tectonics

I have marked the days it has been since I left the Camino, as one week, and then two and three passed me by. I am now officially finished my camino time and well into the lovely travel days I set aside for my dear hearts Mike and Noni. This is us at sunset in Madrid

But there have been things and stuff between me and the day I left. Things and stuff that have shifted the plate tectonics of who I am and allowed me so many many moments I never exactly thought I'd have and yet here we are, here I am. 

 First tumbled out those crucial three days I spent in Burgos, deciding and going and resting my foot (sort of) and writing and thinking. It is a very beautiful city and featured some kindly, beautiful doctors who massaged my foot and gave me a hug when I left. It was the evening after my last blog post that it dawned on me, deep down, from the tips of my toes what I should do next. Go to Slovenia. See my friends there, check in, keep going. Take it one day at a time to figure it out. Once that revealed itself to me, I couldn't contain this jittery caffeine feeling spreading through my body. Leaving Burgos, throughout my brief stop in Barcelona, the excitement shuttered through my veins when I got on my bus. 22 hours from Barcelona to Zurich, and then one strange, orderly, clean, Germanic autumn day in Zurich surrounded by money and suits and a friendly tour, and then 10 hours to Ljubljana. A bus ride where I swallowed my excitement and questions of "what will it feel like to see..xyz everything..again?" and the tears of emotion and how on earth did I get here. 

Because in a way that felt more right then most things I've ever done, I was returning to a place I thought I'd never see again, people I didn't know how to keep in my life. I was returning to Ljubljana, to Slovenia, my exchange home for 10 months, the place that just kind of showed up in my heart one day and didn't leave. The people that taught me love is infinite, really, and no matter how broken you may feel there is space, there is always space for more life, more laughter, more love. To return to a country that held me through one of the most challenging years I'd lived, in terms of heart growth and wandering, to be again in the place that held me as I cried and laughed and figured out how to be alone. 

At 5:14am on Tuesday September 15th, the bus pulled into the recognizable city limits of Ljubljana. My heart jumped in my chest. I got off the bus in the misty rainy pre dawn darkness and everything hit me, flooded me, as I very consciously moved through the steets I knew, I know, so well. 

I took this selfie by the door to my old apartment 

the last time I'd touched this door was a very different predawn day, with my amazing friends holding me close, saying goodbye before Gracia and Gasper and Mattt took me, leaking, to the airport.

I leaned against the yellow building and cried when I saw the castle lit up on the hill, catching my breath in this strange exuberance. Standing in an early morning Prešeren square, shapes and buildings ghosting my eyes. 

And then quickly I was called up by Gracia and while the sun rose behind grey rainy clouds I saw them again. Nejc and Evi and Gracia. We embraced laughing and yelling in the train station, went for a coffee (kava z mlekom) and croissant and just like that I was back. 

Because when I had left in June 2014, I thought I'd left for good. I struggled on my flight home to put it away, to hurt less, to not hold them all so dear. I figured if I could just pull myself together after their friendship and kindness, I wouldn't be so lonely or sad in Vancouver and besides, I probably won't go back so this was just a one time special thing that's it move on. Effectively I tried to put them, put Slovenia, in a box and let it be. Don't touch, don't remember, you'll be fine. 

And for the most part I did okay, the distance really did allow me to dis-remember in a way where I thought I was fine with the 'probably not'-ness of it all. 

But of course, we are not meant for boxes. What we try to put away will always come back until we let it live with us. Even the best of boxing intentions will not last forever. 

It was not until I faced the very real possibility of seeing them, my Slovenian friends, and the country again that it came back completely. That I realized how much they all meant, and how much good they had done for me, for where I was at while on exchange. 

Kind of miraculous. 

And so what followed was really the most random of events as I tried to catch my breath and catch up with everyone, feeling the way deep down that these are now friendships I will never do the misdeed of trying to un-remember again. You are all people I love and will cherish in my life, however and whenever I will see you. 

I went to Slovenia with no clear idea what I was going to do for a month, until October 11th when I needed to get to Spain for my current travels.

