teepees and umbrella stamps and blue glass earings

I have come to recognize that life picks you up when you are down and throws you to the ground when you think you have reached the summit.  This sentence leads to a fork in this post.  Left tine: the term life.  I am referring to life as one would refer to whichever God she prefers to reference.  Life is the controlling force of my existence.  Right tine: the idea of reaching a summit on ones journey.  It reminds me of a time when I went on a backpacking trip with a collaboration of modge-podge friends.  Through out the journey we drew upon our hardships, our physical shortcomings, our mental incapacities to reach an actual summit etc. and defined them under the terms of life processes.  You walk and walk and walk and sweat and become so embedded in the belly of the mountains that you have lost touch with the idea that you are actually getting somewhere as well as the ability to see or remember where you came from.  When you finally manage to painstakingly make it to the top of whichever summit you have chosen to claim you have the ability to see not only where you have been but where you are going quite clearly.  The only catch is that you are no longer able to grow.  Nothing grows at such high altitude.  It remains static in existence and until it manages to muster up the courage to go through it all again and climb down the peak it will remain so forever until death.

The middle tine: the actual point of this post.  I have managed to force myself to surrender to the world.  I have managed to force myself to belittle love and what I thought it was and could be in order to love more and more intensely but with less attachment.  I have managed to travel alone and actually relish in the idea that I may well want to do it forever.  I have managed to be unsettled always but also to leave impressions.  I have managed to allow myself to be cruel for the sake of survival and not for the sake of the game.  I have managed to take my own existence and come to know it more and I have managed to enjoy the idea of wandering as such.  I am my own Howard Roark.  I am my own Harry Haller.  I am my own Dinah. I am my own Jack Kerouac.  I am my own version of all those that I have admired beyond ink pressed into paper.  I can only hope that my aspirations to live life to the fullest will be more than just aspirations.

Karel has asked me to stay in Habří through winter.  They will be opening up a restaurant in a month or so and he would like me to be the waitress.  I am not only flattered that he thinks my Czech is substantial enough but touched that he would like me to stay in the family.  He has offered me the guest house with my own kitchen and bathroom with a little more privacy and I am pretty sure I could get a small car out of the deal for convenience.  The struggle begins here.  I think I was raised, not necessarily within my home but within my culture, that there is a timeline to abide by.  Of course one can skip some steps, take a ladder here and there, but generally the timeline leads up to the defining moment of someone's existence;  who they are, what they do, who they love, where they have been, how successful they are...... It is as though the timeline shows that you have taken the appropriate steps in life for people to know that you are an admirable human being.  You finished high school and carried on to get a degree.  Maybe you didn't go to college but you have proven yourself educated in some way that gains approval.  At some point you pick a place that you love more than most others and you know you did because you "backpacked" around Europe for a month or so and saw it all some where in between.  You live here and maybe start a family or at least connect yourself with some community etc.  All of these things I could see myself truly wanting.  I want the picket fence and the big dog and the little baby on my hip and the nice garden and the sweet kisses from the perfect man.  I want to be doing what I love and contributing to a community and I want to be able to look back on all of the success and achievements of my life.  I could probably do that here....

I have an incredible living situation which could only get better and more mine if I let a career somehow shape itself into something.  I have incredible people around me and I am set in the most beautiful landscape.  I could stay and  I could fall more and more in love with where I am and what I am doing and who I am becoming but that then puts pressure on my journey.  I have to resist the idea that there is a timeline.  I can stay here for three more months, maybe even a year.....I can stay for a while and then leave and return.  There are many options out there but the bottom line is my gut and my mind both agree that I want to see more of the world and I have not yet covered that much ground.  At some point in the next week I will have to decide if staying here longer will interfere with that one thing I know to be true or if it will be good for everyone for me to hang out for the winter and leave every month on small trips.  

Teepees: Yesterday we set up a gigantic teepee and had a little bash.  There was a big pig leg the size of my entire upper body roasting over an open fire and lots of music.  I stuck around for a few hours and then started to walk to Strážek to meet up with the guys.  

Umbrella Stamps: There is a weekend long festival thing happening in the center of Strážek that all of the youth goes to to listen to punk music and get wasted.  We should keep in mind that Strážek is a city that combines six small villages under one district and the entire district is only 1000 people.  So, while the festival for them had a massive turnout of 200 people I couldn't help but imagine them in my old living room at the schoolhouse.  The umbrella stamps they gave us as we entered did nothing for us when it began to pour, thunder, and lightning all night.  Last night was my turn to take care of Petr.  It was quite the scene walking home in a complete down pour occasionally illuminated by a sky full of lightning.  Petr was draped over my better half and we were both babbling in whatever languages we could manage.  Him being plain incapable and me struggling to keep his attention with my Czech.  I woke up in the middle of the night as Petr was sleepwalking himself out of bed, pulling down his underwear, and peeing on the floor in the middle of the room.  I shot out of bed faster than he could get more than 4 drizzles out and pushed him into the bathroom.  In that moment so many things came to mind.  Lily, and all of her drunken peeing stories from the ranch mostly.  Like how it was very common for her and Mark to wet the bed together or the time that Mark peed in the corner of some room or like the time that Mark peed in the front seat of her car.......I also remembered the time that Jess sleep peed when he was a kid on the road map carpet in Wellington.  I have always found the ability for one to lose control of their bladder while under the influence to be quite ridiculous.  Namely because I have never done it (minus the one time I peed my pants while on mushrooms, but that is a completely different thing because I knew that I was doing it), but for some reason watching the whole thing play out was surprisingly cute.  I mean who would have thought witnessing a drunk, sleepwalking, boy, peeing on his own bedroom floor could be anything more than pathetic?

Blue Glass Earings: My pair of blue glass earings seem to have an innumerable amount of lives.  As I started to jog to Strážek I could feel that one was missing because of the lack of weight.  I knew that it was only a matter of two hours from the time that I showered and put them on to the point that I started jogging so as opposed to my normal reaction of complete horror in the thought of not having them in my life I calmed myself down and said that I could find them somewhere in the grass tomorrow.  They have made there way back to me so many times and sure enough, Karel found it and gave it to me today.  

This morning I woke up to Mrs. Koza asking me what I wanted for breakfast again and it was so nice to be at their house.  In the morning we all walk casually around in our underwear, drink coffee, and laugh about the night before and the day to come.  I started milking a little late this morning and was in such a good mood that I gave a shot at plugging in the portable I-pod player and jamming out.  I mean hell, it is the weekend and I was milking on my own slightly hung over.  Karel now wants to start an experiment on the affects that music has on the milking because I got more milk out of those tits today than they have all year!  Looks like the ladies like a little rock and roll to spice up their lives.....

Today I am off on day two of the great festival.