Yoga for a late summer evening....

This evening I embraced summer.
I went out onto the terrace with my yoga mat and gave myself the gift of a silent free flow yoga class. The wind and the slant to the tiles make balance a particular challenge, but the beauty of the city on a quiet, warm, breezy night makes it a joy. I wrote this when I came inside:

Drop your head back, all the way back, look at the stars behind you. Arms back with your ears, drop back, lean back, way back, more back, reach for the twinkling city lights...

Stand with your toes and heels touching. Left knee locked. Pick up your right foot, stomach in, look at the Avenida, stretching for miles. Heel forward toward the terrace wall, elbows down, balance there, hold, feel the wind on your face....

Kick your foot up as high as possible, stretch your arm forward, one shoulder stretching toward el Congreso and the other reaching forward toward Barrio Flores. Kicking and stretching equal, simultaneous, 50/50. Don’t move your eyes. Focus, concentrate on the beautiful twinkling lights of the city, if you move your eyes you might lose the balance, kick and stretch and move with the breeze....

Both legs up together, grab your opposite elbows over your knees. Back of the neck on the warm terra cotta tiles, pull your hips down, elbows in close, stomach in. Feel the warmth from the days sunshine soaking into your spine as you try to get your entire spine flat on the terrace....

Savasana. Lay with your eyes softly open, gazing gently at the stars. Heels touch, toes fall open, back of the hands on the soft warm tiles. Inhale and feel the warm summer breeze wash over you. Exhale and hear the city move gently below you. Feel your belly rise, feel your belly fall. As you lay beneath the stars open your heart to the abundance of the Universe. In the soft, open, receptive posture gently allow the Universe to wash you with it’s gentle intentions. Smile gently. Breathe....


Namaste...

Gypsy Woman....

I’m fairly sure my mother had gypsy blood. Mama was always moving. Even when she stayed in the same city for a while she never stayed in a house for long. When I was a child we moved often. I have no childhood friends, rarely began and ended the school year at the same school and I didn’t know most of my relatives at all, those I did meet I didn’t know for long. We moved for all sorts of reasons, economics, politics, romance, but mostly I think we just moved because moving on was in Mama’s blood. My sister and brother have been fairly stable, but I got the wanderlust. Since I was born I have lived in around 100 houses. I am 46. That’s an average of about 2 a year (gypsies are good at math). Since I lived in one house for 5 years, my record, of course I’ve moved more than twice in some years. I remember a year when my son was small we lived in 9 houses. Since I’ve been in Argentina, 18 months, I’ve lived in 4 houses. In all the places I’ve lived I settled in quickly. I always felt at home. It became habit to connect myself easily to any place I put my tooth brush away. Just as habitual to pick it up again and move it to the next place.

Our apartment here in Argentina is no different. It is my sanctuary in the bustling locomotion that is Buenos Aires. This is an interesting city, maybe a bit too interesting for me. Though I’ve lived in many places I’ve never lived in a city this dense before. Half of the 40 million human beings in Argentina live in the region and half of those commute into the city to work. I think most of them work on my block. As luck would have it they are all on the subway at any time I need to use it and there is rarely a time when the line in the grocery store doesn’t seem to stretch all the way to Rio. It is hectic, crowded, loud and fast paced. This is the perfect environment for many, and we have friends who thrive on it. I have discovered it isn’t for me. There is still much to see, to do, to learn from Buenos Aires and so while our apartment is for sale I will continue to engage with the city. I have learned so much more Spanish since arriving here, though I still am far from fluent and would like to be. I have learned much about the culture, but there are still things that perplex me and while my local friends are too polite to call attention to it, I know I still make social faux pas (is social faux pas redundant?). I have started to feel that I need to hustle too. To rush around and get my fill because when our apartment sells, which will likely be early this spring, we’ll be off to what’s next.


The view from our terrace of New Year's Eve fireworks across the city

When we go this time we won’t be headed back to San Diego, the city that was my happy orbit for 25 years, but to a new place. Miami has a rich international art scene, warm weather (a must for me) and a strong yoga culture with room for a good yoga studio in the neighborhood Jimmy and I want to live in. It is a big metropolitan area, but very spread out, not so dense, a little more room to breathe. I don’t imagine the first house we live in will be our last there, but I do hope we can find a place we like and stay for a while. I don’t think my gypsy’s heart will ever let me be in one place for good, but I do wonder what it would be like to look up one day and notice that I’d slept in the same room for 10 years, or 20....

Trade ya...

