hidden for 2 years in such an extreme way; how anything can become the the new normal. Anne Frank's father made a comment in his video about how much about Anne's writing surprised him. Its depth and emotion making him realize he barely knew the girl he literally spent 24/7 with for 2 straight years. Even Anne confides in one of the first entries how she hopes this diary will be something she opens up to more than anything or anyone she ever has. It made me think about all the ways in which we as people hide ourselves. Whether with make-up or clothes or people or relationships, sometimes it can seem easier to hide. I am in no way trying to compare hiding from the Nazis to hiding from ending a bad relationship
or hiding from expressing any part of yourself. It's that when faced with the remnants of someone literally having to hide themselves away because of who
they are for fear of death, one can truly see the absurdity of hiding from anything less than that. The legacy that Anne created (as well as the incredible people around her) just by expressing her true self is an inspiration and just as important as the legacy of tolerance her writings leave behind.

London Fog

It's drizzling...
of course it is...
It's London...in July.
Apparently grey is the norm for summer in the city.
I am standing in the groundling line waiting to storm the standing room only space in front of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre..not THE Globe of course...but a faithful recreation of the original which was demolished by the Puritans in 14whatever. Still, it's exciting. In a hour or so I'll be watching some amazingly talented English actors perform "The Taming of the Shrew" while standing outside in a pit for 3 hours..totally worth the £5 I paid (about $8). Tomorrow will be my last full day in London & I'm hoping to catch another performance..perhaps a musical this time. When I first arrived in London I wandered from my hotel through the streets of the city. As if by internal beacon, I found myself smack dab in the middle of the theatre district. And so I got a £15 discount ticket to The 39 Steps; A slapstick retro play based on a Hitchcock film and done with 4 actors playing all 100 or so parts. I sat in my seat and as the house lights dimmed and the curtain opened, I felt my eyes well up full of tears...of joy. Later that week as I heard the first few notes of the Westminster Abbey Chorale fill, then echo across the high ceilings and stone walls, a similar swell of emotion. I anticipate it happening tonight.
I used to be an artist; perhaps I still am. There is definitely some unfinished business there. I had aspirations to be a theater actor; a singer; to connect with others through performance the way it connects with me. That deep, gutteral, emotional connection that cuts through reason and punches right in the gut. But fear kept me from giving it a fair chance. I took a break, went to school, went to therapy. I worked on myself hoping to unlock the prison door that kept me from fully expressing this part of who I was. I learned so much about myself and shed a lot of trauma from my childhood that was festering inside me. But I didn't go back to the theater. I don't know why exactly. No matter how much I have loved my work as a massage therapist, I continue to have this nagging that there is a missing piece to my life. But when I try to listen to it; I realize there is still fear.
When I found music and acting, it was an escape for me; a place where I could be someone else. I grew up in a dysfunctional family where a child was seen & not heard, where emotions were never discussed much less shown and where the rod was never spared even if the child was spoiled. The stage was a place of freedom. It was a place where I could reveal myself and be as expressive as I wanted; safely shrouded in the artifice of a role or a song. I wasn't me yet felt more alive than I ever felt in my reality.
As an adult that's all been reversed. Being on stage makes me feel exposed, vulnerable. The voice is my own even if the words are someone else's. I am revealed and there is nothing to hide behind. And I am still scared.I know that if I can give this part of me permission to express itself, my life will profoundly change. The particulars remain fuzzy. So for now I watch and listen and learn all the while knowing that while this adventure may be about seeing the world; it is not about remaining a spectator.

Going back to Cali...road trip 2012

Pics from my California adventure with one of my favorite people in the universe, my wonderful, intelligent and inspiring friend April. There's no one I would rather be stuck in a car with. Click on "view these pictures larger" to see all the action.

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