Excerpts from my Journal while abroad

[A Note to the reader: this is long and somewhat rambling and full of non-sequiters, so read at your own risk and as much as you like, i personally like april 3 and april 6]

5:50 pm 28 Mar 2007 LAX

I am sitting on the plane as it prepares to take off. I am feeling overwhelmed with gratefulness for this adventures that lies ahead. Tears prickle in my eyes.

I don’t know how to pray but I just want to say, “Amen, Amen”

KLM (the airline) greets us “Welcome On Board”

Ha! [Shouldn’t it be Welcome Aboard]

1:20 29 Mar 2007 Amsterdam Airport

We landed I thought about the people on the flight seeing this green landscape with roads and rivers and to them it feels like coming home.

In the airport I see all these white people walking around and they are not Americans. Some speak English but with unfamiliar accents.

I wonder what is does for a person not to live on stolen land. White people are actually from somewhere. They are from Europe.

On my flight I met a lady from Portugal who was born and raised in the colony of Mozambique. (A colony!)

8:00 pm 29 Mar 2007 Hostel

I am in Paris now and I don’t know what to do. I walked around some after I found the hostel, but it started to rain and I was hungry and I bought myself dinner. I don’t know how to start conversations with people except in airports. I wish I knew someone in Paris. Oh Well. At dinner, I thought I was being a very stupid tourist, with my English/French guide as my only companion but then at the table next to me a Spanish couple sat down and had many more miscommunications with our waiter. I felt a little better.

Sometime in the middle of the night 30 Mar 2007 at the Helvetia Hotel by Gare de Lyon

I will admit it. I can’t believe I am here. I am here alone. Traveling. I wish I had someone to listen to my ideas, to hear me say ooh la la when we see pretty things, some one who wears a watch. There is fear surrounding my heart.

I will return to Paris again with a friend. At least I know now how the Metro works.

Dear Jesus

I pray that you will keep me safe and take care of all my fears.

Here are the good things I am thankful for:

1. successfully buying a phone card and making a phone call.
2. conquering the Metro system
3. finding and climbing the Eiffel Tower
4. The view from the Tower
5. walking around Paris in the rain (and having dry feet)

7:30am 31 Mar 2007

I am at Gare de Lyon (train station) too many hours early after missing the train last night and I am regretting the sleep I am missing now. I put too much sugar in my café au lait. I wonder if this country is in a perpetual state of dusting off the bread crumbs. All I have been eating is bread.

The second person to ask me out, I stood up last night. I don’t even know if they were serious. I wonder if they really came to the hostel at 9:30 to pick me up so we could go party.

“What are you doing in Paris to night,” asks the Parisian guy

“Sleep.” I say

“Sleep? You came to Paris to sleep?”

“Oui,”

“Paris is free you know. The French are more direct you are free to [I don’t remember what he said but it involved his friend liking me and thinking me pretty]”

“Free to say No.” was my thought.

I wonder what the pigeons say in French?

Maybe if I were a high schooler I would have enjoyed the 3 ducks hostel. And I am sure the reason I don’t like the drunk party getting with some guy scene is not because I have morals reasons (what are ‘morals’ anyways), but because it feels insincere. Not real and raw. I am a morning person. I like to think in the reason of the sunshine or at least the daylight. I have zero interest in kissing someone because they find me attractive and we are both drunk. I guess some things are the same everywhere. Did I have to come all the way to Paris to figure this out?

12:25 31 March 2007 Macon Loche a train station two hours away from paris.

The WORLD IS VERY BIG and confusing. I am very small and rather hungry. I pray that a bus will come to pick me up and take me to Taize. I need to stop going to random places by myself. I could have instead taken a train from LA to Nor Cal but no, I had to be adventurous. I kind of feel like the first time I smoked pot. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep.

No one is smoking or talking in this train station. There are only 2 people.

12:35 31 March 2007

I just want to sleep. The cows and the babies know more French than me and I can not even find a place to buy chapstick. Fear and sleeplessness are terrible. They cast a shadow on the most exquisite landscapes.

