Green Grass

Hyde Park is the largest park in central London. It's home to the famous Kensington Garden, the Peter Pan statue, and the Diana, Princess of Whales, Memorial Fountain. The fountain is really spectacular in the most simply way. I don't think they could have made a better memorial for such a princess. It's not a high, spouting fountain, but a simple flowing river-like fountain. Everyone is invited to have a sit and stick their feet in. As I sat under a tree at Hyde Park today and watched all the kids in their swimsuits or the fully clothes teenagers splashing through the fountain, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that this is a very happy place.

The park is definitely the place to be in the summer time. Everyone is laying in the grass, soaking up the sun, rollerblading, pushing strollers, jogging, biking, even horseback riding. There are several areas with lawn chairs, which I am sure they rent to people to sit and take it all in. And there are paddle boats if you want to paddle around The Serpentine, which is the small body of water in the middle of the park. One thing I love about London is how I always see girls riding their bikes around town in beautiful blouses, leggings, and platform shoes. Now that takes talent!!!

I was adopted again today by a stranger. On my way to Harrod's to see what all the fuss was about, a guy on the street started talking to me. Originally from Ghana, he has lived in the UK for many years. And while waiting for his appointment at the German embassy to get a Visa for a work trip, he asked if he could accompany me as I wandered around the gigantic department store. How could I say no?? And apparently one of his brothers and his sister-in-law both work there. What a small world! We didn't run into them, of course. Harrod's is a neverending maze of clothes, shoes, toys, furniture, athletic equipment, and pretty much anything and everything else that your heart could desire. My favorite part was definitely the furniture. But seeing as how most of the sofas cost something like £7,000 I don't think I will be picking mine out any time soon.

The Office is a really awesome shoe store in London where I have purchased two pairs of very trendy sandals to decorate my feet and to make me feel like i'm not such a jungle fairy. They are both very comfortable, but apparently not when you walk for 10 miles in them. Both of my small toes of each foot are sporting rather large, pink blisters. Oh well... like I said, these feet were made for walking!!!

These Feet Are Made For Walking.

Yesterday, as I was sitting at the cafe down the street from my hostel staring out the window at all the people passing feeling sorry for myself, a guy sat down next to me and smiled. Eventually I commented on what a good people watching spot it was and we got to talking. He was a deliciously cliche Parisian and dashingly good looking. We exchanged the usual small talk and I got to admitting that I wasn't exactly sure where I was on the map. After making a blonde comment, he kindly pointed out which direction was north and then asked if I would like to walk with him a bit to try and get a feel for the area before he had to catch his train back to Paris. I was pleasantly surprised by this excellent connection with Jean-Christophe who is actually a fellow couch surfer and has hosted many a weary traveler in his flat in the center of Paris. Apparently there are well-mannered people in this city, unfortunately for the Londoners moft of them are from Paris.

After that I wandered the day away until I couldn't walk anymore. I stumbled through St. James Park, Green Park, the east corner of Hyde Park and of course Buckingham Palace. I saw a few of the famous guards standing at their posts. They're a bit too serious for my taste. And what a shit job... they have to stand there for hours in those uniforms in the heat and the cold without moving while hundreds of tourists stop and pose to snap pictures with them. And they can't even smile!!!

Piccadilly Backpackers, where I am now staying is nice enough. It's the first hostel that I have been to though, where nobody has spoken to me. Everyone seems to be really serious, either that or tired and confused just like me. (The latter, I hope.) But I thought the whole hostel experience was supposed to be about ambracing your crazy youth... sex, drugs, and whatever your musical preference might be!

Last night I couldn't sleep... my wisdom teeth hurt. And this morning I was woken up at 8:30 am by the sound of the ear rattling jack-hammer from the construction across the street. There's no curtain over the window in my room either so the sun came barging in. Oh well... at least I wasn't nursing a hangover. And at least the sun came out today. I even put shorts on. Not the teeny weeny ones from Puerto, but shorts all the same. And yes, Sofi... people do wear flip flops in Europe!!!!

Turbulance.