I ended up staying, in Ljubljana and Podsreda and Celje and Slovenj Gradec, getting to know the countryside and rural life and small town things and culture and people at a depth I hadn't known before, the way the language is a comfort now, the accents, the children. 

So...what did I do for a month in Slovenia? 

First I ate at all my favourite places in Ljubljana (this sounds like I am seven years old writing a school report) and came out to my friends and felt the way they are awesome people and ate ice creams and bureks (burek 4 lyyffeee) and bought shoes and then attended a unesco peace day event at a primary school in a small town called Slovenj Gradec and danced in a primary school dance and made smores at a Girl Scout campfire and had amazing feminist political conversations with eager 15 year olds and slept in a library and was offered a temporary volunteer job and accepted that. Then it was back to Ljubljana where I rested and reflected for a weekend in the city, wandering Tivoli and kongresni trg and the cobblestones and three bridges I know so well now, feeling how at home I am, how familiar I feel. Resting. Healing. Realizing how I have my done either of those since the end of university, since the start of it.The week that followed my first week back was a kaleidoscope of cozy nights at ziferblat (a pay for time cafe concept with the coolest owner) planning a youth conference for UNESCO youths in Slovenia and speaking about big ideas and culture and art and what it means to be critical and have conversations and feeling empowered and powerful and invincible. I bought diplomacy clothes and organized conference things and then on a rainy Friday we headed up to Celje (where I experienced the best tomatoes of my life......this is not a drill, they were the real deal sweetest most aromatic tomatoes. Mm.) and Podsreda where it was then time to put on this youth conference in a castle. 

This is what that looked like 

with ~20 students 16-21 years old and we talked about global citizenship and privilege and imaginary borders and how do we do things about this, youth mobilization and action and critical media literacy and I remembered why I love conversations like this with kids who care, because it's fucking awesome 

this was the sunset as we drove away, me and Nejc and Evi and Andrey, to Celje for two nights where we explored Roman ruins and a castle

and a whole bunch of rural living and delicious bread and pumpkin seed oil and cozy family life and conversations about politics and Slovenia and socialism and culture and the effects of everything and then just sort of like that another week had past and September was moving by and I found myself on a train and a bus back to Slovenj Gradec for my temporary teaching stint. 

I was greeted and treated mostly with such massive kindness I laughed to myself for the whole two weeks I was there. I had a series of host moms who really showed me the graciousness of small towns. I stayed with Veronika first, the most cheerful energetic woman I have maybe ever met (with, her new favourite, "spoiled" kids--the way children are sometimes the opposite of their parents), and during my four days with her and her enthusiastic attempts at English, I got to sing the hokey pokey with seven year olds and speak of residential schools to timid high schoolers and sit by rivers speaking of "big love" and meet her parents in their small village 

so beautiful and quiet and holding a bright brilliant moon in night skies. 

Over the weekend I stayed with Mojca, the enthusiastic, kind-hearted, wonderful soul who invited me to be there in the first place. Not only was her home the coziest and her two year old the cutest (got a kiss on the cheek from her my first night there-- see mom, I am good with children!!), but the whole weekend was the most picturesque thing I've ever lived. 

From coffee in this magical garden 

to a hilarious photo shoot with these youngsters 

to making štrudelj in the afternoon 

 experiencing this view 

and the sunset in a field with local cows that Ema (Mojca's daughter) excitedly pointed out in her sweet chirping voice 

Wowza. 

And then Antonija took me in for my final week in Slovenj Gradec, answering many a question in the sixth and eighth grade classes. I could probably write a novel about that experience, but instead I'll give you some pictures. 

Like this very proper school teacher outfit I found myself wearing (wut) 

and the view from our afternoon walk, 

and then this selfie with the 24 11year old students for whom we ran an English camp for two nights

AINT THEY CUTIES???

So this takes me through my temporary teaching stint and brings me back to Ljubljana. 

To the ziferblat cafe and Gracia 

To Nejc and Evi and the best ice cream I've ever had ever in my life ever 

To banana cake for breakfast 

and getting on a bus to get on a plane to get on a metro to get to Madrid. 

Which is where I started this post. 

