I am home. I am here. The era that I have been dreaming about, creating, in my fantasies and downtime over the past three months, has arrived. I am lying on the oriental rug in my living room and the clock ticks and papers shuffle in the dining room where my father is filing income taxes. I used to play Barbies on this rug, or dinosaurs, but dinosaurs were usually on the basement stairs. With Barbies, each square of the rug would be a different house, or room, or business, and the avenues in between would be the roads. It was perfect, really. A perfect rug for playing on. Sometimes I would put on Carmen or Peer Gynt or a compilation of famous marches and dances, and twirl around. The places the music always took me to in my head were castles, high on hills, with soldier entourages ascending the valleys. And now when I think of my trip and what I saw I feel better, like maybe it did all make sense, because those were so many of the kinds of places I went to.

I remember the first day in Paros, coming over a hill, my back to the ocean, and there was a warm breeze and dogs barking in the distance and a rooster's crow, and I had an overwhelming pang in my heart, and my eyes even teared up even though I immediately laughed at myself for being so cheesy. But it was incredibly real, this resonation that came deep from the soul, my soul, a soul of walking, alone, endlessly, over hills and valleys. Sometimes coming into contact, linking up with other traipsing bands, laughing, celebration. But always returning to that feeling of bittersweet solitude once I took up the path again, searching anew, fleeing anything established.

Yet funnily enough, the theme of my musings today was community; how in all these village towns in Greece and Italy, I was the lone tourist who stuck out like a sore thumb. I watched the others going about their daily routines, gossiping in their native language, indulging me with bemusement when they had to and most likely wondering; why? What is there to see in this very average lifestyle? This very average town? I didn't know either, except that the countryside was alive and beautiful and I could breathe more deeply than in Athens and Rome. So I was an oddity, a bulls-eye at the same time that I was invisible, and I was mute, and insignificant. Over time, after a certain number of almost silent days and walking, walking, I began to feel like nothing except for the experience that was in front of me. I had no agenda, no real purpose, except to observe. And I liked it.

Once I reached the art monastery, the ego, the idea of myself, began to strengthen again, and then it really returned in Paris. But in Paris it was joyous, and pleasant to be with, because it was shopping and picking out pretty patterns and speaking charmingly in French. At the art monastery, where the environment was more intimate, the ego felt threatened, inadequate, insecure. And now, home, taking a long walk on the road I have walked as long as I can remember, stopping to talk and catch up with familiar faces along the way, seeing how people, houses, times have changed, smelling the spring breeze come up through the woods and hearing the snow melt and trickle down toward the river, I feel a deep and steady comfort, a sense of belonging. All of this belongs to me, somehow, and I belong to it, and the neighbors are like family in the sense that no matter how much time passes, or how much things change, we are loyal to one another and engaged and supportive. I tell our neighbor Randy about all the trees that are down on our lawn and he offers to help my father chop them into wood. We talk about having a spring solstice bonfire. Alan, who was always the cry-baby kid brother of my friend Chelsea, pulls up into the driveway across from us and waves. We wave back; he gets out of the car and he's about half a foot taller than I am. None of it is glamorous or beautiful or exciting and I know that it's only a matter of time before I feel ready to burst and need to flee again, take off down the open road. But I'm glad to know that all of this is here, as it always has been, as it always will be. Every time that my adventures have taken me too far, too close to the brink, I've come here to come down... and then start plotting the next adventure. There is so much I'm thinking about, but at the same time, there is the afternoon sun and the rug under my belly and the steady, ticking clock, and so maybe during this stay I can begin to see the balance that I need... between putting down roots, and continuing to grow.

I was in Paris when I received the news that I would not be part of USC Writing for Screen and Television, Class of 2010, and therefore the news was somehow not so traumatizing. I booked myself a room in a nice but affordable hotel, showered for the first time in ages, put on a dress and make-up and jewelry and took myself on an all day date around the city. I went to all my favorite places and then some. I tried on scarves and rings and chatted with sales girls, and drank coffee by the Pantheon, and bought journals and art supplies to draw and read upstairs at Shakespeare and Co. I strolled along the Seine and watched all the colorful people go by. I thought about how now I had every possibility of life before me, how I could leave here, or Austin, or San Francisco, how I could get a dog or cat, and write, and create, buy funky clothes, explore, meander. I need to figure out how to bring the whimsical idealism of my soul together with the realism of the world, and still have it come out in a colorful way. 

