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.