Sustainable Me

My Blog has MOVED!

2012-01-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

Today, I become a brand.

Visit me at my new blog site.

www.kimcambron.com

It's on!

Kim

Haiti, With Love

2012-01-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

My Dear Friends,

Some of you have written me today already, on the anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. I am greatly humbled by your reaching out to me. It feels funny to be the one among my friends who is the holder of that tragedy in Haiti, but I am so honored to hold that place with you. And it is an enormous comfort to me that you care enough for me to not only remember the day…but to send me your love as well.

For those of you who do not know, and I have new friends who do not know me well yet (there is time), I spent a little over three months at the end of 2011 in Haiti, helping an NGO down there build their communications practice. We did much together, but leaving the country was still gut-wrenching because there is still so more much I could have done, and wanted to do. But then, there always will be more to do, and my family needs me too. I hurt today thinking about the lives in Haiti that I still so badly want to work with to bring their country around. The more you know about the country and its struggles the more you come to respect their strength, resilience and desire to thrive against so many challenges. Everything new thing I learned about their history opened up spidering networks of additional information that led to an infinite number of additional questions. But the thing I know with a confidence you can only feel after working with the people in that country, is that it is not only possible that the country can return to self-sustainability and strength…it is the likely outcome. You can’t spend time with them and think otherwise. They will return to their strength, stronger than before the earthquake.

The day I arrived, I was taken on a tour of the camp. Beth Milbourne walked me through our organization’s IDP camp (internally displaced persons camp) and watching her was amazing. She strolled through with a comfort I thought I would never feel (I very soon did though) and she greeted people she had come to know (as I came to do also). As we were leaving the MASH unit style hospital at the top of the camp, the make shift hospital she had directed and worked in for well over a year, a tap tap pulled up with men hanging off the edges of it. The screams of a woman in the back of the public transport made it clear immediately why the men were hanging off the sides. She was in active labor. She was too far along to move her the twenty feet to the maternity part of the hospital, so the doctor on duty climbed into the back of the car and delivered the baby there. Beth beamed as she carried the new born girl from the car to the tent to be cleaned up. The baby wailed, as they always do.

I had been there just a few hours at that point and I remember thinking to myself that I wanted this wailing baby to have different opportunities than her parents have. I wanted her to become an adult in a world that she could be strong in. This new life was not broken, had not seen tragedy, did not yet have her limitations ingrained on her thinking. I think about that little girl all the time. I am thinking of her today.

I don’t expect any of you to hold a love for Haiti like I do in my heart. I don’t expect you to understand my confidence in the people of that country, given the massive messaging we get this in this country on a regular basis about the hopelessness of their circumstance. But I do hope, because you know me and love me, that today you will open just a tiny part of your heart to the possibility that something beautiful and strong can grow there. Because Haiti needs us to believe in them. They need us to ignore the data and naysayers and see with them what is possible and probable, if they are given just enough to stabilize the ground they stand on.

This afternoon at 4:53pm, I will be stopping everything and dropping into prayer for them. I would be so honored if you would join me.

Much love,

Kim

Battle of Vetye

2011-11-18T16:37:00.000-08:00

Tonight it is a national holiday in celebration of the Battle of Vertieres. I am sitting in a perfectly charming, if run down, hotel in Jacmel…alone. This feels like something straight out of an Ann Rice novel. Dark, distressed brick, stifling heat, tropical plants everywhere, white flowers drop from vines which wrap around tropical trees just outside of my room in the courtyard. Mosquito netted bed in the center of a room with numerous windows, no glass, just shutters. Truly a shame to be here alone.

As I sit in the dark bar/dining room, drinking my red wine and waiting for my poisson en sauce, I consciously avoid seeing rats scurrying inches from my feet in the dark. There are mice here too. It is a place of creatures. I am in their space.

An hour ago, a crowd of Haitians strolled through the hotel bar/dining/lobby area. Today is the celebration of the final battle before Haiti found their independence. It is wildly celebrated. I imagine the march through the hotel by dozens of people was a demonstration of defiance. No place is shut off to us. If this is not what it was, I don’t want to know. I want to think of these people rising and claiming what is theirs.

I thrilled to see them wander through. Women, men, children…all ages. They walked through totally without affect. No challenge was there. This is their space…that is all.

Just now a Ra Ra band marched through the street with a crowd following. The music was primarily drumbeats and earthy…horns and other instruments accompanied, but it is the drums that drive the Ra Ra bands. Beautiful and elemental. Scores of people followed behind, moving easily within the beats of the band. I stood envious watching them move so assuredly in their space. Tonight, they own their land. They are taking what is rightfully theirs. They are beautiful and magnetic. I don’t even want to join them in their dance. To join them would take away their power. This is their night and I celebrate who they are from the sidelines. I cannot be with them in this. I am separated by the chance of my heritage. Just as they are separated from me in mine.

I love that I had a chance to see them like this. Strong…beautiful…powerful and confident. No one seeking my approval, my money, my attention. Being with each other was enough. And watching them from the sidelines was enough for me.

As I am writing this, I Love My Life comes on the radio. It plays constantly here and surprised me when I first heard the Haitians singing it. I thought they must surely be joking. Fate has dealt them a bad hand. But I get it now. In many ways, they are better off than we are in the US. In many ways, I am jealous of what they have here. And that is my biggest surprise in my time here.

I want them to feel the strength they feel today every day. I want to fight on the sidelines for them. I want to do whatever I can to make every day a celebration of the Battle of Vetye.

Xo,

Kim

The Tap Tap and the Tent City

2011-09-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

I’m lying in “bed” thanking to universe for the science behind wet+wind= cooling. I am thankful for a room to myself, indoors. I am thankful that we are not in the tent city tonight. Thankful for FaceTime…oh my God, I am thankful for FaceTime.

Today I worked for seven hours or so in the office. It felt good to be here working on stuff in my competency. Something calming about putting plans together and rounding up information. Felt routine almost, and routine is an amazing thing when you are this far outside of your element. And I am so far outside of my element that it feels fictional.

Late in the afternoon, Beth I was asked if I wanted to go tour the “camp” and if I had rain boots. We walked there down steep hills with gravely rocky roadways, and by structures that had various spray painted markings on them that I learned today indicates what state of disrepair they are in. It is sobering to walk by so many buildings with red spray paint markings, indicating that they are compromised even by Haiti building code standards, which, by all accounts, are woefully inadequate. We were soon to enter the tent city, and this would make those buildings look like bed and breakfast establishments.

The gate at the camp is flanked by men who look like they are casually guarding it. Like everyone here, they are friendly and gentle. We first pass by a tent that has been converted into a bar. We later get a beer here, will get to that. This is the first in a series of shops and restaurants set up to serve the people in the community. There appear to be more shops than actually homes, but I imagine they break down the shops and the tents are also their homes. The streets between the tents are so muddy that I am constantly sinking into it and then having to stop to pull my boot from the muck. I am so grateful for my boots. So grateful.

People and kids all around me are shoeless and the kids sometimes are unclothed in the rain...bathing. The tents are not tents in the way we think of them. Tarps mostly, supplemented with corrugated metal in places, burlap sacks in places and wood that has clearly been scavenged from somewhere. As we walk by, the kids shout out “Hey There!” the only thing they know in english, taught to them by the American military I am told. I respond with bonswa, and they giggle.

The Kreyol language is a bit of an adventure for me. As I hear things, I try and stop to see if I can connect it to something I know in French. Often I can…but not always. Bonswa, for instance, sounds just like bon soir in French, but they take great pride in the spelling differentiation and having their own language. I am committed to learning.

I am stunned by how truly beautiful the people are. There are kids who could easily model in the United States. They are that beautiful and they are everywhere here.

On our way to the medical facility, we stop at the shop of an artist in the camp. She is a lovely woman, and her work is beautiful. The paintings are $25 dollars a piece, and are on canvas, but not mounted. I want to get some to bring home with me, of course.

Through a heavily guarded gate is the climb up to the hospital. And it is quite the climb. I wonder how people who are truly ill can make it up this hill, but quickly check myself. This climb is hard from my perspective. From theirs, it is surely the least of their concerns. The hospital was formerly a relief hospital operated by the American military, at least I think that is what we were told. In any case, it did not work very well and was abandoned and donated to (organizaton). The reason it is so high on a hill was that it was next to the helicopter landing pad, which was in great use after the earthquake.

There is a canopy for triage, but this is not the first triage location. The first is before you even go through the gates to determine if you really need medical attention. This triage is to determine if you will be sent to the pharmacy, the hospital, the birthing dome or directly into the isolation tents if you are infectious. Only the birthing dome is fully contained without dirt floors.

We meet two very young boys there. One of them is chatty and clearly brilliant. He is curious, speaks English, French, creole and Portuguese and, while we are standing there, asks the woman with us from Pakistan for an urdu dictionary because he wants to learn this language as well. I am told later that he is indeed brilliant and quite adept at getting the other kids to do things for him. A bit of a scam artist apparently. This does not surprise me. He is quite charming. But it does make me a bit sad. I want to pluck him out of the mud and deliver him into some kind of apprenticeship. He is so incredible curious and resourceful.

The trees up here are native and wild, overhanging everything.

As we turn to leave, a tap tap pulls up in front of the hospital and we can hear ferocious screaming coming from it. The midwife is emerging from the dome as our guide asks her “besoin d’aide?” and she apparently does need the help. She rushes over to help her…no scrub up, no gloves, there is no time. The woman has endured an arduous ride up an impossibly bumpy hill in the throes of extremely active labor, and the baby has crowned. As the woman screamed in agony, it occurred to me how removed we are from the birthing process in the states. I have never heard this. I was not even screaming during my births. Women give birth in my network all the time, and I have never heard this.

In any case, moments later, a very small, newly born girl, in a blanket, is carried to the birthing dome to be washed. The baby is screaming her beautiful head off, and I feel instant compassion for her to be born as she has been in such a dire environment. I know babies all scream, but this moment feels particularly poignant to me. This moment firms my resolve to do what I can to help this country build a different reality for her. I want her to have access to a different life. Her specifically. I want this for everyone…the two brilliant beautiful boys who are still standing just outside the emergency tent, the woman selling mangos in front of her tent in the camp, the little girl, wearing only a long shirt, walking through the muck of the roads after the rains. But this newly born baby fills me with a sense of urgency and hope at the same time. For her, life is not yet something to endure. Right now, nothing is defined. So, for her, things must be different.

On the way back to the house, we stop for a round of beers. Three citizens of the tent city are already in there and greet us warmly and are so friendly that I want to talk to them, despite the fact that I will have to crank out my rusty French. Fortunately, our guide knows one of them well and we begin chatting with him, in English. We are handed ice cold beers, colder than any I have been served in the states, and we pull three iron chairs around from the theater set up on the side of the tent (this bar also acts as a makeshift cinema on weekends at times, showing movies on a television screen that is about the same size as my laptop computer screen).

We talk with a man about the challenge in translating (he has done translating for the organization before), and that you must factor in the cultural relevance or much of the meaning can get lost. It is a truth one can only know if you speak more than one language and have spoken it in different areas, and this observation startles me here in the middle of this tent city, drowning in its own debris and muck. And this is what we need to know in the United States and everywhere where there is money. We need to know that there is a brilliance here that defies our “you must have gone through university educating in order to be valuable” mentality. Here in this primitive tent, with electricity stolen from the wires run above our heads, sits a man who has just communicated a concept that I have struggled to explain to college educated clients in high ranking corporate positions. He is not even aware that he has made this much of an impression on me. I carry that into my evening, however, and into my thinking. I later ask if anyone in the organization has ever seen anything written by this man, and she says she might have something.

I get back to the house and am just in time to get in on an impromptu trip to the grocery store. When we get into the store, I make a mental note that the volunteer materials need to be revamped. There is so much available here that I could have avoided packing into giant bags and bringing with me. I am thrilled to buy some rice and beans for the days when we are on our own for food. I meet a couple of the other volunteers who invite me to go hiking the next day…something I will not end up doing after all. Maybe another time.

Love,
Kim

Living Dangerously

2011-09-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

“The voodoo priestess can kill you
And she does not even need to be anywhere near you.”
I am sitting in the back of a pick up truck
Against the tailgate
Because here I am in Haiti,

Living dangerously.

“It is hard for you to understand their magic.

Because you are not of here.”
The women with me in the back of the truck are American too.
They are skeptical.
We are always so skeptical of things we don’t understand.

“People in the rural areas,” his English perfect,

his accent perfectly Haitian, “they believe everything is voodoo.
But it is not everything.”
One of the women in the truck bed with us speaks up,
“Maybe they can kill people,
because people believe in it.”

Our young host looks down as if trying to find a connection

In the grooved floor of the truck bed.
There is none there either.
“You are probably safe,
you are not from here," he decides.

"But we are of this land,

This soil is in our bones.”

A car pulls up behind us and the headlights frame the dark outline of my head

And shoulders

Until my reflection in the back window of the truck

Looks like I am

The absence of light.

“Yes, you are probably safe.

Still

If you see a white woman on a horse

Or a black dog that is unusually large,

Do not go home.

Do not go to sleep.

Just in case.”

Arrival and the Haitian Flop

2011-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hi Kimberley fans. It's Tina. With Kim's permission I am posting a few entries in the form of notes I have received from her. I am taking out any reference to famous people and the name of the organization to comply with the media agreement she had to sign. Kim sends lots of love. She is receiving your emails and good wishes. She doesn't have much time for personal correspondence. Being inspiring is apparently more than a full-time job. :-)

I am sitting in the large living room area in the headquarters. I am sitting here, in the middle of everything and everyone because the room I am going to be living in for the next three months is currently full of someone else’s stuff who has not quite moved out yet. I am not upset so much as I am overwhelmed. Trying to find the fun and adventure in this. Not quite there. I feel pretty certain that everyone here thinks I am deadly serious. Maybe I am.

My room is quite a luxurious set up compared to the other accommodations here. As a long term volunteer (most are here for two weeks or so) I get my own space. A giant room upstairs has been divided into two rooms but a wood frames and partial walls of plastic tarp. I almost cried with relief when I saw it. There is a light, two electrical outlets and a small window. There is a standard issue cot there, not sure if I get that. I have my fingers crossed. There is no door, but at this point, I could not begin to care less. It feels positively palatial. I wish I could move into it right now.

It rained like crazy this evening. Wild lightning and thunder torrential downpour type stuff. I put on my swim suit to go stand in it on the deck outside of my room. There are two tents on that deck…all space is occupied here. In any case, a guy saw me go out and showed me a little secret. He has a covered front area and a bucket sitting on the ground. When it rains, you can go out and dump the water from the cover into the bucket and then pour it over your head. It is freezing and wonderful. I have done it twice already. No one is up there, and it is dark. Heavenly. I needed that.

The drive here was wild. Reminded me so much of Nepal, with beat up streets running down into winding roads with houses and buildings all over the place.

Anyway, the streets are tragic. Things for sale everywhere. Art, drinks, something that looks like it might be cleaner…not clear. In any case, the people seem extremely friendly, just desperate. The airport was insane.

The minute I am outside of immigration, I am in the middle of a sea of people who want to be the one to help me out to whatever form of transport I need to get to. In this sea of faces, I am supposed to pick out two that are in a picture that was sent to me…a small picture. Fortunately, One of them is holding a sign with my name on it. I have six men literally surrounding me, and more waiting to jump in if a space opens up, when I see him through the crowd. He is completely mute, and not impressive in stature, but he effectively takes over my case…though the six continue to follow us to the parking lot and will end up asking me for a tip, even though I was clearly taken care of. I totally get it. They are just trying to earn a living in a country starving for work. But I have maxed out. I silently pray for the power to shut down mentally, but it does not come.

I have been praying this prayer all day. Wanting to shut down and just barrel through. It eludes me, except in very small moments. I almost lost it when it became clear that I would not only not be getting a phone, but I would also not be getting hooked up to the internet tonight. I am breathing into everything. Breathing. Into. Everything.

I met two Haitian boys on the plane today. Early twenties. They live in Boston now and are visiting for three days. They were sitting next to me and very sweet throughout the trip.

All around me in different rooms, people are laughing and joking and chatting away. I know I should join them. I don’t want to. I don’t want to act. I don’t want to pretend like everything is peachy. I just want to disappear and process. I have decided to count the days after all.

Thing is, the people seem like people we would like to hang out with, at least at first blush. I find myself wondering what brings all these people here. So many are here for over a year.

The house is giant, but not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination. The view is stunning, so it must have been magnificent once. There are many more than 20 people here, however. Many more.

As we drove to the house from the airport, I was told about a medical condition here called “the Haitian flop” by the medical team. Apparently, people are brought in without any physical issues at all, yet they are completely unresponsive to any kind of stimulation. They do not respond to anything the medical community knows how to do to rouse a passed out patient…pricks, shots, aromas…nothing. They have found the only way to revive them is by doing something to the nose. In any case, they have experienced trauma so extreme that they are complete and in all ways incapacitated. Have lost all feeling and are in some kind of emotional coma. This brought up a conversation about PTSD (the other person who arrived with me is a therapist)…to which I eventually replied, “when do you determine it is post trauma? Seems to me it would have to end for it to be PTSD.” This produced an interesting conversation. It feels really weird. This country is so relentlessly battered. It is impossible for me to fully comprehend what that must be like. The sheer relentlessness is mystifying.

Love,

Kim

A Love Poem

2011-07-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

I can feel you slipping away again.

Though I still cannot resist
And reach out every time I pass by you
To see
If we have another couple of days together.
And though I take you home
I am not fooled
You are not as sweet to me as you were even a month ago.

I am such a fool.
It’s not like this is the first time.
You always show up when it’s time to play,
And remind me of picnics,
And exotic holidays,
In far away places.
And every year, I am swept away.

I resent even the slightest suggestion that I share you with others.
You are here for such a short time.
And I have waited all year.
You make me feel like a child guarding her things.
So, I share.
And make sure no one takes too much
Of what is rightfully mine.

It is hard not to feel justified in this
Right now
As you become a paler version of yourself.

You will be totally gone soon.
Though pretenders will still appear
And try to convince me they are every bit as good as you.
But they are not.
I know this.
And I will wait.

I can wait for the next watermelon season.

xo,
Kimberley

Finally, a Personal Reason to Celebrate Independence Day.

2011-07-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

I confess that I have not been a big fan of the Fourth of July celebration for the past decade or so.

I go through the motions. I sweat it out watching fireworks. I do the picnics. But my heart just has not been in it. I haven’t really given it that much thought until this year.

I love the fact that I live in the United States, the land of opportunity. I appreciate the freedoms we have and truly value those who have fought for them. Yesterday, I began to wonder why it is that I don’t feel connected to this holiday. Then I heard the cloying lyrics to “I’m Proud to be an American” bleating out of the speakers at the grocery store. Suddenly, it all became clear.

I have no problem at all with being proud of being an American…but I do take issue with sentiments that alienate us from everyone else. I have a problem with jingoism and national pride taken to the extreme. Those who would take our luck of the draw on being born under the government that we have been as some sort of indication of individual superiority. But there is something worth celebrating today. I had forgotten it.

235 years ago today, our founding fathers did something so wildly daring and extreme that it boggles the mind. They spoke on behalf of the colonies and said, to the most powerful government in the world at the time, “ENOUGH!” They announced their intent to separate from the oppressive rule of the British monarchy, even though we were clearly no match for their force. The odds were against us, but the colonies had the strength of their conviction. And that conviction was strong enough for them to commit to something that would certainly result in countless deaths and the likelihood of defeat. A betting man would not have picked the freshly united colonies to win this battle. But win they did. Although, the very act of writing and signing the Declaration of Independence, given those odds, is enough reason to for celebration.

So, today, I am celebrating that spirit. I celebrate the spirit of rising up and fighting for what is right, even though the odds are against you. I am celebrating those who made a pact to stand together in the face of almost certain defeat to defend their right, and each other’s, to have a voice in how they are governed. I am celebrating that union of brothers and sisters, who had so much faith in their mission that they were willing to cast aside the comfort of what they knew to pursue something more authentically representative of who they had become together. I salute those who recognized that “united we stand and divided we fall.” That is a sentiment that has the power to reach around the entire world to embrace everyone who faces tyranny of any kind.

And that is a sentiment worthy of fireworks.

Xo,

Kimberley

Strikes and Protests in Athens and Airport Delays

2011-07-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

“Um, let’s find out where we need to check in.” I smiled sheepishly as Tina rolls her eyes.

“Uh, no coffee…no independent thinking.” I respond to her eye rolling. On two hours of sleep and no caffeine, my brain was parked. Tina had returned our rental car, and I had not moved from the place she had deposited us to wait. And, obediently (or cluelessly, depending on your perspective) our motley crew, stood there still…three kids, five bags, sweaters, pillows and carry-ons.

I was thrilled to see that there were only four people in front of us in line at Cyprus Airways. In retrospect, I might have guessed that, at this time of year in Europe, this was not a good sign.

“Did no one contact you?” the woman at the counter looked incredulous. Somewhere in the blurred areas of my brain, I suddenly remembered an overheard conversation in a kiosk a couple of days ago about some kind of protests in Athens. The “what-are-you-doing-here?” look on the woman’s face was now making me nervous.

Over the next six hours, the kids surfed the internet, played games, read and bought giant packages of watermelon flavored gum (“they only had it in this size!”) while we called around and exhausted every single option available to us to make our way home.

“The very earliest flight I can get you on to Houston is July 1^st at 11:20,” the woman on the phone offered me, from the Delta offices in Turkey, the only Delta number I could reach. Hours later, Haley would say to me “I can’t believe there was no way for us to get home today.” I confess that, in this moment on the phone with someone offering me a less than ideal solution, I was feeling a little…um…American indignance. Damn it, we can make anything happen! Why am I still standing here? I caught myself. Not my proudest moment.

“Yeah, ok, book us for that flight.” I say, at least in this condensed version of the story. The various permutations and options were calculated for hours. In the end, we piled back into a rental car and drove the little beach in Voroklini (just outside Larnaka) and the kiosk with the Keos and Lountza Halloumi sandwiches…and recovered ourselves.

I should end it here. It is a much more dramatic ending than the one that follows, which is a secret I will tell you that is really not that much of a secret. I do wish I were home now. I am frazzled quite to the core. I am sad for the kids who, while totally awesome about the making the most of their additional time here, are truly homesick after more than three weeks and really did want to get back. But it would be a lie by omission for me not to add that I am just a little excited that our plans were disrupted by something as truly incredible as the world’s oldest democracy demonstrating its voice in this way. That three weeks ago, I took photos of the beginnings of this, without knowing what it was, makes my heart race a little.

Something momentous and world changing is taking place and we are close to it…disrupted by it…inconvenienced and made to stand still for it. It is really no hardship for us to stay three additional days in this lovely country with our incredible hosts…but I feel honored to have my activity halted by these groups of citizens in Athens, raising their voices…because they can. I am thrilled to have our flight cancelled in response to the activity of those who have been for the past 30 days, holding vigil in front of the Parliament to make it clear where they stand on this issue, and that they stand together on it. The fact that they are not asking for anything specific…the fact that the situation is complex and overwhelming is irrelevant. The people’s dedication to being heard on this issue is inspiring to me. And I say that as someone who lives in a country heading in the same financial direction as Greece. That this has happened here first is not really a surprise. In issues of politics, they have always gone first.