Perhaps it's good that I am having a brief visit with my friend Courtney before heading home- she always gives me the law student, material-oriented view on things, and it's good to hear things like "Ok, Liz, but Betsy and Wetsy stories aren't actually going to make any money," from people who aren't my parents. I am definitely at a crossroads in terms of how I plan for the future and relate to the world, and hopefully I can trust those who show up to guide me. The problem is that I am a Pisces, idealist, and only child all at the same time. Even I get frustrated with how fantasy-oriented I am... and after the past three months in which I did not magically encounter and fall in love with the man of my dreams, and all the film-school based dreams were shattered with one e-mail, and during which I got increasingly disenchanted with the fact that I was wandering, and it was beautiful and exciting but had no particular purpose, and it wasn't even something I had truly earned, anyway, after those three months I am happy to take the advice of someone like Courtney, even if it is advocating working in an advertising office, or something of the sort. 

I want to do art and speak my truth but I don't want to be struggling in order to do so my entire life. I want to see as much of the world as possible, but I also want to be grounded in one place. I want- yes- to be seen and entertain and perform, to act out the scenarios I envision in my head and then some. But I don't want to sell my soul to Los Angeles, I don't want to compromise the precarious self-confidence it's taken so long to build. Humph! Most of all, I want to write, I want my stories to bring joy to people, make them laugh. I want to sing my songs, I want to make music videos. I want to be old and gray and say, "I'm satisfied with what I've done, I tried my hardest, I went for my dreams and made them happen." But I just turned twenty-four and the impatience that pushes me forward also trips me up, causing me to panic, doubt myself, go in circles. If I were to really surrender and actually believe the philosophy I tout so often, that none of this really matters, that nothing "I" say is anything new, that everyone is an artist and no one should be upheld over anyone else, well, then maybe I could relax. People like dear old Courtney here make fun of me for shaving my head, but the result was that I was the happiest, or rather, the most content I ever had been. Because I had no expectations. I had a general idea of the feeling I wanted the summer to have, and it came from my soul, and that summer was that feeling and so much more. The feeling was the seed, and then it blossomed. 

Anyway. It's clearly time to surrender again. To surrender every day. To let the dreams simmer and not dwell upon them, and let the Universe or the Tao, or the great whatever do its work, and sit back and breathe deeply and enjoy the ride. It's suddenly moving very quickly, and I want to make the most of what I've been given. 

and here i am in my bedroom of a country guesthouse in umbria, italy, bird calls and rainfall outside, cat asleep on the bed beside me, cold, cozy, pleasant. books on "creative meditation and multi-dimensional consciousness," "the spiritual in art," "the archaeology of consciousness," line the surfaces, a borrowed guitar leans against the wall. the art monastery project is a vision of a collaboration of artists, musicians, dancers, coming to live and perform and teach in the italian countryside. the intended monastery is under endless negotiations and renovation and so the project is in flux; tonight, the directors of the project, Chris and Betsy, are in Rome talking business proposals for a new town and monastery. the location: Labro, a gorgeous hillside haven with a year-round population of 30.

the other day four of us, plus a dog, went on a reconnaissance mission to towns and monasteries all over the countryside to scout the ideal location. i was the official undercover photographer. it was not a bad way to spend an afternoon. and so now the project might be moving to Labro, and there are any number of jobs, such as volunteer co-ordinator, available, and the present volunteer co-ordinator lives in the nearby town Narni, as in Narnia, as in the inspiration for the books, in a medieval tower turned art studio, with her Italian playwright/actor/director boyfriend. this could be my life, is a thought that, believe me, has been kicking around in my head ever since i've been here. it's all so intensely perfect and in the flow that i'm not quite sure what the universe wants me to do with the situation, so i think i'm just going to sit back and wait for it to do me. hah.

Tale of the Snail

In Rome, the shell which you see pictured three posts below, which I had thought was very pretty and thus had been carrying around in my make-up bag for three weeks, suddenly produced a snail. I was terribly confused and disgusted to see what looked like snot emerging from the make-up bag, and so I quickly threw the shell to the floor of the train. It proceeded to crawl, very slowly, back up the wall toward me while I alternated shuddering, giggling, murmuring words of disbelief to the universe, and then looking around nonchalantly at my fellow passengers, who merely stared quizzically back. It's a good thing they didn't look down.

What happened to the snail, you ask? First, I put him back in my make-up bag before the conductor came around. Those guys get livid when you so much as put your feet up on the seats; there's no telling what they might do to a wayward mollusk. I left some room for breathing but not so much that he might emerge again, and then I promptly forgot all about him until two days later when I reached in for my eyeliner. Luckily, by that time I was in the countryside, and so I set him loose on a nice garden veranda and tried not to think about how I had originally found him near a beach. I don't think I made a very good snail owner, is one moral of the story, and the other is that I am always going to be more careful when picking up shells from now on.