Entries this day: About_last_night Dream Work jen_in_holland

About last night

1:51pm JST Monday 16 August 2004

I forgot to mention one thing about last night: Jen repeatedly prompted me to do my "great monkey noise," my imitation howler monkey. I was really embarassed and shy to think about doing it, but "c'mon; it's Dan's last night," pushed me over the edge. That plus the concern that I might regret not having had the experience of screaming like a howler monkey in an izakiah in Tokyo.

Dream

9:47am JST Monday 16 August 2004

Maggie had learned to ride a motorcycle, and made a greeting-card video of her on the motorcycle. She had a video camera on the bike looking up at her as she rode and talked to me. She kept looking at the camera more than the road and I was really worried that she might wreck (she was riding really fast), but I reminded myself that because she had already sent the video, she must have survived actually making the video.

Then she was actually talking to me in realtime, saying she had been in touch with John, who had told her that he really admired what I was doing. I was like, "why?" and she said that he said I've got two women who will blow me at anytime. I was like, "??" because he didn't say anything about my having gone to Japan, nor gotten a new job/apartment situation here or any of that.

I asked Maggie if she was one of the girls, and she was not ashamed to be like, "yeah; I just haven't told you," and began to show her technique, but not on me or actually anyone. We were in my dad's house in Magnolia and in the master bathroom where there were google adwords ads placed in the bottom of the sink so when I was brushing my teeth I would read them. I wondered about how I could get my ads into that mix; they were ads with much more copy than just three lines.

I noticed someone was sorting laundry in the laundry hamper, which is big enough for two kids to play hide and seek in, and I nudged Maggie with my leg to have her stop honing her skill. She didn't stop at first so I nearly pushed her over with my foot/leg and she was like, "だれ?" (who [is it]?) and I didn't say anything cause I didn't want to be too obvious about covering something up and also, I didn't know who it was. The person emerged, and I was glad to see it was a new roommate, a new English teacher who had moved in. He was like, "hi" and made no mention of anything out of the ordinary, and just asked if we knew of any good travel agents in the area. Maggie was like, "no" and feigned surprise like she had never heard there were any travel agents in the area and went so far as to write down the name of the agent the guy had mentioned.

Something else happened and I woke up.

Work

7:09pm JST Monday 16 August 2004

Just had Erika, who I've had once or twice before. Pretty long time ago. She obviously was flirting with me saying I look strong and telling me I could get a wife in Japan.

I felt all the sensations in my body, none of which were in my crotch, but just tingly ideas over my body. Like what would it be like to kiss her? Could I kiss her here? What about just a bite on the neck? How would it feel? How would she taste? I was vaguely able to turn off the banter with, "how would it turn out in the end?"

Man.

That was hard.

Lesson before that was a challenge for me to help this guy with a book 2 level of grammar understand book 4 structures and vocabulary. I focused on book 4 vocabulary and book 2 grammars: "Who heard the explosion?" "Neighbors heard the explosion."

I went through several different sentences like that, and I basically refused to write them down and handed over the pen and paper to him. He refused (unintentionally, I'm sure) to write "the" before "explosion" but I figured correcting that wouldn't be helpful overall.

Had a pretty good lesson with Mari, the student to whom I wrote the weak postcard yesterday. We practiced rejoinders, and she has gotten better at them than she was yesterday or two days ago when I saw her before.

Cool Tatsuya finished his book and bought book 6. He did quite well on the level up test - 96% correct, and I graded pretty strictly.

jen in holland

2:43am JST Tuesday 17 August 2004

Bon Jour!

  It has been a while, my last real mail was sent before the war
began. And strange things have continued to happen. Oh well, there is
still plenty of room to work on a better world. Sometimes i wonder if
i am still doing my part.

  I have been living on the same small island in southwest Holland,
Schouwen Duiveland. I have completed my obligatory year "integration
course". I am going to go back to school in the late fall for my third
year of Dutch. My grammar is getting better in Dutch and worse in
English, Spanish and French. That is expected, it happens every time.

  My relationship with Ron is going very well, he has settled into my
heart and we are a strong ship, weathering the seas of the seasons
together. It is exciting to be so enthusiastic about being in each
others company. We have returned to France to pick up the pilgrimage
where i fell down 3 years ago. We started from Auch 12 days ago. In
2001 I had stopped there, and was busy doing my firefighter, Emergency
Medical Technician continuing education hours when 9-11 happened.  I
made it two days walk away from Auch when i fell down and hurt my
leg. After that i hitched a ride to the Pyrenees where i stayed in a
house in the mountains for 5 incredible months, until i was
hospitalized for 2 weeks after fighting a fire that destroyed all of
the houses on the mountain except for the house where i was staying
and my neighbors house. Soon after that i discovered i was an illegal
alien in Europe. In between the hospital stay and my 90 day stay in
the States, Ron and i decided to become official (mostly official)
partners. At least i am not the only commitment phobic partner in this
relationship. Anyway, i now have my staying/working permit in
Holland/Europe until 2009.