If it is possible, Athens, I would like to return to my home on Friday, July 1^st. But on this weekend before our own Independence Day, I don’t feel comfortable throwing about demands on this. If I am home on our holiday, however, I will be toasting you and your fight to keep the voice of the masses heard in the mix of parliamentary action.

And I will be watching, with the rest of the world, to learn what a democracy as old as yours does with a challenge like this.

Xo,

Kimberley

Soaking Wet in the Troodos Mountains

2011-06-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago, when Tina first visited the Troodos mountains with her family, the roads were unpaved and extremely narrow. Her Uncle Pete drives professionally, so they were in good hands, but I can’t help but think what a harrowing experience that must have been. Because twice this week, we have driven those same roads, only now they are paved…and there are guardrails everywhere. The roads are still narrow. In some places, the roads have hairpin turns with no visibility around the corner. And those particular roads will sometimes truly only accommodate a single vehicle. And occasionally, they are still unpaved.

It is a testament to the villages, scenery and beauty of the ancient churches nestled throughout the Troodos that we make this trip, not once, but twice. I think I could spend months in those mountains before I was satisfied that I had a good sense of the place…another time perhaps.

The first day, we ended up driving mostly. The map we have is not very reliable, so we were just pointing our car in the general direction and crossing our fingers. We spent a good bit of time in Platres, a beautiful and comparatively large village in the Troodos. We stopped at the Chocolate Factory for three chocolate shakes and perfectly divine “Metrio” chocolates. This is a rather unassuming little place where chocolates are made by hand. And the flavors sound incredible. I wish I could figure out how to get some back to Houston, but that is unlikely. They would be eaten halfway through the flight, I feel certain.

We ate lunch at a gorgeous second floor café called To Anoi. I simply cannot imagine why anyone here would choose to dine at any place that does not look like it came out of a storybook. We sit in plastic chairs, but the deck is beautiful and the view is stunning. Again, the indoor area of the restaurant is fairly small…everywhere here, it is clear they understand the value of the atmosphere. It is possible I will never be able to enjoy dinner out in Houston again.

But the highlight of the day was the Kaledonia falls. We climbed through gorgeous unusual trees, on a stone strewn path, beside a river rushing over stones down the mountain we just navigated up. The signage is unclear and we keep thinking the small falls we are walking by may be all there are to the falls, and this is plenty. Even the small falls are incredible and worth the hike up. We are just about to turn around and descend when we hear Jesse and Grant, who have dashed ahead of us, say “Oh My God, we found the falls.”

The heat was stifling…which is probably what prompted Jesse to walk straight into the falls. Shoes, socks, clothes…everything.

Needless to say, we all ended up hiking down the mountain soaked from head to toe.

And happy.

The second trip up into the Troodos…coming soon.

Xo,

Kimberley

Food Perfection on the Beach in Oroklini

2011-06-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

At almost 9pm, half of the welcoming party left. It was time for dinner.

Dinner at 6 is a laughable concept here. Or rather, it would be laughable if it were even considered at all. Not that we are ever given the opportunity to have even a moment of hunger. Our days have been filled with food…and I am afraid that is only going to be worse now that we have landed in the land of “Yea! Ellie is here!” I afraid we are going to be “hosted” into morbid obesity.

We pulled tables together at the beachside restaurant and looked over the menus. To be honest, I was only interested in trying a KEO, a Cypriot beer. But I ordered the fish and chips anyway. To be honest, I have no idea what the food was like…I was so tired and overstimulated. But the beer was wonderful.

Michaelis is a Greek-Cypriot, a composer, a teacher and choir director—probably in that order. He tells stories with his entire body and his face channels his passion for every detail. The storyteller in me wishes I spoke Greek so that I could hear them in his native tongue, which he insists is the most beautiful of languages.

“If only I could tell you these stories in Greek! So beautiful this language. Every word has its very own meaning.”

I am unaware in this moment that this snack bar of a place on the beach near our house will become such a favorite for me. You will never find it listed in any reviews of Cyprus or on Tripadvisor…though, I’d like to think I will figure out how to do this for this wonderful place. The only name I can discern for it is Kiosk, which is hopelessly generic here. Everything is a kiosk of some sort.

It is pretty unassuming really. A very small kitchen with a large outdoor patio. We end up eating multiple meals here…breakfasts, lunches and dinners. When we leave Larnaka, a week later, it is the place I will miss the most.

It is situated directly on the beach. While we wait for the food, or the check after the meal, the kids run in the surf and try to skip perfectly flat skipping stones into the ocean. There is no hurry to leave. In fact, you could be there for hours and no one will bring you a check unless you specifically ask for it. In the mornings, half of the tables are taken up by older men playing Tavli (a game played on a backgammon board) and drink their coffees. Some of their wives sit together at other tables chatting and laughing. No one appears to have anywhere to go.

On our third trip to the kiosk, we become regulars. We chat with the waitresses and the owner brings us small glasses of Cypriot wine after we have finished our meal. We sit peacefully drinking our metrio or greek wine, while the kids play on the beach. No schedule. No pressure. We are truly outside of time here.

It is here I try what will become my favorite find here in Cyprus…a village salad and a lountza and halloumi sandwich. The village salad is cucumbers, tomatoes, a little cabbage and feta. It seems crazy to describe it that way, however. I don’t think I have tasted vegetables this fresh since my dad grew a garden when I was still in elementary school. And the feta is different too, fresher and richer somehow. I eat it without any dressing at all. There is no need. And it is the best salad I have ever eaten. Period.

The lountza halloumi sandwich surprises me. I am not much of a meat eater…I avoid eating it if I can, which is easier to do in other countries I have found. But this sandwich is perfection. Lountza is a Cypriot meat, pork to be exact. It is a teeny bit like Canadian bacon, but I would not get carried away with that association. The meat and cheese are put into the bread (which is also beyond perfect here) and grilled. Then fresh cucumber and tomato are added. No spices. No condiments. And it is perfection. For the remainder of our time in Larnaka, I will order only this every time we go to the kiosk.

If you ever find yourself in Cyprus, this unassuming kiosk is worth a trip to Oroklini.

And tell them we said hello.

Xo,

Kimberley

Tonight, I learn a little something about rescues

2011-06-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

There is something hypnotic about sitting in the middle of a conversation in a language you do not understand. Something about the familiar cadence and the unfamiliar words causes my brain to flicker in and out this afternoon...as if I were trying to fall asleep in self-defense. I watch Tina and wonder if it’s worse for her, because she understands enough of the Greek conversation surrounding us to follow it, having been exposed to the language her entire life, but not enough to truly participate. Her brain is grasping the edges of the conversation, so must be working very hard.

The topic of conversation is music. The people we sit with are professional musicians of one variety or another. If it weren’t for the fact that I am a stranger here, I would be of no interest at all in this room and I am lulled into a false sense of invisibility that one gains by being completely unable to comprehend anything that is going on. This does not last long. My heart races as I realize that Ellie is referring to me in something she says. My dull, glazed over look feels inappropriate when I am suddenly referred to. I can tell she is letting them know that I told her months ago about Kataklysmos, the festival in town...that she knew nothing of it until I told her about it. Her story is clearly charming and animated...I am clearly surrounded by storytellers actually...but still I can't follow. Though no one seems to notice, I find myself embarrassed by the fact that I am making the freshman traveller mistake of mirroring the movements and expressions of the people talking without understanding what they are saying. I feel a little like a bobble head doll.

Ellie's friend, Mary, has been scurrying around making sure the house is in perfect condition for us. Unnecessary, really, as it was beyond perfect when we walked in. Unexpectedly, she slides into the room beside me and asks me if perhaps we would like to go for a walk to see the beach. I dearly hope my rush for the door didn’t appear as desperate as it felt. I did not even want to take a moment to change into more comfortable shoes and risk the chance that the opportunity would pass. The people in the room with us were clearly so sweet and kind. But my brain ached from trying to remain awake. Plus, I wanted to see the beach.

Tina and I walked with Mary and she spoke to us in English. She was quite capable of communicating with us, but I felt bad that she had to make the effort, having just scrambled out the door to escape the challenge to my own brain.

Mary’s 21 year old son was studying in the states when he was diagnosed with cancer and told he must go to Houston to be treated. She took an eight month leave of absence from work and rented an apartment in Houston to be with him during the treatment. She was alone in a huge city where she knew no one, spending the few hours a day with her son, as she was allowed while in cancer treatment and then returning to her apartment alone. The thought of this truly dear woman enduring this time alone fills me with so much grief that I am grateful when the well of emotion running through her slows her to standing. Motion seemed inappropriate given the intensity of story. The story she shares runs so deep in her that I can literally feel the lonely ache of sitting by herself in an empty apartment counting the hours until she could be back with her son. And this is how I learn about Ellie.

I have known Ellie for years, of course. But today, standing along the beautiful beach as the sun sets, I really learn about her in a way that would be impossible except through the words of a woman like Mary.

Ellie received the call about Mary through the Cypriot network in Houston and sprung into action. Every day for eight months, Mary could count on Ellie’s call, a connection to something other than the fear and loneliness that filled her days. Ellie came often to pick Mary up from her apartment and take her shopping, to lunch or dinner, or to just sit amongst the noise and chaos of a house full of people somewhere. Mary was clearly not a charity case to Ellie, Mary was a sister…a sister who needed her.

Suddenly, the fuss over ensuring our comfort was understandable. I came thinking that Mary felt indebted to Ellie and was happy to have a chance to give back to her in some way. But this is not really it. Mary was inviting family into her home. She is proud to have us here. Having us stay somewhere else is unthinkable, not because she has a debt to pay but because she loves Ellie, and by extension, us. And she truly does.

I have always loved Ellie. She is easy to love. But as we walked back to the house this evening, I loved a part of her that I had not really known before. Ellie has a gift for making family of strangers. She gives where she is most needed. She loves those who most need her love.

I silently thank Mary for the fresh glimpse of Ellie.

Xo,

Kimberley

Manual Transmissions and Halloumi

2011-06-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

I am sitting at an umbrellaed garden table in the small courtyard of the gorgeous summer house that has been loaned to us for the duration of our stay here in Oroklini, a small town just outside of Larnaka. I make a note to myself to always lay a feast for visitors when they come to stay with us. I sit here eating fresh watermelon and the salty, chewy Cypriot cheese, haloumi. It has been available in Houston for some time now, but I have never eaten it with watermelon. As many times as Tina's family has suggested it, I have resisted the pairing of salty and sweet...the contrast of textures. Today, I am wondering why. They are perfect together. It is watermelon season in Houston (probably everywhere). If I were there, I would make a feast of these two items and invite you over. All of you.

I can see, from where I am sitting, the car that I drove here from the airport. I was not expecting to drive at all, but the rental car reserved for us was too small to fit us AND our luggage. I realized half the way to the house that:

I have never driven in another country.
I am driving a manual transmission for the first time in over 25 years and
I have no way to contact anyone should I get separated from the three car convoy heading to a house I don't have any information on.

Despite this, I was actually relaxed for the entire thirty minute drive. But still I glance over to the car now, as if I need confirmation that I actually did that. And it makes me laugh. I'm glad I didn't know that this would be necessary.

The kids are immediately whisked away by Photos, the son of our hosts, for a tour of Larnaca and I am deeply grateful to him. He is an accomplished musician, about 30 years old and is currently in the process of writing a musical. As they walk out to the car the conversation moves to iPods and pop music. Had I wished for the perfect afternoon host for our gang, he could not have been more perfect than Photos. I lean back in my chair with a feast before me and Tina beside me, and melt into a perfect moment under flower vines and palm fronds.

Xo,

Kimberley

An Angry Old Greek Woman at the Top of the Hill (and Lycabettus)

2011-06-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

This should really be a video post. A very old native Athenian at the top of the hill we were climbing becomes agitated and extremely vocal when Ellie asks for directions to Lycabettus. We can see the passion and ferocity of her expression, and she holds Ellie at attention for much too long for the simple directions we have asked for. Tina fumbles through the backpack for the video camera as I stand completely transfixed by the interaction. I am paralyzed by the unexpected intensity. Ellie nods periodically and says nothing. Her back is to me so I cannot see how she is faring with the angry words I can’t understand. I keep thinking it is about to end, but it doesn’t for a very long time. Finally, the woman dismisses us and we descend back down two blocks of the hill we have climbed. We don’t know what happened until we turn the corner and head to our destination.

But I am ahead of myself.

Today we head out to find out what is on the hill opposite the Parthenon. A metro ride…ten blocks along a busy road…and about the same number of blocks straight up, we are in range of what we are looking for…Lycabettus.

But before we can get there, we must ask no fewer than seven people if we are heading in the right direction. This incredible spot at the top of a hill, with a stunning vista, is maddeningly difficult to find. It seems bizarre that we can be climbing this long without even the slightest indication that we are heading in the right direction, but we keep getting affirmation that we are on the right track. So we continue to climb.

So, at the point we are about to begin losing oxygenated air (ok, I’m exaggerating a wee bit), Ellie asks the elderly woman we run across if we are still heading in the right direction. What we find out, as we turn the corner toward our destination after the interaction, is that the woman is completely and wildly infuriated with the government. They have paved the road to her house…which she confesses is wonderful, but they have done little else in a very long time and she is enraged. Enraged enough to monologue her displeasure to unwitting American tourists…winded and lost on the way to an elusive hilltop.

And Tina is as transfixed as I am. We did not get any of it on video. Fail.

But we did finally make it to this:

This alone was worth the climb. It is a bizarre contraption of a tram that pulls tourists up through a tunnel to the top of the mountain. It is a short ride. We have already climbed much more than this will eventually carry us. But the thing is irresistible. Come on. Can you imagine NOT getting on this thing?

But at the top…good lord, it is beautiful. We can see everything from here. A little church sits at the very top and vendors sell icons and keychains to visitors.

And this is where Meagan begins to totally drive Grant crazy.

Grant wants to look through the telescope, which costs two euros. Tina and I aren’t up for it…because it is really not the kind of place where a telescope is gonna add much to the experience frankly. But Meagan has two euros and she will give them to Grant in exchange for…a kiss on the cheek. (SPOILER ALERT: Meagan will leave after two weeks without a kiss from Grant, despite NUMEROUS attempts.)

I snap photos and try not to laugh and the silly interactions…because it is all very serious to Grant. I get some great shots. They are on Facebook, but here are a couple:

We had a much more pleasant walk back to the metro station…largely because we did not have to ask for any directions.

Xo,

Kimberley

GREEK COFFEE MAKES ME HAPPY!!!!!!!

2011-06-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

“Greek coffee makes me really happy!”

That’s Jesse. Ellie taught Jesse and Meagan how to make Greek coffee this morning and Tina and I are being treated by the newly trained. Newly trained and caffienated to the point of extreme enthusiasm. It is heated in small, long-handled brass pot on a bed of fiery sand (we later feel this heat ourselves on the beach in Larnaka...but that is another story). Then you poor the boiling water directly over coffee grounds in the bottom of a small cup. The finely ground coffee remains in the bottom of the cup, so you must be careful as you drink at the end, or you will end up with the grounds in your mouth.

I drink them on purpose. I love them. That's not good, hunh?

Greek coffee, Cypriot coffee (Turkish coffee if you want to cause a fight around here), is wonderful. I know why it makes Jesse happy. Drinking it gives you super powers. I swear. It’s true. We generally order it "metrio", which means lightly sweetened. Perfection. Not sure how I am going to go back to drinking plain old filtered coffee.

Ellie’s family has been making it forever. Tina fondly remembers her Yia Yia making it for her on her first trip to Cyprus as an adult. She could go all day on that coffee. I can see why.

Today, we go to Lycabetta. This is the place we saw when we were at the Parthenon yesterday on the top of a neighboring hill. But first, as we are getting ready to go, Ellie’s friend Catharina calls and wants to take us to lunch at the Greek Officer’s club. We head our stuffed-to-the-gills-bodies back to our rooms and change into fancier duds…hoping that the walk to the club will give us the strength to eat again.

On the way, we sidetrack into the street with the government buildings. This beautiful street is lined with flowering trees and vines. At each of the government establishments, there is a little guard house outside the gate with a uniformed man on guard.

I took stop motion pictures of the changing of the guard...which I am going to attempt to turn into a video and upload later. It is truly bizarre and amazing so I am hoping I can figure it out.

We eat at the officer’s club and then head out for pastries, which was the real eating highlight of the moment, of course.

More later on the trek up the hill. I need another metrio before I start that one.

xo,

Kimberley

Our Parthenon

2011-06-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

Today, we take the metro.

Athens’ metro system is new and wildly easy to navigate. We buy 24 hour passes and off we go. Toward Demitrious on our way to the Acropolis and toward Antonios on our way home. Clean, fast and insanely efficient. No need for a car because the city is incredibly walkable.

The Parthenon is a temple to Athena, or not. That is how it is referred to, but archeologists document that the structure never hosted the cult of Athena, and was probably just a grand setting for statues, as well as the place for the treasury.

But this is not what it is for us.

For us, it is a discussion on how inconceivable it is that this marble was brought up the hill we just climbed. It is looking out over the city and understanding why this spot was chosen, you can see everything from here. It is looking out onto a neighboring hill and wondering what it is that stands atop that hill and deciding to figure out the next day. It is noticing that the structure is all marble, because we are having to choose our footing carefully and still we are sliding. It is hearing languages from all over the world swirl around us and through the crowd. It is watching men on scaffolding carefully tending and repairing this beloved monument. It is standing to one side, looking out over all that still remains and imagining it all as it once was.

I don’t know why I had always thought the Parthenon was stone. Well, marble is stone, of course, but this is not what I had expected…at all. And I guess that is why people stream into this gorgeous place. We stand incredulous. These walkways were once walked by people in togas and sandles. The people who constructed these columns that we would later name doric columns and the marble stairs that look like they might have been carved out of marble only yesterday…they could not have imagined what this would be like thousands of years later…people from all over the world walking their hallways. We are tourists here. This was a usable structure in their time.

At night, we walked through Plaka looking for a restaurant we had heard of that had a view of the Parthenon lit up at night. Each restaurant, with white linened tables lining the narrow streets, would have made for an impossibly romantic dining spot. The candles on the tables and lanterns on the wall on the exterior of the restaurant created a scene worthy of a Hollywood movie. Surprising to find it here though, these streets look like what I imagine in the streets of Venice or Rome.

We find the restaurant, and sit on a tree shaded deck with an incredible view of the dramatically lit Parthenon. They take great care here to light their history well.

There is a Greek flag flying to one side of the monument, a recent addition. Ellie explains that Athens was occupied and this pole flew the German flag. Two Greek men, incensed by the claiming of something so clearly belonging to Athens, snuck into the encampment and replaced the enemy flag with a Greek one. They were eventually caught and executed. Their story is proudly captured on a plaque next to the flag.

There is a long running joke that Greek people insist that everything was invented in Greece. “Give me a word and I will tell you the Greek word that it comes from,” says a character from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” But in this place, where the buildings themselves are centuries older than any construction back home, the point is well taken. Looking into the dark sky at the dramatic majesty of the Parthenon, I can feel the birth place of democracy. I can feel the stretching of the mind by Plato and Socrates. Sitting here, I believe in this moment, that everything was invented here.

Xo,

Kimberley

The Birthplace of Democracy

2011-06-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

Ellie’s elegant friend, Katerina, met us at the airport, piled us into taxis and took us into the center of Athens, where our hotel sat situated in the middle of everything. The Titania is a block away from the national library, and then it is an easy walk through history from there. Past buildings called “the university” and “parliament”…all very recent construction for a country as old as Greece, but ancient to our eyes.

But we don’t see any of this right away. A nap is no longer a “nice to have.” It is a priority. I am not sure how anyone else slept, because I fell into a coma. When I woke up, Haley, who has fought sleep since she was a baby, is sitting up telling us that we missed protestors marching by the hotel in the street. I am thrilled she got to see them…and anxious to get going so that we might see them as well.

Our first walk in Greece was sweet and exciting at the same time. We walk past the national library and Grant runs through the pigeons at the foot of the stairs. We walk past the University and see a lean-to built as a form of communication…Afghans petitioning for political asylum. We walk past vine swept buildings between pastry shops and watch stores. Along the way, everything is tagged and stenciled…but somehow, at least for me, this adds to the scene rather than detracts. This is a place where people can speak and they do.

After just a few blocks, we are at the parliament building. We hear it before we see it. Protestors chanting and singing, line the streets and sidewalks in front of the building. The sidewalks are tagged with images of, what I assume to be, members of parliament…with lines slashing through them. This group is angry about the economy. They want something done about it. They are demanding something be done. But these crowds are not like the ones in London last fall. The protest, while serious, is actually peaceful enough for our family to walk through. The only fear I feel is that I will lose sight of the kids in the big crowds…which I don’t, of course.

Further down, we see Zeus’ original temple, still in excavation, and in the distance…the Parthenon. It is too late in the evening to make the trek there tonight, even though it is enticingly close, but we will get there tomorrow.

But tonight, we make our way back to the hotel, through the same crowds we encountered on our way out. It is dark now…and there is something more dramatic about the protests, not threatening…dramatic. The lighting of this city, a city that knows something about drama, makes everything beautiful. There is a concert in front of the University now…next to the lean-to made for Afghani asylum seekers. In Greek and English, they are singing songs about freedom.

And I remember that we are walking the streets that brought us democracy. And here, in Athens, it is good to see how alive that spirit is.

Xo,

Kimberley

The Flight to Athens

2011-06-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

(disclaimer: this entry and many of the ones that follow, were written almost two weeks ago. Finding the time and access to upload them has been difficult. But here we go.)

My eyes actually hurt as I strain to open them in response to Tina lightly brushing my leg. I am not sleeping. There will be no sleep for me during this almost 24 hours of this trip from Houston to Athens. We are off to a stunning adventure amongst history and natural beauty, but in this moment, it is hard to remember that. In this moment, all I can think about is how I miss being horizontal.

I have been on multiple international flights over the last few months on different airlines. I had set the kids expectations along the lines of what my experiences had been on each of the flights. Entertainment screens at every seat with movies, televison, video games and music...temperatures in the 60s in the cabin...snacks set up in the galleys...power outlets at the seats. We have none of this on this twelve hour flight to Athens. The kids and I peeled off jackets and still sweated as we tried in vain to sleep. Eventually, Haley did manage to eke out an hour's rest. Grant and I have only been able to rest our eyes. I feel a little bratty complaining about this, but it has been a long 24 hours of travel and waiting in airports. And everything in the description of our flight led me to believe my expectations about the amenities were accurate. I think I'm due a little bratty.