But it is not where I am finishing it, located as I am right now on a bus to Montreal. 

Yes, in Canada. 

But let me go back a second and take you to how I get here. 

 Back to Ljubljana with some very big questions in my heart, and some sort of rattling decisions that came shaking through me in my last few days of teaching. 

Because while this experience taught me so much, and showed me all the beauty and grace and awesomeness of really good teachers, and a really good school, I ended up at midnight during the English camp with my heart racing over the question/statement of "I don't want to do this." 

And it's incredibly difficult to try and describe everything that goes into that statement, but I will try and wrap it up simply.

And quite simply it is that right now, right now I feel the need to be doing, living, manifesting ~politics~ (the rad kind). I need to be acting, I need to be speaking, I need to be listening and protesting. I feel how my heart beats loudly in conversations on politics and "radical" things and the wrongs and justice and society and inequality and rights and the shit, the shittttt we have to smash out of our system. I feel how much I want to put my energy into making this world suck less, hurt less, into questioning privilege and unlearning binaries and calling in a new way of being and raging against the (machine) everything that has been fucked up. Not that this cannot happen in a classroom--it does, often. It needs to. 

     But, importantly, I want to do this in the context of 'Canada'. Because I can't avoid the responsibility that my settler upbringing has revealed in me, that I cannot just run away to somewhere ~else~ because I don't think there is anything to do here. I previously used to believe this, that Canada was dull and apathetic (not totally untrue)and nothing really happens or needs to happen. I cringe in this, but we live and learn. My time in Vancouver showed me otherwise, and my time abroad revealed to me how difficult it is for me to at all be proud or even remotely okay with speaking of 'Canada'. I mean, sure we heaved Steve, but there is centuries of work and learning to be done and undone here. 

Any time a kid would ask me what I will do next, I'd say travel for a while and then end up back in Canada to work to make it 'better' (better as in revolutionize the system and smash the patriarchy and dismantle white supremacy and gender essentialism and decolonize the continent, y'know). And then in a moment of quiet that came after a moment of frustration (because 11 year olds are 11 after all), I heard myself. And I thought, why wait? Why postpone? Why not try and do, now? 

Even pre-Camino I knew I needed to "figure things out", re: my life and life's direction. Reading over my inventory of being post, I even had an idea of this. 

So on Friday October 9th I faced it. I faced what I knew I needed to do and I swallowed what was left of my "but the plan??" and embraced the way it felt to acknowledge what has been making me breathe, making me move for a while. 

Upon arriving in Madrid I cancelled the next step I had planned to make: doing my CELTA in Belfast, to be certified to teach English and then find a job (in Spain somewhere) and work teaching English. That was my plan. 

Instead, we travelled Madrid 

and Barcelona 

and Valencia 

and spoke and spoke and lived our trip as a conversation from one place to another. 

As I fell hard in love with Barcelona and considered going to Australia while by the sea and booking my flights back to Toronto. Because I had to, for visa reasons, and I needed to, for "breathe for a second and don't spend as much money and look for jobs" reasons. 

So then I suddenly had a deadline, November 4th, a willing return to Toronto, to home, the very place and source of all the tension I left so gladly. 

A willing return. 

I have not wanted to return to Toronto in a very long time. Possibly have never really wanted to return since I moved out. 

So, there's a change. 

Change of mind, change of heart, change of plans, and figuring out how to work in and around and through and with all of this. To forgive myself, and accept myself, to meet myself always where I am at. Not to judge for what I previously thought and felt before, because whether it still stands, I am where I am because of that. 

I couldn't write for the rest of the time I was in Spain because I was in such a transient-decision place, my mind changing and weighing all the possibilities. Possibilities that we're all remarkably possible, possibilities I considered while by the ocean 

and at sunrise 

Until I stumbled upon something I maybe want to do, a bit more school, to get qualified for the kind of stuff I want to do. 

And so October, always a weird and difficult month for me, passed, and my travels through Spain were frustrating and gorgeous and everything life is and becomes when nothing makes sense and everything is possible. 

