Friday, January 21, 2011

Birth and Pilgrimage

February 16, 1985

The winds are howling in the dead of night during a bitter winter. As heavy clouds spread a cloak of white over the city of Kiev and the Dneper River, the cold and thick blanket warn people to stay inside. An unusually cold night, when most where asleep, my father was struggling on Shevchenka Blvd. through the snow to reach my mother. Passing by the Kiev University, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, St. Volodymyr's Cathedral on the right, and the Kiev Botanical Gardens on the left and their famous red fence, he finally reaches the hospital at 2 a.m.

In the delivery room, my mother is sweating and losing blood very quickly; she lays there with a heavy breathe and a pale face, while the nurses and doctors rush around her. She glances outside the hospital window, where the silhouette of the snow covered trees across the street and the full moon calm her weary self. The moon hangs over the room, shining and pulsing its subtle but important currents into her and through her belly. I am floating there, fully developed and ready to be welcomed, but I feel the urgency and panic in the room. My grandmother is there, as a midwife and a mother-in-law, soothing my mother's pain with encouragement and strength. It is time.

After hours of struggle and labor, I'm being cleaned, warmed and wrapped up, but my mother is being rushed away, where I can not see. I see her disappear, pale as a ghost, into the hall with the hospital crew after her, I am left alone in a stranger's arms.

Not long after I enter the world, I am taken home in my father's arms. His warm and burly body and layers of clothes insulate me beside his chest. It is still cold outside. Everyday he took me to the hospital twice a day to be fed. We traveled on train, walked in snow, but the highlight was always walking through the botanical gardens, a wooded land in the heart of a city.

We lived in Kiev for four years of my life. In the summers, we'd go swimming in the Dneper river, a 1,400 mile long river, passing through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. We'd vacation along the Black Sea, with the slow and balmy summer days, chasing guppy's in the water and being cooed to sleep by guitar. We'd go picking fresh blackberries in the Lisovyi Masyv, a forested neighborhood, on the edge of the woods, where my grandmother lived. The time flowed slowly.

October 3, 1989

Just three years after the Chernobyl disaster, the family had papers to leave Ukraine. On our way to the United States, we lived along the rolling hills of Austria, with the bulls and gingerbread houses; we lived in Venice, Italy surrounded by water and diplomacy. We where shipped from city to city, each time making new friends, playing and sharing in the different lands.

January 2, 1990

Westchester, CA, sea breeze and succulents. We live at my great aunts for four months before we move to the center of Los Angeles. LACMA, LA tar pits, traffic and buildings; we are home. Between the ages of five an eleven, I spent my time between elementary school classrooms, chlorinated swimming pools, dance classes and rooftops of houses and parking lots (we liked to climb and jump them). But life was not solely spent indoors. The populated hills of Studio City, the cool mountains of Malibu and the dry, hot valleys of San Fernando where explored and made familiar. Weekends where primarily spent on the beaches of Marina del Rey playing near the sea foam, ducking under waves, and getting skin chapped by the sea breeze and sun.

February 10, 2005

Two years after graduating high school and obliging to the expectations of family, my heart spoke its call loudly. Days on end, it was asking, pleading with me to let it loose. “Take me away, take me to the lands. These walls are closing in on me.” 'I hear you,” I say. “I want to go, just as much as you do, but there are logistics. I want to see the world, I want to connect with nature. I want to have more than just this contained city we dwell in. Please, just give me a moment to straighten some responsibilities out.”

So, to get away when I couldn't really, I spent a lot of time in the ocean for my release. My love for the water grew into an admiration. A perception and understanding of its holy nature. Its giving and fluctuating essence. I prayed with it, marveled at it, bowed down to it with fear and revere. And then, as if it heard my thoughts, the time came.

January 2007

A solo trip to Hawaii gave me the first glance at how large the world was. How much of it was unknown to me. My heart jumped! It skipped and giggled in delight. “Look at all this greenery! The roots system of those massive trees; the pineapple fields; and how about the volcanos? Do you feel them? Oh, and the ocean! Oh, the mighty, mighty turquoise ocean!” It swooned, it sung with glee and gratitude. So I did my best to follow its wishes. I took it to see the sunrise at Haleakala, a 10,000 foot volcano, at five in the morning, in a convertible, with windchill at 15 C. It was freezing, but as soon as the sun began to rise and creep through the blanket of clouds, and shine its bounty on us and the craters, it all made sense. What a blessing, truly understood.

And so continued my indulgence and allegiance to my little, beating heart. With every trusting step, it led me, and I carried it, through the world. Wonderful meetings and encounters with amazing people; witnessing and beholding varied landscapes and forms. The bounty of colors, sights, sounds. Each with a personality, a pulse, an existence to respect.

November 2007

Gothenburg, Sweden. A month long experience in the cold and snow. Twenty years have passed since I've actually lived in the snow or visited Europe. I lived with woods of spruce trees and frozen jellyfish implanted in the sand. There where long walks in the chilly air day and night, with only the sound of our footsteps to break the quiet. Time seemed to glide slowly here, perhaps it was me adjusting to the change in sunlight, which would rise at 8 a.m. and set at four in the afternoon. There was a sense of unlimited night time. I felt like Sweden allotted me timeless space for deep reflection. I also witnessed a sense of sustainability and consciousness in people that both surprised and inspired me.