The kids are being amazing, frankly. I am sitting between them now as they read their magazines, for the billiondth time. Tina and Ellie are two seats behind us, supplying the kids treats when they venture back there to check in. And i bless them everytime the kids come back with something delightful. Tina has offered to change seats with me, but it is really too late for sleep unfortunately. We will nap at the hotel.

Jesse and Meagan are several rows behind Ellie and Tina. We have not heard from them at all and I am hoping against hope that they have managed to sleep.

It is something of a miracle that we are sitting together like this. Our seats were all over the place when they were assigned. Twice, I elbowed my way past fairly aggressive people trying to jump my place in line to talk to beleagured gate agents accustomed to requests like ours. The joke in our little party was that I was going to go off on them when I got up there in order to get us sitting together. It wasn't necessary. In fact, it is so rarely necessary to go off on people. Despite telling me that it was highly unlikely that we wouuld find ourselves sitting together, they managed to move people around to get us together. Others around us were not so lucky. I am not sure why this worked out for us, but I am grateful.

We are flying over Grenoble now. The kids are delighted at the information screen tracking our flight.

"Look! We are going to fly over Rome!"

"I wish we could fly over Copenhagen...I like the way that sounds."

"It's negative 63 degrees outside!"

I am reading an article in a magazine about a family who took their two kids out of school for a year to travel and learn. It is an overview of their travels in Peru, Africa and France...just a light touch in this brief article, and I intend to read more on their blog because I am fascinated. But right now, I am thinking now of this trip and how we can make this a more active learning experience.

I'm back...sort of.

2011-06-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

I am having so much trouble writing.

It’s not that there is not stuff to write. There is plenty. But when I have written on this trip, there is something travelogueish about it. There is no humor or drama…just us. Plus, I have had to shift my focus a little. I had begun to write down the details of everything we are doing every day, and there is just no way to make that interesting. I have forgotten, on this trip, how to look for moments and themes. I have been recording like I am writing a news story. Just the facts ma'am.

So I guess I do know what the problem has been. But fixing it is another thing entirely.

I have written multiple blog entries. But I lost steam when it became clear that there was no way to upload them. Even if I am writing for only one person, I am writing this for someone…and if no one reads it…

All this to say, I will uploading the posts I have already written…as they are. It is a blog after all…not a book to be published. Read at your own risk.

Xo,

Kimberley

Story Engineer on Deck

2011-06-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I can forget for a moment that I want something different for my life.
I am sitting outside the Chevron building in downtown Houston, the building that in 2001 was home to Enron employees. We have just finished a meeting with a client giving us the relatively recent history of an advisory network within a functional organization here. All their histories are fairly recent, it turns out…the function itself is only two years old.

We asked for this meeting because we are building a website that must include some fairly solid information on this advisory network. I did not think I had the energy for this meeting today. The thought of listening to matters of consequence that are significant only to a very small fraction of the world’s population…and then only for a fraction of their attention span, seemed so insignificant as to be a truly outrageous waste of time. But it is my job, so I go.

I am sitting outside the building now after the meeting, in the shade by the street. There are trees and people and life all around me. And I pull out my computer to write, because I find myself surprised by how I am feeling about this meeting. And surprised, also by its familiarity.

Today, we met with a storyteller. By title, he is an engineer. He lives numbers, drawings and integrated visualizations. He pulls up blue prints and diagrams that mean something to him, but look almost random to my untrained eye. It is a recipe for sheer boredom. But the two hours flew by with the unlikely combination of centralized versus decentralized this and who is responsible for that, no real story content, just regular stuff, told by a storyteller.

It is tempting to say the meeting came alive for me when he began speaking about his last post in Nigeria. “I am a swamp guy at heart. I want to be in the middle of operations, where it is happening.” It is clear by his demeanor that he is quite sincere. He is here because it is a step back to the field in another, grander position. He is stretching and learning as fast as he can to get back into the field.

But to say that this is when it became personal and interesting is cheating almost an hour out of the time in the meeting. From the moment he began talking I was engaged in the story. To be honest, the level of detail covered was really far too deep for our intended product. For what we needed, we could have taken half the time today. But I was consistently committing the cardinal sin of asking additional questions. I have been in meetings when others do this and it is only by sheer force of will that I have restrained myself from leaping across the table to silence the offender by any means necessary. Today, I was the offender. And I was not asking to demonstrate my knowledge. I was not asking because we needed that depth of information. I was asking because a world opened up to me and the questions leapt to my mind. I was curious. That does not happen to me often.

I’d like to say that maybe this will create in me a more generous attitude next time, when it is someone else asking the inanely detailed questions, but I doubt it. I mostly am trying to get the meetings behind me now, and get the product produced.

But today, for two hours, I forgot that I am working toward a different life. For two hours I allowed another world to open up. I forgot that all this supports a system that I don’t believe in.

I was just listening to a story teller.

xo,
Kimberley

Who Was Actually in Hell?

2011-06-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve dropped into hell. You’d love it.

I got this text message as I was sitting in a sanitized lobby, waiting for a client meeting. As sure as I was that I was surrounded by juicy and intriguing stories, this was of no comfort to me today. I was not here to pry these secrets from the people walking by, practically sweating their words from their pores. I was there to discuss a project that, in the big scheme of things, was completely insignificant. Those delicious secrets would stay wrapped up in ties, slacks and shoes…the uniform that would remind everyone where they were after all.

I was on my way to a meeting, in heels and business clothes, when the truck I was driving began smoking and died along the side of the freeway the day before. It was about 10,000 degrees on the asphalt and there was no easy way for me to remove myself from the situation on foot. I hid the key in the truck, called the insurance company to arrange for the tow and then my sister to come take me home (Tina was in a meeting over an hour away). This is apparently not how it goes. Leaving your vehicle opens you up to all kinds of issues. Which is why, a full day and a half later, Tina is sitting for nearly three hours in the lobby of an impound lot waiting for the tow truck to finally arrive.

The woman in here has been yelling at me the whole time I have been here.

I have no idea why Tina thinks I would love to be in her shoes, apart from the fact that I am wishing like crazy that I could spare her the torture of her situation. When I get the text message above I cringe and cannot imagine how I am going to manage to keep my composure through the next three hours of meetings…meetings about nothing.

The woman here is threatening to go to lunch before the tow truck gets here.

As I wait, I am getting these texts AND a myriad of phone calls from the insurance company, who is arranging our tow (why was the vehicle on the side of the road again?), the tow truck driver (does the lot require us to have an SPD license?) and a dozen or so recorded messages continually adjusting the time when the driver will be at the lot. No matter how many time I give them Tina’s number, she is at the lot with the truck after all, they continue to call me. This keeps me in a state of high alert.

Mean woman starting to feel sorry for me.

At dinner, Tina tells me about the afternoon and I understand why I got the first message from her. She was sitting in the middle of a colorful story, characters running through the scene, dropping dialogue that would be hard to produce convincingly on a stage.

Lot Manager (glaring): Who’s that you’re talking to?

Tina (timidly in the corner of the room): The insurance company. They say they have been trying to call you.

Lot Manager (narrowing eyes): Well, I’ve been sitting here the whole time and the phone ain’t rung, so they ain’t called me, have they?

Tina: Can you talk to them on my phone?

Lot Manager: I ain’t talking to no one that don’t call me on this phone!

(Tina confirms number and asks them to try again. Phone rings in the office)

Lot Manager: Hello? Well you know I gotta have that ______ form before they can pick it up. It don’t matter, I still gotta have it. That just don’t matter, if I don’t have the form, I can’t release the truck. (hangs up the phone)

Over the two and a half hours that Tina shares an office with this woman and assorted drivers, she begins to learn about them. She witnesses one side of gentle private conversations the lot manager has with a child on the other end. She hears the same woman defend one of the drivers who is apparently not treated well by the others. And, as she fingers one of the two bibles perched prominently on her desk, she casually tosses some unexpectedly gentle nudging into the conversations.

Driver: He don’t share nothing of his and he comes in every day and just helps himself to our cokes. He brings just enough for himself and looks at you like you crazy if you ask him to share…but he just helps himself.

Lot Manager: Has he ever been any different?

Driver: Not a single time.

Lot Manager: Well then, you gotta forgive him, don’t you?

Tina’s right. I would have loved it. I would have been scribbling notes like mad on scraps of paper had I been there. As it was, I was absorbed in her telling of the story, even in the scant detail of someone who does not hold a story on her tongue like the delicious melting of dark chocolate. I can taste enough of the detail to wish it had been me there. To wish that those two and a half hours had unfolded for me, layer by layer, as it had for her.

xo,
Kim

I'll Be There

2011-05-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

The beginner choir was singing the opening notes to “I’ll Be There” when I finally tuned in to the middle school choir concert. I was there to see my daughter perform, in the advanced choir. Her songs would be last in the program. I had a long wait. And this is what made is hard to settle into my seat and just be where I was. I was waiting for everything else to be over. Besides, it was hot, we were in a public school auditorium and I could not get my camera to work for some reason…so I was frustrated. But, something about the opening strains of this song caught my attention, and I settled in. Almost two entire groups into the music program, and I was finally settling in.

You and I must make a pact

We must bring salvation back

Where there is love

I’ll be there.

Suddenly, I saw the faces of these little girls. One little girl had a sad hopeful look on her face. One shuffled her feet and was clearly searching through a wall of bright lights for a face in the audience. One of them swayed to the music as if she was really feeling what she was singing. All of them beamed. All of them wanted to be there. All of them were proud, and deserved to be.

Johnston is a performing arts magnet school in the Houston Independent School District. Kids from all over the district audition to get into the school. We did not move into the district in time for Haley to audition the year we moved into town, so we specifically found a house located within the zone of this school so that an audition would not be necessary. The school is that good…and that good for the creative students that go here. Artists, musicians, dancers, actors and singers…they have found the school and made their way here.

For many of them, their talent is their ticket out of a lower performing school within the district. The magnet program rewards those with the talent AND the willingness to work hard.

I watched every second of the rest of the performance. I watched these kids who innocently sang as the state cuts almost 200 million in funding from our district this year alone. The decision to make these drastic cuts happened very recently, but the impact is already being felt. The stable foundation underneath them is shaking and none of them can feel it yet. Not yet. But their parents do. We are watching. Some of us are figuring out what to do with our kids if the school system just caves in on itself. For some of the parents of these kids, there are no other options.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the kids of Nepal. Specifically, how this country, in this moment, has decisions to make about what their priorities are. The people of Nepal have suffered for generations for the opportunity to make decisions that are only recently theirs to make. In this moment, they can choose to build a future for their country that moves it into something inspiring to generations to come, as well as to the rest of the world. I am hopeful that they are not looking to us for that answer.

Tonight, I am thinking about the decisions our country is making about what is expendable and what is not. Tonight, I am looking into the faces of these children, children who are in school because we profess to believe that we cannot be a strong nation unless all of our children have equal access to basic education. Tonight, I wish there was some way to help every politician in the country see the hope I see in these faces. I want the hope in these faces to live…I want this hope to form the foundation for our future. As I go to sleep tonight, I will be praying for a shift in our perception that will wake us up and cause us to prioritize differently, because the children of Houston are not the only ones considered expendable by their governments. The politicians in this country need to all be held accountable for our future…and not just the period of time between now and our next election.

Xo,

Kimberley

sometimes, I play

2011-05-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

I am sitting on a wooden work table in a 100 year old mattress factory, listening to a singer songwriter play his original music to this attentive, mellow crowd. People are scattered around the room in chairs placed in front of and around antique industrial sewing machines that used to sew mattresses and now sew bags. The next room is still set up for making mattresses. Frames, drying racks, compression boxes…all look as if someone, just this second, walked away from using them. There are even downy feathers in the wire egg baskets next to the work stations.
Twinkle lights look carelessly thrown up around the rafters, illuminating only enough as the sun sets for me to make out the other faces in the room. We watch the performer sing in front of a backdrop of colorful flags and blankets thrown onto numerous coat hooks behind him. He is lit by a single living room lamp. We are in a still life.

Only Cheryl could have pulled this off…such accidental looking perfection. She labored dearly to make this happen, but it would be impossible to pinpoint precisely what it was that she labored over. Every detail looks that unstudied, a complete lack of fussiness that is impossible given how perfect it all is. As Will Johnson (lead singer of Centro-Matic) sings about dreaming (I’m not making this up), I look over to see her casually perched in a deep window ledge with Paul and Zoe (her truly adorable husband and magical daughter). It’s a picture, of course, but it will not be taken tonight. Because the genius of Cheryl is that she is not trying to look like this, she just does. Her focus is to make magic. And tonight, with soft winds blowing wind through open windows and the occasionally train whistle interrupting the show, she succeeds.

(Photo courtesy http://www.stashstudios.com/)

“This is the first time I’ve played a mattress factory.”

Will speaks softly between songs. He is not miked. There is no need. We are a very small, sold out show. He talks and plays and then talks some more. Mostly we just soak him in with everything else. He is so perfectly placed here. He will always be associated with that night for me. And this is a good thing.

Cheryl runs her business from here. It has been in her family since the 50s, when it was actually used as a mattress making factory. These days, Cheryl makes her line of upcycled bags in this old factory. Until recently, she did all of the work herself…from the initial design of each bag to the invisible stitching that holds each one together. She will gladly tell you about how, the moment she needed help in producing the bags, the right people appeared. This is the way with Cheryl.

Tina and I own some of her bags and I am finding two more are calling my name. They are ridiculously underpriced for bags made with as much care as Cheryl puts into them. Carrying mine makes me feel like I am carrying a glamorized version of our collective past. And these bags get noticed.

There are pictures from the show on her website. (click on the photostream at the bottom of the left column)
But not even these gorgeous shots can do justice to that evening. You can also find a link to her catalog here (link in the left column as well). She just finished a show in Houston, so she will have to update her inventory online before you will see what she really has in stock. I am jonesing for a long hair messenger and a canvas bag with a rebellious lining. Both are scene stealers.

The Impact of a Child

2011-05-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

I do not even remember her name and, at the time, I did not know there would be any long lasting impact. It was the middle of the school week, and this little girl had to have been all of 7 years old. She should have been in school, but she was along the main street in a tiny little town called Madrid, which is somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Haley and I were in transit on the way to Santa Fe when we met her. As we ate on the porch of a quaint restaurant in the town, a little girl came up to us with a box of rocks. Crude crayon drawings barely decorated the rocks. They looked hastily done, as if she had just ducked into the woods behind the diner to create some additional merchandise.

She gave the impression of a girl raising herself. Her comfort with walking up to strangers and asking them to purchase crayon colored rocks was disquieting. She saw my camera and asked me to take a picture of her with my daughter. I wonder if she wanted someone to have proof she was there. The fact that I cannot now find the picture of the little girl whose name I can't even remember, is sad to me.

No one at the restaurant seemed to know her. As we walked through the town later, we caught site of her occasionally, always alone. Madrid is an isolated and very small town along this highway; it seemed improbable that she was alone and unknown there. We were there for hours, and I never saw her with anyone. I think part of me was prolonging the shopping that day in hopes that I would catch sight of her with a family, any family. As we drove out of the town at sundown, I saw her on a bench…looking for rocks.

I think about her more than I imagined I would. But not her exactly. I don’t know her story, really. But the story I have in my head, the one of the little girl or boy having to raise themselves in a world that does not really see them, that story belongs to a lot of kids.

The girl in Madrid did not create the fire in me to share stories of kids living in our periphery, but she did make me stop, and she did add some kindling to the fire stoking in me. I wish I had her story. I wish I could find the two colored rocks we bought.

I have been writing stories about the kids in Nepal recently. And today I am thinking about other children who have also stayed on my mind over time. As I gear up to submit a bunch of my stories to you over the next few weeks, I find myself curious about your stories. Tell me about some child you encountered that you still think about. It does not have to be a sad, dramatic story. Children generally remind us to be merry, and I’d like to hear those stories too.

xo,
Kimberley

Street Festival and Krishna Temple in Nepal

2011-04-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Forgive me. The last couple of days have been impossible to write about. Eventually, I will. I have a story for you today, but it is not from my trek yesterday…through the slums to the homes of the beautiful children we have spent the past week with. That story will have to wait. I can’t write that quite yet.

The view from just outside our room, and where I walked this evening.

Today I was sick much of the day. I slept for much of it, which was a stunning disappointment to me. I needed to see the kids. But, no matter how I protested, I was told to stay put. And this was the right call it turns out. I slept and ate rice all day. Late this afternoon, I awoke to the sound of music and festive voices from somewhere in the area. I went out on the balcony and could see, just barely through the houses, colorful banners and dancing blocks away. Renu came in to check on me and I asked her what it was. A festival. Would I like to go see it? As weak and dizzy as I was feeling, a street festival in Nepal, only two blocks or so away, is too juicy to pass up. She sent her housekeeper with me.

Her housekeeper is lovely. Kind and smiling. She speaks no English. And away we went toward the festival. Just the two of us. The streets were filled with people, mostly congregated around the decorated carts holding travelling shrines to various gods. Shimmering metallic strands stretched between buildings above the street. You can imagine how conspicuous I felt amongst all of this. I spend so much of my time here feeling like a bit of a voyeur in the lives of this culture. I asked Didi to take me home. At least, that is what I thought I asked her.

Instead, as we left the festival, she veered off the path and motioned for me to join her. A shortcut perhaps? More of the festival? She walked me through back alleyways until we were standing in front of a temple for Buddha. The gods have their own temples, I was about to find out. We followed more paths to another temple and then into a large field for soccer that had the most beautiful mountains framing it in the distance. What a luxury these mountains are to me…coming from the flat land of Houston.

We then took more back alleys until we were at her home, which she pointed out proudly. We walked right by, her dog, Kali, following us. (Yes, Tina, her dog’s name is Kali J). We walked through fields to the edge of a very steep hill climbing further down into the valley. Women were washing clothes on a ledge just below us. While standing on the ledge, Didi pointed out numerous temples of various gods. And before I knew it, we were again descending the steep ledge into the lower regions of the valley. We walked a narrow path, me with no idea about where we are headed.

We arrive at a temple, her temple I gather. It is a temple to Krishna. She motions for me to enter with her and we are alone there…her showing me the modest room with a shrine behind a locked gate. We sat down for a moment to peer into the shrine. It was clearly a place of warmth and love. I have been to many churches and temples around the world…and it always surprises me how clearly you can feel how infused with love the temples are in places that are the poorest. Nothing in America, that I have seen, can hold a candle to any of them.

As we were leaving an old woman came into the room and Didi whipped back around with a look of pure glee. Her face made it clear that something wonderful had happened and that she was thrilled that I, her guest in the temple, was about to be a part of something magic.

She introduced the woman as “grandmother” but I suspect it is not literal. She clearly belonged to this temple…lived in it, as it lived in her.

Grandmother invited me to sit down again in front of the shrine and she scurried around turning on lights and mixing something in small metal cups. I was blessed and painted on my forehead. I found out later, with the help of Renu’s translation, that amongst other things, Grandmother asked where I had come from and said “You have come such a long way. I hope you find what you are looking for.” She is also praying for me at 2am…her normal prayer time. I understood none of this at the time and kept nodding my head like an idiot saying “thank you” and “ok.”

Then she produced a handful of peanuts and a piece of rock candy from the pocket of her sweater to give to me to eat, which I did, of course, like it was communion in church. As we were leaving, she showed me her room and asked me to take a picture of her. I had not brought my camera (how insane was that?), but promised to return with it tomorrow. I will keep this promise, but I will bring someone with me who can translate back and forth. I appreciate the flow of just going without shared language, but I would prefer not to miss any more of what this woman is saying to me.

Tomorrow, I return to the school for my last day with the kids. I am still not well, but I will go tomorrow no matter how I am feeling. What I suffer from is not contagious…and I will not miss my last day with the kids of Koseli.

I am gathering stories from some of them…but these too must wait. I can’t write them just yet.

Love,

Kimberley

The Bus Trip to Jhule (My Mount Everest)

2011-04-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is a note to myself…while I will never forget yesterday, I might forget the details and the texture of the moment, and I never want to do that.

Renu asked us if we wished to take a separate car or ride on the bus with the children on our laps on the way to Jhule. Three minutes later, I was sitting in a seat meant as a tight fit for two people, with Srijana, Manju and Pinky, who insisted, despite the fact that their seat already was an excruciatingly tight fit, that I sit with them. They had a mission. They wanted to teach me a Nepali song.

Photo by Manoj Jirel, Student Photographer and Joker

I positioned myself on a full half inch of seat available to me and began to try and do what they said as they moved quickly through the song, expecting me to pick up and repeat the simple words they were telling me. After a laughed filled five minutes, I redirected them. I asked “is there a song you teach the babies? Like a VERY simple song the very little ones can learn to sing?” They laughed wildly and then began teaching me this one:

Ma Janchu, Kathmandu

Motor chadera

Bholi parsi aune chhu

Ma doctor ba ne ra.

They tell me that this means “I am going to Kathmandu by motorbike. When I come back, I will be a doctor.”

I asked them to please write down the words for me so I could follow. They first wrote them in Nepalese, which is a truly beautiful looking writing, but one I cannot read, of course. They got help from one of the teachers to write the English phonetic spelling for me. I now have it in their handwriting in my little book, along with the words for parts of the face and the word for silly. They enjoy it very much when I identify several of the boys as jokers…and jokers they are.

I sat with them, trying to sing the baby song for a while (I plan to record them singing it as soon as possible, so that I can continue trying to learn it when I go home). Then Manoj asked me to sing an American song for them. I told Manoj (who, by the way, is quite the joker) that I was glad to see everyone happy and that I did not want to make everyone cry by singing. He laughed and asked me if I knew songs by Hannah Montana. I told him my favorite song of hers was Party in the USA and, miraculously, one of the teachers produced their phone playing the song for me to sing along to. So sing I did…at least the chorus. They watched me very seriously, studying me…like I held some kind of information in my random moves and singing manner. It was odd, but ok somehow. Then I sat back down (yes, I had to stand for this so I could turn to face the one requesting the song) and the back of the bus, where I was sitting, broke into Let it Be, by the Beatles. As I was sitting, I had to brace myself by placing my hands on the seat back and the seat in front of me. As I sang, my hand was stroked by the little girl sitting in the seat behind us. We only stopped singing because Manju said she wanted me to look out the window with them and see their country as we drive past.

The ride was hard. As uncomfortable as it was for me, kids all around me were throwing up from motion sickness into little plastic bags. The 30 minute bus ride seemed to last for hours. All I could do to comfort them was stand so that they had the seat to themselves, and offer the exotic wet wipes I had for them to wipe their mouths and faces. The remainder of the trip was them being sick and me wiping their faces, pulling their hair out of their faces and asking the teachers around me how much longer the trip was. I was glad when the ride ended so my friends could recover themselves, which they did with amazing alacrity.