I hugged Mike goodbye and went to Dublin, 

and had the most interesting first twenty four hours I've ever had in a place 

and then saw Vicky again! And we watched rugby 

and pigeons and small children and I got a sense of her life and friends on exchange and I breathed and breathed in the breath of fresh air that Ireland, magical, so truly is 

and my hair went all wild for sunlight 

and then it was time to go. 

Which brings me to where I am. 

Back in Toronto, visiting Montreal for the weekend, and in Canada again for an indefinite period of time, until the rest of things make sense. 

Here are words I encountered on my final night in Dublin, 

over a pint of Guinness and some (fckin perfect) curry chips:

"The time is right for you to make your home an oasis of healing and connection. The time is also right for you to be hatching your big ideas and communicating them with those you might collaborate with. The time is right for you to look at your upcoming year and wonder what you might want to conspire creating with your life. 

There is magic in the written word. Especially this week. Write down what you wish to create in a home. Write down the ideas you wish to develop and delve into. Write down the types of experiences you’d like to invite into your daily life. The more you consciously, verbally construct your hopes right now, the more likely they are to be made manifest."

so I leave you here, looking out the window as the road passes by. 

this is where I continue beginning. 

xx

-k

the way

I wrote this yesterday but was too exhausted by emotions to edit and post, so here goes. 

*

Day 9- 

Today I left the official Camino de Santiago de Compostela. 

Today I boarded a bus in the town of Najéra and I went to Burgos. 

Today I got off the Way. 

Today I make my own way. 

Hear me out, because I have had some realizations that poured into me like the closest thing to truth there is and I trust the way it feels to be where I am, doing what I will. 

this is not a justification 

this is a revelation 

that everything I wanted to find on this Camino I already had in me 

and what this Camino has provided me is the ability to see, again, to breathe 

my destination was not some grand cathedral hall: it was me. 

And so today I leave the official sign posted Way in order to do what I set out to do, way back in April when I decided to do this and 9 days ago when I left in the blustery rainy predawn from Roncesvalles: Make space for myself. Breathe again. Be me. Do me. Do my own thing and find my own way. 

I walked 8 days on the Camino alone and battled blisters and bruises, stanky wool socks and loud snoring men and some of the best sunrises I've seen in my life. I laughed in absolute joy when I began, and I cried from happiness in moments that caught me off guard, like the small child who waved at me from his car, yelling "BUEN CAMINO!!!" enthusiastically from the window, like flocks of bird taking off in flight from the red earth coloured, tiled roofs of these small quaint Spanish towns we pass through, like listening to exactly the right song at the lowest moment of the day and knowing deep down I will be all right. I have walked with and beside and been passed by wonderful folks from all over the world, and I have felt the intimacy of this countryside to hold grief and uncertainty and happiness and shining inspired eyes. I learned what my own pace meant, and I slowed down. I smelled the roses, everywhere. I took selfies where the joy radiated from my face because it feels so good to be alone. 

I have been alone, and I have been alone. I felt my heart beat in my chest and it was the sound that sent me to sleep every night. I breathed into time that was mine, is mine, completely, with nothing to do and nowhere to go but walk forward. I have eaten the best tomatoes in the world, and laughed about peaches that look like butts, and commiserated over blisters and peed in a field and tasted wine from a fountain and spread my arms out and took it all in. 

I have napped glorious naps and felt my body get stronger and stepped into my skin. I have wrestled heteronormative assumptions that I never imagined would be so heavy to shift, and I feebly laughed off comments in moments where I otherwise would have come out. I have passed fields of sunflowers and tasted wild blackberries and vineyard grapes and fresh picked figs.

All of this has happened, and I did not know how to write it. For seven days I struggled over how to write this. The words didn't quite work. 

And then as I walked into Logroño on the seventh day, I followed my instincts and took a room at an albergue with only 4 people and a private washroom and they even gave us towels! It felt right so I went with it; I followed what flowed and I didn't nap and I ate some awesome patatas bravas and I wrote in my journal "I feel like something is shifting". In my room, apart from the funnily snoring Spanish man, I met two American girls, Sydney from Seattle and Taylor from Connecticut. They were very kind and friendly and we saw some of the city together, had some tapas and gelato and then Taylor invited me to walk with them the next day. 

