transitions

skipping time zones and continents

The thing about transitions; liminal spaces; relocating every three months – the thing about the blatant impermanence of private chef life – is that it forces me to confront my simple little most-human desire to cling. Citta vrtti, our whirring and whizzing monkey mind, wants permanence. It wants a clean narrative. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are all susceptible to avidya – “the mistaken conception that anything can provide permanent satisfaction or ongoing security.” We want to lay the last brick on our little house of happiness and stay. If I could just – fill in the blank – find my soulmate, get that promotion, move to Indonesia; if I could just get the thing. If I could architect my life the way I want it, and make it stick, then everything will be solid and good. Then I will be solid and good. Foreverandeveralhamdulillah. Nothing makes this subconscious grasping more palpable for me than packing up my life three months at a time; my vata dosha thrown into hyperdrive. I strip the bed and wrap my crystals up in t-shirts for safe travel. I make stacks of books and tuck them between packing cubes. I attempt to wipe every trace of myself from the dated rental house I’ve spent the last three-months sharing with my coworkers, and I can’t ignore the huge swell of nostalgia building inside me. My mind reels back and forth through time.

I think about who I was when I first set foot in this room in Hawaii three years ago and who I am now. I think about who I was when I arrived three months ago and who I am now. I think about all the anxiety and laughter and heartache I’ve experienced inside these four walls. As another season comes to an end, I am again standing amidst piles of half-sorted things and thinking about permanence and how, though we all cling (desperately at times) to the illusion of it, the only thing certain is change. (Nineteen year-old-me felt this so profoundly that she got a tattoo of the lower-case delta symbol. A semi-ironic permanent reminder that nothing is permanent.)

This season will not be like the next or the one after that. Next time I come to Hawaii, I will not be the same woman I am right now. We will be staying in a different house next year, so I know this will be my last time in this room. Ever. Lines are drawn with each geographical change-up, marking my progress. Towards what? Growth, hopefully. The opaque embraceable unknown.

The ground beneath us is always shifting. Even when we don’t think it is. Especially then.

And the only thing that grants us grace, really, is to move with it. To listen, to notice, to breathe and adjust. DC is never the same each time I return. Neither is HI or MA. Each time I set foot in a room I left three or six or nine months ago, I am confronted with the memory of who I was then. The hope, the solitude, the dreams. This juxtaposition makes growth feel like it’s happening in lurches – one step forward, two steps back. I return and I am standing next to the version of myself from the last season – more anxious, more naive; listening intently for the version I will be asked to become.

With each transition I am learning again how to release, let go, detach. But can you live that way forever? I don’t know. Catch me from one day to the next, as my friends do, and I will have a different answer for you. There is a thrill in knowing that nothing is static; nothing is certain. It is a beautiful precarious thing too, knowing I am someone who falls in love with places easily. Given proximity to water and a diverse community, I could be happy anywhere. Getting older has taught me that there are not really any wrong choices, just different doors that open and close with each step forward. The version of me that emerges in DC is different from she who reveals herself in Hawaii, and so too the Vineyard. Each path is different and distinct from the next, each self embodied a little differently. There is a feeling sometimes of not knowing which one is my “real “ life — though of course all of them are, scattered as across the country, each one waiting for me to resume the plot. For now, each place is a glimpse into a community, a rhythm, a life which is truncated with a packed suitcase, a “see you in x months!” And although I know, nothing is permanent, I do wonder what would unfurl uninterrupted by these abrupt geography changes. A desire not for permanence, but for place. A version not meant to last forever, but long enough to expand.

For now though, even as I write this I am looking to the horizon. My heart galloping at the pace of summer-things and I feel the pull to keep going going going. I just want to scoop it all up and keep it with me all the time. Be everywhere all at once. Again vata — air and ether — moving, flowing, expanding into the unknown. I am pulled to experience everything in this life with increasing depth and range – an insatiable thirst for life. So I love and I feel and I try to be here now everywhere I go. Unsure at this moment if I will wander forever, or one day tire of always saying goodbye.

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a recipe for something that is in fact edible, but is not meant to eat — and you guys I am about to change your life for real. Two words. FLAX GEL.

2 T flax seeds

2 C water

… das it! haha

I can’t lie. I fell down a youtube rabbit hole and found this two weeks ago. I honestly can’t believe it’s taken me this long to learn about it. Did you know? I had no idea, but DUH. It makes your hair shiny and soft and the curls hold perfectly without feeling weighed down or crunchy. I am not exaggerating when I say it is the perfect hair product. And flax seeds are full of omegas and protein and all this good stuff that is going into your hair. No more alcohol or weird unpronounceable compounds here!

You just boil the flax and water until it makes a gel-like consistency, strain and jar it up. You could get a glass bottle with a pump (I feel like a lot of hippie grocery stores have them? But also perhaps CVS) I added a little sandalwood essential oil to mine (good for balancing vata!) It keeps for two weeks in the fridge. You can use the seeds twice by pouring them back into the pot and adding more water. I made two batches this way and froze one jar.

I went to France last week and instead of stressing about hair products and not checking a bag etc, I just brought a lil jar of flax seeds and made the gel there when I arrived. Amazing. Crazy how something so simple can be so good. Mother earth provides!