But the amazing thing was how the other kids took care of their friends. As kids up and down the bus became sick, their friends would move them to the seat by the window, yell for plastic bags and water, and tend to them constantly. Some of the older kids, even the jokers, stood in the aisles to facilitate quick transfer of the needed items. They were all focused on taking care of the motion sick kids. And no one had to ask any of them to step up. Not one of them shirked the responsibility of caring for the others. Not one of them. No one wanted to change seats to get away from the sick ones. The seat in front of me had kids in it who were probably 7 years old, and when one of them fell sick, the other two in the seat tended to them for the remainder of the trip. They would look up continuously and make faces like it smelled awful, but it never occurred to them to do anything other than what they were doing. And, for the return trip, they sat with the same kids…never once considering changing their seat mates as an option, though it most assuredly was.

Next installment will be about the trek itself.

xo,

Kimberley

To Be Willing to March into Hell for that Heavenly Cause

2011-04-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was final exams results day at the Koseli School. Yesterday, each child found out if they were promoted or needed to redo the year. I had no idea this was happening, and, had I known, I would not have had any context for the experience of it. It was brutal.

Renu has a very tough job. She is actually trying to give these kids the tools they need for a better life. Some of these kids come from very bad backgrounds and all of them come from a culture of very low expectations. No one really expects much of anything from them. No one, that is, except Renu and the staff at Koseli. And these expectations are critical to their success. If they learn to rise up and continue on, despite the repeated failures, they can change their lives.

Most of the class failed their final exams. Renu explained that much of the schooling they had prior to coming to Koseli was really inadequate and did not set a foundation to succeed. She also confided in me that, she does not think it is a bad thing for them to fail. If they fail, that is one more year she has with them. One more year to imbue them with skills and knowledge they need to rise above the challenges that have been dealt to them.

But the air of disappointment permeated the school. The girls cried and cried. Parents came to the school (well, some of them) to hear the results and, coming from a background of no education at all, could not fathom how the kids had worked so hard and not succeeded. They were angry.

Renu is worried that some of the children will not return. She is worried that the disappointment will be so crushing that they will just return to the life they have always known. As she sat on the floor in one of the classrooms and talked with me, I could see the pain all over her face. It is a pain she deals with every single day of her life and one she has committed to enduring for the rest of it. The pain of losing some of these kids she loves so much.

When she verbalized all this to me, I could literally feel the pain in my chest. It literally felt like I had been hit. Something in me had imagined that, once in this place, a child would never choose to go anywhere else. And for some children, this is true. But the reality is present every single day, as some of the kids fail to come to school for days at a time and gamble on the streets instead. And some of the kids cannot take the crushing failure and never return.

In that unguarded moment, alone in a small classroom, Renu gained my commitment forever. Koseli is my school too. These are my kids. She communicated volumes in her hushed tones, slumped shoulders and distracted air. This is not a charity for Renu, this is a monumental quest.

And I’m in as a sidekick…for the long haul.

XO,

Kimberley

P.S. I have pictures to post here...but I am on a new computer and have no idea how to reduce the size of my pics so that they will upload. :-( will work on that tonight.

Miro Nom Kim Ho

2011-04-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

My writing will have to change. If I am to capture the intensity of every moment on these kinds of trips, I will have to learn to get out of my way. To lose the training I have had in writing. I ache for this, particularly today.

Today, I am capturing the stories of some of these children. I was not prepared for how I would feel here. I knew I would feel compassion. I knew I would feel pain that I could not do more. I knew that I would think they were sweet. But these are the least of my emotions here.

I am filled with hope for the world here, within the walls of this school. I want more for these kids, and I want more for me and my kids back home. I want the thirst for life that these kids have. I want my kids to want to learn and be as these kids so clearly do.

Stephanie is teaching them now and their focus and intensity is not compulsory or polite. You can feel them pulling the information out of her…hanging on her every word. Sometimes, it feels more that she is allowing the information to be pulled from her, rather than “teaching” it to them. Stephanie and the kids are natural together in a way that I would not have thought possible.

In fact, I am surprised at how comfortable I feel here. With this group from the US, with Renu, who I only met three days ago, with these kids whose names I am becoming so familiar with.

As much as we bring knowledge to these children, they have more to bring to us than we can imagine from where we sit at home. I am only beginning to learn. What I am learning today is hope.

In any case, the stories are not done. They are not simple. I need more time with these kids. In the meantime, I am sticking some of the pics onto Facebook.

Tomorrow we go trekking with the school. I am hoping to get to know them better. One at a time.

XO,

Kimberley

Going into the Cocoon

2011-04-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Today, the universe totally messed with me. I’m not gonna lie, today was tough. Who am I kidding? It’s still tough. It's messy. Like the caterpillar must look in the cocoon before the butterfly escapes the binding.

This morning Jen asked me to interview the children for a piece of the project. I did not and do not feel up to this task. And this floors me. Who am I that I am literally afraid of asking questions to these children? What does it mean that I am not up to the task? And, make no mistake, I was afraid. Afraid that I would not get any more of an answer than I had heard from them yet, which is to say smiles and giggles. Afraid that they will only say stock answers like “I like to learn.” Afraid that I will find out for sure that I am unworthy of the abundance of being with these kids.

So, today was brutal. The start this morning colored everything that happened all day. All I saw anywhere was my uselessness. At one point, when there was truly nothing for me to do, I sat on the stairs and tried to write my feelings down. This is as far as I got…

Today I want to go home. Not because I am uncomfortable or overwhelmed. But because today, I feel abundantly and exquisitely useless. It is paralyzing me. I wish

Then two kids came up to me and asked me if I had pictures of my kids. So, as they sat on the stairs beside me, I pulled up picture after picture of my kids and told them about them. Then two or three more would come up and want to see the pictures…then more. As they cycled in and out, probably about 15 kids and their teachers sat through my impromptu slideshow. One particularly inquisitive child, Manoj, quizzed me right away about each of my kids. Then, as new kids came up to see the pictures, Manoj would rush in to give the vital stats before the pictures even came up.

“That is Haley. She is 12.”

“Grant wants to be a ninja.”

“Do you know how old she is?” (pointing to me)

After I had gone through all the pictures multiple times, a child came up (Rajesh) who, all agreed, could dance just like Michael Jackson. I am not able to pass up an opportunity like this. The kids cheer me on as I chase him into a classroom to show me his best Michael Jackson moves.

“You better make her happy! If she is not happy, she will not come back.”

This convinced him for some reason, which is bizarre to me. So, without music, without a stage, without shoes on...Rajesh killed it.

“AH! That is from Smooth Criminal! (this is me)

“OOOOHHHH Thriller” (me again)

I have asked him to dance again for me tomorrow so I can capture video. If I can get him, I will post it so you can see his sweet moves. J

Then Steph distracted everyone and I was again alone. I began to pick up where I left off. But I had no more opened the document, when again, I was surrounded. So, I began asking them questions…and they began answering them. I have only just begun this project, which I will pursue in earnest tomorrow. By the end of the day, I was not ready to leave, and they wanted more. They wanted to tell their stories. And I told them that there are people on the other side of the world who really want to hear them. I told them about you.

So, I will be pulling double duty on the posting for the next few days as I process their stories through here…pictures and all. You will be surprised at how hopeful and joyful they all are. I will warn you, however, that you are likely to love them forever and ever once you read their stories.

My whiny document never got worked on, actually. It is not that I feel better…it is more that I have work to do now that is more important than writing that piece out. And maybe that’s the point.

XO,

Kimberley

P.S. Formatting all messed up, and I am too tired to fix it. :-P

End of the First Day...Part One

2011-04-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

After a day in the school, I am not ready to leave. But leave we did. And went straight to a café to digest the day.

Two giant beers later and I am talking smack to our whole group. I have been told there is drinking required at dinner and this is fine with me. I am celebrating. I am celebrating the manifestation of my heart’s desire.

It now feels selfish to be here. I am in heaven. Experiencing the beauty of children who are wide eyed and ready to take on what is real. I want to a part of their growth, any part.

Tonight, we will dinner with Renu’s husband, Anand. And, as we eat, I will be thinking about these kids. I will be thinking about them returning to their homes. I will be thinking about returning to Koseli tomorrow and soaking in the hope and beauty of their hearts.

I am in love.

Xo,

Kimberley

P.S. more pictures tomorrow. I am exhausted. And there is more...much more.

I'm not worthy...Nepal

2011-04-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Am I up to this?

Today we meet the children. We are going to the Koseli.

After breakfast, Jen pulls me into her office (our bathroom) to discuss my enthusiasm. Which, despite my assertion that I am controlling, is apparently bubbling over the edges of the teapot of my brain. Our bathroom conversation is wildly helpful in a way that I cannot possibly verbalize. What I can say is, that Jen connects with me in this and now I have someone here who can hold my intensity…if I can hold it through the day, Jen will hold it for me at night and help me contextualize. Now, I am good. I have so much to learn. And that makes me happy. I love to learn. I want to grow into what is next. This is an intensive in that.

We leave for the school and I am sitting in the front seat with the driver. Jen directs me to sit there and I protest, but she sits me up there anyway and I’ll be damned if she is not right. I feel like there is a soundtrack moving through my head as I we make the trip to the school. I don’t want the drive to end. I am happy.

I step into the school’s gates, my insides melt. I could live here. I swear this is true.

Stephanie disappears immediately. How anxious she is to begin her mission. Ah, her mission, I have not told you about this. Let me tell you now.

Stephanie is a photographer. She lives in Georgia, outside of Athens, on a cow farm. She has a brilliant smile and she is here on her own mission. She wants to teach the kids to tell their own story, through pictures. She has just formed an organization called Lens on Life. She has kids in Tanzania and Nepal that she is now dedicated to in driving this mission. This is a real call of the heart. She travelled, met these children, took pictures, and when she left, her work came to her. She needs to help the kids tell their own story. These kids needs the tools to communicate. This is a mission I can get behind.

Stephanie has, through her Twitter network, eight iPhones donated for her trip. She is teaching the kids to take pictures with them. Pictures of their life. Pictures of the things that are important to them.

So, today, I am in a class of twelve kids as her assistant. Twelve kids who are magnificently ready to take on this challenge.

And they are incredible, these kids. Each comes from the slums of Nepal. Slums I have not seen, but are clearly beyond anything we identify as slums in the US. Each of them has a story that is beyond our ability to comprehend from where we are. I fall in love instantly. This is not the “how precious are these children” kind of love. This is “I love them. I want to them to teach me. I want to help them become whatever it is they want to be.” I want my kids in this school. I want my kids with these kids.

Immediately, two girls focus in on me…and I on them.

This is Srijana and Pinky.

As Stephanie gave them the iPhones. They immediately began taking pictures of me. Every time I looked at them, they were looking at me.

Pinky is an artist. I mean, seriously. I will post pictures of her work tomorrow.

She and her friend, Srijana were magic to me.

I love them. Seriously. I want to bring them home with me.

Stephanie engaged them in a way I would not have thought possible. She taught them how to start the phone. How to take pictures. How to communicate what it is they see.

“What is important is you…not your camera. There are people in the United States who would love to come to Nepal. They can’t. They need you to see what it is like here. What your life is like.”

Stephanie showed them her pictures from Tanzania and the US. Showed them pictures of kids in their natural environment. The kids were silent as she clicked through the pictures, drawing in the lives of kids they would never see in person and don’t have any context for what their lives are like. They got it. You could see it in their faces. They understood the importance. You could literally see the lightbulbs going off in them. I could live in that moment.

Neil and Kristi, the videographers who said yes to this project before they really knew what it was, were moving around the small room in a way that seemed completely natural and beautiful. I have been watching videographers for years and I have never seen a dance like this. They moved around the room like they were connected by an invisible thread. Never in each other’s shot and always shooting the complimentary shot. It was a beautiful symmetry that could only exist between two people in love. And they are. You should see them together. It is a true romance. It is my goal to capture that love with my camera at some point so you can see. They are lovely, fun, sweet and their heart is totally in this.

I am an assistant here, and I love this role. I am learning so much. Stephanie tells me what to do and I gleefully do it. If she asked me to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, I would do it with more love than I thought imaginable.

There is more. Of course there is more. And you will know it. I promise you. I will give you everything.

Xo,

Kimberley

On the Other Side of the World

2011-04-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

I am safe. And I mean physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I had no idea how safe I could feel.

We are staying in a ridiculously gorgeous home on the outskirts of Nepal. I was so tired when we arrived. I had not slept. And the city is overstimulating…auditorially, visually, physically.

But I have to stop here and qualify that. The streets of Nepal are precisely as you would expect them to be…busy, crowded and wild. All manner of motor and wheeled vehicles. But I was not overwhelmed. I don’t understand this still. I felt peaceful in the midst of all that.

In any case, we got to Renu’s house and settled in.

This is Renu, Stephanie, Jen, Neil and Krista plotting about what to do next.

This is dinner. The empty place setting is for Tracey Clark. She was with us in conversation all evening. She deserved a setting at the table.

I laid myself down for a nap and as I was falling asleep I heard:

1. Children playing the street in front of the house. Two boys, playing and chatting in a language I could not understand. But it sounded exactly like the cadence, rhythm and subject matter of children playing in the street back home. It was the same. It felt so familiar it was bizarre.

2. A cow mooing very close by. Can identify from where, but if you told me she was directly below our balcony, it would not have surprised me. It sounded that close. And it probably was.

3. Call to prayer. I did not expect this for some reason. The distinct sing-songy prayer. I loved this so much. If I had had the energy, I would have joined in.

It was so beautiful hearing all these things together. I wished I had had the energy to jump up and find the source of all these things. But all I have the energy to do is cry silently at how beautiful this all is and let sleep take me.

I am having trouble already containing the wild horses of my imagining of what could be…what I could do to help on every project that is swirling around this beautiful group of people. But I am staying quiet. Fireworks are exploding inside me and I hold them in. Those of you who know me will know how completely inconceivable this is. How quiet I am being. I need more context. These projects are not mine. This world is not mine. I am learning to just “be” first and let things happen around me. But it is not easy for someone like me.

Renu says, with all seriousness, “who wants to see the slums?” We all affirm that we are in for this trip, for a variety of reasons, but the question sticks with me. From a communication perspective, this is a really good question that I will carry with me through the remainder of this trip. I want to know the answer to it and I want to know the “why” behind it. I immediately think I know the answer to this question myself…the answer to “why” I want to go. But I am not sure I do actually. In any case, I am in.

I feel very lucky that I am so exhausted. Because going to sleep tonight is not going to be easy. I want to write. I want to go back out and take pictures. I want to stay up all night making lists and planning.

But I will sleep. Tomorrow we meet the kids. Tomorrow, my life changes. Again.

Love,

Kimberley

My Memories and Tears Find Me in the Delhi Airport

2011-04-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

I am standing in line at the airport when Tina tells me the news that she has been holding onto. Chris’ dad has died. The news hits me like a ton of bricks to my chest and before I know what is happening, I let out a wail and begin crying before I remember that I am standing in line with people I don’t know, in an airport on the other side of the world. Immediately, I am disoriented. Like I am in a surrealist work of art. I can’t quite process what people are telling me quickly enough and they are having to repeat the instructions to me multiple times…though they are speaking perfect English.

Chris’ dad was a shell of himself in recent years, a combination of the bipolar chemistry ravaging his thoughts, the drugs he took every day to ‘manage’ those chemicals and the impact of the repeated failure of those drugs to mediate much of anything in him. I knew he was tired of fighting, but I did not think death was really a possibility. Not yet.

Bob felt deeply and read voraciously…could talk at length about all manner of subjects. He was inquisitive and fascinated by people. He was such a kind heart, and you could see it even in his most frenetic moments. He also suffered mightily at the hands of the ups and downs of his chemistry. If you have never seen anyone at the mercy of that kind of horrific chemistry, trust me…it is heart-breaking.

But it was not always a problem. Bob was playful, energetic and brave. Once, when he was visiting us in Seabrook, he took an interest in a beautiful house on the water of Galveston Bay. I too was obsessed by this house. It was two doors down from us and had stunning details, like an observation tower rising above the roof line that held a telescope, and openings in the wall around the property that held a variety of beautiful bells. On one of his many walks, he brought his video camera along and moments later, as I was standing on the seawall having coffee and looking at the water, I hear Bob shouting hello. At the end of the dock of the gorgeous house just two doors over, he stood next to the grinning, happy owners waving at us. He had just asked them straight out if he could come in and videotape their house. And Bob was just the kind of person you wanted to say yes to.

That is the memory I am holding of him today. Not the man ravaged by a sickness that our culture does not really want to talk about. In our world, even an emotional outburst is seen as some kind of regrettably digression, a symbol of our lack of strength.

I read something recently from a woman who had just lost her husband to suicide. The wild trip of riding his brain chemistry overtook him one day and he came up with the only permanent solution he could imagine in his state. Her one wish, as she penned this post was that people start demystifying mental illness and talk about it openly. That these big, strong men who feel like it is a sign of weakness to confess that you need help, get help anyway. Before it is too late.

Bob did not commit suicide, but he did get exhausted by the fight. Because for him, it was a fight. He too believed deep inside him that his inability to overcome the genetic illness in his family line on his own was a sign of weakness. It wasn’t. It is a sign of the weakness of our culture that Bob still felt he needed to fight this fight alone.

Goodbye, Bob. Even half way around the world, you are on the top of my mind today. I hope the place you are resting your weary head is beyond the expectations your challenging and cynical mind could hold. I am imagining you standing on the deck of a house far away, camera in hand, waving like crazy to let us know where you are and that you are happy and fine.

And that you are getting some really cool shots for us to look at later.

I love you.

Kimberley

Stranger in a Strange Land

2011-04-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

Here is where I spent my first night here, across the world...

This is a “Sleeping Pod” in the Delhi airport. Pretty sweet set up, hunh? We had a 14 hour layover in Delhi, so these pods saved me. Turns out horizontal is a fairly important position.

I am in the gate this morning waiting to board for Nepal. I ate breakfast this morning at Delhi’s Daredevils Sports Bar.

Currys and cereals…airportish kind of food, but the décor was way cool.

Don’t those guys look like sports bar ninjas? It’s a Delhi Daredevils cricket mural. It’s beautiful in person actually. Ok, maybe beautiful is not the right word…maybe damned impressive.

It’s foggy out this morning and I really wish I could get out and take pictures in this light. It is so moody. Nothing I shoot is coming out right through these windows, which is a bummer. The mood outside is actually more reflective of my mood than the wildly energetic colors and décor of the sports bar. I am feeling moody, far away, muted, still, dampening.

I have not slept well. I cannot settle into my skin. I got some very bad news yesterday that I am having trouble processing. When bad news comes from such a distance, it feels a little surreal. And that is how I am feeling this morning, surreal.

Later this morning, I will be in Nepal. I will be a stranger amongst old friends. In a way, I already am. But this is such an important thing to remember in my body…how it feels to be a stranger in a strange land. And, while I can’t quite say that I welcome the revisiting of this kind of experience and am looking forward to the reminder of my vulnerability, I can honestly say that I am glad for what will come of it. Being uncomfortable is unsettling, and being unsettled makes such quick work of redefining what is normal.

This trip will be far from normal. It already is. I promise to stay vulnerable here, in my writing to you. I trust you to hold this space with me.

Xo,

Kimberley

Lawyers, Sound Bites and Nepal

2011-04-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I want you to feel sorry for me, so I am going to tell you that I spent the better part of the day trudging through videos of interviews with lawyers from one of the oil and gas majors. Hours and hours of video discussing the finer points of what it means to be a successful lawyer in the company. Now, close your eyes and silently send me your most comforting energy. Thank you.

Truth is that I actually liked the people I was interviewing and tomorrow morning I will resume my task, but tonight I am actually grateful for this particular experience because it has delivered me some “just in time” learning for my trip to Nepal--a reminder that I needed in this exact moment. I need to keep my goal in mind.

As I was sitting with these people, listening to them explain to me how they loved their job and what it took to do it well, I became engaged in what they were saying. I literally asked the same questions of almost 30 different lawyers and got virtually the same answers from them all. I would have expected to get bored out of my skull after the first few, but I never did. Their earnestness enchanted me. Interview after interview they said the same things about “really listening” about “caring about the business objectives” and “maintaining focus on mitigating risk.” Subjects that, of themselves, aren’t that interesting. But the people were. I swear, I could do 30 more.

Trudging through the video after, trying to find sound bites however…that is a nightmare.

You see, I got really good material. Largely because I was so interested in THEIR interest in the subject matter. However, as I am combing through the clips, I find that what I have are interviews, not perfect little quips about the subjects at hand. And the end product relies on perfect little quips. We are doing a piece that will be less than an hour long…so I need brevity. Something lawyers are not known for in general. In the interviews, I got distracted. I forgot to interview for sound bites. But we will have the clips we need for this project. We will sculpt away at the most powerful sections, until they are lean and powerful.

This could not have happened at a better time. As a result, I will be listening differently while we interview in Nepal. I will be looking for the succinct and powerful. I will be noting them and asking for reframing where possible.

If I were interviewing you this weekend about something you feel powerfully engaged with, would you be able to speak about it succinctly and powerfully? Do you have something in your life that so inspires you that you wish you could give it just the right words at just the right time? Tell me what that is. I really am interested.

Xo,

Kimberley

Sitting Still in Nepal

2011-04-04T20:40:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I began working as a consultant, I was eager to demonstrate my value at the conference tables where I sat. I wanted the people around the table to know I was engaged in their challenge and had ideas. I wanted them to know I cared. I typically demonstrated the opposite, however. I was too quick to offer solutions. I thought I knew what they needed before they even finished outlining the challenge. Every client turned into my parents/my teachers/Glady’s McElroy (the glamorous woman -mother of Brian McElroy- who babysat me during my fourth grade year). I turned into a child version of myself. “Look what I can do!”

There is a woman in Nepal who is building, what I believe to be, a replicable and truly sustainable model for schools for the very very poor. She has one operating very successfully and wants to build hundreds more throughout Nepal and India. I have been invited to come spend some time with Renu Shah Bagaria, founder of the Shikshantar Outreach Program and the Koseli school. I have been invited to sit with her, hear her stories, see the school and, working with my dear friend Jen and some videographers and photographers, see if there is some way we can help her turn this “100 school” dream of hers into a reality.

I have been waiting for an opportunity like this my whole life, I think. My need to do something of value in the world has risen to a degree in recent years that I doubt a single person in regular contact with me could fail to see the significance of this moment. To those of you who have suffered my plaintive wails for meaning…my sincere apologies. I have apparently finally reached a tipping point, where my need has met the world. When meaning sends you an engraved invitation to a party you have been pleading for your entire life, you not only go, you RSVP the minute you get it.

But nothing is ever simple, of course. Jen has told me that the pace there is much slower than I have likely ever experienced. This is my challenge going to Nepal. I am deeply emotional. I know my heart will be broken and I know I will want to “fix” everything I come into contact with. I will have to learn how to sit still. I will have to learn how to be. I will have to learn that my presence is enough for now. I will have to learn that there is so much to learn before I can really even know what the deeper challenges are.