13 December 2009

I have always loved to read, though in the years since my son grew up and left home I have done less and less reading for pleasure. Working to build a business I seemed always to have necessary reading to do, some book that needed to be read to increase my knowledge or understanding of some thing. Since moving to Argentina I have more free time and have been between stages in my life, with little or no “necessary reading” to do. The longer I am here, the more I read. I don’t read in Spanish, that would be work. It would require that I look words up in every sentence, at least for some time, and maybe for a long time, and while I know I would learn a lot from it, I find I simply don’t want to. I study Spanish in other ways, in conversation, by turning on my subtitles if I watch something on the television, by reading my Argentine friends’ FaceBook posts and with my Rosetta Stone program. Reading I save for pleasure.

Finding books is one of those things you don’t consider before you move to another country. If you did, you might stock up. Most book stores here carry a select number of English titles, but there are very expensive. The first time Jimmy and I found English books in a store here we excitedly selected three or four each and went to the check out stand. As we were waiting for help from the girl behind the counter I stopped to look at the prices on the books. Not one was less than A$R 60 (60 pesos was about U$S 20 at that time, when the value of the peso and the dollar shift the prices of imported items shift with them) and some were much more. This was double and sometimes triple what we would have paid for these paperback books at home and funds were tight, so we sadly put them back. Thankfully buying books new from a bookstore is not our only choice. We have discovered, as I imagine most immigrants do, other ways to feed our appetites for books.

In San Telmo, an hour from here by subway with some walking, there is a bookstore called Walrus Books. They sell both new and used English language books. It is very small by American standards but they always have a decent selection of books there. If you can’t find something you haven’t read you are either very well read indeed, or a bit picky. This store, as one might imagine is on Calle Estados Unidos (United States Street).

In the middle of Avenida Santa Fe in Barrio Palermo past the Jardin Botanico (botanical garden) and Plaza Italia, past the zoo but before the military base where you turn to go to Jumbo (a supermarket where you can buy imported goods like Jiff peanut butter and Camp maple syrup) there is a book market on an island in the middle of the Avenida. There you’ll find about twenty used book sellers in stalls. If you ask for “libros en ingles” they will pull out a crate or two, or sometimes even three, of dusty, dirty used English language books. Many of them are things I would never read, romance novels or old classics I read in elementary or secondary school. Lots of Agatha Christie for some reason. Still, every time we’ve gone there we’ve each found a book or two to bring home and they usually run A$R 10 - 20. The last time we were there a seller quoted Jimmy A$R 30 (U$S 7.80) for a book he wasn’t sure he wanted. When he hesitated he dropped it A$R 20 or around U$S 5.25. He bought it. If you ever end up on Avenida Santa Fe looking for books, bring something with you to wash your hands because they’ll be black as soot when you’re done sorting through them all and give them a good wiping down when you get home, after you’ve flipped the pages some to get the dust out. A funny thing about asking for English books. When you ask, they'll always ask you what specific book you're looking for. That strikes me as odd, since most of them wouldn't know what you were talking about if you named one and would likely just have to pull the crates out and let you sort through them anyway, even if you were looking for something specific. I also suppose I can't imagine going there thinking to myself, "oh let's go over to the books stalls in Palermo and pick up that new Stephen King book".

The thing we’ve done that has cost the least though has been to have book exchanges. We’ve had two and between us we’ve gotten a number of good books from them. The best thing is that we make it a social event and invite anyone who wants to come to bring two books and something to share to eat. We share coffee and food and talk about life as expats. We always see old friends and meet new people as well. It’s a lovely way to pass an afternoon. These books are free, I don’t even count the cost of whatever we have to eat and drink because that’s just a part of socializing. Better yet these books are easy on the environment and they usually aren’t dirty.

None of these avenues offers the kind of selection you are used to from home, though I’ve found that it means I read things, wonderful things, that I might not have if I could to Barnes and Noble to be enticed by the publisher’s latest selections. I’ve read books here that were written too long ago for them to hold a place of honor at the book store any more. I just read The Known World, by Edward Jones. It was on Oprah’s list some time ago, from those years when I was mostly doing “necessary reading” and so I missed it. I enjoyed it thoroughly and am glad I had the chance to read it.

A final note on where to find books when you live in a non-English speaking country. Audible.com sells a wide selection of audio books. They are not for everyone. Jimmy finds that he doesn’t enjoy listening to books he’s never read before. He can enjoy the retelling of a story he already knows, but he misses too much if he tries to listen for the first time because he’s usually doing other things at the same time. I have come to love audio books and they are not terribly expensive, between U$S 5 - 15. they do take up some space on your laptop and your iPod but if they are read well it can be a very special kind of joy to listen to a story being told to you.