Before 7 pm 31 March 2007

I have arrived at Taize and it feels like camp but everyone smokes and they sell wine and beer and there are people from all over Europe and other places.

My 10^th grade English teacher said that even if a student was failing she would sign a permission slip to allow him to go on a field trip because when you experience new things your brain creates new pathways and connections so if nothing else perhaps I will be smarter and have more pathways in my brain by the end of this trip.

It is very global here.

11:15 1 April 2007

I am humbled as I meet Europeans and realize I know nothing about nothing, nothing about languages or God.

Please have mercy on me I am worried still about many things, traveling and how France did not stamp my passport.

European Christians are much different than American. So this may be camp but it is unlike anything I have experienced before. I think anyone could be comfortable here.

God, I pray that you would gather my thoughts.

I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!!

13:05 1 April 2007

Meeting up with Lydia and Rosa was good, mostly. Last night they introduced me to their friends and we were all going to play poker. One of them reminded me of someone I knew. Or perhaps just of someone I wanted to know.

15:15 1 April 2007

I am trying to be open. But its hard to feel anything but alone with my bad decisions. What am I doing here? I FEEL AIMLESS. Aim towards God I tell myself. BUT WHERE is that???

I feel like I tried aiming towards God but got it wrong and ended up standing on invisible ground of an existential crisis. Maybe that was just one step towards God. My insides writhe at the thought of that. Why?

God, I still do not trust you and I still do not trust myself. Both of these trusts have been broken and I do not how to feel the way back to trusting again.

There is a difference between being an arrogant know-it-all and someone who trusts that God is good.

The idea of the French Airport frightens me tremendously.

I lost myself. I have spent so much time these last few weeks, months trying to figure out what is right that I have lost myself.

Jesus, Fill me with your Holy Spirit and help me to listen.

16:15 1 April 2007

[explicit] [expletives] I WANT TO RIP [fragment] [edited] I [delete] MYSELF!!!

How do introverts [expletives]. I don’t know what the F I am doing here. That is a lie. I bought a plane ticket in an attempt at Freedom. Escape from myself, from my life, but yet here I am. I couldn’t handle [blank] alone in Paris and I can’t [blank] either. Making me realize there is no place in the world I want to be, except possibly in bed. But then someone might ask how my trip to Paris was. I didn’t buy a plane ticket to France for a view from the Eiffel tower and to realize that I [Edited]

These are my unpleasant thoughts and I (try) to surrender them to you.

I will find joy. I will find peace.

Something I realized that pisses me off is when people make noise in places where you are supposed to be silent out of respect, like Notre Dame.

1 April 2007

LORD, I am ready to quit surviving and start enjoying.

Help is such a vague word.

The reason I like the alter at Taize is because it looks like it should collapse but it doesn’t and instead it is beautiful.

2 april 2007

I need to stop trying to sort sort sort sort things out. I need to leave this labyrinth in my mind that is getting no where.

I feel like a stupid American.

I took a shower and brushed my hair and that made me feel generally better.

22:00 2 april 2007

So I asked a brother what to do and he shrugged and said that maybe I need to just ask God to lead the way and take the confusion and reveal himself to me and be my peace.

It is so simple I hated it. Especially the shrug.

But a few songs after I spoke to the brother I knelt (like in child’s pose in yoga) and let that be my prayer.

2 April 2007

JESUS—

If you’re reading this message. I would like to know a) that you are listening b)if I can ask you for a promise, it can be from the bible.

I will never forsake you

I will never leave you

I will never abandon you

Then why have I never felt more alone?

Why am I so afraid to ask you for things?