I will be in Nepal for two weeks. Two weeks is not nearly enough time to learn a culture. It is not enough time to get past the pleasantries to authentic trust. The most I can anticipate is that we get the footage and verbiage we need to communicate sufficiently enough to magnify their really outstanding work in their community. I can only hope that we gather enough in video, pictures and story to bring life and connection between cultures so different that they are literally unimaginable to each other.

I leave Sunday morning. I will be taking you with me and I hope you will shower me with your support as you did last time. I promise to share my journey with you…internal and external.

Much Love,

Kimberley

Can you guess where I'm going?

2011-03-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Two Hints...

and

A special gift of a note to the person who can correctly identify the place from these pictures (that means if you already know, and I know who you are, you may not make a guess).

Go.

xo,
Kimberley

Japan and a Tin Cup in Kuala Lumpur

2011-03-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

There is so much I want to write to you guys now. I want to write about the feelings of travel, jet lag and the thoughts I have about doing this better next time. I want to write about how it feels to be back home. I want to write about how much you all improved my trip by commenting, emailing and checking in with me in the various ways that you did. But today, I am thinking about Japan and the poor, blind man I passed in the center of a street in Kuala Lumpur.

I passed many people in the streets in Malaysia who needed money. I gave it when I had it. I broke big bills so that it was easier to put something into the cups I passed. I did this without thinking really. People need our help. We should give it to them. People.

On my last evening in KL, as I was walking through the Indian street market, I bent down to put some ringgits into a man’s cup who was clearly blind. He was quite skinny, wearing dirty old clothing and his cup was tin and beaten up. He was not that different from others I had passed…or had seen in pictures from the comfort of my home in the United States. But something struck me that night that struck me again this morning as I was watching the news pouring out of Japan this morning…news about numbers confirmed dead, numbers in shelters and the impact on the stock market. Squeezed into the news stories are single line quotes about actual people in the shelters. For the most part, I note the tragedy and don’t really feel connected to it. It’s not human.

The news helps disconnect us from the tragedy. It reduces it to statistics and facts, peppered with single lines of human interest. We feel compassion, but not connection. As I watched the news it occurred to me that I have dropped money in Haiti’s cup and walked away. I have dropped money in New Zealand’s cup and walked away. As I plan to give to the Japan relief effort, I already know that I will be walking away from their tragedy too. Their tragedy continues…I move on.

Today, one of the single lines in one of the stories was about a woman in a shelter in Japan, one of 450,000 currently living in shelters. She cried because someone she barely knew gave her water and shelter. She cried because there was humanity in the middle of chaos.

This is what is missing in all of this for me…the humanity. The 450,000 in shelters have stories. They are human. For them, the devastation is far from over. The nuclear plants alone leave this country in horrific limbo. But even if this was not the case, what do they have to look forward to when they leave the shelter? And what are the stories of courage, hope and community. They are there and it is in those stories that we feel our connection to people we have never met.

The press is not charged with connecting us to each other, of course. They are delivering the news, in the most sensational way possible. They have a business to run, which is why they move on to the next tragedy. That is why the earthquake in New Zealand, tiny by comparison, but enormous to the people impacted, has fallen off the radar in all major news outlets. The news is not about people, it is about what is the most dramatic right now.

The man on the street in Kuala Lumpur has stayed with me. I don’t know his story, and for some reason that matters to me now. I think it is a mistake to allow the news agencies to hold the stories for us of these tragedies.

We need our storytellers.

xo,
Kimberley

Мне нужно практиковаться в русском

2011-03-09T22:30:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in the Moscow airport. Had no intention of blogging from here as I am really just in transit and am not really seeing Moscow. But...

I am not sure which is weirder...the fact that for the past week I have been immediately pegged as a tourist everywhere I am or the fact that every single person in this airport thinks I am russian. It is seriously strange. When I go into a shop, they address me in rapid russian. When I go through security, they speak to everyone else in english, and to me in russian. A russian woman stopped me to ask me a question, yep...in russian. An American woman apologetically asked if I spoke english so I could direct her to the business lounge. A child asked me a question in russian as we were waiting in line. And in the business lounge, where virtually everyone is in transit, the women at the front desk spoke to me in russian and handed me the russian version of the pamphlet describing how to connect to wifi. Seriously? I look that russian?

Interestingly, I am reluctanct to speak at all. A flight to Houston takes off from here very soon and there are literally men in here wearing UT baseball caps and talking loudly about oil fields. I can only hope that they also think I am russian and that keeps them from addressing me.

I wish I knew even two words in russian. I would totally work them here.

Just eight hours ago I was thinking how nice it would be to not stand out somewhere again. Maybe I am just enjoying the fact that I don't stand out so much here and want to suspend the illusion.

I wonder how long it will be before I am, again, frustrated by my generic American look when I am back home. :-)

К сожалению, я пока не говорю по-русски,

Kimberley

Porn's Elephant Butt

2011-03-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

I am already thinking I need to write a follow up blog for the entire trip. I have lots of scattered thoughts I would love to process with you. But that will come once I have a few days to make sense of them. For now I have a few leftovers that have not fit neatly into any of the other blogs. I am just gonna stick them in here beause they are are worth mentioning, but I am truly too tired to write anything really interesting here.
I had dinner at Porn’s tonight.

How do you not try a place that is this bold in its branding?

I am not sure the thai food was really sexy, but it was seriously the very best pad thai I have ever had the pleasure of eating. I did not know Pad Thai was meant to be spicy. It is so much better that way. Oh, and I had Thai tea with I think is iced tea with sweetened condensed milk in it. Yum.

Someone want to tell me what an elephant’s rear has to do with the name of the restaurant or with anything at all actually?

I love the badge they gave me at BP.

I wanted to bring it home and wear it to work every day, but it ripped when I took it off the wall.

I love you guys. Can’t wait to get home.

I’m out. See you in H Town.

Kimberley

Singapore, David Hasslehoff and John Denver

2011-03-09T09:41:00.000-08:00

I am in the Changi airport in Singapore waiting for my flight. That John Denver song about “You fill up my senses…like a something something something” (my brain is dead) is playing on the speakers…well, at least the Muzak version. Something about that feels a little surreal to me. Particularly when I factor in the music I have been hearing my entire time in Singapore.
Singapore has a definite soundtrack. This did not occur to me until I heard the John Denver Muzak track. I have heard the same music everywhere I go. In every cab…blasting out of every store (except in China Town)…through all the markets. It is the same music, everywhere.

Pop music. Not American Top 40 music, this music that I have been hearing all around me is along those same lines, but not good enough to have made it into the Top 40 somehow. It makes me think of that “we are really big in Asia” joke. I wonder if anything I heard was a David Hasselhoff hit.

This ubiquitous night-club dance beat is what hastened my departure from the walk along the river in Clark’s Quay in fact. It did not break my heart though. Clark’s Quay is really nice in a Disney World kind of way. But I have been to Disney World.

I did see this:

Yep, That is a Burger King Bar.

Now THAT is cool. From an advertising/branding perspective, this makes me giggle. We just don’t cross concepts like this in the states. They are playing loose and fast with their brand here and I kinda dig their moxie. I like how cheeky The Burger King is turning out to be. But that is another story for another day.

Today, once we had finished the video shoot, I took off for Haji Lane near Arab Street. I keep reading everywhere about how this little street is the funky side of Singapore. The second hand shops and alternative styles are supposed to be here. It’s also in a funky district…worth the trip to check it out. And here’s the deal, I am spoiled.

I live in a city with some serious funk in it. Not that Houston is known for its funky edge, but if you walk the curve in Montrose, you know you are on the edge. If you stroll down 19th street in the Heights, the funky vibe, while not as funky as Montrose, has enough going on in their second hand shops alone to qualify the street as a funktion.

We’ve got shops and restaurants in the museum district, the theater district and Washington Avenue that bring a little somethin somethin to Houston, and totally PWN Haji Lane. All this to say that Haji Lane is cute, but I could make a fortune there by just copying a single store along the Westheimer curve and dropping it down right there on Haji Street. If anyone wants to do this, I am willing to sell you my idea for 25% of the profits. I will even help you scout which store in Montrose to steal the concept from.

I don’t like how I think, frankly. Too many years of marketing and advertising. This city is actually quite young as cities go and I can see that in its advertising. I can read their age by their marketing skills like you can read the age of a tree by the circles in the trunk.

But there is plenty they kick our butts in. Plenty. I decided to go into KL right away because I had assumed from what I read and saw that Singapore was going to be antiseptic and boring…or at least, just like Houston. I was wrong.

My favorite thing about this city is its love affair with aesthetic. Our cities look so incredibly utilitarian compared to theirs. Beautiful, dramatic and well cared for trees line the streets. Vines crawl all over the overpasses that are clearly cared for lovingly. So many of the buildings could have easily been constructed in a MUCH more rudimentary way, saving money, but losing the heart of Singapore in the process.

I hope western culture does not overtake this child of a city. Wouldn’t it be cool if this city was allowed to grow up with its imagination and sense of wonder in design intact?

Xo,

Kimberley

Snow Ice, Khulfi and Sexy Walnut Paste

2011-03-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

In about four hours, I will be getting on a plane, leaving Singapore for home. I am tired and ready to be some place again where people ask me all the time if maybe they know me because I blend so much. That does not happen here.

The past two days have been work heavy, so my whirlwind tour hit the wall. Which is ok, because I crammed as much into the few hours I had in order to be able to say I saw a lot of this country. I wanted to have a good sense of it. I think I do.

After going to Buddha’s Tooth temple on Monday, I walked around China Town. But Frankly, I don’t remember much of it. I was in something of a daze. OK, so that isn’t really true. I remember it. It just doesn’t realize stand out. Sweet vendors selling pretty much the same thing you can buy at the other markets. The music was different.

As I was walking down one small street I stopped at a really small restaurant squashed between two shops. Most of the little restaurants in the places I walked were completely open to the street, so it was easy to see what people were eating. And in this place a woman was eating a mountain of beautiful ice cream like I had never seen. It was quite beautiful. I was hanging back a bit, trying to figure out how to get a picture of it without looking like a total idiot (I have been trying to figure that one out for the past week) when an older asian woman, clearly a regular customer of the restaurant, asked me where I was from. I hadn’t uttered a word, but it’s pretty clear that I am a tourist…of course. After exchanging some pleasantries, she asked what I was looking at. I pointed to the towers of ice cream and she said “Oh, No. You eat the walnut paste! It is hot. You will like. We eat it all the time. That is why we are so sexy.” The women she had been chatting with laughed wildly. So, duh, I ordered the walnut paste immediately, of course. I actually ended up ordering both that and the “Snow Ice.” Ridiculously too much food, but it was too fun to not have both. I considered it dinner.

The soup was actually quite good. I was expecting it to taste a little like soupy peanut butter…so I was understandably nervous. It was quite a large bowl and very rich and very sweet, that and the fact that the taste was unfamiliar to me meant that I could only actually eat a little bit of it. Same for the Snow Ice, which was strange and delicious. The Snow Ice was actually not as sweet as regular ice cream, which I liked oddly. But I think what I enjoyed most about it was the texture. You know those places on ice cream sometimes where it is very icy from the difference between the freezer and the bowl? Or that crunchy texture of the edges of the ice cream in a really cold root beer float? It was like that, all the way through. I enjoyed that immensely.

OK, tell me seriously. Could you have resisted that?

Oh, and that is the sexy walnut paste in the background.

Tuesday, after work, I headed over to Little India here. I had a mission in mind. I wanted to try Khulfi. I had never heard of Khulfi before this trip. It is a “traditional Indian ice cream” and it seriously rocks. I had no idea ice cream had so many variations.

There is a Khulfi bar in Little India, called, um, Khulfi Bar. And it got rave reviews in a magazine I read in the airplane. I headed straight for it.

Little India is a little, um, more dicey than the other places I had been in Singapore. Streets feel a little rougher…attitude is a little more aggressive…the alleys are a little narrower. There is an edge here. Which was a bit nerve-wracking in moments, but I have to say I was THRILLED to see that there was an edge somewhere in Singapore.

The Khulfi Bar was on one of these little streets. I passed some restaurants with serious character as I made my way to the ice cream shop, wondering all the time how a place like this could make money, tucked away as it is. I am so American.

This is it from the outside.

This is the shop from the inside.

Many of the shops in this part of Singapore have decorative things hanging from the ceiling and things to sell stuffed into every corner. The saris I passed along the way here were so beautiful that it was very hard not to buy one. Every time I stopped, I imagined how ridiculous I would look in a sari and kept walking. I don’t wanna be that girl. The one who thinks she looks cool in ethnic clothes, but really looks like some completely out of touch tourist character in a National Lampoon movie. I kept walking past.

So, I ordered mango Khulfi with Lychee (I LOVE lychee nuts) and a lemongrass frizz. Still not clear on what a frizz is, but it was so fun to just order something like that.

This is my Khulfi.

This is my Lemongrass Frizz.

I love Khulfi. It is much more dense than American ice cream and the kind I had was in little discs, about an inch in diameter. It was truly incredible. The lemongrass frizz was interesting, tasting good, had some interesting seed like stuff floating around in it that was cool. I felt very cool and adventury here, the sole diner in what was reviewed as the most exciting thing to happen in Little India in a very long time. Maybe it was the time of day.

The rest of my trip to Little India was really challenging. Nothing bad happened. I was just tired and so were the people who were working there and shopping there. The place is supposed to be really hopping on Sundays, when the laborers have the day off.

I accidently ended up finding the subway station and decided to hop on and try and navigate my own way back to the hotel. I had never really explored Clarks Quay, where I was staying, but it was early and I had plenty of daylight to get lost in. I actually really enjoyed this little journey back to my room. I will write some about that next.

Xo,

Kimberley

A Miraculous Shift in Perception

2011-03-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

I sat on one of thirty or so hard gray plastic stools at the back of the temple meant to catch the overflow of the faithful. I knew the minute I stood on the outside of the door to this sanctuary that I would join them, though no westerner appeared to be among the worshipping. I still do not know where this bravery is coming from. I keep wondering if it has something to do with all the times when I was little and chickened out when dared to do something…like I am making up for all those dares now. Brian McElroy, if you are reading this, I would totally swing on that rope swing over that mean old man’s backyard ditch if you dared me today. No way would I let you tease me about chickening out for an entire two years that followed that little incident.

But this does not feel like something I am daring myself to do. Not like the zip lining in Belize. Not like the drive to get on the White House Staff during the Economic Summit when it came to Houston. Not like buying a bus ticket in Singapore to go into Kuala Lumpur all by myself. I felt pulled into this place. This place on Waterloo street, in Singapore that houses the holy relic of one of Buddha’s teeth.

This place is considered one of the holiest places in the world, let alone Singapore. Tourists pace around the courtyard, not daring to go in, but wanting to take pictures of getting close to it…of the colorful and ornate interior that is easy enough to capture without actually entering. They will let you take pictures anywhere in here, but I store my camera as I light a joss stick, pray for peace and place it reverently in the sand outside the temple door…I know how to do this now.

Inside there is a sign indicating that it is proper, but certainly not required, to make an offering of a candle and/or flowers to the Buddha. I make my way to the stand at the side where a gentle lady takes my money and hands me a candle wrapped in flowers…assuming I know what to do with it. I do actually, but only because I just saw someone else make her offering before taking her seat amongst the faithful.

This building has five stories, the top four house museums, a gift shop, gardens, a tea shop and the golden protected sanctuary where the sacred relic is kept. But for now, the chanting draws me to the wildly ornate inner chamber…to the chanting of the monks.

Todays’ recitation comes from the Sutra, verses 33-36. I don’t know this at the time, of course. It is only later, when I wonder what it was that moved me so much, that I decided to look it up. The appropriateness of this message to me right now, in this moment is not lost on me. The universe is divine and there are many paths to God. Here are the verses, translated:

33. If you want to completely liberate yourself from fear and end all internal formations and doubts, You must know that if you haven’t pulled out the arrow of desire, then you haven’t understood yet that this body is suffering.

34. Among the highest things that people call the most divine Nirvana is the highest. You must cut off all ideas and attachments and do not be deceived by words.

35. Knowing how to refrain or not to refrain that is the highest practice of letting go. If in our heart there are thoughts of practice the shell will be cracked.

36. Of all offerings, that of the Dharma is the most precious. Of all kinds of happiness, that happiness based on the Dharma is the greatest. Of all strengths, patience is the most powerful because it can put an end to attachment and bring the happiness of Nirvana.

Pulling out the arrow of desire…patience putting an end to attachment…my western mind struggles with these concepts, even though I feel the truth of it in my heart. But I don’t know any of this message as I sit in the middle of people who, like me, are sitting on small gray overflow stools. But who, unlike me, are following along in their own book of the Sutra (at least that I what I am guessing they were as it was all in Chinese characters) and sing-songing along with the orange robed monks who floated through the room at intervals delivering critical components to the service that I did not understand, as they chanted. I bowed when everyone else did. I turned to face another direction when everyone else did. But mostly, I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the hour and a half service pour over me and then through me. My heart understood something my mind could not.

And after twenty minutes or so, my mind rested and stopped trying to figure out if I was in the right place. I stopped worrying that I did not really belong there. I stopped wondering if the people there judged me for intruding on their sacred service. I know so little about Buddha, but what I felt in there was acceptance. I was creating my own separation, my own doubt, my own judgment. And I stopped.

And when I did, I could hear the chanting differently. What had frankly always felt sleep inducing and a little like droning to me, suddenly held passion and fire. What had felt cold and emotionless, now had life, warmth, intensity. How had I missed this? How is it possible that I had shut myself off from the experience of this with my own restrictive perspective?

The entire temple was stunning. In total, I spent more than three hours there, yet it felt like almost no time had passed. I walked through the gardens. I explored the museum. I turned the prayer wheel and I meditated before the Buddha’s tooth. But nothing could touch the experience of just being part of a flow I have been a part of that evening. Once again, my experience of a temple in Singapore defies my expectations and opens space in me that I didn’t know was there.

Taken long after the service ended, as I was leaving.

Xo,

Kimberley

Running into Kuan Yin

2011-03-06T21:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, as I was waiting for my luggage to arrive, I scouted online for some things to see in Singapore. I ran across a very brief comment about a temple here that was on someone’s MUST DO WHILE YOU ARE IN SINGAPORE lists. It was the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho temple on Waterloo street. It was mentioned that wishing something in here makes the wish come true and that there is a fairly complicated process for paying your respects here (at least complicated for the uninitiated, like me). I made a mental note to check it out at some point and then called a cab to take me to Bugis Village.
After walking through the mosh pit market I found myself on, what I thought to be, a quieter, but still quite populated, part of the market. And then I literally looked up and discovered I was right in the presence of the temple I had just read about. I sat and watched what people did on the outside of the temple for a while before deciding I would go in myself. I did not see a single other westerner approach the temple at any time…but something inside me was dying to go in and see for myself. I went to a woman selling lotus flowers nearby and purchased one that I assumed would be an offering of some sort. The flower was so beautiful that I wanted to take it home. I have never seen a lotus flower in person before.

As I entered the outer vestibule of the temple, I followed everyone else in picking up joss sticks (an incense stick) and walking over to the fire to light them. A kind man there, who was lighting his own sticks) literally lifted mine away from the fire and told me in the sweetest voice that I needed three, not two. That only three would bring me the luck I needed. I thanked him and brought a third back and he showed me the correct way to light them and, once they lit, told me to hold them and how to pray and place them before entering the temple. Which I did. I did not realize at the time that I was praying to Quan Yin.

Once I had placed the burning joss sticks into the sand in front of the temple, I entered tentatively. The place had hundreds of people, inside and out. A stunning golden statue of Quan Yin stood at the back of this temple behind a wooden counter filled with flower pots. I followed everyone else to the front, bypassing the large red carpet positioned in front of the goddess on the floor…filled with prostrate worshippers.

At the front, I noticed a donation box and put in my donation as I placed the lotus flower in one of the pots nearest to me. I then did as everyone else did and walked over to men behind another counter with brass containers holding maybe 100 wooden divinations sticks and red divination stones of some kind. Then I turned and walked over the carpet, on a side just a little less populated than the one I had entered on. I stood and watched what the people did and almost decided to return the sticks and red stones, when a female official of some kind approached me and said “I will help you.”

Here I am. Clearly a clueless westerner, and this kind woman offer to teach me what to do. I remove my shoes and kneel as she instructs in broken English. “Now you pray, in your heart, to her. Tell her what you want and what you want to know. She will answer you.” And pray I did.

Being in a room with so many clearly faithful people fills you with a reverence that is hard to define. Their prayer was intense and focused. Their hearts were reaching out to this goddess of mercy. I felt her there. I did not have a problem praying to her.

Once I felt sufficiently connected, my guide in the process instructed me to shake the box until only one of the sticks fell from it. This is more difficult than it sounds and, while other more accomplished worshippers completed the task in moments, it took me some time. Finally I felt the motion and a stick dropped out on the floor before me.

I gathered my things, as instructed and headed to the same counter where I had picked up the sticks in the first place. I handed them the stick that had dropped before me and they handed me a piece of paper with the goddesses words for me. The counsel I got was perfect, but less important than the entire process had been for me.

I walked out and crossed the street to sit on a wall and witness the people coming out. I had stumbled into another world and I was not quite ready to return to the bustling mayhem of Bugis Village. I took the only picture you are allowed to take of the temple, which is outside…but the statue of Quan Yin is etched in my brain. She was that beautiful… infused with the wishes and dreams of millions of devoted who had bowed before her.

I felt lucky to have been a part of this. The details I share here are really not sufficient to deliver the impact of the experience of entering a place of mercy, a place packed with the faithful and being gently guided through the process of seeking your own answers. I believe I got mine in the faces and love shown to me in the process.

I am blessed.

Xo,

Kimberley

Bugis Village Market - Singapore

2011-03-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

Um. Wow.

This market made the Pasar Malam in KL look like a Sunday stroll through the park. The clerk at the front desk of the hotel in Singapore told me to go there if I wanted to really see a market in Singapore. I lost all the feeling in my body when I got there. It was that overstimulating.

I was in constant contact with some other body at all times. A shopping mosh pit.

I bought things, though at the moment, I can’t remember what they were. I am most fascinated by the watches and t-shirts though. There are so many that just do not make any sense whatsoever. I know I bought myself a killer watch that is bizarre for just $3. I will have to check at some point what else I got. Rest assured, I am getting souvenirs for you guys who have given me advice. They are silly and small…but I am braving these markets for you and with you.

This is my favorite picture. I am hiding upstairs in the only corner I could find that was not absolutely teeming with people. You can see the huge television screen that hangs above the market flashing advertisements and show segments from what appears to be a show on the market itself, highlighting particular stalls. You can’t hear it anything said on the TV though, as each stall is blasting out their own music. It is hilarious…hypnotic…dissonant. A crazy mash up of sites, smells and touch.

There is a food court here, but I cannot feel my legs, much less my stomach, so getting food would have been a nightmare, even if I could have read the signs. To be fair, it is more common here to see the signs translated into English as well. More common, but not ubiquitous. And I am still one of a handful of people that are not speaking in one of the Asian languages spoken in Singapore.

