Coming Home

Hello friends,

The two months have been full of reuniting with people and places. I returned for a short while to Kalamazoo, and for the last 8 weeks I have been in Boston. After so many months of striking out to new places and focusing on meeting new people, it was interesting to shift gears and spend some time revisiting the past.

Visiting a Place Where I Belong
I arrived in Kalamazoo on the Thursday before graduation. This is a wonderfully hectic and confusing time for everyone. There is a collective joy/ sigh of relief/ desire to sleep and/or get drunk that everyone enjoys together because everyone finished their classes for the year and summer break is upon them. The first-years are excited about their first summer in college, whether it be spending some time back home or some cool internship they lined up. The sophomores are giddy for the upcoming study abroad, or whatever it is they have lined up, and happy to be done with the utter mental and emotional exhaustion that comes with sophomore year for most Kalamazoo College students. Juniors spend their time split between trying to think about their SIP and trying not to think about their SIP. Meanwhile the seniors are excited and terrified of graduation and exit from the bubble into whatever comes next. It is a beautiful, exhausting, emotional roller coaster for all, and I was excited to be there and partake in it for the 5th time.

Despite being excited to be there, I did find myself a little out of place. I did not fit into any of the roles listed above. Walking around the city of Kalamazoo, and especially walking around the campus, I felt such a strong sense of connection and familiarity. Up until a year ago this was my home. I also felt very welcome, I knew a lot of people, I met most with hugs, although some administrators simply gave me a wave from afar. But despite all of that, I still felt like a visitor. The most analogous situation I could think of is visiting your best friend's home. That best friend who gives you an extra key, and you know you are welcome to come and stay at their place indefinitely anytime. It's the closest connection to a place, the closest level of comfort you could possibly have outside of being in your own home, but it's still not quite your own home. That feeling made me realize that I had moved on, that I had changed and that my relationships had changed during my year long absence

The stay itself was wonderful. The only thing I had to do was visit friends, so I had a lot of down time to recharge after my journey up from Panama, and got to spend a lot of time catching up with people. Kalamazoo was probably the best place for me to land and reconnect with the US. It was a great way to get thrown right back into things with lots of love and without being overwhelmed. I was also fortunate enough to spend my whole time there with my wonderful friend Lindsey, who is not only very laid back and one of the easiest hosts to get along with, but was even able to offer me my own room during my stay. After a week and a half, I moved on and headed over east to Boston again.

Repeating a Leg, One Year Later
My journey began with a trip from Kalamazoo to Boston, and about a year later, I was doing the same trip all over again. But so much about this second time was different. A year ago when I left Kalamazoo I was leaving a home of four years, and entering a nebulous and unknown future full of opportunities and excitement. This time I was leaving some place from my past that I was visiting for a week, moving on yet again with and end goal of a place where I had a community already built up. Last time the 24 hours of bus seemed like a long brave journey. This time the 36 hour trip seemed like another short leg in the journey.

The actual experiences were pretty different this time. It started with my ride from Kalamazoo to Ann Arbor. I ended up being able to catch a ride with a rising sophomore who I met through mutual friends. The car ride with Katie was fun and helped me realize both the extent to which I have moved past and grown from being a rising sophomore and 18 or 19 years old, but also how much I can still learn from people and the extent to which I can relate to people who are younger and older than me, and in different places in their lives. I got a wonderful text from Katie the day before we left saying something like "are you in a hurry to get to Ann Arbor? Do you like adventure and feminism?" Who could say no to that? So we took a detour through Lansing to see part of the vagina monologues done on the capital steps as a protest to Michigan legislators getting gagged for using the word vagina. (if you haven't heard about this, you should read about it http://jezebel.com/5918493/

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Ann Arbor offered a nice relaxing respite as well. I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with my bouncy friend Emma. And I got to hang out again with my friend Camille. Camille and I have met four times over the past five years, each time for no more than one or two days, and each time under extremely random and coincidental circumstances. But I always have an amazing and enlightening time chatting with her. She always challenges me and pushes me to reflect on my experiences and decisions in a different way. Just as an example, most people who know I have been traveling in Latin America start by asking me "How was Latin America?" to which I usually try to make some smart ass comment like "south of here" or if I am tired I just say "great" because how else do you summarize six months of experience in three countries? Camille, who I hadn't spoken with in two years, started instead by asking me "how did your experience in Latin America change your perception of cultural relativism?" Not an easy question, but one that I can try to give a meaningful answer to.

Finally my megabus adventure over east was full of excitement and mini mishaps. I almost missed my bus out of Ann Arbor and had to flag it down and have it stop for me on the curb. I spent the night sleeping in an Amtrak station in Pittsburgh and got kicked out at 7 am. In New York I met some young guys from Kazakhstan, refrained from mentioning Borat, and helped them get to their destination, somewhere out on the cape where they are doing a work exchange program. Then after sleeping in South Station for two hours I walked the 4-5 miles to the Food Not Bombs house and started my up my life in Boston for a second time.

Falling Into a Pattern

My time in Boston has been relatively uneventful, and in that way it offered a contrasting experience with its own opportunities of reflection. Several hours after arriving in Boston, I started cooking up the Friday Food Not Bombs meal. Some things about FNB hadn't changed at all, while others shifted. Most of the people who came to cook were different. Those who had cooked with me last fall were mostly either out of town or burned out. But the kitchen was still a perfect mess and the vibe of carefree connections and celebration of food was still present in the air. It was interesting for me to see how much I still knew about what was going on at FNB, where everything was in the kitchen, how to plan a meal, etc. It helped me realize just how deep of a connection I had made with the organization back in the fall.