I agreed, and we set out before dawn, leaving Logroño by way of a pleasant reservoir, and walked 18-ish km to a small town called Ventosa together. Chatted about this and that, families and friends and returning from exchange and animated movies and favourite foods, telling stories about the Grand Canyon and LA and hiking and adventures. I was surprised by how different it was to walk with other people, what a different rhythm it was. Not unpleasant and totally adaptable, but decidedly not alone, even in the quiet moments. 

When we arrived in Ventosa I got a bed in the only albergue in town and after lunch I set out to write in my journal. 

And I wrote. 

And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote so many words it was as if my pen was not under my control any more, the words flowing out of me from wherever they came, some deep place that had been feeling and knowing what this was this whole time. 

I wrote how deeply the space of being alone had affected me. I had not consciously felt what that alone had been until I was not alone in walking. I wrote that I am infinitely capable and able to do what I need, what I want, right now. That in the past seven days I had not realized how much quiet I absorbed and how much I could actually hear my heart again. That what I had been searching for outside, in conversations or other people or moments or what, I had already inside of myself: the ability to fully be, fully breathe, know myself and be aware of wonder. That I am becoming, I am full of this creative space in my life where I can finally begin to know and do what I want in ways I have never known before, that I am coming out, coming alive again. 

This life force of feeling how very possible, how very present I am, can be. 

Over the course of the evening I trembled with that realization and I felt this deep peace, this ease settle into me. I don't know how else to describe it but that--an ease, a comfort, like a soothing balm, lavender or cucumber-mint, soft, a quenched thirst, a good sleep, familiar kindness after far away fear. 

And then I got real for a second with my feet. Because they have been remarkable vehicles for me so far, but I've had this swollen tender point on the inside of my left foot. It hasn't been bad enough to make me limp but it has gotten steadily worse over the last few days. On a quick google search, I figured, possibly, it could be a stress fracture (or cancer or an alien baby) or an angry tendon (not the actual diagnosis but still). And for about an hour I sat in an intense unfolding of what that could mean, (6 weeks of 'rest'), the 'end' of my Camino. 

And that's when everything really fell into place.

Because in considering having to stop my walk, I realized that there is no destination to this period of time. It was not a place I was seeking and it was not kilometres walked and counted. If anything, the destination for my Camino was to arrive at myself, my own self. And the thing is, I am already there--already was, always will be. 

With my flashlight propped under my tent of a pillow, I wrote into midnight, unable to halt my pen: 

"I feel like I am in touch with the infinite possibility that comes with being. And that every moment I live is allowed to be a reflection of that, because I can be that person, because I already am. And wonder is never really far from hand. And I think, I really do think, this was inside of me all along. That I have always been capable of knowing this, and shining, but it is a myth I tell myself that I am lesser or smaller or uglier in different places. 

       I am not lesser. I am always me."

I had to leave to know this again because so much got in the way between me and myself: moving home, post grad worries, king city smallness, tensions and anxieties and small voices that become big voices because sometimes it is easier to dislike yourself and your life, even when you don't, because to be bright and bold and happy is too much. Sometimes it is easier to believe you are too much, or not enough, rather than exactly who you need to be for this world. 

I had to leave the familiar and I had to walk, to set out with some dedicated time to encounter this. And I thought the Camino that would do this, and it has, but it was simply illuminating for me what I had all along. 

This stunned me. It was like some magmatic force that moved around me and shifted the tectonics of what my present looks like. 

I woke up in the morning, this morning, to a heart that knew what it needed to do. 

When I left the albergue, I was coated in sunrise, breathing in that rose-dawn air as my feet took me effortlessly through vineyards to the next town. Everything flowed in a way it has not yet flowed. It was something bigger and more than me, momentum, that moved me to where I am. I am in Burgos now and will recuperate for a day or two, get my foot checked out, and think. This isn't me jumping to the conclusion that I can't keep walking: this is me having found myself again. 