I had a surreal experience as I accidentally bumbled outside the market for a few blocks (it tapers down and does not end abruptly). But it is too surreal to include in a post about the market, so I will write a separate one on that next. As a teaser, it includes lotus flowers and praying.

I am considering diving back into the Bugis street mosh pit tomorrow (Monday) when perhaps it is a teensy less crowded. I have to work, but I may knock off early and see how different the experience is on a Monday afternoon.

I love you all for commenting and being “with me” while I am here. It is making all the difference in the world. You have no idea.

Xo,

Kimberley

The Pasar Malam

2011-03-06T07:28:00.000-08:00

The hotel in which I stayed during my weekend in KL was one block from one of the two most favored night markets in all of Kuala Lumpur. I did not know this until the German girl showed me the section on night markets in the travel guide she was referring to in planning what she wanted to see. Bob had also nearly lost his mind when he saw how close my hotel was to the Lorong Tuanku Abdul Rahman pasar malam. "Oh, it is only one block from you! You must go! The whole street is taken up with vendors and lights. It is really something!" The torrential rains from the afternoon had stopped by evening and so walking through a street filled with tented stalls and stringed lighting was too incredible to pass up, even though I was so tired I could have slept standing up. I grabbed my camera and some money and went in search of food, treasure and mostly just to experience what Pasar Malam means in KL.

Bob was right about the vendors and the lights, but he had not mentioned the crowds...though I imagine that was to be expected. The atmosphere is like a party, the vendors know each other and are shouting to each other back and forth and laughing so that the whole thing seems like a massive party, where you just happen to buy things. The stalls are about half food related with the rest selling clothing, toys, bags, electronics and other various things. I did not notice anything handmade there, besides the food, and did not end up purchasing anything. Well, I did purchase food. A lot of it. But the quantity was more about self defense than about my hunger level.

This was a fairly typical layout...impossible to tell what anything is, but beautiful.

Once again, I could identify nothing. I even ventured to ask on multiple occasions…not complex questions about what something was…just basic questions “Meat? Vegetables?” A phrase book would have been helpful. Several times, as I asked the questions, a few young Malaysians nearby leaned in, roguish smiles on their faces, to hear how it went for me, as if perhaps they would have a story to tell their friends later about the crazy woman in the bazaar who did not even know what a “Popia” was or "Tamil Nadu." In the end, I just bought things that looked interesting and looked like there was no meat involved. My hands hurt carrying them back to the hotel.

Here is what I brought back:

This is as glamorous as I could stage the meal without plates or anything...

It all looked so much more beautiful in the market

You will note that this time, I went for the red drink. There is also a chocolate cake in there, which was iced and had sprinkles added. I didn’t even really want this, but the woman was so sweet and focused in her work that I wanted to watch her put one together:

It was just a normal cake…so I did not end up eating it.

One thing was spiral cut potatoes, fried and seasoned. I like that, of course. There were various preparations of rice in banana leaf packets, some sweet, some savory. I did manage to avoid meat altogether, which was good. But the Indian food here was MUCH sweeter than I had tasted it anywhere else. It was filled with sugar cane juice (which I saw them squeezing and numerous stands), sugar and coconut milk. Even the dinner dishes. In fairness, I did not try any of the meat, so I can’t speak to how that is prepared…and my veggie selection was limited. But I could not take more than one or two bites of anything I got because of the sweetness. Well, except the potatoes. But that was no matter. What an incredible adventure to be trying all kinds of dishes I could not recognize in a hotel room in KL. No plates…no fork…no napkins, Just bags, one spoon and a couple of sharp sticks to poke at my food…oh, and some tissue. I am figuring I am going to need to pack a little camping kit in my suitcase next time I am traveling like this. If for no other reason, for the pictures.

The food was good for the most part, and probably delicious warml. I am off to sleep feeling cozy and well fed. Because even two bites of a selection of food that varied, is plenty for a dinner.

Good night.

Xo,

Kimberley

Bob in Malaysia

2011-03-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of the guy who saved Kuala Lumpur for me. Bob.

Bob used to do safety training for Oil and Gas companies. Offshore training. He taught water evacuation and water survival mostly. And he loved it. Not long ago, he injured his shoulder badly and now can no longer do this training. He drives a cab now in KL.

He was born and raised in KL, and he clearly loves the city. He is very proud of it. There was a call to prayer when we were on our way back to the hotel and I asked him if that was what that was. He replied that it was, and that it was hard to answer that call when you drive a cab for a living. He was quick to add, with a sad face, that his religion does not condone violence of any kind and the things of the world now make him very sad. Bob has the kind of face that you believe. I told him there were extremists in all kinds of religions and they do not account for the rest of us. I can tell Bob is an interesting and complex guy, but for me, it is his kindness and humanity that changed the way I think about Kuala Lumpur.

As I sat with my face in my hands, in the back seat of his cab, Bob asked me how it was that I had come to be in that area of town. I told him what I had been looking for and it appeared to confuse him as well. Then he asked why I was going back to the hotel. I told him that I was tired and I really did not want to try and figure out where to go next and what to do. That it had been too hard. Then he asked if I was too tired to try one more place…Central Market. He assured me I would not be disappointed. He even said he would give me his phone number, and I could call him when I was finished and he would fetch me. With that, I agreed to try it. On the way, he told me that it was a big market, to just go slow and not get overwhelmed. That there were many traditional artists in there, if only I would be patient. He asked me about my kids…about what I was doing in KL…and how long I had been there. It was a real conversation. I asked about him too and found out about his children, his divorce and his true love of a career that he could no longer perform in. But he said all this without any heaviness. He did not try and make it a sob story for me…the American tourist with dollars.

The market was everything he said. I could have easily spent hours and hours in there. But it was late, and I really was tired. I spent almost two hours walking around and then called Bob. He came quickly and drove me back to my hotel. As we approached, he told me I should rest and then walk one block to the Pasar Malam that night, that operated on the entire street right one block from my hotel. The food was great, he said and the sights even better.

As I got out of the taxi, I asked him if he would consider coming to get me in the morning to take me to place where I had to meet the bus in the morning. He agreed and told me when to be downstairs to ensure I got there in time.

As I walked into the hotel, I realized that I was happy and not just because I had gone somewhere cool and had plans for the evening. I was happy because one person was not just nice to me…he was kind and honest. He represented something I had not seen yet in KL, someone who genuinely cared about my experience there.

If you are going to KL, or know someone who is, let me know. I have Bob’s cell number and will give it to the you, provided I have assurance that whoever calls him will be kind and generous to him. He saved me. I owe him that much.

Thanks, Bob.

Xo,

Kimberley

Blink. Blink. Blink.

2011-03-06T04:37:00.000-08:00

KL Sentral Station is insane. It feels like a giant market area with the transportation aspect of it an after-thought in the design. If you do not know where you are going, there is no way to find it easily. I finally found an information counter and was told that the line I was looking for, the one I had determined would take me the closest to the Malaysian Craft and Cultural Center, did not leave from this building and that I had to go outside, go down to the lower street level, and the cross the street to the other station. Doesn’t that sound easy? Ha.

Descending those particular stairs, the ones that take you to the lower street level, take you directly into hell. Or, at least, that is the way it felt to me at the time. Dark, insanely crowded and noisy, large buses everywhere, construction retaining walls line the other side of the street for as far as I can see. This is a place for locals who know exactly where they are going, not for pale faced, disheveled tourists like me. And I was getting paler by the minute. I stood at the bottom of the steps for too long. You know those shots in the movies where the camera pans around at the chaos and then stops on the stunned face of the main character? There you go. Now you know what I looked like. Someone finally asked me to move along, so I chose a direction and just started moving. Nothing made any more sense to me as I moved down the walk, trying to squeeze me, the camera hanging from my neck, and the backpack on my back, through the crowds…hoping something would make sense in a moment.

Then the skies opened up, even though I was underground, and a halo formed around a small shack of a building ahead of me. “Taxi tickets. No haggling.” was the sign on the building. At this moment, I would have seriously considered a 400RM fare to anywhere frankly, but here was a place that controlled the metered price to anywhere. I stepped up the counter, accompanied by angels singing in my ears, and asked how much it would cost to get me to the Malaysian Craft and Cultural Center. “14rm” I handed the money through the window, was directed to a waiting cab and I was whisked out of that place and into the world again.

Then the driver told me he had no idea where this place was. Did not even know it existed. Still, I was out of the underground. I did not care where I was going. When we stopped at a light, I showed him the place on a map, and it still confused him. As the conversation continued, I tired of trying to explain where I thought it was and the landmarks around it. I told him to just drop me close by and I would find it myself. He seemed relieved, and sped off before I even made it to a sheltered area. It was raining cats and dogs at this point.

I went into the nearest building to look at my map and get my bearings. The sky had opened up and walking around felt challenging, considering I really had no idea where I was. I put my map away and decided to walk until I could find a cab, and then get them to take me back to the hotel where I could take a shower and just disappear into my bed for the 18 more hours left in my stay in KL. It just seemed too hard.

A taxi was sitting just outside the building I had escaped into. The driver agreed to take me to the hotel, even though he was unfamiliar with it. I showed him on the map and he immediately knew where it was and how to get me there. I sank back into the seat and put my head in my hands. Then Bob, the driver, started talking to me. And the whole day changed for me. More on Bob in the next post.

Xo,

Kimberley

And Batu Caves are Worth the Trouble

2011-03-06T04:33:00.000-08:00

The caves were strange, funny, interesting, and magnificent. (WARNING: this is picture heavy.)
This is the first thing you see as you enter the side gate:

This is Hanuman. You see him first as you enter from the station. Another very good reason to not take the taxi. You could easily miss him altogether and that would be a shame. He is worth seeing.

I think I took nearly 100 pictures here, I will only put a few. But it is a shame to see it piece meal like this.

Here are some pictures of the characters in the epic battle told here.

Here are the 272 steps, straight up, to the caves.

The giant golden statue to the right of the steps is Lord Murugan, the Hindu Diety, proudly standing guard to the temples dedicated to him. And the pictures do not do him justice, of course. He is so imposing that I did not notice the shrine to the left of the entrance until we descended from the caves.

I’m not gonna lie. The walk up was intense. These are not gentle slopping stairs and the hike up is not for the delicate. I went anyway. :-) But at the top is an impressive cave, with ceilings 100 meters high and temples and shrines scattered about. There is also, oddly, a substantial souvenir stand. Selling all kinds of shrine souvenirs as well as general KL souvenirs. In this moment, I am kicking myself for not having purchased one of the insane pieces of wall art, featuring any one of the deities represented in the shrine in a plastic frame with lightning bolt lights blinking around them. What was I thinking?

I took lots of pictures. Here are two of them.

I am dying to know if this is Kali. If she is, she looks quite different than I have seen her represented. But she is clearly standing on a man...

It was at the top of the stairs that I felt a twinge of disappointment. All these beautiful, reverent pieces around and still I am disappointed. Because there were no monkeys. Not one. Perhaps I had come at the wrong time of the day…but I read nothing of this in the descriptions of the place. Perhaps they had been chased away. Perhaps what I had read was old. In any case, I looked and looked and did not see a single one.

Here is what the cave looked like

We descended and at the bottom, it began to sprinkle just a bit and we were about to leave when I decided I wanted just one more shot of Lord Murugan. As I began snapping shots, Dorothea, the German student I was exploring with, whispered, “the monkeys.”
I looked up and there they were. Bananas in hand, they sat among the shrines that told the stories and scouted the crowd to see who was the most likely “mark.” I was mesmerized.

Right above our heads on the entrance to the shrine

At Lord Murugan's Feet, eating a banana

This guy is the madman. Totally bared teeth and went all postal on some poor woman.

The baby was teeny and the mom was very protective. Very sweet.

Another tough guy...seconds away from stealing someone's peanuts.

The trip was full, more than I could have anticipated really. So I was ready to go. The sky had become more threatening, and, to be frank, as cool as it sounded, I was not that excited about going to the bird sanctuary as I had planned. I scoured the map the hotel had given me and found a place called the “Malaysian Craft Cultural Center” which was described as a recreation of a traditional Malaysian village with traditional Malaysian crafts being demonstrated and sold. Why had no one told me of this? I changed my plans. I would head over to this place, despite the threatening weather. I said goodbye to Dorothea, who was heading off to kaoroke with her friends, and set off on my next adventure. Starting in KL Sentral Station.

Xo,

Kimberley

My Own Personal Pilgrimage in Malaysia

2011-03-06T03:50:00.000-08:00

You know those “last straw” moments in movies where the main character has had enough and starts kicking butt? The Batu Caves were my “Hulking out” moment…without the picking up cars part.

Going to the Batu Caves was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to KL in the first place. These are actual caves in the suburbs of KL that were long ago made home to Hindu shrines to the victory of Lord Murugan over the demon Soorapadam. It is a place of Hindu pilgrimage for worshippers in Malaysia, India, Australia and Singapore. Once a year the faithful journey to the shrine in an eight hour arduous procession, climbing the 272 stairs at the end to deliver an offering to Lord Murugan. The beautiful shrine is housed in a cavernous…um…cavern, in a hill. I was dying to see this.

Plus, there are monkeys.

I had read that monkeys are everywhere on the premises. And that, if you are not careful, they will pick your pockets…bare their teeth at you…jump on you…steal things right out of your hands. Goodness, who doesn’t want to see that?

So, my first day here, I began asking how I could get to these caves. I asked several people and they all insisted that a cab ride was required. I really had absolutely no idea where these caves were, so when people started talking money, I have no reason to doubt them…but at 400 ringgits for the trip there and back (that is about $130 American), it was something I had to really think about. As a marker, My beautiful room at the hotel cost less than this for two nights stay. Before spending that kind of money, I decided to explore KL a little bit first, as mentioned in an earlier post.

It is confusing, no doubt. Even getting to the train station is wildly confusing. The maps don’t make sense to me and nothing is very clearly marked. I finally reach the station by listening for the sound of trains and heading in that direction. I go to the booth to get my ticket to the convention center area and then head down to the platform that was pointed out to me. While waiting for the train, I casually look over at the map of all the different lines in the LRT. They have several:

Then I notice this:

Check what it says at the top of the red train line...Batu Caves.

OK, so I am simultaneously excited and hurt. Not one person I talked to mentioned that the train went to the Batu Caves…not one. So, it appears I can get there easily enough, which is awesome. But now I feel hurt and defensive about all these people who seemed so nice to me.

I know this is crazy. The people I have asked about the caves don’t know me. I am just the latest in a long stream of people from all over the world who have taken holiday from their lives of abundance to tour around the place the place where they live out their lives. I have money, riches in their eyes, and they want it. I get it. I really do. But I still feel hurt. Even as I know it is ridiculous, it makes me sad.

So, as I sit in the KFC train on my way to the KLCC (the entire train is bathed in advertisements for KFC. I do not use the term ‘bathed’ lightly. There is not a surface inside or outside this train that is touting the pleasures of KFC chicken) I begin restructuring my day.

By the time I got to the towers, I was really done with it. Funny that. It was kind of a defiant feeling “oh sure, you want me to go there cause I am a tourist. NO DICE!” After a half-hearted attempt at finding the ticket book…and getting the fish to eat my feet…I was out of there and on my way to the caves.

Ah, but to navigate the trains, that is an adventure unto itself. Multiple lines…transfer stations where different lines come to the same tracks alternately…little clear signage to give you any idea what you are doing…its tricky. I spent the better part of an hour realizing I had, once again, gotten on the wrong train and had to go back to the original station and try again. I asked several times where I was supposed to go and still had trouble. I also asked at these stations if, once I had gotten to Batu Caves station, if I would still need a taxi to get to the caves. For the third time since I discovered there was a station, I was told that, yes, a taxi would be required but that there were plenty at the station. OK, so surely it would be a shorter ride once I got there. Little did I know how short a ride it would be.

Half way through my bumbling through the trip, I noticed a young German girl having a similarly frustrating time. I asked if she was going to Batu Caves and she replied that she was trying. Third time’s the charm and we both found the right train together. We chatted for a bit. She was on an internship in the legal department of some large corporation here. She had just arrived this week. This was her first day out on her own. Then something wonderful happened. Two Iranian students seated behind us began talking with us. They had been there for eight months and had, of course, been to the caves. When I asked how much a cab fare should cost us from the station to the caves, one of them laughed out loud. “Who told you you needed a taxi? The caves are about 50 feet from the station. I think you can probably walk that distance.” Another blow to my trust muscles. She said I should not take it personally. No way to disguise the fact that I am not from around here and many are nice, but ruthless with the tourists when it comes to money.

The station at Batu Caves is tricky, if you are not paying attention, which I was by now. When you disembark, there is a circular drive in front of you, filled with taxis. But, if you walk past them, there is a little hidden gate that walks you straight into the temple area. A five minute walk past stunning icons, statues and devotional monuments gets you to the front gate of the caves, which I imagine…after quite the round about trip, is where you arrive should you hire one of the taxis outside the station.

At this point, I am getting more defiant by the minute. And less trusting. I am not crazy about this development, but I am not all that savvy in places where no one is trying to take advantage of you. I feel increasingly helpless here. And helpless makes me Hulk up. I am not even making friendly eye contact anymore at this point. I am on my own in this city…and it is not going to get the best of me.

Sorry this is so long. I am heart broken at this point. The caves are next…lots of pictures.

Stay Tuned.

Xo,

Kimberley

Return of...MY DAY IN MALAYSIA

2011-03-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

There is only one thing you can do to detox from an experience like the Petronus Towers/shopping mall experience…I went straight to the KL aquarium to get some fish to eat my feet.

Minna (Tina’s cousin) actually sent me this recommendation before I left. It is that thing where you stick your feet into a tank with certain kinds of “therapeutic” fish in it, who enjoy eating feet. I didn’t end up going to the one she sent to me, because this one came insanely highly recommended by some Malaysian blogger I cannot find now. It is called the AQUA SPA and is in the KL Aquarium. They make everyone wash their feet thoroughly first, they change the water multiple times a day and they are trained to look at feet and detect problems to keep bad things out of the tank.

Anyway, after I washed my feet, the woman led me to a tank with the little fish first so I could get used to it…here are my feet getting eaten.

I am glad these are not piranha.

Man, I wish I could say that I found the whole thing obnoxious. It did feel freaky at first, but then I got used to it and found it incredibly relaxing. I actually liked it. I had this weird moment of feeling like part of the food chain…like I was bonding with these little fishies (cue Snow White music). They started me in the “Small Fish” pool, then I switched to the tank with the BIG FISH. These guys had a good bit more suction and they tickled. They also seemed to prefer the bottoms of my feet. But I liked them as much if not better than the teeny ones.

I swear, it all felt so good that I think if they had had another pool with catfish in it, I might have stuck my feet in there as well. I need to check out the Aquarium restaurants in Houston again…maybe they have a tank I can sneak my feet into.

Next, the Batu Caves or “how I got one over on all those people trying to trick me because I am clearly not from around here.”

Dang, that is a long title.

Xo,

Kimberley

My Day in Malaysia...Taking the LRT to the KLCC

2011-03-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

Today is not over, but I thought I would post DAY IN MALAYSIA and do sequels later.
So, I decided to begin my morning by freaking myself out. This is my sweet spot really, working myself into a “worst case scenario” lather. And, I was in the zone this morning…big time.

I read on the internets that the scam artists and pick pockets prey on tourists. They look for people with cameras and backpacks and make a bee line for them. So, as I began preparing to go out for the day, I began checking out the gear I am planning to haul around the city…basically, a camera and a small backpack. I fretted over the large lens on the camera I brought and the fact that I have no idea how to hide it other than in a backpack. I thought about maybe going a full day in this country, my only one, without a camera so that I would not stand out so much. Then I laughed and laughed and laughed.

I could not stand out more if I dressed like the Statue of Liberty and wore the American flag like a cape. Even in an anglo country, I look quintessentially American. The camera and backpack are the least of my worries.

I decided to really go nuts and try to get my way around on the KL train network (Light Rail Train or LRT). At this point, I have only been in the country twelve hours and I am tired of being told by everyone that I have to pay a taxi driver the equivalent of twenty American dollars for a ten minute cab ride. I decide to hoof it.

As I got to the train station, I saw two men in full camo fatigue uniforms, carrying bagpipes. They looked incredibly tough…desert boots and all…and they were carrying bagpipes. They were a little scary looking, even with the bagpipes, so I fixed the settings on my camera and tried to catch up with them. Every time they would look around, I would pretend I was fascinated with the Hello Kitty watch selection, or the extensive Indian CD choices available in the market. Finally I was in the perfect position to shoot a few inconspicuous pics… and that is when I realized that I had left my camera’s memory card in my computer. And this is why you do not have a picture of those guys. This is my saddest moment of the day. Which is pretty cool actually.

After retrieving my card from the hotel, I headed for the Petronus Twin Towers (which are in the KL Convention Center area, or KLCC). The towers are like the second or maybe third tallest something, something blah blah blah in the world…something like that. These things are on every t-shirt in town and I did not see a single souvenir shop anywhere that did not prominently feature a selection of Petronus Tower statuary. There is a bridge that connects them that you have to get a ticket to go up and see and it is supposed to be a really incredible view. I didn’t end up going. The Petronus Towers house a pretty shi shi shopping mall. Somewhere in that maze of Chanel, Tiffany and Bvlgari…I lost my will to live and left the premises without ever having found the elusive ticket counter.

Hey, I saw ‘em. That’s enough.

Next installment…man eating fish.

xo,
Kimberley

A bus ride, a cab ride and a face plant

2011-03-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

The bus ride to KL was surprisingly lovely and restful. While I did not actually sleep, I was whisked by all kinds of rural scenery on the way to KL while I listened to Corinne Bailey Rae on my iPod. Here are some highlights of the bus trip.

Along the side of the expressway

OK, this is not actually a picture I took myself…but I coulda if

I had had any idea whatsoever that this was possible, and would have, therefore, had my camera ready to shoot.
Had a slightly more powerful telephoto lens
It had not been raining

But there were truly monkeys in the grass alongside the highway. I yelped when I saw them, as if I am not conspicuous enough. I yelped the entire rest of the trip so that everyone just thought I was crazy instead of retarded. OK, not really…but I wish I had thought of it.

I yelped again when we stopped at a rest stop and I saw this when I went into a stall

Ummmmm, what?

I am not going to go into the details about how this is supposed to work. Let’s just say that I got it wrong…at least I think I did. Wow, TMI even for me. Let’s move along.

By this time, I am feeling MUCH better. I feel calm and ready for the adventure. We had a light rain…lunch on the bus was actually pretty good…I have everything I need…I am off to adventure…PLUS MONKEYS! Right? Then we hit KL.

Culture shock. Big time.

OK, I truly saw only about 30 minutes worth of the city…so I am SSSSSSSOOOOOOOOO not qualified to say what I am about to say. But, dude, I am pretty much a loose cannon, so here it goes.

Kuala Lumpur is not a happy city.