I'm just a little jungle girl in the big city. Or at least that's how I feel right now. Today is my 5th day in London. So far it's been a mixture of good and bad feelings. I spent two days wander down Portobello Road in the market that was featured in the movie Notting Hill. It's not quite as glamorous as they show it in the film, but I think I like it in the real world much better anyway. On the weekends the streets are covered with booths filled with vintage clothing, cool t-shirts, antiques, scarves and funky fedoras. So much stuff I couldn't figure out how to spend my money. I wandered into a little cafe along the way and wound up sitting for two hours talking to the owner and some young guy whose family has had a fruit stand at the market on Portobello Road for like 100 years or something like that. He kept complaining about market life and the area and the people. I told him he should see the shitty town where I grew up in New Mexico. He would never complain again. I got lucky a few times meeting new people who would stop and chat and smile for a bit. But for the most part, like my friends said, Londoners are not a friendly bunch.

My work exchange has not quite panned out, and yesterday the woman asked me to leave. Friday night I went out with some friends and stayed out until 4:00 am. I stayed over at those friends house but wound up leaving early to go back home and try and sleep. I got back to the place where I was staying around 9 and fell asleep until 2. I don't think an atomic bomb could have woken me from that sleep. But apparently Angella didn't approve and said she felt really uncomfortable walking around her house while I was sleeping. I wonder, what would you expect from a 25 year old woman staying in London for the first time? Is it unfair of me to come and stay in a strangers house and want to go out and see the sights and enjoy myself and have a good time? I guess next time I know not to stay with old fuddy duddies.

My first night out in London was cool. I have officially been to my first English pub. Apparently, on Friday evenings there in not much of a rush hour because everbody is standing on the streets outside the pubs with a brew or two in hand getting shitfaced. I spent the evening in the company of my Spanish friend who introduced me to his friends from Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. Oh how I have missed my latinos!!! I felt quite at home rambling in Spanish on the street as the Brazilian and the Argentine took turns insulting each other's countries. In the span on the night we visited many a pub, one in particular called The Cock, where nobody could stop giggling at the name for more than 5 minutes. After The Cock, I wound up in a cab with 3 other people who have been in Puerto Viejo and we headed to East London where we began the search for a club that offered some reggae music. I pulled out the Iphone and we bobbed our heads some some Collie Budz and reminisced about the Caribbean. I have to say that for all the places in the world that I have been so far, there isn't one club that I've been to that can top Johnny's.

I've gotten lost twice in London now since apparently the weekends are a good time to cancel trains and I've been stuck in the Tube station, coming out the mouth of some random stop wondering where the hell I am and what to do next. The buses are a complete mystery to me and when I went into a coffee shop to ask if someone could give me the number for a taxi, they looked at me like I was a complete and total idiot. I have to say that I am dissapointed in the people of this city. I know much more about Costa Rica than they do about their area of the city. And people here really aren't helpful at all. I guess that's their karma. But even Angella was like, "Well, you wouldn't really go into a coffee shop to ask for directions, now would you?!" Sorry, I didn't know there was an etiquette for direction asking especially since I'M FUCKING LOST!!!

Adventures of a Gringa...