Because when I took my first step on the Camino, I was not just beginning a long walk. I am beginning my life, here, now, again, with all that has happened becoming rainbow clay for me to colour and stretch and shape the way I am. 

And today, when I stepped off the path, I was not ending my walk. I was going on my own way, beginning, continuing what it is that I need. 

There is no day 8 or 9-- there is just the next day I choose to live. 

I needed every second of what has come before, every struggle and resistance and rhythms and not knowing in order to get to this point where I understand that my long walk is not just the Camino de Santiago. It is literally the rest of my life. 

It begins to make sense now, how it felt while I did walk. How the cathedrals and religion felt off, the difficulty being out to others while walking, the rush and race of so many other hurried bodies. The moments I loved best were ones of total alone, of music and birds, the horizon, flowers: the wonder I have always known. 

The Camino provides, they say. 

And the Camino has provided, and it has opened me up and into my life, and it has pushed me here. 

Whether I return to the path matters not. It could be in a few days or forty years or never again, but I have found what I needed. 

I cried in my hotel room considering what it was I have done. I cried because I read my journal words out loud and everything was so much, so present, so moved by something more than me. I remembered this quote, from the book Solar Storms I finished before my walk: 

"Tears have a purpose. They are what we carry of ocean, and perhaps we must become sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed." 

This is a transformation. 

And I cried because I was worried about making this choice and moving with that kind of flow and force, but no one else's expectations or pressures get to control the direction I move now. That is exhausting. I am not quitting, I am not backing out, I am not reneging on some deal with the should-do's of society. No. I am (relatively) free. I am 22 and young and queer and messy and loud and I don't need to have my shit together and I am doing what moves me. Listening to the sound of my heart. 

And so now, 

now I get to make it up, live every, every minute, and keep going. 

Where next? No idea. 

Possibly the sea. 

And I rest assured knowing that whatever it is I will do is whatever it is I will need because it will be my choice. 

The poetry from the heading of this blog (words I foolishly posted as a reminder to not be an asshat when travelling other places knowing we can leave), now comes back in ways more poignant and home-hitting then I could have known. 

"We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." -TS Eliot

I have arrived, am arriving, will always be. 

inventory/being

an inventory of being. 

it is 20:20 on August 30th, 2015 as I write this. 

I am in Pamplona, Spain, and tomorrow I board a bus to Roncesvalles where I spend a night and then begin to walk.

Because tomorrow is the day I arrive at my starting point, I am writing now. I am writing now because I think I want silence, to start. It was so nice when I was off social media earlier in the summer for a while. Mm. A kind of silence and disconnect and just me in my brain-ness, before I begin. 

Although even that is, I know, a trick thing to say, "before I begin". 

Because exactly a week ago I encountered words that reminded me how this has already begun, constantly beginning. 

I like remembering where I have been to see better where I am now. To think of a week ago today, I remember stresses that come from too much time at home and not enough of it spent being who I am. There was this mounting pressure I did not want to address of too much left to do and nowhere near enough time to do it and slow internet connections and do-I-need-a-new-sleeping-bag kind of hassle. And so I did what I usually do when my deadlines are around the corner and I just kind of stopped doing anything productive and skimmed through emails I've sent in the last few months, distracted myself with posts on various Camino blogs. 

Two things came up. 

'The Camino provides.' 

         and suddenly I felt this trembling like the end of something that doesn't want to hold up anymore, and then things kind of just crumbled and I remembered that oh, oh yeah. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. That is what this is, this ancient pilgrimage thing. The Camino provides. Oh fucking yeah. 

and 

'The Camino begins the day you decide to do it.'

     the day I decided to do it? Here are the words I wrote in an email about it to my friend Mike: 

i looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and my eyes were bright shining through me and i said to myself, I can do this. this is something I can do. this is part of my life I can live, I can do this, I will have my time to do what I want. 

and all this sincerity whelmed up and rushed out and I had this jumping feeling in the cells in my veins that this is so much possible, this is so much what I can do. just walk, walk alone, walk with others, walk with my own two feet for like 7 weeks through Spain and to the ocean, eventually, and I can do this. 

