Sab to the Rina

Four days after Jen died so did Sabrina.
Twenty four years old as well, she died on a Wednesday.
My best friend all through high school, glued to the hip. I remember ten years ago meeting her, almost to the day... Braces and curls and catholic uniform in Mr. Nick's history class. And that was it, for the next five years you couldn't tear us apart. Sabrina and Liz. We began to dress and look and talk alike. We were those annoying girls who couldn't stop giggling when together and you would never know why because we had too many inside jokes. We slept in each others beds, drank each others orange juice out of the carton, walked into each others houses without knocking. We made mixed tapes and videos and music together. If I went out of town for a week I would get letters and calls every day detailing even the most minute of events. We went on vacation together, to each others house for Thanksgiving and for family dinners. If you wanted to date one of us, the other better really really like you or you're out. We fell down on purpose, we shouted at boys, we stayed up late. We told each other everything and still had more to talk about. We dreamt about the white 67 mustang we would buy (together, duh) and her dad would fix it up and we'd cruise around as cool as any Rob. We made two person bands even though we both sucked at our instruments. We jumped into fountains and ran into bushes, we kissed boys and we cried about high school. We called in Limp Bizkit requests to KRZQ, and ate peanut butter and jumped on the sofa! (j/k we would never jump on the sofa)We would ride to school together and then call as soon as we got home to talk about what funny stuff happened after we got dropped off. We would watch movies like it was going out of style. We played soccer together, we tried to be track and field discus throwers together. We went to Palm Springs and wore matching sequined butterfly shirts on the strip. And sang karaoke. We had the same favorite foods. We ate fries with Ranch dressing. And drank Dr. Pepper. We were each others ally, we held each other up, we got in petty high school fights and we competed. But we were always together no matter what. Any bullshit could be solved with a Wendy's run and a Slurpee. And Night at the Roxbury. We would make our mothers and our brothers crazy. We had an encyclopedia of inside jokes. And nicknames. And matching outfits. Sometimes people would call us by each others names. Especially(and this was often) when our hair happened to be the same. We dressed up like 1980's bridesmaids and went to homecoming together with Melissa as a threesome of awesomeness. We made up stupid dances to random songs and videotaped them. We shared our art and our deepest fears. We were ridiculous together. We got each other. We shared a sisterly closeness to a sickening degree. Sharing clothes and food and lives. We ran together, we studied together, we partied together. I have hundreds of notes intricately coded written by her during some class or other. (Probably religion) We were so close it was almost telepathic. One look would say a million words. One roll down of a car window, one tiny movement of the face. We never went anywhere without the other one and if we did it was really boring. I loved her and she loved me. Sabrina and Liz, Liz and Sabrina.
I never imagined ten years was all I would get. And not even the full ten.

We began to lose touch one year after I moved to Seattle for college. Something had flipped and she began to find different friends and pretty soon we weren't talking on the phone as much, she wasn't telling me the truth, and our friendship began to fall apart. I last saw her maybe three years ago, and we didn't even have anything to talk about. There was something missing behind her eyes, something she was hiding from me and from herself. That hilarious, unrelenting humour was gone and something had replaced it. She no longer was this amazing girl who didn't care what anyone thought, the girl I loved and grew up with. Her sense of lightness had disappeared. A dark fog blew into her life and never quite left. Everything that had been hiding behind the jokes and the fun was burbling out. She was finding new ways to deal with pain she had been clutching onto for a long time. We lost all touch after a while and that is when I began to hear about the cocaine. I had almost lost a friend to heroine who was lucky and lived after emerging from a coma, she knew how I felt about this, and so she kept it from me. And she kept herself from me as well.
I don't know much about these years, only that they were dark and lonely. I should have been there for her, I should have come home and literally slapped some sense into the girl. But as life is, I didn't. I would change things if I could, and I'll never forgive myself for letting her slip into such a world. But I had to let her live her own life. We couldn't be hip to hip forever.I had my own life too and I had to live it. What can do?

I wrote her a letter before she went to rehab. I knew we wouldn't ever be friends like we once were, but I told her I would love to start over. If she got her shit together. And when she was healthy, when she wanted to, I'd be there, ready to begin a new and different friendship.
She moved to Austin, Texas she went to rehab, and for the past two years or so she had been on the up and up. She had her own apartment, she was finally out of the hellhole that Reno can be, she had a job.