When I go home to the United States I will enjoy going to a big book store and finding books, but I know it will take me some time not to be overwhelmed by the vastness of my choices. I will also continue to buy books at used bookstores and I will get back to the library because it is a gift I have for many years taken for granted. There are no free public libraries in Argentina and that is something about the United States that should be appreciated. If you pay taxes you’ve already paid for those books and getting them from the library gives the planet a break as well. I doubt I’ll have any more book exchanges when I get home, mostly because I don’t think anyone would come. Americans are too used to having whatever they want at their fingertips, the $18.90 charge on your Amazon card seemingly so much less an inconvenience than having to pick a couple of books to give away and spend three hours with people talking, only to have to select from fewer than one hundred titles. I think though that I will miss book exchanges and plan to do them regularly until it is time for us to go....

Taking Sides...

I've been thinking a lot about President Obama and the congress. There are a lot of people in America today, maybe not half, but a lot, who think that we’d have been better off with the other guy. There are many among us, in our nation family, who are battling for territory, resources, power, attention, respect.  

When I was a little girl my older brother and younger sister and I fought, a lot. We used all the classic tools in the arsenals of children, name calling, manipulation, teasing, tattling, and no, we didn’t balk at all out physical assault. I was severely punished one day for throwing a telephone at my brother’s head (phones weighed about 10 pounds then). He had kicked me, hard, but Mama didn’t walk in until the telephone was in full flight, headed for a collision with my brother’s frontal lobe (contrary to what I would have said to him at the time there was no brain damage). Our house was often a battle zone, every kid for him or her self, in skirmishes over territory, the distribution of wealth and resources, even affection. We formed alliances, held peace talks, shifted party lines. We had fun too, don’t get me wrong, we played together and we laughed and we did chores and had friends, but we didn’t hesitate to hurt one another if we thought it would get us somewhere.

The one thing that disrupted this internal war was an attack from the outside. I could beat up my baby sister, but if you touched her, you’d better get ready because you were taking on me, and my big brother too. My brother wouldn’t hesitate to hit either one of us but he’d go toe to toe with you if you called us ugly names. My little sister Maggie wore glasses and I can’t even begin to count the number of times I got into it with some stupid kid who thought the epitome of humor was teasing a six year old until she cried. We didn’t hesitate to gang up on someone who was bigger than us either, joining forces to defeat a greater foe. The irony of this was completely lost on us.


Like the truces in my childhood home, calm moments occur in America's internal battles. A great man dies, a moment of national tragedy is remembered, these moments calm the internal din. They don’t end the skirmishes though, because they can’t hold our attention. The last things that held our attention long enough to get us all working together were World War II and the "Race to Space" against communist Russia.

Japanese Americans volunteered for war while their own families were interned in camps. Black men went to train at Tuskegee though in town they couldn’t drink from the same fountains as the white people whose lives they would soon fight to protect. Women turned in their nylons for the war effort, children collected cans to make munitions and later studied science to increase the nations "brain bank". Everyone did without. Everyone pitched in. While we certainly had our internal problems, we worked together to sustain our nation. The world was knocking on our door and it was bringing war with it. We would stand together to face that threat.

President Obama has detractors in America, but I believe he can use that "us against them" energy to bring our country together. He is after all, one of US. The real “enemy” to focus the fear and hatred on is planetary change. 

There are things happening in the world today that are more frightening than anything we might have imagined during the war years. Our planet is in peril. It can be saved, and better yet, as in our battle to save the world from fascism, there is money to be made by saving it! Unfortunately, as in the years leading up to America’s involvement in WWII, we are unprepared and a high price is going to be paid for having waited so long to gear up for this war.
 
I’m talking about the race to own the solutions that give the world clean water, fresh food and CLEAN ENERGY to move our goods and services around the globe. The enemy is not a country or a people but a situation that must be solved and solved quickly if we are to survive. Eventually, to solve the problem we will have to pull together as a planet but if America wants to retain her place as Leader of the Free World she is going to need a nemesis, a competitor to race against. China is perfectly poised to be that focus. China is a nation on the verge of greatness.

Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times,

It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

 If President Obama wants to get the focus off of the internal differences, I am sorry to say, he is going to need to do something that is antithetical to his way of operating in the world. He is going to have to focus the attention of his enemies on a very real external threat. Someone is going to win the war on climate change by creating and producing technology that cures the planet. I want America to be that country. China is over taking us while we bicker and is happy to make massive gains while watching us quibble internally, the clock ticking away our chance to be a world leader in this arena. What’s amazing is that we are so focused on our internal fights that we don’t even yet realize this will soon be the only arena anyone is watching.  It is very quickly becoming the only thing that matters.

Make no mistake, I understand that what I am suggesting is an appeal to something base in us. It is in our nature as humans to form groups for the purpose of survival, us against them. I look longingly toward the day when we finally get it as a planet that we are in this together. I don’t think that day is coming soon enough for this battle though. I think to win this one we’re going to have to make the focus nationalistic. Right now the two factions of America, Conservative against Liberal, Business against Environment, Nationalist against Globalist, are waging an all out Us-Against-Them war, but the enemy is not us! We need to turn our attentions outward. Time is short. Someday, when we’re all grown up and have learned to solve our problems like adults we will look back on this time from a different perspective. But America is a young country and I am not opposed to using the bluster of that youth for higher purposes. Are you?

I Have a Dream...

I believe that we are all deeply connected to one another and to all living beings. I believe we can influence the unfolding of life with our intentional and creative thoughts - some call this prayer. I believe some of us are more effective at this simply because we practice. I believe when two or more of us do this work together that it is exponentially more powerful.

When I met my partner Jimmy Danko he was wearing a pale blue bracelet made from a slender ribbon on his wrist. He told me he had gotten it, a wish bracelet, on his trip to Ecuador. The bracelet was infused with a wish and worn continuously until it fell off. The bracelet would bring the wearer his wish. I did not ask Jimmy what his wish was and he did not volunteer it. At the time Jimmy was working full time at a corporate ad firm as a graphic designer to support his art habit.

In June of this year Jimmy sold a painting. He’d been working hard on his art since our apartment was completed and after all our travels he was ready to paint to full time. It wasn’t the first painting he ever sold, but it was the first one he sold when he didn’t have a “day job”. A couple of weeks later, the day before his first public exhibition, the bracelet fell off. When it did, I finally asked him what his wish had been. To be a full time professional artist. And so it was.

In light of this I recently donned a purple rubber band infused with a wish, a dream. I colored the band with colors to represent aspects of the wish. I then sent an email to some of my friends, who are also some of the most powerful people I know, and I asked them to hold the dream with me. As each of my friends has written me back, telling me the story of the dream as they are holding it for me, I have put a mark on the band to represent their vision. As the band fills with color and my inbox fills with carefully crafted visions of my dream I find that I am filled with certainty. I am certain that my dream is on its way.

I have been careful about who I’ve shared the dream with. There are some people I just know I can trust with something so precious. These same people know that if they ask it of me, I will hold their dreams with mine, and we will each be more powerful because of it.

Do you have a dream?

America! F%#*& Yeah!

A year has passed since I left the United States to live abroad. On many occasions in that time I’ve been asked why I’m here. The answer to the question is always the same: Jimmy and I came to live in Argentina to have a rich cultural experience and to stretch our understanding of the world. There are many travelers and expats living in Buenos Aires and abroad. We often meet these people and have conversations about where we live now, where we are from and where we are going next. Some of them have strong emotional feelings about the United States of America, many positive, some negative. It is common for there to be an assumption that I feel as they do, which is often not so.

I wondered, after living here for a year, what it would be like to go home again. I never imagined it would be in any way a negative experience and it was not. For the record: I love the experience of living over seas, though Buenos Aires is far from my favorite place on Earth. I love the people I’ve met, the things I’ve seen and done, the opportunities I’ve been given to stretch myself intellectually, culturally, emotionally. I also love my country. I am an American. America is my homeland and it always will be. Yes, statistically America has more morbidly obese people than any other developed nation on Earth. It also has more Bikram yoga studios. You can list WalMart, Starbuck’s, fat people, fast food, politics, war, racism, problems unending, it will not change my mind. America is the most beautiful country on Earth to me. The people of the United States of America are the most beautiful people on Earth to me, even those who were born somewhere else. The government of the United States of America is the best government in the world to me.

The news media as a whole in America is agenda driven and assumes the ignorance of it’s audience. And then there’s Bill Moyer’s Journal. Corporations push fat laden calorie bombs on the sub-literate causing serious health problems for the young and old alike. And then there’s Whole Foods. The government spends billions each year on the “war” on drugs and on wars around the globe pushing an agenda I don’t believe in. And then there’s the fact that our country has done more to help eradicate world hunger than any other nation on Earth. For everything I can point to about my country, my government, my people, that I wish were different, there is something I am deeply proud of to off set it.