So, I am sure your mouth just fell open, not from the brilliant and insightful revelation, but from the fact that this should have been patently obvious to me YEARS ago. And, on some level, it was. But the city hit me hard as we drove into it. It is not the clothes hanging out of the windows in virtually every high rise apartment building…it is not the smog that obscures the skyline…it is not even the dour faces. I did not really feel the city until I stepped off the bus. I was happily snapping away bad picture after bad picture. Adjusting F stops and white balance, trying to get a picture of the towers (more on that later). But I stepped off the bus and into a feeding frenzy. Cab drivers and hawkers vying for my attention, and every single one of them, at least the ones located at the intersection where the bus dumped us out, had an intense, hard look in their eyes. I did not select the cab as much as the driver took out the competition by grabbing my bag and piling me into his car.

The driver, whose name I still do not know, even though he told me several times, talked to me constantly…mostly about what a good and reliable driver he is. He showed me pages and pages of his guest book where there were stories of him hunting down a fare and returning the guy’s passport, his wife’s wedding ring and 2,000 lbs. His English is better than my Malay, but only by about ten sentences, and those were wildly difficult to make out. I gave him the paper with the address of my hotel (Frenz Hotel) on it.

By the time we got to the hotel, I was completely over-stimulated. I checked in to the tiny tiny hotel, followed the guy at the desk to my tiny tiny room and face planted right into the bed. Here is my room:

It is tiny, no windows, paper thin walls…and I could not be happier because the bed is ridiculously soft and it feels like a cocoon. Plus, the shower is warm. I got showered and ready to go exploring and could not reach escape velocity. “just a quick little nap” turned into four hours…and I am about to go back down again. It is 10pm here. The adventure will have to begin again in the morning. I have fallen asleep four times while writing this.

Night,

P.S. Now it has been nine times. I need to wrap this up. Dang.

I am a Weenie

2011-03-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

I am in Singapore now. Specifically, I am in the office of the bus terminal at the cruise center…waiting three hours for my bus to leave for Kuala Lumpur. I love how dramatic and adventurous that sounds, but the truth is that I am tired and overwhelmed. I am not feeling adventurous at all, in fact part of me is screaming out to check into the nearest hotel and hide. What I did instead was buy a round trip ticket to KL, sit alone and cry quietly in the bus office and then go downstairs to the food court here to get something to eat. It has been a while since I ate.

Everything smelled delicious…and I recognized almost nothing. Here is what I ended up eating as my first meal in Singapore…in the bus station.

Um, I'll have rice...okra and green stuff and that stuff that looks spicy and those pastry things and the green colored drink, please.

I recognize the rice and the okra. Even the drink was the “green” one of four different choices, so I don’t know what that was either. As I ate, I begun to relax a little.

I am so conspicuous here. I am completely unaccustomed to standing out so much. This cruise and bus terminal is filled with hundreds of people, and I am the only non-asian person I have seen. Even in the airport, I saw only a handful of people who were anglo. And they are noticing me…big time. I am stared at where ever I go. On a shuttle bus to from terminal 3 to terminal some-other-number in the Changi airport, I was the only one on a bus full of more than fifty people who was not asian. As each person got on, they literally did a double take as they saw me. I had a surreal moment when “Eye of the Tiger” came on the radio and a few of the people looked over at me, like maybe they thought I would start singing or something. Children stare the longest…or at least the most openly. They are adorable, but it is still a very strange feeling.

The plan from here is to get on the bus and ride for five hours to get to KL. There, I will check into the hotel, take a shower for the first time in over two days, and then suck it up and get out there. I may go to the night market (or Pasar Malam) tonight.

I will take pictures and notes along the way. I am bringing you with me.

More later.

Xo,

Kimberley

Flying Into the Future

2011-03-04T06:35:00.000-08:00

The screen showing our flight path shows that we are flying over Oslo now. In about two hours we will touch down in Moscow. Tina and the kids are fast asleep (at least, I hope they are), as it is around 1am at home. I have entered a timeless zone, losing time that I will awkwardly regain a week from now on my trip back.

My sleep turned into more of a long nap, unfortunately. I know I will suffer for this later and wish I had brought melatonin or something to ensure more than four hours of sleep on this leg of the flight. There is no point in being awake now.

For seven grand, you can either buy a fairly decent used car or this seat for eighteen hours:

Hard to justify. Fortunately, it is not me paying.

*********************************************************************

The airport in Moscow surprised me in how well it was cast. If I had been a Hollywood set designer, I would have thought the steel grey and blue décor and dim fluorescent bulbs a little too predictable and 1950s American propaganda filmish. Turns out I had to walk through most of the airport to get to my gate. However, near my gate was, astonishingly, an Irish pub. It was the sole warm and welcoming spot in the otherwise strange surroundings. Here is a shot of my oasis amongst the “Joe Versus the Volcano” surroundings…

Note the perfectly poured Kilkenny…

400 rubles later, I was in better shape to board. I didn’t really need a beer, frankly. But drinking a perfectly poured, perfect-temperature ale was a small price to pay to sit amongst warm light and deep brown wood.

Then I woke Tina.

I didn’t mean to. I just texted her so when she woke up in the morning, she would know I was safe. She is apparently a much lighter sleeper when I am not there. :-)

We texted for a bit while I walked back to my gate. I pulled my camera back out when I saw this magnetic child.

I don’t think this picture does him justice. He was spectacular, frankly. Happy and beautiful.

Next stop is Singapore…then a five hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur. More from the bus.

Xo,

Kimberley

P.S. I am working on my photography, bear with me.

Come with me to Singapore...Sort of.

2011-03-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

I am going to Singapore. I leave Wednesday. I need your help.

I am not excited. This is a big confession for me to make, because it sounds bratty and ridiculous. A client is flying me there to do interviews, and I have about two full days and a couple afternoons and evenings to myself to do whatever I like. Time to play in Singapore, a place I have never been to before.

Singapore

So, what’s the problem, right? It just sounds boring to me. See? Bratty. So, here is what I need you to do…

I need you to inspire me. This is serious. Here are some options as to how to do that:

Send me one of your own fave stories about traveling alone. What did you do? How did it feel? What cool things happened that would not have if you had been with others? How did you make it fun?
Tell me about something cool I need to see in Singapore. You do not have to have been, you can just look it up and tell me where I should go and why. Give me some ideas about what is fun to see and do in Singapore.
Tell me something I should see in Kuala Lumpur. It is a four hour bus ride away and I am considering going up there for a day or maybe two (depending on what you send to me). What is fun there?

Kuala Lumpur

Tell me I am bratty in a creative, innovative way that makes me laugh and figure this out for myself.

Pouting

You can post a comment…email me…post it on my wall in Facebook. Anything. Inspire me. I know you are up to it.

In return, I will flashpack the whole thing for you guys. I will tell you what I do and whatever weird things end up happening. I am bringing my new camera, so I will be snapping pictures as well. I will write every day.

In addition, I will bring back a small souvenir for everyone who gives me their time on this.

That way, it will be like I am not traveling alone at all. I will have you with me the whole time.

Xo,

Kimberley

A Bear Cub in Wimberley

2011-02-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

This is Moose.

OK, he is not actually a bear, but it took me a minute to make sense of his size when I first encountered him. This was not my first time meeting a Bouvier de Flanders (a very formal name for the very bearish moose to be sure). I have loved them since I first laid eyes on one…years and years ago.

As Tina finished getting ready to go to breakfast that first morning in Wimberley, I took my camera outside to see what worked in my baby photographer’s eye. I thought that surely this place would make me feel like a brilliant photographer. Surely here I could just swing the camera around and capture magic in every image. Ha.

Magic was there, though. Only not in my lens. As I stepped off the front porch I saw the movement of something large and black behind the car. I froze…not in fear, but curiosity. How was it possible that a bear cub was here? A black bear cub, no less. In Wimberley? Then a very timid Moose peeked out from behind and I fell in love.

Clearly unaware of his impressive size, Moose timidly approached me as if it were me that was all muscle, teeth and black eyes peering from behind mounds of hair. When I reached out to pet him, he backed up as if I would strike him. In my eagerness I had forgotten the dog-approach rules. No eye contact…let them smell you first…no smiling (showing teeth)…raise hand, palm up, to nose for approval. When he approached again, I was ready. We became fast friends.

In fairness to Moose, who is a gentle soul, the picture above was taken as Moose played by the creek. He followed me and Tina down as we strolled down to sit in chairs and listen to the wind. Moose played in the water and ran around and around like a wild thing. I took many pictures. This is one of my faves because it is so out of character. The dog in this picture would scare the hell out of Moose. My skills at photography were quite challenged by moose. He is so dark that many pictures ended up looking like a mass of fur. The best pictures I got were with him playing with Tina.

Tina said at one point that, in order to get into my pictures that weekend, she had to be standing next to Moose. And, while it is true that I was just a little obsessed with this gorgeous dog, I took lots of pictures of her as well.

Proof.

Xo,

Kimberley

Four Hours to Drive to Nap

2011-02-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Tina slept in the seat next to me as we hit the outer limits of Katy, Texas. We were on our way out, not in, and I was already beginning to feel the muscles around my jaw loosen…my breathing become deeper. I propped my left foot up against the dashboard defiantly…I was raised by a southern belle, this is just not the way a lady sits. Today, I am more than just a lady. I am a fugitive from the city.

Miles and miles of billboards and exits for small towns. I try to find things to take pictures of, but there is no reason to stop along I-10. Not right now anyway. We are almost to San Antonio when we pull off the freeway (I never call it freeway when I am in town), and onto to the road that will pull us toward Luling and slingshot us to Wimberley.

The road to Wimberley appeals to my newly forming photographer’s eye…but I don’t stop. I don’t stop for the huge dark hawk circling close to an infinite field of perfectly yellow tall grass. I don’t stop for tall, beige willowy reeds, at least twice my height, lining the side of the road…poised to be shot from below into a perfectly blue clouded sky. I don’t stop for the abandoned house with old tin signs that mark it as a business from long ago. I will catch these shots on our way back. I am not stopping before I have pulled off onto that gravel road that leads to our “middle of nowhere.”

When we arrive, the now familiar little cabin on the river seems impossibly welcoming. I always expect it to disappoint the wildly high expectations I have of it…and it never does. I pile my arms full of everything we need to bring inside, because I know I am not walking back out to the car now. I know what happens when I walk through that door.

And it does. Just as it does every time. My body feels the exhaustion of a thousand days of sleep that feels carved out of something else I should be doing. There is nothing waiting to be done here, and I fall helplessly into the bed, barely able to remove my earrings so that the pinch of them will not wake me from my perfect nap. I never realize how tired I am until I get here.

My eyes close on the dark wood walls and now shuttered windows (thank you, Tina), and I drift off slowly…savoring the feel of arms around me and the walk to the little creek waiting for me to have rested enough.

xo,
Kimberley

Possible, Not Probable

2011-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Almost a year ago, Tina and I had just returned from our latest trip to the desert. I was preparing mentally for surgery and the weeks following when I would be on “bed rest.” It was a strange time for us, to be sure. And into the mix came Mondo Beyondo.

Mondo Beyondo is an online course in dreaming big. Over five weeks, Jen Lemen and Andrea Scher walked us, and 300 others, through the process of reawakening the parts of us that imagine amazing lives full of adventure and rewards. For five weeks, we focused on what is possible, as opposed to what is probable.

Something shifted for me during that class and the past year has been a wild ride. At least internally.

It never occurred to me to go through this exercise with the kids for some reason until Jen suggested it to us recently. She gave us the process and we sat down with our kids this past weekend and had them make their own list of the possible, not probable.

Here they are making their lists.

The results were stunning.

I promised them I would not share them with anyone without asking, but trust me…they have some really cool stuff on them. I shared some of my list with them too. So did Tina.

Our conversations have changed as a result. I am regularly finding myself in discussions with them now about cool things they want to do. And not things like “Go to Disney World” (which was noticeably absent from all three lists). More adventurous things like travel to exotic and remote locales and adrenaline rush type of physical activities. I am finding out more about them every day. And man, they are cool.

I am hoping all their Mondo Beyondo dreams come true. In any case, we are dreaming into our future together. And it feels better that way.

Xo,

Kimberley

P.S. If you have not taken Mondo Beyondo already, get on it. For 99 bucks you can find out for yourself what big dreams are lurking in your heart.

Dreaming as a Family

2011-02-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past year. Its funny how I clear I am about how long I have been thinking about that actually. It is tempting to say I have been thinking about this my whole life…but I know now that I haven’t. I have been so focused on what I want within what I think are my limitations that I have somehow lost my ability to dream big. I don’t even know when I stopped dreaming really big, but I do know it was before high school. I was pretty “realistic” about my dreaming by that time. The messaging in our culture is so focused on plugging away and then retiring that we don’t even realize that this dream does not really fit all of us. We have invested ourselves in pursuit of watered-down version of a dream older than our Grandparents. Or at least from a time when “plugging away” and then retiring meant security, or some semblance of it.

There is something freeing about letting go of the myth of security. Letting go of the thinking that, if we plan well enough, invest well enough and save well enough…we will be safe. There are still people now who are retiring comfortably, but there are more stories every day of people who had that in their plans and are not able to retire…at least not comfortably, whatever that means.

Lifting my head from this myth has made me realize that “safe” was never really all that inspiring to me. There is no adventure in that. And, as I look at my safe-seeking kids, I realize that I have been modeling, by example, that comfort is more important than adventure or taking risks.

Erica Jong famously said, “And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” I believe this in my heart. But I have not been living it as much as I would like.

I am glad my kids want to be safe, it is somehow in their nature. But I want them to know that they have access to more, should they want it. I want them to, at least occasionally, want something so passionately that they are willing to close their eyes and take that leap into the unknown. I don’t want them to think that their dream is safety.

Stay tuned…

Xo,

Kimberley

Two Ways to Play

2011-01-23T18:33:00.000-08:00

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go."
— Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

I like things to be completely unstructured. If there is a structure, I tend to fight it and that is no way to engage in an activity like this. However, I know also that some actually do like structure. They like it a lot. In fact, it clarifies the rules of engagement somehow. So for this latter group, I am going to attach just a little bit of structure around this game…as an option. There is absolutely no requirement to play this way. But the structured play might give you some ideas anyway.

Every week, I will post some theme of risk taking.

On Sunday night, every week, I will post some kind of risk-taking theme for that week. Then, every morning, starting on Monday morning, I will post suggestions and ideas for pursuing a rejection based on that theme. We begin tomorrow, so I will post this week’s theme right now…and activities relating to it starting tomorrow morning.

Theme for Week One: Rejection from Someone You Know

This week, we will be focusing on your immediately available network or community. The level of play is up to you, as always. But remember the goal is to really take chances. The goal is not to make others uncomfortable…but to give them the space to give you a firm rejection. You may let people in on the idea of the game AFTER you have received your rejection if you like. And it must be a solid and honest attempt, meaning, you must accept the gift/service/date that you have asked for if you do not get a rejection. Do not ask someone to go to lunch with you and then say “Nevermind.” if they accept. Ask only for things you are willing to accept.

This week is going to be a bit tricky. You will have to think carefully because many people in our “network” are very willing to do all kinds of crazy things for us. In order to receive a rejection, you will have to think about who the right person is to ask.

Suggested activities for this theme will come out every morning this week. Remember, you should not be asking people who will give you a rejection just because they know you are playing.

As a reminder, don’t forget that the suggestions this week are OPTIONAL. You do not have to do it this way in order to get points or to win.

Have fun with this.

Xo,

Kimberley

Four Ways to Win at Being Rejected

2011-01-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” Norman Vincent Peale

There are so many intrinsic rewards for taking chances…for just putting yourself out there. You will naturally see things in your life shift as you become bolder and see how resilient you are.

But I promised prizes too, and there will be prizes.

First, the categories…I wanted this contest to be a little more substantial than just a straightforward points-based game. I hate the way contests are set up generally. Either they are so random that it seems ridiculous, or they are set up so that the person with the most time will naturally win it. But what if you just play one day, but you manage to task a chance on something that scares the daylights out of you…shouldn’t that count? So, here are the categories:

The Postman Award…Cause you deliver. This is the one purely point-based prize. The one with the most points wins. You get one point for every day you intentionally seek, and receive, a rejection. Plus, there will opportunities to earn extra points along the way. Simple.

People’s Choice Award. This will be voted on by your Rejection Therapy peers. I am not establishing the criteria for this one…so you’d best bring your game and make it show. Obviously, you have to post on the Rejection Therapy Facebook group page to win this one.

Epic Fail (at getting rejected). This award is based solely on my own judgment. I am looking for the most incredible story of you seeking a rejection and gaining an opportunity instead. What that means is that you take a wild chance at asking for something that you can’t possibly imagine receiving…and then you get it. Equals a fail at the game…but a MAJOR WIN in your life.

The Wince-Worthy Award. This one will go to the rejection that is the most cringe-worthy. This is again, based solely on my judgment, though I will be factoring in comments as they are shared. You are free to send me these stories via email though, if they are just too brutal to share publicly. You should get something for putting it out there so boldly.

Now the prizes:

The Postman. For you…who play full out for the victory of a significant point spread…you receive a party to celebrate your focus and determination. You will receive an awesome party box from Saint Cupcake, delivered straight to your door, to celebrate in style. Includes:

12 Cupcakes with all the trimmings
Some funky poms
A sprinkle scope

Check out this link and watch those points.

People’s Choice. If the people choose you…you get to make a choice of your own. Choose a gift from the selection below:

Customized Mystery Gift for you.
Etsy gift card for $50. Supporting other people who are making a go of it and risking rejection.
Subscription to online resources…will have to work with you to determine which and for how long, dependant on cost and access.

Epic Fail (at getting rejected). If you find yourself the winner of this category, you get an award that will move you toward that opportunity that opened up for you. You will receive a gift certificate to an online course called Mondo Beyondo, where you will dive deep into long forgotten dreams and plans and bring them up to the surface again. Here is the link for more information on that one.

The Wince-Worthy. If you make me wince...if you put it out there enough to get this award, you get your choice of gift to yourself to heal your wounded ego and get you back into the game. You will get a $100 gift certificate to an online retailer of your choice.

These are not insubstantial prizes…but you are really going to have to play.

Mice Type: I am not giving just straight cash. So don’t even ask. This is a gift…a surprising and unexpected gift to you. Practice receiving.

The spoils will go only to the bold, my friends.

Be bold.

XO,
Kimberley

P.S. Sign up now, before we start tomorrow! Email me or leave a comment.

The Rejection Therapy, 2011 Rules of Engagement

2011-01-22T10:01:00.000-08:00

OK, so here are more of the details for the play of the game…

We will officially start playing on 01/24/2011. (That’s Monday)
The game will run for four weeks. Twenty eight days to rack up some rejection points.
You get a point for every day you successfully receive a rejection. But it has to be one you sought out…not an incidental one.
Every day I will post some ideas for rejection seeking. You don’t have to use any of these ideas…they are just thought provokers and idea generators.
In order to get credit for a rejection…you must share! Send me the ugly details. If you don’t want to share publicly…no big. But you have to send them to me. Post them on the wall of the Facebook group…email them to me. Message them to me on Facebook. Whatever works for you.
No fakey “oh, I asked my sister for a dollar and she said no” kinda stuff. It only counts if you are stepping outside your comfort zone…even a little bit.
It is kinda an honor system…so don’t mess with it. Play right. Karma sucks. Karma with an Irish Pirate…don’t ask.

Every day, I will attempt to pick some rejectoid for the “Rejector Seat.” This will be totally at my discretion. I will be looking for the boldest rejection attempt and rewarding it with one extra point for that day.

I will be keeping track of point totals on a spreadsheet. Those who know me know that I must be very very serious about this if I am willing to use a spreadsheet. And I am.

Here are some things that can make this experience a little more fun (yes, fun. I really believe putting yourself out there is fun once you get into it).

Request to be added to the formal Facebook Rejection Therapy page. Share the triumphant rejection of thousands. (you can find the link at the top of this page)
Buy a wall calendar, Jerry Seinfeld style, and stick it up to track your progress…check out the story on this here. He practiced his own form of Rejection Therapy, and you can see the results.
Play full out and play to win. Throw yourself into this.
There are prizes…there will be four awarded, and they will not be pathetic. You want ‘em. Trust me. More on that as details progress.

A note about rejection:
What constitutes a bold rejection will mean something different for different people. You will know what a bold step is for you and you will not be judged for what you consider to be a bold step. The goal is to step outside of YOUR comfort zone and take a chance. And that is different for everyone.

Come play with us.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Xo,
Kimberley

"And the Trouble is...

2011-01-21T10:09:00.000-08:00

...if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." Erica Jong

Risk.

This is a tough one. We got so many messages growing up about being safe…cemented for years by stories of people who risk everything and lose. People around us “tsk tsk” and shaking their head when people do something “foolhardy.” Every risky thing I have ever wanted to do in my life was inevitably met with a chorus of “how do you expect to support yourself?” “There are already people doing that…what is different about you?” “Do you have the right experience for that?” and my personal favorite “Maybe you should just do that as a hobby.”

The result of this kind of culture is “calculated” risk taking. Making sure the odds are weighted heavily in our favor before taking the chance. We figure the rejection or failure is a little too scary. Best to think everything through.

We are at an interesting moment in the history of the world. Things have never moved as quickly…or accelerated as wildly, as they are doing right now. The resources we have access to are unprecedented (financial, information, people, etc.), and yet we do not feel empowered to take the steps we want to take to change our lives or the lives of others. We have unprecedented access to the widest range of community than any generation before us, but we are nervous about reaching out to them…and suspicious when others we don’t know reach out to us.

Rejection and risk need to be put in the place they belong…helpers to the process…something necessary to get to the other side.

So, how about a game then? With prizes even!

Monday starts my version of The Rejection Therapy Game! You can read more about the premise on this website. It is a rather simple game. Every day you do something that takes you outside of your comfort zone, and risk rejection in the process. I am inviting all my friends to enter this experience with me.

Over the weekend, I will tell you more about the game…AND the prizes. In the meantime, message me to add you to my closed Facebook group for the challenge.

In the meantime, think about it. Comment if this sounds like something your soul needs. You have nothing to lose but your fear.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. “

Nelson Mandela

Tony Curtis

2010-09-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl, I was OBSESSED with old movies. Well, the comedies anyway. I saw them all. I loved Betty Hutton, Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, Bing Crosby…I loved them all…even Danny Kaye. Tony Curtis was on my list. He was cute and was silly enough to wear a dress in Some Like it Hot. And my young mind was unencumbered by all the faults of alcoholism and drug abuse and whatever. Those were invisible to me. He was just fun.

I went to France to go to school for a year when I was 17. I was trying so hard to be cool, but everything was new and I was not cool. Probably not for a single moment while I was over there. I learned a lot about myself…but one of the big things I began to become aware of while I was there was that I was closer to the fumbling around slapstick style glamour of those old movies I loved than the sophisticated bored glamour of the film and music stars of my day. I have totally settled into that now, but I was just figuring it out then and it was slow going.