During my year of travel we began to reconnect. I would see some Milk Bar in Australia that reminded me of our obsession with Clockwork Orange, or see some Indian dude in a Roxbury shirt. Or meet another upper thigh toucher, or see something I knew she would love. It was in no way on the level we once were, but it was something. I was curious about her life and was so happy that she finally got to move, something we had been plotting since teenagers. And every now and then we'd throw an inside joke each others way.I was happy, even if it was only an email here or there, i truly missed her and would take what I would get. I had no idea that things were beginning again. I thought everything was fine.
But she began drinking again in the past months and then last week it was all over. One too many things in a recovering body and that was it. I will never see her ever again.
We were supposed to grow old together in Palm Springs and fight over who was the Romy and who was the Michelle.
This is all wrong. None of this is right.
I miss her, I've missed her for a long time, I can only hope that no more follow in her footsteps. I can hope against hope that she is finally at peace. I'll have to live for both of us now. My Sabrina shaped space will always be there. My hilarious, beautiful, bootylicious Sabrina.

If I can't dance...

Jen. One of the most alive people I have ever know, is gone from my life. It takes so much not to agonize and hate and curse the earth right now. She lived like no one I have ever known. A million lives in just twenty four years. I sit here and scream and shout and cry and nothing I do will change any of it. No matter how many times I shout NO, this is life. And life ends.
She died in Africa, she had been gone for two years traveling and dancing and lighting up lives like no one but Jen knew how.
And unlike most who loved Jen and missed her terribly since she left to see more of the world, I was blessed with the most beautiful gift of seeing her when I was in India. She happened to be flown there for work and had just seen the tops of the Himalayas in LeDak. Jen said the air up there at the top of the world was something she'll never forget. So I showed up at her hotel and it was like we were back in Seattle again. Except we had to haggle with rickshaw drivers and step in pishy filled streets and get stared at a lot by Indian dudes. We went to a totally weird mexican restaurant and paid way too much for 'nachos' and she told me tales of her travels. Of Brazilian streets and diving in the bottom of the Ocean and Argentinians who fell in love with her. She told me about living in Africa and about this perfect(if slightly underpaid for how brilliant she is) job she had found and about her recent trip around South Africa. We laughed about the good ol days when we would get off work at 3pm and ride our bikes to Agua Verde and drink margaritas, even if it was the middle of the week. We spent a few days in shitty Delhi, sharing tea and breakfast at her fancy work-paid for hotel. We rented Bollywood movies and tortured her roommate with the four hour long singing romances. Then in the even shittier Pahar Ganj neighborhood where we basically hid in a guesthouse ordering food and watching crappy movies on t.v. and neither of us gave a shit. We walked and walked around Delhi in the hottest heat to the India Gate and then decided we'd rather just sit in the shade and talk. We rode the metro one afternoon for two hours, just because it had air conditioning, and really good people watching. We went to see movies, drink soda and eat popcorn and pretend we were in America or something. Except for everything was in Hindi. We ate snickers bars and spent hours in bookshops.
I feel a Jen shaped space in my life which will be there forever. She taught me to enjoy things, to say fuck the corn flakes and eat delicious breakfast if you feel like it. She was a person who found space for everything and everyone. She could paint some pottery like you wouldn't believe. Jen was sexy in an unassuming way, like she didn't know how fine she was. Jen could party till dawn and still wake up and go to work then write some massive important paper for school. Jen supported herself and she was more selfless than anyone I know. She put her friends first and was always ready for adventure. I distinctly remember her working two or three jobs, a double degree, volunteering for various fair trade organizations, and still made time to go to support her many friends in their lives, go for a beer afterward, and then maybe go to an African dance class.
And probably the best Unicorn I've ever seen.
I sat at my desk in Seattle many a night reading her travel blog and just thinking, Of course- Jen is becoming a dive master, of course she is doing a road trip around the Congo with some dudes, of course she is living in Brazil speaking Portuguese and frolicing in waterfalls.
http://splendidtraveltales.blogspot.com/
When I last saw her she was learning Zulu for fuck's sake.
If it wasn't for Jen, I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to leave on my own travels.
No one I know was more in love with the world than Jen. When she got the Bonderman Fellowship to travel I knew no one more deserving. Jen understood people, she wanted to make life better for as many people as she could. And I know that she did. I for one will never dance without thinking of her, cause this girl could shake it. Especially when you're at a Michael Jackson/Prince dance off party.
This sudden and tragic event has shaken me and I know that Jen would want me to snap the fuck out of my pity party and start living. I'll miss her every day. But I know that from now on, when I paint, dance, or travel- Jen comes with me.