I'm always surprised every time I step off an airplane. I mean, when you think about it, it's sort of like a time machine. If you're not sitting next to a window, you don't see the outside. For all you know, the clouds and sky and patchwork pieces of earth you see below could be a movie someone is cleverly broadcasting outside your window. I always think about the movie French Kiss, at the beginning when Meg Ryan is sitting in an airplane and freaks out because she's afraid of flying and busts the door open and falls out of the fake plane that's simulating flight. It definitely looked real to me. Anyway, it's just amazing to me how you can step into this box with a couple hundred other people, sit for 5 hours or so, and step off into a completely different country, a completely different world. I wonder sometimes if maybe it's really not different at all... maybe the sets and actors have just been changed.
I made my first friend in London before I even got here. We met at the Newark airport while charging our cell phones. I asked him about what train or bus I should take to get downtown and he politely gave me directions. We didn't sit together on the plane and I had all but forgotten about the conversation when he found me at the baggage claim to ask if I wanted to go with him since he was taking the same train. I couldn't have been luckier to find such a nice person to help me. He must have thought I was an idiot when he asked me where I was going and I was like.... I dunno. I told him I had a distant friend who lives in London and told me that his roommate would be home if I wanted to go hang out or leave my luggage at his place. I figured I would keep my fingers crossed and if worse came to worse I could go sit at a cafe somewhere and read my book until the evening when I would be meeting up with my host for my work exchange. The guy furrowed his eyebrows with a semi worried expression on his face and gave me his email and phone number, telling me to call him if my friends weren't home. Then he helped me get a pass for the Tube (or the Subway) and even took me to get a sim card for my cell phone so I wouldn't be without technology. This all reminded me that there still are people who sometimes do nice things for no reason at all.
Later on when I was telling my friends at their apartment about my experience and how everyone was so nice to me, they told me that everyone I must have spoken to wasn't from London because Londonders are not really friendly people at all. I think maybe it's something to do with the weather and the sunshine and warmth outside that has everyone in a better mood. Either that or they can't help but smile back at me with the big goofy grin I've had plastered across my face since I arrived. This is when I am at my happiest, completely lost in a totally new world.
You never think about how the 8 hour time change messes with you. I passed out on my friend, Alberto's, couch pretty much as soon as I got there and got showered. At one point one of his roommates walked through the door and I groggily lifted my head, mumbled a hello, and crashed back into my coma. I guess they didn't mind too much. Later on I listened to the neighbor kids outside cuss each other out. But it's so much prettier when they have an English accent. And the kids were running around the neighborhood with camouflage masks over their faces and face automatic weapons pretending to shoot each other. In the states I think they probably would have been arrested playing around like that. But it was pretty funny to watch.
Today I am wondering around Notting Hill. It sounds so cliche, and I couldn't be happier wandering around by myself, staring in all the windows of the little shops around the area, listening to the pretty accents of the people here. I hate the sound of my own voice now. I even love the way people way toilet here. So far the food I've had is complete shit, though. I'm hoping that it's not all so bad.
The woman, Angella, who I am staying with is nice enough, and I have a cute little room to myself. My first job at the work exchange with Angella has been to take all these children's clothes that she has from a clothing store she used to own years ago, and organize them to be sold on E-bay. Not too bad at all. I spent the morning going through kids pyjamas and tracksuits and underwear, writing down sizes and taking pictures of them. Then I set out to explore the area. It's cool outside today and fairly windy. Everyone in the area walks around with their dogs and it reminds me of 101 Dalmations... all the dogs do resemble their owners. And I just got a library card so I could come and use the internet here in a library the size of a small bookstore. Here there are small libraries like this all over the place. And I feel like a dork when I have to ask a dozen questions to understand the system. But when people hear my accent, they must be like, oooooh, I get it!!!

Once in a house on a hill, a girl met a boy...

Little did she know that this boy would forever change her heart. He was a modern day Tarzan, to say the least. A shoeless, shirtless, sun kissed, curly haired, brown eyed, surfer god of Salsa

Brava from a jungle called Nowhere. And yet, a man of the world. He claimed her as his own from the moment she stumbled into the old harbor town. Mesmerized by her fairness and innocence, he fell for her completely. In that instant, she hesitated to know the untamed Mowgli man, until the wild winds came and swept her off her feet.

'My world is not so easy', he told the blonde haired, blue eyed, doll face. 'You have to learn to speak the language of the hard-footed people.' And he traipsed through the jungle with his machete, in his bare feet, and cut through the untamed earth with an effortless artful hand, as if he were birthed into this boscage and raised amongst the lion cubs. He pointed out the snakes in the trees and taught her not to be afraid of spiders and ants the size of bullets, how to use a shovel, and drive a stick shift.

He introduced her to his son, and then his daughter, and then another son. And she was left speechless, so many bags to carry. 'How can I compete with this?' she asked. 'I want you, I need you, I love you,' he replied, and carried her off into the bush, tumbling down the rabbit hole in a knot of sweaty, love filled sheets.