I dragged two of my friends with me to the Cannes film festival that year. Somehow I was expecting the streets to be absolutely littered with movie stars. I had seen the pictures in the gossip magazines. We would see them in cafes and on the beach and walking down the street. Strangely, we saw almost no one. Almost.

On a side street we took to cut through to the main drag I spotted Tony Curtis walking down the street. It was just us and him. The rest of this tiny little back street was empty. Without thinking I yelled out “Mr. Curtis!” My heart was racing a mile a minute. He certainly looked a lot older than I remembered…but he still carried himself like a movie star and it was unmistakably him. I wanted to tell him how much his movies had meant to me as a kid. I wanted to tell him how cool I thought it was that it seemed like he did not take himself too seriously. I wanted to tell him that of all the movie stars I could have stumbled upon in Cannes that year, this unexpected meeting was far and away the most exciting one that could have occurred for me and that I could return to my dorm completely satisfied that I had met him. He turned toward the sound of my voice and I panicked. I jumped into a doorway and he did not see me.

I don’t tend to regret a lot about my life. What has happened has brought me to where I am and I rather like where I am. But I do regret that moment. I have no idea why I panicked. I am not typically afraid of approaching people. I have actually met and talked to some serious movie stars since then and it was not that big of a deal. But this was Tony Curtis. He was a little unreal to me. I just could not hold it together.

Tony Curtis died yesterday. And, of the many deaths of people I have grown up watching, this one hits me just a little bit harder than most.

That was me on the back street in Cannes, Mr. Curtis. I just wanted to say thank you.

Kimberley

Vancouver is Lovely

2010-09-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

What a vapid start to this entry…but there it is. And it is true. I swear I don't think I have ever been to a lovelier city than Vancouver.

There is no arguing the beauty. Across the Pacific, tall mountains tower over the water that is as deep as they are high. Colorful flowers I have never seen before grow a bit wild here in the summer. Dense hedgerows cloister homes along the main boulevards. Waterscapes and art are built up around the city belying a culture clearly in love with the aesthetic. Perhaps inspired by the art of nature there.

And the people are nice. Like, really nice. And not in that “duh-i-have-to-be-nice-to-you-because-you-are-the-customer” kind of way. The way they are nice feels like a habit. Like something they do involuntarily, like breathing. Even the street people begging for money are gentle, “maybe you will have some change on your way back?”

The rains are gentle. The cold is gentle. The newspaper headlines are gentle. It is a nice place to rest.

It did not occur to me until last night what I was missing in this place. I could not figure out why I felt so uncomfortable there. Then it hit me. I had not heard anyone laugh since I arrived. No one. I was constantly in meetings…on trains…in crowds…in restaurants…in shops. No one laughed. No one erupted in anger. I saw no one who was clearly unhappy.

I am not suggesting that my four days in Vancouver represents a complete picture of the city. In that time, I realize that my experiences are extremely superficial and can only represent my personal snapshot from the pieces of the city I visited. But I leave here today feeling a little odd. I wonder how long a fiery person like me would last in the kind of world that, at least in my small impression of it, did not appear to have a lot of emotional variance going on. At least publicly.

Still, it was nice to rest. And I really did feel peaceful in this lovely city.

xo,
K

Am I as Brave as Issa?

2010-09-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

I am a sucker for a story. Even if a movie is terrible, it takes an act of congress to get me to walk out of it…I have to know the end of the story. This is why I am addicted to blogs. I long for people’s stories. I check my regulars every day and am always looking for new ones. Some make me laugh. Some make me think. Others make me feel. The ones that make me feel are my favorites. Today it is Issa who has me thinking.

Issa does not exactly write as much as she opens her heart and pours her feelings into her blog. Reading her blog feels almost too personal…like I am reading her diary. Her pain is right there…right up front. So is her love, longing, joy…whatever she is feeling. She is not a clever writer…I have never read a witty turn of phrase from her. Yet she has many many followers, because she is completely there. People identify with her because she is real.

It occurs to me today that I write to entertain, not connect, and I hate this. It is not that I think there is anything wrong with entertaining, but it is not what connects us…human being to human being. And it is not who I am. I am wildly emotional. I work hard every day to restrain as much of my crazy emotional life as I possibly can. Virtually our whole lives are spent packaging ourselves for how we want to be seen. And all of us for a secret longing to really know who everyone is. To really KNOW them. I believe this guarding of our own truth is responsible for our lack of real connection. It’s not that we are alone, there are people all around us, it’s that we are not authentic enough to connect to.

My challenge to myself now is, can I put down years of messaging to “hold my tongue?” Can I just make a decision to stick my neck out and write what I feel? Can I show you my shadow? Can I share my dark side? The parts of me that embarrass me? Am I brave enough to do that? Am I as brave as Issa?

Cool New Learning Model

2010-08-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

I am such a geek.

This fall I am participating in an online “course” (quotes used intentionally) in personal learning environments. The course, which looks different than anything I have ever seen, is sponsored by the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University. It is delivered online to explore and clarify Personal Learning Environments and Personal Learning Networks.

I have no idea what they are talking about. But the course design is blowing me over. You will have to go to their site to really get the big picture…but here is a snapshot of how it will work:

1. They will send LOTS of content. LOTS. You are not expected to read or view it all. You are expected to pick and choose based on your interest level.

2. Keep track of what you have read/viewed with your ideas on it somewhere. This can be as simple as a list or you can track it online with a blog, twitter, facebook…whatever.

3. Then, periodically, you create something new from all the stuff you have been reading/viewing. You put the pieces together. You come up with connections.

4. Feed forward. Then you share your “something new.” However you want to.

I found it in a blog by my fave learning genius (after Tina, of course), Jay Cross. If you are not reading his blog…you should be.

He is taking it too, btw.

I am actually giddy about this. And this is the way I do everything. Here is something new. I stumble onto it then dive into it without even checking to see if I have the right gear. We shall see. This looks like fun. In any case, it is INCREDIBLY different and I am all about that. Different is good. Change is good.

Check it out and then come join me and Jay.

xo

I Need Your Brains On This One

2010-07-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of ours is in the hospital. She is not ill, her father had a stroke (or two) and she is staying with him. There is so much involved here that it is exhausting to think about going into in this note…suffice it to say that it is virtually impossible to be of any help to her or her family whatsoever.

We work with her too, so we have 21 people asking us daily what they can do. Tina’s mom is friends with the family as well, so there are requests to support from that angle too. And we are not even in contact with all their friends…the church…the community…you get the idea.

The thing is, I know she and her mom need stuff. There is so much stuff weighing on them right now that they just cannot figure out how to offload any of it. Really what they need is an “assistance coordinator.” Someone to come in and figure out what they need and coordinate it.

“Looks like you need someone to hang out with your daughter for an hour and a half once a day while you commute back and forth from the hospital.”

“Looks like you need someone to wait in line for you to turn in those forms.”

“Looks like maybe you need someone to make up a basket of easy-to-eat foods in a basket that you can just pick up and swallow whole for times when the nurses come in and you can have a 3 second break.”

“How about someone does your laundry?”

Things like that. Because organizing and writing down a list of things people can help you with is daunting…and then you have to ask. Why has no one ever thought of this?

How about you? You got any ideas for me? Everyone out there who has ever been in a situation where you could not begin to imagine how to wrap your head around what you need and ask for it…now’s the time.

What can I do for my friend? What have we not thought of?

xo

...then I tell two friends, and so on, and so on...

2010-07-16T14:40:00.000-07:00

I got my hair cut and colored today.

As I write that I am wondering what that statement brings up in you. Getting my hair done is always a very sensory rich experience. It verges more on entertainment than simple cosmetic maintenance.

My quietly alt hair personality is created in a funky little house in the Heights in Houston by Sharon. Sharon’s room is bathed in natural light, so if there is artificial light (and I imagine there is) I don’t remember it. It is pretty, but not spa-like. So you feel a little pampered, but not like you should have brought your purse dog with you and gotten her hair dyed to match.

I walk out with my hair impossibly soft falling against my face. It is wonderful. I love the feeling of swingy newly cut hair.

(What you can’t really see in this shot is that my highlights are burgundy. I love them.)

I once heard a story on This American Life about someone shaving their head. The way he described it was amazing. The feel of the breeze on skin that has never felt the breeze… the rush of water over an exposed scalp…the sensation associated with exposing skin that has never been exposed. He did it on a lark for a story and now does it once a year to recapture the feeling. I think my jaw was dropped the whole time. It sounded incredible. I wish I had the guts. I swear the thought brings tears to my eyes.

(By the way, if someone has heard what I am talking about and has a link to the story…I would be sooooo grateful for the hookup.)

Would you shave your head for the sensation alone?

A Yellow Balloon

2010-07-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today I was in a meeting on the 26th floor of what used to be the Enron building. I was in a meeting with some pretty serious folks talking about some pretty corporatey stuff. Ten of us in the room and four people joining the meeting via conference call and some online collaborative tool. I was talking through a presentation and guiding the team through a series of questions to refine the content when a yellow balloon floated by the window. It floated between our building and the building right next door. I stumbled over my words and was grateful when a conversation started without me at the table for a moment so I could watch the balloon drift by. I was the only one who saw it…at least the only one in our room. It occurs to me now to wonder how many people saw it in other offices in either building as it drifted up between us.

It was like something in a movie. I could see the balloon and the reflection of the balloon in the glass in the opposite building. Everything all glass and steel around us, except for that balloon. It was beautiful.

I wish I worked in the kind of world where I could have stopped the meeting, stood up and shouted “Oh My God! Look! How cool!” But I don’t. I am respected for what I do, but what I do is not considered to be very important in the big scheme of things. In fact, it is considered to be a little “touchy feely” by many. One moment of “Lookie lookie! A balloon!” could totally seal the deal on that. So I sat, grateful for the chair I had chosen at the table, relieved I was able to resist jumping to my feet with excitement and thrilled to have had the opportunity to see a yellow balloon floating by on this very serious day.

Wild Weather and Grandfathers

2010-06-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

Three nights ago I laid down on the ground and watched the lightening light up the clouds above me. I have been wishing for storms lately. Not rain. Storms. The kind of weather that puts everyone on edge. Big crashes of thunder. Electricity lighting up a dark, wet sky. Wind that howls until it matches the wildest pain you have ever felt. Heavy drops of rain that almost sound like hail as they fall on your roof, your grill, the leaves on the trees.

There was no storm that night.

The ground was not even wet that I lay on, though we enjoyed a respectable little downpour not five miles away at dinner. I laid down in the grass and wondered how much time goes between me feeling the ground on some part of my skin. Between shoes, floors and concrete…how much do I really feel of the ground?

Looking up into the gentle show of the sky, I remembered a time sitting on the front porch with my Grandfather in Florida. He loved the weather and was mesmerized at how, from the vantage point of his front porch, he could watch the electrical storms cross the sky in the distance. I felt it too. It was so beautiful and intense.

So, I let my thoughts go to him completely. It’s funny how you can miss someone more as you grow older. There are parts of him I understand more now that I could have possibly understood then. And many more parts that I am sad I missed knowing as an adult. He died when I was in high school. I thought about that too.

I realize I don’t really know what he was like. I am piecing together the impressions of a child and guessing what that means. I could ask, I know. But no one could possibly tell me what I would have noticed about him as an adult. Only I could know that…if I had the luxury of knowing. But tonight I allowed myself the space to guess.

And tonight I am thinking about him again. Sitting in our new house I am thinking I would so love to call him up on the phone and celebrate the storm bearing down on us. If I could find the whiskey in this mess of boxes, I would break it out and raise a glass to a real mess of a storm…and to my grandfather, who taught me to love the drama of big skies and wild weather.

2010-06-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

A few years ago there was a movie called Uptown Girls.

I LOVED this movie. Probably because I am that little girl and I need the Brittany Murphy character to teach me how to relax and play. (RIP Brittany)

Tina has had a very big job of trying to get me to be more playful. Not easy. But help is on the way. And it rides in tomorrow morning.

In honor of Dream Lab starting tomorrow, I am posting my Mondo Beyond list from March.

That’s right…all three of you who read this blog (yes, I am counting myself) will see what Mondo Beyondo made me realize I want to do. For the one of you who does not know about Mondo Beyondo…it is about dreaming big. Not the small “wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-find-the-perfect-pair-of-flats-on-sale” dreaming. Jen and Andrea had me dreaming of things that made me giggle and blush a little.

I am putting this list down now because I am going to play. Jen and Andrea are going to give me back my mojo with Dream Lab. They promised. And I trust them.

My Mondo Beyondo List (abbreviated, but important, version)
• Live with the kids in another country for at least a year (this one totally threw me off guard)
• Complete and utter financial security forever so that I can live boldly, give freely and not worry
• Become silly and wildly playful (that is this summer’s assignment)
• Marry Tina legally
• Free up the writer in me so I can create things I am thrilled with instead of just making clients happy
• Become someone I wish I knew
• Dramatically reduce my worklife (this is in progress)
• Write and get published

The point of the list is to be dramatic…to think of things you have absolutely NO IDEA how to manifest. There is sssssooooo much more to the course, but I am not interested in killing the drama of discovery. Do your heart a favor and find out for yourself what it wants.

XO

summertime and the living is easy...right?

2010-06-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

I need a summer.

And I do not mean this in a “I-need-a-vacation-and-wish-I-was-back-in-elementary-school” kind of way. I mean that my inspiration is drying up. I mean that anything that requires creative thinking at work is now taking me four times as long and that makes me sad. I mean I am burning out and I badly need to fill my coffers.

This February I did something bizarre…at least for me. OK, I actually did a lot of bizarre things, but I am specifically talking about an online course I took in dreaming big. I went in voluntarily, but honestly thought it was going to be too soft and airy fairy for me. I went into it thinking I was going to be rolling my eyes through the whole thing. Looking back, I do not think I was as cynical as I thought I was…I mean, I invested time in it…I must have thought it had some worth.

And it did. It has changed everything for me. That course was Mondo Beyondo. I found some more of myself in that class. I am still working with all that.

But I am bogged down right now. There is too much heaviness. I need a summer. And, miraculously enough, Jen and Andrea have created something called Dream Lab...just in time. It starts Monday. I am so in.

The thing that makes their course work for me is that it is not all “HEY! You are valuable and you can do it!” There is only so much of that I can stomach. I need something I can do…something I can apply to my life. Mondo Beyondo had exercises and assignments that really excavated things for me. And I mean “FOR ME.” I found out things about me despite myself during that class.

I cannot wait for this one to start. I can already feel myself running through the sprinklers, getting grass all over my feet. Come join me...I am thinking about dragging out the Slip and Slide!

xo

The Gulf Between Us

2010-06-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Tina and I are gnawing ourselves from the inside out over the disaster in the gulf. We have gone from mocking the bizarrely and stunningly inappropriate remarks from everyone in the BP camp to letting the reality of what is happening to the body of life just south of us.

It is so easy to get wrapped up in the insanity that is the business and the politics of what is going on. While we are screaming about money and penalties there is so much life dying in the gulf that it boggles the mind. I cannot even really comprehend the damage, and not just because we are not being shown all of it.

Don't get me wrong. I know we must have discussion about penalties, payments, blame. I know that the circus stage on which our politicians parade around trying to make a name for themselves on our tragedy must be played out. I know that the idiots in charge at BP must be publicly humiliated. I know.

But I am frustrated at the arm waving and the well-meaning, but directionless people. Where are our inspiring leaders? Who can we follow? It is hard for me to get in my car, fill it up and drive to the beach to participate in a protest against offshore drilling when I know I have to get back into my gas guzzling car to drive home. I can't fully participate in that kind of halfway thinking.

Where are the people who will direct us to something to fight FOR? Has this crisis created enough momentum that we can now find someone to follow who will guide us on how to draw attention when research and development into alternative fuels is being eliminated by any large company? Is there someone who will shine a light and leverage this disaster to highlight the numerous times progress toward incredible fuel efficiency or cheaper solutions for fuel have been lobbied away by car manufacturers who do not want to retool their factories? Will someone march us to these leaders and lead us to wail publicly at hastening the demise of a living ecosystem that sustains us in so many ways?

Where are our leaders? Where is the inspiration? Where is the heart in any of this? I just cannot rally behind a bunch of statistics.

Wherein Strangers Distract Me and Make Me Less Agitated

2010-06-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

OK. I am better now. Because there are other people who are so confused that they would not even know something was different if it jumped up and bit them on the cheek. (Grant used to do that)

I am sitting right next to a couple who I am fairly sure are not a couple at all, so I do not know why I wrote that. Except that it is a guy and a girl sitting together talking about things like “Are you going to take all the cat toys and cat tower and stuff?” and “we have the big one, and I know we want to keep that one because we got a good deal on it. But do we really need the two little ones?” – and this is where she starts acting like she has no idea what he is talking about and they get a little snippy and says she wants to keep the big one in the bedroom and that he has plenty of room for the cat toys. So, voila. There it is. They are in a relationship.

But then she tells him that she never knows if he wants her to introduce him to her friends…and he says no, because he understands that they are bigoted against straight men, which she denies. And then he is asking all kinds of relationship advice, which I think is weird to ask someone you are in a relationship with…but whatever. But this is not even the biggest problem. She is not even asking the obvious question…”who is telling you my friends are bigoted against straight men?” or even “what? Bigoted against straight men? Are you an idiot?” I so wanted her to ask this question. I almost slipped it to her on a slip of paper, but I did not have one.

Dude just said that English is ghetto. WTF? I need to find some paper to write her some notes.

The Quickening

2010-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

In the Highlander movie, there is something called “The Quickening.” It is where the immortal awakens to the existence of all the other immortals and realizes who they are really. Where they belong. How they are connected. At least, this is what I have read. I did not see the movie. In any case, whether or not this is what the movie was about…I like this as a concept.

Today, this term “the quickening” has been rumbling around in my head like mad. I would so like to be able to tell you what this means. It would be nice to have a tidy post about why this came into my mind today. Instead, I can only tell you how I feel. And I feel bizarre.

What this feels like for me today is that I am exhausted beyond my ability to think straight and extremely agitated at the same time. I lie down to rest because I am overcome and I am kept awake by my mind racing. This is not your run-of-the-mill anxiety. This is something else entirely. It feels vaguely exciting, like I am heading into some wild ride. Like I am clicking along up the scariest roller coaster imaginable. Only, I don’t really know I am on a roller coaster. And I think you are on this ride with me…all of you.

What I do know for sure is that I am transitioning…a lot. I am moving toward something more sustainable for me. I think maybe we all are. I am not entirely sure what that is going to look like…or if I am going to be able to put my hands up in the air when the real ride begins…but I am having the butterflies in the belly thing. And it is about time. Wow, that’s right…it’s about time.

I am ready for The Quickening. Are you?

Morgan in Trouble

2009-04-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

We are goin all Dog Whisperer around here.

A little over a week ago, Morgan attacked a smaller dog that surprised her (and me)in our driveway. Morgan was on a retractible lead, so was the chihuahua she jumped at. It was pretty scary, and the little dog escaped with the toothmark in the chest and a scraped belly. I gave the woman my card and let her know we would gladly pay for the vet bills. I was profusely apologetic. And felt sick that night trying to figure out what to do.

The apartment complex calls the next day (we are temporarily in an apartment until the end of the school year) and tells us we need to get rid of the vicious German Sheppard and that we are in violation of the lease. For those of you who do not know Morgan:

Come on. A German Sheppard? And I received a tight little email from her with the doctor bill. She is being nasty.

I am having a hard time with this. I was not the least bit resistant to giving her all the information she needed to get in touch with me. I immediately offered to pay the medical expenses. I genuinely had great concern for this dog and had already put things in motion to get Morgan into some kind of training program (this is the first time she has done anything like this). And Morgan mostly scared the dog. There was not even any blood. But now I am thinking I need to get a lawyer or something to make sure I am not signing on for a lifetime of this stuff with this woman. If I send a check, is that me accepting full accountability, even though her dog was relatively loose on a retractible lead right next to my car? If the dog develops some kind of sickness later, is this license to come back to me and blame this incident?

The horrible thing to me is that her actions have made me feel much less concerned about her and her dog and made me defensive about ours. Running to the leasing office to tell them we had a vicious sheppard living with us (her words)? Refusing to accept even the slightest bit of accountability for letting her dog run right up to our car? Sending me an ugly note with the bill? It has suddenly become a matter of trust with me. And I do not trust her.

I want to write her a note to tell her all of this. I want her to know that there are consequences to behaving the way she does and what could have been a very simple transaction is now more complex. I want to let her know that I am struggling to feel any compassion for her, given that she clearly has none for anyone else involved here.

I am still glad the chihuahua is fine. Too bad about her owner.

xo

My Response to the Question at Hand

2009-04-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

I started a contest this week to start a conversation. I have so loved the responses I am getting and I realized this evening that I have not actually done my own work publicly to share with everyone. So, tonight I am laying it all out there.

I am a communication and learning strategist to the oil and gas industry. I consult with project owners and managers for large oil and gas companies on how to communicate with their people and help their people do their job. Prior to this, my background was in marketing…my clients were financial companies, oil and gas companies, and a smattering of companies in other fields. But mostly I work and have worked in service to oil and gas. I live in Houston, Texas, after all. The town lives and breathes oil and gas. Figuratively and literally.

I love how my knowledge is applied now. I am not a big fan of marketing and have become much less of a fan since I watched a Bill Hicks riff on it a few years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo, forewarned…there is ugly language). I truly believe marketing has made us, as a culture, unable to make a decision on anything else but packaging and marketing. I despise my role in it…but I digress.

I love my clients now. I have always loved my clients, even in marketing. They are good people, just trying to do their job. I really believe that. I want them to be successful. It makes me happy to help them. Their individual goals are really good ones…they want to connect with their people and help them do their job well. They really do.

I love the people I work with too. I realize that my work in the organization supports the work they do and that we all need each other to be successful. They are supporting families too. I like that we have a really wonderful culture of people supporting each other in our collective work. It is an amazing feeling to go into work every day with this group. No joke. I am very lucky.

My work stretches me too. I am pushing the limits of what I know and I what I can learn. It is exciting to me to be learning so much. I love being challenged this way. Some of my work comes very easy as well, which is a good balance for me. I am also lucky in this.

There is a darker side too though. I drive 30 miles back and forth to work every day, releasing toxins into an environment that is already terrible (Houston is not known for its air quality). I am supporting clients in large companies. Large companies who must support a bottom line, regardless of the impact on the world. The work I do is to help people put their heart into their work and bond as a community over the effort. Good for the individuals, but is this good if the mission of the company is ultimately problematic?

I am not sure what to do with this information. I am trying to figure it out. I really am looking to build community around the questions and thinking. I need the brilliance of the crowd with me. I am not sure we can figure out our future alone.

I hope this helps more of you enter into the conversation. I am coming at this from a humble place. I do not believe I am operating in a clearly noble pursuit, as I have expressed in this post. Enter the conversation. Or, if you already have, has anything I have written here sparked anything for you?

Where are you?

xo