Smells like Sagebrush

It isn't all bad, this coming home business. Reno for example, smells terrific. There's something about the smell of home that really brings me back to reality. Or at least makes me stop and think for a bit. Keeps me in the moment if you will.
I smell sagebrush blowing in the wind, sweet and dusty. Asphalt and construction, the hot exhausting smell of progress. And although I feel I have changed and grown older, some things will always be here, just as I left them. That massive, low Nevada sky that sits on the mountains hanging puffy clouds about town. These mountains, I have forgotton how beautiful they are. They circle around town; golden and violet, deep dark blues behind bright fiery mustard yellow, orange and sometimes rose. The abundant sagebrush is on every hill, every street and fills the barren hills behind my house. Fatty blue-belly lizards slither in and out of the rocks and bluebirds sing their oh so familiar tune.
I went on a walk with Charles wonder dog(who has totally gotten fat and can hardly keep up, even with me which is saying a lot) down my neighborhood streets and hills. The creeks run with cool fresh and probably dysentery free water, cows and horses and sheep hang out in their pastures. I smell damp hay to feed the animals, the rain threatening with the coming thunder storm. And let me tell you there aint no smell like desert rain. The dry wood on the deck, the old oil paint in my studio, ripe crab apples and willow trees. The carpet in the living room, the sandpaper couch, the laundry room. I can even still sense my moms footsteps first on carpet, then on wood, and back to carpet again as she walks through the house in the morning for work. The sticky smell of fruit sugars cooking in the kitchen fogged through the house while my mom made this years batch of crabapple jelly.
Today while I was walking I passed my old middle school bus stop and dragged the garbage cans up the long driveway, I felt like I could be eleven years old again. And just as moody.
I went out this weekend to the Wine Walk. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Drunken traipsing with Kaylene, her brother and a massive crew. Ran into everyone from camp counselors to neighbors to relatives. Reno reno reno. It was nice but drinking at 3pm can only end with a 9pm bedtime, no matter how tough you think you are, the wine walk gets you every time. Downtown is getting it together though, revamping, getting hip, or whatever. There was music down at Wingfield park and the river is looking awesome, and a rad place to hang out for hooligans. It even felt good just to walk those downtown streets. Hear the slots and see the mullets, the jeans and Harley t-shirts, the smell of cigarettes coming out of all the tattoo shops.
This is my home after all, and I do love it for what it is. The sun shines almost every day, everyone talks to you wherever you go and waves at you when you're on the street. I can walk five minutes and be completely surrounded by desert. I can ride my bike, eh thirty minutes and be downtown. I left for a reason and I know that I can't live here forever, but I'm here now and I need to understand Reno for what it is. My home. Complete with laundry machine, comfy bed, fridge with food in it, art studio, drum set and of course my loving family and friends.
I am still desperately trying to pull myself together however.
I go back and forth between Goldie Hawn in the beginning of Death Becomes Her, and Zach Braff in Garden State. Not that good.
I find it hard not to cuddle up on the couch with my favorite mug and watch hours and hours of recorded Entourage. Actually hard is to go through a year's mail, call all the friends I've missed, come to grips with the people I love who've died, update my cv, balance the longest distance relationship ever, and find a purpose in life.
So I decided to roll out. I bought a bus ticket to L.A. and am heading there in two days to see my brother, my aunt and uncle and my grandparents. Then see more friends around SoCal, and then I think I'm going to make my way up to Seattle and maybe to Vancouver. Because I need just a little more time moving before I can totally pause.

Reno... seriously?

I was hyperventilating. I was panicking. I was about to cry. I did NOT want to return to the United States. I kept wishing the plane would crash or I would get detained or deported. But not so much as a flight delayed. Seamless all the way to the Reno airport. I slept none. I watched many movies and listened to the same music for the last time. I wrote and tried to read. I had that garden state feeling where I felt the plane in chaos all around me, yellow air bags and tiny vodka bottles flying all over the place, and all I would do was sit there and stare. I was shaking when the plane landed in SFO. I dragged my iron feet across the airport, coasted through it all and there I was. I had arrived in the United States of America. San Fransisco. Took the BART. Which in comparison to the world is one of the worst public transit systems ever. Eight dollars for a twenty minute ride? I don't think so. And a bus to the Oakland airport. I sat in the terminal where I have sat many times on flights to and from Seattle and stared blankly at the television. I was sleep deprived, shocked and sad. For the first time I saw Obama as actually the President. Addressing the nation about healthcare. I was so tired and wrecked and delirious I could hardly keep my eyes open. No offence Barak. And then I was home.
Melissa and Eric, and my mom and Eric all met me at the airport. A place I have landed many many times, and usually always been happy to be home. To see my family and friends, to be wrapped in that comfortable hometown blanket. Nope. I was and am of course delighted to see friends and family, but I'm struggling with the returning home funk.
And now the other news. So Sean has moved to China. He went there originally for a few weeks cause he got a free ticket and some work. And now has decided to stay and save up money for eh, at least six months. And so the end of my year of travel is the beginning of his time abroad and we aren't in the same place. And we won't be for much much longer. Thus transforming all plans I had for my return home. Opening many doors and closing others, but all in all I am beginning to understand the right thing for both of us. So now my options are unlimited and I can go to Africa, or Spain, or some random ranch in the states, or back to Seattle, or down to Georgia or wherever the fuck I want.
Right now though I don't know where to go or what to do and end up pacing my big empty house in pajamas and spending way too much time listening to kexp and not accomplishing anything.
So I'm gonna bring down my glorious golden bike, I'm gonna set up my drumset, and I'm gonna screen print some shit. And I'm going to try and live and love life as much here as is possible, because its too short to stay in your pajamas all day long.