"I can do this". 

and in a similar rush last Sunday night, I came back to me. My Camino began rooted in possibility. 

OH RIGHT. 

Okay. 

So I took a deep breath and decided to let go of the fractured frazzled puzzle pieces of everything, let it just fall away and approach this all remembering those two things: that my present is taking care of itself and I have been on my Camino long before I left the country. 

And if I am to remember all that mid-April to end-August contained, well then. 

Well then, I am in for something else entirely on this physical/spiritual culmination of all such things. 

inventory of being: 

heavy eyes from not much sleep the last two nights//last week of nights: 

     remembering late nights packing and then, my last night, and then overnight flight to Lisbon and then two small sleeps and then overnight bus to Seville and then last night hostel friends, pen pals who just finished their Camino, picking me up and taking me out for beers in the park as the sun set over the Pyrenees, spectacularly, acapella Basque music floating over families and couples and lovers and candles being lit by small children, sitting on the streets by a plaza and drinking beers and eating patatas bravas on the warm stones and people, so many people around us, shoulders (like yours, soft by streetlight) and backs and legs and laughter, dancing out til 2am and the warm night packed with humans outside

feet propped on this hostel couch where earlier I finished a book that made me cry because it ended with these words: 

"Something beautiful lives inside us. You will see. Just believe it. You will see."

which makes me think maybe it is not so bad to have a soft heart that cannot always forget and can always love again and moves on 

my heel pain is less, not gone but less, and maybe it'll be around forever but hopefully not and I am determined not to let that stop me. to know the limits and beyond of my body, but smartly. 

I had a conversation with a man on a bench while I looked for my bus from Seville to Madrid. In my limp-along Spanish I told him I was a peregrino (pilgrim) and we chatted and I laughed and it is all the more reason to be open to such small chats because 

     I remembered what it feels like to have wonder run through me and I do not remember the last time I felt that, like suddenly I am present and feeling and unravelling all together, knowing 

the last time I travelled alone was on exchange and I am not who I was then and my heart is not currently broken and everything everything feels like I am new again, like I have fallen apart and am falling again but maybe falling into place 

      this is not the same foundation-building desperate need to travel I have felt before and I am lucky to have friends who say listen, it will never be what it was and you don't need to make it that and that is good and better for you. 

So I breathe and say okay, yes. How does the me right now feel, how does me right now listen to what is around me and what sounds best. How do I do me, do this, do life as it happens, every minute. 

So I breathe and say okay, yes. 

It is such an unknown I've never really done before but I get so emotional in hearing/reading stories of it in a way that feels inevitable to be here. It is a long walk and I want to walk a long walk. 

I want to walk a long walk because I want to move until I feel my heart in my throat and my feet because I feel, am alive, and I can feel that alive in all the ways I feel that I am me, now, fully (fuller). 

I want to walk a long walk because my last night was the last night that I had, 3am becoming 5am becoming the city swirling around me waking up, because I can't stop that night from coming back to me in moments and I think maybe it was a night meant to happen, as sweet and kind and giving and good as it all was, every cosmic second. And I don't know what to do about it, and so I will walk. And write postcards.

I want to walk a long walk because I came out to myself and the people in my life and I am still maybe winded from that, and I want to walk a long walk because it is not a one time event, it is again and again a new way of knowing my skin and my self. To keep unlearning, to keep questioning, loving. 

I want to walk a long walk because the last 5 months were the last 5 months that they were, the last year was the last year it was, the last 4 years were what they were.... I think this is more of a need, here--that I need to walk. I need to keep going, I need motion. 

I need motion because all that had propelled me before, my time in the place that gave me purpose (school, UBC, unceded Coast Salish territories), is no longer mine to be in. Also, a whole bunch of societal shit I was built on and into is no longer okay for me to breathe, it is toxic in a way it hasn't been before. 

     I need to move myself now, physically, to find what it is that moves me, in every other way. I have an idea of this and that, the things that hurt and hurt the world, the earth, the land, the systems and oppressions and injustices and privileges, and all the moments of awe and colour and music and laughter and stars that somehow find their way anyways: this moves me. How does it fit, does it, why? 