But FNB gave me much more during my time here. As I mentioned, during my time in Boston I fell into a pattern, into a normal routine, which has not been typical of my life this past year. Food not bombs was central in this routine. Every Friday and Sunday was dedicated to the meal, and occasionally other days would include a few hours of clean up and organization. Having this organization, community, and goal as a backbone actually felt really great. I realized that no matter what happened, who showed up to cook, how many dishes with rotting or molding food were left out, or whatever other surprises were thrown at me, I could still love FNB. I have often reflected on the strongest and most meaningful connections that we build up, friendships, religion, romantic relationships, etc. and in my opinion one of the central reasons that these connections are so important to us is because they provide us the opportunity to love unconditionally. A healthy relationship would have your partner, your friend, god, or whatever else, love you back unconditionally, but just the opportunity to love something unconditionally is extremely powerful and not as simple to conjure as we may wish. This is what FNB has provided for me. It is an organization and a community which I can love with the only condition being that it continue to exist in the spirit that defines it.

My other life pattern while here was working a job 20 some hours a week. I can't say that there was any love for that job, but it still made up much of my schedule. I worked for a company called Dash, which does food delivery for restaurants. Someone goes onto the Dash website, looks through the menu of one of 200+ restaurants, and orders food. Dash calls the restaurant to place the order, and then calls me to have it picked up and delivered. There are a bunch of car drivers that do this job and then a lot of us bike riders that deliver as well. The nice parts of the job are that I got to know the roads in different parts of the city a lot better, I got to spend a lot of time outside getting exercise, and when I wasn't busy on an order, making money, I could lounge around outside reading a book, daydreaming, or napping. The bad parts were that some of the people in the company kind of suck, between working this job 20+ hours a week, moving the 300-500 lbs. bike cart for food not bombs, and using my bike to commute for other purposes, my legs were consistently sore, and even though I got to relax when I wasn't getting an order, since I got paid per order, and my pay depended largely on tips, the pay was highly undependable and generally low. I ended up averaging about $7/hour, but I could not count on earning that much. Luckily for me, I was working to make up for bus tickets and  repurchasing stolen items, so while I did not do as well as I had hoped, earning significant amounts of money was not an urgent matter. Some of my friends who work this job suffer much more since they depend on the money for things like rent, food, etc. and then the nerves of possibly not making enough really stink.

Aside from FNB and Dash, I spent most of my time hanging out with friends. Once a week I would do a free bike repair clinic with the Boston Cyclists Union, occasionally I would go to a house show, and I still had to occupy myself with moving from place to place and looking for housing. I went on a few small adventures. There were a couple of trips to the beach. A few days ago I biked out to Walden pond (about 20 miles away) at night with a few friends. We went swimming as it started to drizzle and storm in the distance. We were hoping to camp out there, but as the storm grew closer we packed up and started riding back, getting drenched in the process and occasionally fording 10 inches of water on the trail. But still we had a wonderful time and laughed the whole way.

But over all most days were alike and most weeks were alike. There wasn't much challenge of excitement. Although I had to work to find housing, it was quickly established that I am welcome at the FNB house anytime, so I was never too worried, and a few times I dropped by for a weekend as I was searching for another option. I had a clear, easy, and welcoming home base, something I am not used to. And even when I wasn't staying at the FNB house, I was mostly staying with other friends in the same community or with people who I met along the way. I only couchsurfed twice and both times spent almost no time with my host because I would leave in the morning to do something, and come back only in the evening, spending any free time in between hanging out on the porch of the FNB house. Food was likewise not an issue this time, since summer is the season of plenty for food not bombs and there was still so much random stuff left over from occupy that it was easy to feed myself healthy, albeit unbalanced meals, without ever thinking of buying food. Perhaps the thing that felt least adventurous was that I already had a social community built up. I met many new people, and built up friendships with people who were only acquaintances before, but almost all of the new or revitalized connections were people within the community: new volunteers at FNB, friends of friends, new FNB house members, etc. I arrived settled into a community and my new interactions revolved around that community, as oppose to my experience everywhere else where I look to meet people and to join activities in order to seek out a community for me to plug into. The result is that when I thought about my life, it seemed kind of boring. As one of my friends said when I was talking to her about this: I have been under stimulated here. Which is interesting because all of the activities I do and all of the people I hang out with are pretty awesome when observed individually. But the comfort of my situation means I am not challenged as much. That is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a different phase and manner of living which is also good to explore. I have a deep warm feeling from knowing that I am well enough connected and integrated in Boston so that life here can be easy and boring. One of my friends claimed that there is an entire movement in philosophy that claims the most concrete reality and the most meaningful growth occurs in monotonous routine. Yet despite all these positives, I am on a challenge, change, and stimulation binge right now. I am seeking them hungrily and unapologetically. And for that reason I think it is ultimately in good time that I am about to leave. My roots here are now even deeper, and that makes leaving somewhat harder, but I like to leave when it's still hard for me to do so.

The Future Gets Murkier

Birthright has been on the docket for me since before leaving Kalamazoo. I knew sometime this past spring or this summer I would be headed to Israel and all of my trip plans were structured around that thought. In less than a week I will actually head off on my trip. One of the implications is that the path ahead is more uncertain than ever before.

On Monday I leave Boston for Philadelphia, and on Thursday I leave for Israel. I should be there two or three months. Because of green card restrictions, it would be wise of me to not remain out of the US for over a year, so tentatively I will be on the West Coast of the US sometime late next spring and in the summer. I think it would be cool to visit Thailand and China in the interim. But all of that depends on luck and on what I will bump into along the way.

I hope to see you all somewhere around the world in the near future. All the best,