Aint no sunshine

I left Santorini today. I leave Greece tomorrow. My trip ends. The year is up.
The bookshop has become such a special place to me and I would stay there forever if I could. I was only just getting into it and then whisk- done. But thats the way it goes eh? better to leave something while the sweet taste lingers than to suck it dry of all flava. I had an interesting last couple of days as well. New developments have come to light that will completely alter every vision I had for my life when I return home. And this awakening shook me to my core and I tried to come to grips with the curve balls life throws at you. The timing of situations you run into, people you meet, people you love. Freedom and responsibility, selflessness and selfishness. You think some things are controllable, manageable, impermeable. Well even those things end eventually. Anicca. In one day I will be back in the house I grew up in, I will be in America. I am terrified. And its going to get a lot worse before it gets worse.

I had an incredible last night in Oia drinking beers in weird parking lots and on the beach, listening to Amanda and James and John try to play guitar over the strong sound of the sea. Cruising around the island road trip style bumping jams. Eating one last greek salad, drinking many last Mythos. Looking back I suppose its strange to be doing such american style things with americans the day before returning home. But it made me happy, and I will really miss hanging out with both Amanda and James. A couple of very good American specimens.

This morning was my last day waking up in the bookshop. It was early(for me) today and I was greeted for departure with a cold stormy sea surrounding the island. Shivering in my pj's I stepped out of the shop just in time for a crazy donkey to come running down the hill followed by garbage man wapping his stick on the ground. Oh Greece. Planned on one last swim but instead walked over to the castle ruins and sat with James waiting for the sun to rise through the storm and having great conversation. I sold my last book. Packed my shit- and onto the boat I went. It was a thoroughly depressing ride- I tried to sleep for most of it. Dig the high point: I'm rolling into Pireaus and my ipod is playing songs... Hey Jude, How can you mend a broken heart, then How it Ends. Kill me now.

So now I'm back in Athens, ready to shower and crash before the three planes which will deliver me home. Home home home. Hmm.

My bed in a bookshop

Something about being with Hanna and Amanda makes crazy things happen and time whir past at astronomical rates. We can traipse all over cities and towns and piles of dirt and have as much fun as most people have at disneyland. So we all finally made it to a tattoo shop in Athens and got inked. A fig, a ladybug, and an olive branch. Then we rode the metro like it was goin outa style, bounded onto a ship and woke up in Santorini.
When we all walked down into Atlantis books we literally couldn't keep it together. And I'm pretty sure we all did a group hug victory dance spin around in the back room when James wasn't looking. This place is the most incredible bookshop I have seen in my entire life.
Down the stairs and into the books and crevices there is a certain sanity and beautiful escape from tourist crazy streets. For the next five days I find myself living, cooking, and helping out in the bookshop. And did I mention sleeping on a pimped out bookshelf in a little hideout. Not as cool as MADA's bed which is literally behind a wall of books, but amazing, show stopping sleep.
The website has the full story so check it: www.atlantisbooks.org

Funny thing is that when I was in Oia last I almost went into this place but was too tired or some bullshit. But it just seems fitting, that I would save it for now. For my last week to be karmically blessed enough to end up here, now. James is running the shop, tired of staring down fourth graders in New Orleans.(For the time being at least) A friend of his is one of the founders and invited him down. Also Rich and Tony arrived the same day as us- a coupla british guys that would have you saying Hail to the Queen in no time. Blimey, sweet cheeks, luv. Regularly used and awesome every single time. Want a cupa? um yes please. And they both make the most delicious food you've ever eaten. And are genuinely awesome individuals. And although six people living in the bookshop makes things a little crowded, we try to find a balance. Everyone gets free time whenever they can grab it.