And they cared for each other fiercely, and endured the hard times side by side. They took showers in the rain and slept amongst the insects and bats in a lightless cave of a house at night. They painted and sanded and varnished and raked and created a new, humble abode together. She taught herself to cook and care and mend and keep and manage it all. And after work, they ran to the beach and played in the sun and waves until there wasn't a drop of daylight left. Then they went home and made love until they had no more love to make.

It was a passionate all-consuming affair. The kind of infatuation that lifts you up and leaves the rest of your world to crumble at your feet. Yielding no room for other things, like family or friends, or even life. A love so overwhelming that very few escape, and those who do are left only with the pieces of a bleeding, broken heart.

For years the doll face loved her Tarzan. She idolized his strength and vitality, his brute mannerisms, and his wild untamable ways. And when love's intoxication aged and began to wear, she turned a deaf ear to the whispers and rumors, and ignored the many faults of her exotic Romeo. 'What is love without sacrifice?' she pondered to an ever silent moon, and poured herself even deeper into the cracks in her life.

But, as the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end". One morning she woke to find that her love had been stolen right off the pillow beside her. And when she went to look for him, she found that the face of the man she had adored for so many years was not the face she remembered at all. 'The times have changed and so have I, and I don't need you any more,' he sung. And with that her world fell apart, from one instant to the next.

She must have cried a million tears before finally picking herself off the floor. She ached from the shards of the shattered heart inside of her, and vowed revenge against the man who had so easily taken it all. Time, they told her. Time heals all wounds. "Time is all there is," she wept. And with each tick of the clock, the anguish of her torn soul eased day by day. Eventually, she disregarded all threats of revenge, all hope of reconciliation. Finally forgetting even the curves of his face and the smell of his skin.

The moral of the story is not one of sadness and dismay, but simply of letting go when the time is right. Some things, no matter how much we'd like to, we just can't hold on forever. And so life is... what is meant to be will most likely be. Now comes the mystery.

"The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it." -Banksy

In the small Caribbean town of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica there is an abundance of beautifully displayed broken tile art. It seems that every garden or hotel you stumble upon has pieces of these treasures hidden along the way. This is where my love affair with mosaic began. I owe much of my inspiration to Natacha Nokin, a french mosaicist who has also made Old Harbour her long-time home. (http://www.luluberluart.com/historia.swf) Every time I walk into her gallery I am astounded by the brillant collection of colors and vibrant, energetic art that covers the walls of Lulu Berlu. During my first 6 months in Costa Rica, I was fortunate enough to be able to work in the boutique and witness first hand the creative genius that exudes from Natacha. It was then that I thought to myself, I want to be an artist! I want to make the world more beautiful!

It was a former love interest of mine, though, who taught me to lay down the tiles. He has composed mosaics in places like the Jacaranda Hotel in Puerto Viejo. I have no patience for this, he told me once, as we slaved over an enormous shower floor at my family's lodge. Until that point, I never knew that I was capable

of creating such beautiful things. We spent a month laughing and tiling to make ends meet, and I knew my life would never be the same after that.

A few years later when my beau and I went our separate ways, I found solace in the art that I love. I spent hours tiling the house at Cashew Hill called "Todo Bien". With my ipod by my side, it was easy to get lost in the hypnotic trance that often ensnares me while I work on a project. Sometimes I find myself coming out of my catatonia at the end of a long day's work, stepping back to look at the installation to find myself bewildered by the sight of what my own two hands have created. It's an amazing feeling to dream of a new idea at night and then wake up in the morning and be able to make it a reality. It's also incredibly fulfilling to look at your work and actually like it. I feel completely satisfied by the imperfections in my projects, and I believe that is what mosaic is about: embracing the imperfections. It keeps pushing me to do better, to work harder, to make the next installation more fabulous than the last. I have fallen in love with the art world. Life really will never be the same.

