Day before day one ....
USA | Sunday, 17 October 2010 | Views [269] | Comments [8]
Preparing on every level: the packing; the leaving of home & cats in good hands; the full body-mind scan of how it feels to be heading out, more or less on my own, to a completely foreign place. Anticipation wells up, and it's like my mouth watering when I know I am about to have a dish of unfamiliar and likely amazing culinary delights placed in front of me. For now, this whole journey lives mostly in my imagination, except for the concrete details that have been arranged ahead of time. Though, with most communications having taken place primarily in the electronic realms, thus far, even those seem less-than-concrete. The plan begins with a Lufthansa flight out of DIA tomorrow (Sunday), and I expect to arrive in Málaga, on the Costa del Sol, on October 18th, after an overnight flight via Frankfurt, Germany. What is clear, sitting here on my couch next to my cat as she fervently cleans herself, a noticeable aroma of chickeny-fishy cat-breath approaching my olfactory organ (this is an ode to the senses, after all, pleasurable and not always so), is that there has been a dizzying array of mental and emotional gymnastics having taken place in the past four or more weeks in regard to taking this trip, in part because my trek across the wide Atlantic will be made on my own. Sin amigos. Yes, yes, I will be joining a cooking program in the Alpujarras, led by two women, one of whom I know from Boulder, so there is some bit of structure; I have a friend who has friends in Monachil (near Granada) whom I hope to meet, and there are people in Madrid with whom I've made contact; however, I am used to traveling with at least one other person whom I know well. Forget that I'm a grown woman for a moment; we all carry an assortment of characters within our psyche: the inner child(ren) and company, if you will, and I have both an adventurous travel-bug of an inner kid, and a terrified little sweetheart who wants someone to hold her hand. Both of whom have been tugging at the sleeves of my psyche for weeks now, so I give those inner characters their air time, and move on. A wise and trusted friend reminded me to "rest in the nature of unconditioned mind," such that an mature awareness, based in curiosity, mindfulness, and openness might take the lead. I'm game. That is a practice available to this mind ... and seems as good a place as any from which to venture forth. I feel like a helium balloon with a string attached, that was held by the warm tight grip of 6 year old who looked up into the endless blue-black sky, and with a delighted smile, let go of that string .....