We have family dinners on the terrace nearly every night; greek salad,MEXICAN food, homemade veg curry, boatloads of delicious pasta, even more boatloads of wine.
When we can borrow a guitar James plays and sings and it is sickeningly beautiful. Amanda busts out her Joplin voice and Hanna sings like shes never sung before. Or whatever. But its amazing. And I am so happy. And I don't want to go home.
And I know I have to, I've reached the end of this traveling rope and I need to go home and earn me some threadz to spin another. But it still blows.

One night we traipse down to the sea and swim under the harvest moon with the island covered in fog. Amanda drunkenly falls off a buoy buck naked. Someone stubs their toe. We gettin crazy down there. During the day sometimes I can take long walks down crazy hot roads and steps and cliffs and stare at the sea. This blueness that knows me so well. I throw rocks and hit other rocks till my arms hurt. I think till my brain hurts. I love being in this place and being with these people. And ending here, on this note is a beautiful thing. But sometimes I think the gods are up there mocking me and putting awesome stuff in my lap then jerking it away when I want to grab and enjoy a while longer.
Everything has its time eh. Well my bookshop time, its golden.

Even farm girls get the blues

Farm life has come to a close. Had a lovely last week and watched as Amanda and then Hanna left and new wwoofers came in their place. Used my woodcut education and hand carved a sign for the farm, nursed a baby kittie back to life, did some watering, sea swimming, cooking, and hitchiking. Made gruel and sprinkled cornflakes on it, saw a PHAT snake in the egg nest, swam at Kouruta one last time, learned a little greek, enough to hitch at least. I will miss farm life. Weird and uncomfortable as it is, it has grown close to my heart. I'll miss the smell of dirt and onions and hot tomatoes. I'll miss the porch and pots of tea and doing laundry in the hot sun. It was weird to be there without Amanda and then without Hanna as they went onward.

I found myself in a rare place. All alone one evening, for the first time in like three months. I sat and ate some dinner, drank some tea and wrote. Wrote one of those life lists and listened to the transistor. It was beautiful. And short lived. I reminisced on things passed and knew I shouldn't. I am starting to get kinda depressed upon my return to America; jobs, schedules, cars, deadlines, stress, etc. And I am even more terrified that I will forget this glorious year of my life and revert back to the unhinged lunatic I once was and who is still buried deep deep in there. Making random appearances here and there but not living on the surface anymore. I don't want to be her anymore, I don't want America to do that to me. I will fight it. I will meditate on it and write books and traipse at home, in my own way. I remember that there were points- (mostly in India when I was shitting my brains out with rats and cockroaches crawling on me) that I felt ready to go home to comfort and couch and orange juice. But now I feel lost, listless and unexcited. I feel like my year of glorious life is over. I know I will travel more, I love travel more than I ever expected and I will see Africa, I will live in Spain and Japan. I will go to Austria. And New York City. And the South. And I will still hitchike- which RULES btw.
And I will need to make some money to do this, I will and do have to return. And I do miss my family and friends and Berger, but I'm not ready to settle down yet. And I don't think I should be.
So, I've got the blues. I'm also reading Even Cowgirls get the blues which is a hitchiking woman's bible, which is giving me a little hope about the U.S. Maybe I'll go learn to ride horses and work on a Ranch for a while. Why the hell not?
Also adding to the blues is the fact that Sean probably won't even be home when I get home. The one thing that I look forward to more than anything, the one thing that stops me from canceling my ticket and taking off to Liberia. He will probably still be in China. And its an awesome opportunity for him, and I'm the one who left for a year, but it just seems like the cherry on the shit mud pie got thrown out and now all i've got is a pile of mud on the table. With cornflakes sprinkled onto it.
I will go home though, in eight days. And I will face what comes.
Enough of this crappy debbie downer.

In other news I met up with Amanda and Hanna yesterday in Athens and they promply threw my blues out the subway car. Waiting for me with a sign at the metro, you'd think it'd been longer than a week we'd been apart. We wandered all over Athens in search of post offices which would mail parcels and tattoo shops. And drank some beers and ate some pita. And her glorious cousin put us up in the swank suburbs of athens. With HOT water, a mirror in the bathroom, cold delicious wine, and the comfiest bed I've slept in since Anna loaned me her bed in India. We sail for Santorini tonight and will head to a bookstore where Amanda has a job and all the dudes sleep in beds made out of bookshelves. Hanna and I might crash on the roof if there isn't any room and watch the full moon rise over Ia.
And I'll get my fig tattoo today. Screw the blues. I got my ladies and a Greek Island. I'm gonna live it up while I got it.