Being in India

May 24th, 2009

being in india is like going back in time. but every once in a while you see a nice car or a spiffy gas station and you remember it's 2009. cows are everywhere... big fat holy cows. the roads are lined with beautiful straw huts that house the cow dung that they use for fuel and fires and things like that. monkies playing in the fields look almost like small men. it seems like such a normal thing to have the monkies running amongst the children. india is the only place i have ever heard of that asks you to please honk your horn as often as possible when driving. i love how they decorate the cars and buses, trucks and rickshaws so colorfully; painting om symbols and flowers, cows and birds on the vehicles. most of the big trucks have "please honk horn" painted on the back of them. the women are so beautiful in their saris of every color imaginable. if you don't wear colors in india you will surely stick out. the highways are lined with eucalyptus and frangi pani and flamboyana trees. people brave the roads in all sorts of automobiles; bicycles, bicycles with trailers, rickshaws, motorcycles with whole families piled onto them (dad, mom, and three kids), nice cars that are big and small, trucks filled with loads of bricks, buses filled with so many people they look ready to pop. it's over 100 degrees outside and everyone always wears long pants and for the most part, long sleeved shirts too, with all different variations of scarves or shawls or head wraps or turbans. they drive in the right side of the car here and the left side of the road. an older man at the visa office in houston told me: in america you drive on the right side of the road, in england they drive on the left side of the road, and in india it's optional! truer words were never spoken. they serve no beef at the mcdonalds in india. what a concept. it's unreal to be here. it seems almost like a movie to me, but maybe that's because i am a vidiot. the indian people seem so thoughtful. i see it on their faces in this meditative, higher state. like they know a secret... and i want in on it. maybe it is that the people here have truly learned to let go because they have no control over the powers that be. the forces of nature are so fierce here. i suppose that is what you really have to do to be able to enjoy india... just take a few deeps breaths and let go. this place is pure, utter, divine chaos. there is nothing left to do but embrace it. i am here for the ride.

i feel like every click of my camera, every picture that i take is a masterpiece in itself. the drive to rishikesh was like a dream. the dirt road along the ganges river was so utterly perfect. monkeys lined the road practically the entire trip. old men sitting on the walls or the bridges, like trolls demanding a toll for passage. piles and piles of cow dung collected along the sides of the road, like bee hives or temples paying homage to the mooing creatures the hold so sacred here. women wrapped in beautiful clothes and colors balancing hand woven baskets or piles of sticks on their heads like it weighs no more than a book.

the traffic is insane everywhere you go and yet you see no signs on angry drivers here. there is not really road rage in india. how is that possible? i suppose maybe it's due to the diet here, since the majority of the people are vegetarians. what a world it is. this place is so poetic, mesmerizing, disturbing, inspiring. but most of all, even though i am as different from the people (to the naked eye) as can be, i don't feel foreign or alone here. for these few days while i am here, i will call india home. i have fallen hopelessly in love with the exploration of this old world so new to me. somehow i feel that i have never been so at peace as i am now. thank you, world, for bringing me such good fortune as to be able to see all these things with my own eyes. i am truly blessed.

everywhere we go heads turn and people stare. i have never caused such a stir. the way the indian people react to my friends and i with our white skin, blue eyes, blonde hair. you'd think we were aliens or something. at the taj mahal i think we may have had more pictures take of us than of the actual palace. so many people stopped us to ask if they could take pictures with us, men and women alike. we even saw an indian cross dresser in a sari who wanted to take a picture with us. it was the most random, entertaining thing. i was completely amused. and yesterday at the train station, we were the only three foreigners in the whole place. probably in a 50 mile radius, actually. little kids were running up to us to shake our hands, girls kept asking us where we were from, smiling shyly, men staring, old people frowning at us. i feel like a total celebrity here. i would hate to be famous.

overall, the trip has been amazing. in so many ways i would love to stay here forever and sit at the little buddha cafe every day overlooking the river, drinking chai tea or lemon nannas, writing in my journal about how this place inspires me. i love the style of this world. people aren't afraid to just sit and be with themselves. they don't need cell phones or tvs or internet to distract themselves from the real world. i love the low tables and the pillow seats and the way people aren't afraid to just lounge in the candlelight when the lights go out, like they do every day, and listen to the river rush by and all the tears and prayers of the believers that have been sent to kali in it. this is the epitome of bohemia and i am totally at home.