Wait

Also wait

3 April 2007 standing in the The Garden of Silence at Taize under a little shelter and it is raining.

Cleaning the bathrooms was actually fun. The Spanish girls are very fun and it is good to practice my Spanish and not feel so stupid for being only Mono(and-a-half)lingual. One girl is named Bienvenida (which means Welcome, Accuiel). But she goes by Beinve

I came a long way to

discover small things.

to sleep in and be okay w/ missing breakfast

to wonder how the French write

the songbirds twitter

to be very much afraid and very

much at peace

to breathe french air

to quickly fall in and out of love

I came along, long way to discover

the world is really quite small.

and I think I will go to Spanish

language school in central America

because I feel like more things

are possible

to pick up rubbish,

to eat

french bread

to hear 100 different

languages

to be quiet

to listen

to be away from

home to sing

songs w/ words

I don’t understand

Will I make peace w/

And his infinite mysteries

Will i?

Am i?

I’d like to

Listen

11:00 4/4/2007

I still don’t understand much

Nothing

Walk humbly w/ the Lord (micah 6,8)

At LAUP someone talked about how this meant walking carefully. Conscientiously, taking care of your walk with God. I think I can not walk with care, but I can walk and I am humbled in this place.

I don’t know why life exists

But here I am in the world at the age of aviones [airplanes] and babelfish translators

Post WW2 and post V for Vendetta and Taize, wheel chairs and electrodes

Goal:

Draw with Freedom.

6 April 11,30 am

I ached in the land of pomp

Of straight lines, arrows of darkness

I traveled across the continent and an ocean

To land in a place where all my tools

Of language did little good for me

Here, the songs of love are repeated in and outside the chapel

In unfamiliar words, and daisies like the ones I threaded into necklaces as a kid

I find that to sit or stand here in his presence is enough.

The confused/brokenhearted, postmodern youth of Europe with blonde dreads, tattoos, and cigarettes are as dear to Jesus as the impoverished of Calcutta.

Yesterday I walked down the street with a few other people

One of the Portuguese guy brought his guitar. The sun shone brilliantly. The hills stretched out before us in varying textures of green. The sky a pale breathable blue. We walked and he strummed melodies from the strings of his guitar with his fingers. Tears came to my eyes. My heart could not contain such beauty.

8 April 2007

There are so many Europeans with green eyes. I didn’t know they were so common.

9 April 2007 Sometime after 5 am

What great American in Paris novel I would have written had a spent the entire night in the CDG Airport, I don’t know because I opted for a night in the safety of a hotel next to the airport. I swallowed hard and paid the 97 Euro and felt like I was letting my generation down.

I showered, and slept well and asked for a wake up call and ate my last Petit Dejouner (breakfast of the french variety, consisting of several breads, café au lait and jus d’orange)

I am happy that I made it to this liminal place of the terminal Gate. I am no longer really in Paris, but I am really no where else either.

So my world wind vacation is coming to an end and what do I want to write?

Ooo Eh Toilette? No.

The Lord will never leave me.

My brief escape from the U.S. showed me my world view was just that. One (1) view of the world among many.

I am ready to loosen up the grip that long ago left my breathless, as in strangled.

The Lord is Risen – the brother said

He has Risen indeed – response.

I heard this call and response in over 10 different languages.

I experienced Freedom once I was ready to let out the last breath I had sucked in long ago when I was afraid the world might have run out of oxygen.

Last night several angels helped me here:

The ticket lady who could not understand what I was asking for but sent an English speaker after me when I walked away from the ticket window confused and almost tearful.

The dark skinned man with a beautiful smile who waited for me as I put my wallet it back in my purse and helped me find the RER B3 toward CDG and counted how many stops it was until the airport.

The little Indian Girl (and her family) with decorated with much gold jewelry and a smile when I was afraid because I was the only woman on the train and the neighborhoods outside had begun to look seedier.

The lady at the hotel who joked with me and told me the vital information that Air France was at Terminal 2.

Bless these Angels.

I am soon going to be surrounded my Americans. I am a bit afraid. Of their hardlines and sharp edges. I enjoyed all the cigarette smoke and couples in love around here.

I have taken on the challenge of trying to listen to myself and to trust the Holy Spirit within me.

10:36 9/4/2007 Amsterdam airport

I tried to buy Holland tulip bulbs but the lady at the counter asked me to which country I was going and when I said the U.S. she said I could not buy them.

It is an hour before I get on my flight and sit down and drink small bottles of free wine.