I hit a pretty hard post-grad blues point this summer. The rest of my life is now rolling expansive in front of me, for all that the future is a myth. But I do face an infinite amount of 'now', and how do I want to fill that? What moments do I want to make up my life? 

I am breathless always for the ways I have been afforded the space and time and resources to do this-emotional, societal, material, all of it. I am knocked over always by what it means to be able to walk, to move, to consider and be touched and experience all of this. 

here is the sky from when I laid in the park where the concert took place last night: 

I have no idea what is to come. 

And that is perhaps the way it should be. 

these are the guiding questions to what happens next: 

   who am I

   where have I been 

   where am I going 

so here is to moonlight and warm breezes and dust and blisters, to sleep and sleepless nights and the backs of people and words that bring laughter and messages from good people and the everything, the everything that this always is 

x 

-k

airport floors

I must say I am getting quite acquainted with airport floors.

this is my plastic bag of electronic knick knacks, and a set your pussy free sticker in the event of radical feminist friendships that may happen. The innocuous passport photos folder actually contains the worst passport photo I have ever taken in my entire life. No, no you will not get to see it. 

I left Toronto last night at 8:45pm and lost the battle against my eyelids and discomfort to sleep most of the way to Lisbon, 

and just now I am waiting in the airport, charging devices, planning the nap I am about to take. 

This is what the sunrise looked like 

hooray for shitty quality iPod pictures! It's been a while! 

The next step is a hopskipjump to Seville, arriving at midnight. The counter-desk-man-checker-inner said "it's realllllly hot there. Be prepared for hell." I laughed. I love the heat. I shall report if it is hell-ish or not. Although I am glad I am not walking from there anymore. No, instead in the next 6 days I will be bussing and training my way to Roncesvalles. 

I am making my way there with the words in my heart that The Camino provides. And that your Camino begins the day you decide to do it. 

In case you maybe haven't caught on or are a cyber bot or something, I am heading to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. I have lived and loved and friggen killed it at my last year at UBC, and I graduated with a degree (whatever that means) and I crossed a stage and I left Vancouver for a more indefinite period of time and it was okay to go the way it wasn't before (much is okay and more and nothing and everything then it was since last writing), and I have spent 6-ish weeks around Toronto "at home" and now finally finally I am going again. Probably as much for survival as for adventure and breathing and time on my hands. 

Even while I sit here heavy-tired and definitely-smelly, I have a heart that feels right again, this kind of smoothness of transition for my soul or something to be moving like this, to be going. 

I will surely wax poetic at length (or not??) before I begin my walk, with all that is has been before this part of it. 

For now though, I am existing in that not-real reality that is airports and travel days. It feels even further removed from any actual living because my hours of sleep in the last 48 totals about 4. Woooooooooh...? 

It was interesting to return to that beautiful city in the sunshine summer weather, remembering it in shadows and general ideas of orienting myself. I put my feet in this water after I dozed by the metro station I had arrived at when I was here last (in February 2014, on exchange and visiting a friend!).

I think this guy on a horse was probably important: 

 There was a cruise ship docked just outside the frame of that picture, so the generic white tourists were everywhere. A few were of the hardcore "I heart Lisbon" t-shirt wearing variety, and I was about to judge before I realized I am wearing the shirt I bought in Nicaragua. No one is blameless here. 

I ventured up to the used bookstore where I had purchased my Portuguese copy of the little prince a while ago. They didn't have any notebooks. I am kind of appalled I did not bring a notebook with me--I didn't forget, I just ran out of time to remember. So I wandered back down the smooth marble streets, smooth in the rainy-slippage sense, otherwise uneven surfaces, and sat in plaza Rossio for a while and ate an apple and read Solar Storms and then I checked for wifi and this image came up in the viewfinder (be warned, you may encounter many a foot/hiking shoe picture in the weeks to come) and I said hey, I could be anywhere. 

I could be anywhere, and I am right here. I am in transit, I am going. 

Well well. 

hello again, my sidekick companion of my own two damn feet and the words 

keep going. 

-k