Going home for three weeks in July reminded me of all the things I love about America. It also reminded me that I am and will always be American, no matter where else I may live or travel. My deep cultural connection to the land and the people of my native country is simply in my blood. I have never been ashamed of being American and, perhaps because of that, I have never been treated by anyone as if being American were a negative thing. I’ve never encountered rudeness or disrespect with regard to my nativity. I have met many people who have expressed opinions to me about our country’s global politics but they have always done this in a friendly and conversational tone and I have enjoyed these conversations immensely.

I know that I will continue to meet people who don’t share my warm remembrances of home. I used to imagine I might become one of them once I had the experience of living overseas. I am glad to say that is not what has come to pass. Instead, I have been given the opportunity to know more about the world my country is part of, to grow my understanding of the planet and it’s people, and to hold tight to my homeland as the place that created, among other wonders, me.

Volvemos (We Return)...

July 11th, 2009

Yesterday was my second birthday in South America ( the 2nd time I celebrated a birthday, I'm noticeably not 2) and I passed it quietly at home relaxing with Jimmy and preparing for our first visit home since moving here a little over a year ago.

It’s funny, because we’ve been known to say that “we came here to open and yoga and art studio” but obviously we could have done that somewhere in the States. We came here to have a cultural experience, which we both very much wanted. The realities of it have been overwhelming at times and along with the ever shifting economy led us to choose a simpler life here with an apartment but no brick and mortar business. We know a couple who arrived five months before we did with a plan to open a studio and seventeen months and many thousands of dollars later - not to mention the work! - they are not open (sending powerful positive eyeball rays in general direction of studio) and while we have admired their persistence and determination we have also often said, “glad it’s not us”. I’m glad someone is doing it because this city needs a Bikram Yoga Studio, but I’m glad it’s not me.

Jimmy’s art though was not something that would wait, it pulls on him too hard and calls too loudly for his attention, and he has steadily continued to work toward being in a place logistically where he can take full advantage of the artistic culture here and do the work he loves, let world begin to see his stuff. Last Friday night we passed a major milestone on that path.



Photo by Beatrice Murch

We prepped, planned, sweated and worked to create an opening night for Jimmy’s work in South America which coincided with the completion of his website and the 1st official Jimmy Danko t-shirt and a limited edition print of Changin’ Times, his portrait of Bob Dylan. We put the word out (in English & Spanish) and were flooded with support from some of the amazing people we’ve met since we came here. We found ourselves at 7:00 pm anxiously awaiting the crowds. Sure enough at 7:05 the doorbell buzzed and the 1st of over 100 people started the one minute elevator ride to the 24th floor (where you get off and walk up one more...) to our art gallery in the sky, Gallery 24B.



Photo by Beatrice Murch

There were locals and expats, artists and professors, the very young, musicians and business people, the somewhat older and more. We poured cases of wine (almost ran out but a back up order arrived in a flash!) and passed trays of home made love courtesy of a really good friend. There were people we knew and many we didn’t and they spent the evening talking to Jimmy, to each other, about art, about life, about living in another culture.



Photo by Beatrice Murch

I asked everyone I spoke to which piece was their favorite and got answers as varied and interesting as Jimmy’s art. As I raced around, energy high, bottle of wine in one hand and dirty glasses (headed for the kitchen) in the other I stopped for just a moment to notice the buzz of the voices, the energy, the evening, all buzzing around me. I felt a sense of accomplishment. We did it. We moved to another country, bought and remodeled a home, created something to share and blended the local culture with our own in sharing it. We did it.

The next morning as I washed the floors and put everything to rights I felt a calm satisfaction. My Spanish isn’t perfect and I don’t have a yoga studio but we have done an amazing thing and we have learned and grown and stretched our understanding of the world in the process.

The day after tomorrow we’ll board a fourteen hour flight back to California for a visit and I am curious to see how my year in Buenos Aires will have changed the way I interact with the place I lived for most of my life. I hear from other expats to expect some interesting stuff to happen in the experience. I look forward to that. I don’t know what doors life will open for us next and I don’t know if they will open onto America when we leave here, or when that will be, but I do know I got what I came for. We have had a cultural awakening in this big, loud, dirty, spunky city and we are stronger, more flexible and more open to what will come next because of it.

Stay tuned...