October 1. 2008

What started out as an intriguing idea was finally coming into fruition. The journey was set, a 1,200 mile bike/camp pilgrimage down from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles appropriately named “The Big Ride”. My family kept asking me, “What is compelling you to do this? Why do you keep taking (what they presumed to be) risks and how can you satisfy your hunger to see the world in a more 'normal' fashion?” I just kissed them and tried to reassure them that I knew what I was doing, and it was this kind of travel or nothing. In reality, I had no idea what was in store for me. I just felt an opportunity like this needed to be grabbed up and lived, before it passed me by.

On October 16, we rolled out of Portland toward the ocean at 2 p.m on a brisk, sunny afternoon. The first few days where a mixture of joy and suffering. The joy was experiencing something for the first time; for the sense of adventure and the unknown. The suffering was from the physical pain of going out like a novice on the Tour de France. The first two days, was the first taste of some of the mountains we would be climbing, before we stumbled into Lincoln City. From there, we traveled south hugging the ocean and traveling through sacred tree lands. I was in awe. Aside from making my heart work hard eight hours a day, it was in awe too. Every spot we stopped to rest was new and beautiful. Whether it was by an unknown lake, under a redwood tree, or on the cold sands along the pacific ocean, we all had a sense of grandness and gratitude pulsing through our bodies. Without going too much more into detail, the “the Big Ride” transformed me, yet again. I was hooked. The wanderlust was burning in me, begging for more.

October 10, 2009

Just short of a year from “the Big Ride”, I am on a plane yet again, this time flying to Boulder, CO. A good friend recommended I research Naropa University, and now I am actually going to visit a university I'm considering of attending. This is a first.

Green. All I see is green. Green trees. Green lawns and so many parks. There is a creek that runs through the entire town and an amphitheater surrounded by grass. This is heaven. The class I audited had a five minute meditation before class started and the second part of the class we took outside. We sat on the lawn behind the school, as the sun glistened through the foliage, I couldn't help feel joy. My heart was jumping inside. “Well, if this is what school can be, we have to go here!” it sang. I agreed.

But I wasn't ready yet and I couldn't stay long. I was in Boulder for only three days before I needed to return to LA. I kissed Boulder goodbye and promised return, but I had one more pilgrimage to go on before settling into school.

November 1, 2009

I'm flying over the the Pacific Ocean and my heart is soaring! Excitement and happiness are bouncing all over in my brain, and the deepest sense of gratitude like an aura, is glowing around me. Airports and flying have always been a good time for me. When most people worry or sleep, I set into a calm and reflective nature. It is like everything is put right into the world, or so I think.

This trip has been five years in the making. Although the destination is irrelevant. All the while in school, I've been hoping, secretly and openly, about a time when I could free myself of belongings and fly away. And so the time has finally come. I've said my good byes to family and friends. All my things stored in boxes at my dad's house and my apartment subletted, the only things I own are in a bike box sitting in luggage under my seat.

A year long visa to Australia is what my papers say. Oh, the possibilities. While some do not like the unknown, I welcome it with flowers and wine. I am a sucker for adventure and a junky for fun. I have a slight itinerary, an idea, but mainly, my heart is open and my mind is ready for what life has to offer. What does Mother earth and father time have planned? What do the currents and the winds hope for me? What do the roads and lands hold in store? What does the moon, or the sun wish for me? What will the people be like? Will they be open and willing to partake in life's grandness, or wish to be closed and ill dispositioned? What will this journey unveil?

I must say, again without going to far into the details, that like all journey, there where some up and downs and round-i-rounds. Nevertheless, I was left with all gratitude and fond memories. In terms of geography, the most striking features where the depths in colors and shadows (some will say it is from the lack of the ozone layer). The warmth and saltiness, the clarity of color, and the abundance of fish in the ocean. The kangaroos and vicious magpies. The twisting roots of Moreton Bay Figs and the their full canopies, providing solace from the sun. The change of climates: temperate weather to humidity and summer storms, tropical lush to dry deserts. Rainbows, warm breezes, blistering sun, breathtaking sunrises, generosity from people, generosity from mango trees, Australia wrapped up the first chapter of my life with a great ending. And also wrote the introduction to the next.

Australians' awareness of global issues and environmental responsibility is grounded. They are living with the immediate and are not sheltered from storms and changes of climate, like some of us. I hope I can be of some service to my community, like they are to theirs.

January 2011

Boulder once again, greeting me this time with snow covered arms. How you've changed my little “city”, I hope I can make you proud. This time the mountains are making their impression on me, and I come to them like a moth to a flame. Hikes through snow, ice or slush, I am gaining an appreciation for the cold I haven't had before. Sunrises every morning, I witness through my window the change of light perception and the warmth it radiates into my room. Boulder, I am excited but deeply grounded, and looking forward to our time together.

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