 We have been on the Camino de Santiago de Compostella for 12 days. It
has been perfect so far. Yea, we are still working into our wild beast
side that we never completely worked out of. It is a process to work
back into this very moment and not reflect on what we have done or
what we plan on doing. We are dreamers and wallpaper our minds with
dozens of possible projects per day. It is never-the-less in the
silence and quiet hours of our observations walking under the changing
sky that the viable plans and obvious steps toward our current
projects trickle through to our consciousness. And then the sun gets
to shining too hard and our brains begin to bake and we look for a
place in the shade to enjoy the mid day "siesta". It always comes back
to the "now". Yea, i am glad that we started off 2 years ago from the
mountain house, crossed the big mountains into Spain (where Ron caught
the train back to Holland to go to work) and i got lost in a storm at
the top of a huge mountain and promised myself that if i survived that
night i would catch a bus from the next town i could find to a more
traveled footpath. And so i did, to Roncesvalles, a former monastery
20 miles over the boarder in Spain. That is where we are heading
towards on this leg of the trail. This trail that we are walking along
is the GR 653. GR means "big walk". It is so well marked with red and
white painted stripes on trees, telephone poles, the back of road
signs, the sides of houses and on the pavement of small roads that i
only look at my compass and map as a matter of habit and comfort.

  So all that "lost in the mountains" business makes it much more
pleasant to walk along this well defined path because otherwise i
would never consider taking this much too easy road.  No, i would
ditch this GR and head for the big hills, even in the hot sun. In fact
for the first 2 days of this trip i did just that. Then we came to a
village where i thought we could find a little store to stock up on
provisions. There was no store and the farm where i had stopped to ask
if i could buy some eggs to hard boil for the road made me promise to
go back to the GR because in the mountains there was nothing. I knew
this, no i have not forgotten. But it is abusive, and i don't want to
scare my honey. He is so kind and sportive to join me. So we are
happily walking the "low road". Every day the big mountains are
getting closer, even though we are walking parallel to them. By the
time we get to the pass we are heading to, the easiest pass over the
Pyrenees, the ocean will be close and the really big mountains will be
behind us, to the east.

  To be quite truthful, we had never thought about this town, Pau.
But now that we are here we are enjoying our vacation.  We rested here
yesterday and today we are walking slowly through the streets without
our backpacks and taking our "siesta" in this internet cafe until it
cools off and we will hit the trail later this evening.

  The Baskenland is not far off and Ron has never been there.  I
finally crossed the Baskenland on foot two years ago (a long time
dream), but it remains an obscure and fascinating land for me. It is
like dark and turbulent waters with many hidden surprises. I found the
people not so warm and friendly, but the people that found me warm and
friendly took me swiftly and earnestly under their wings. I always
feel like i am searching for a needle in a haystack in the Basque
Country, and whatever it is that i am searching for there, the
profound hospitality that i have found in a few people there has made
me feel like i have come a little closer to it.

  We walked last week through Gers, the equivalent of a state in the
USA, but here it is much smaller and called a department.  The old
people there speak an old local Catalan dialect. Folks were friendly,
but not jolly. About 5 days ago we walked into the Gasgony region.  I
have never been here before.  Within a kilometer of leaving Gers the
house construction style drastically changed and all the people were
waving and smiling in our direction. Some obviously laugh when they
see us with our hugh backpacks plodding along. It is glorious to be
recognized.  On our island in Holland most people pretend not to see
you, and it is much to much to go to the trouble of saying hello. It
is a memorable event to get a one finger salute. That is the index
finger, the equivalent of a country wave and a very friendly gesture.
All of this in combination with the relaxed French atmosphere and the
hours of introspection while walking has inspired us to be stronger in
Holland. We want to wave and say hello without regret or
frustration. We want to be tirelessly friendly in the face of
indifference. It must be possible, we have an abundance of love in our
hearts.

  Last summer i did not come back to walk because i was working in a
restaurant. I was planning to come back to walk in the fall after the
tourist season was over.  Instead i went to Portland, Oregon to be
with my mother during and after knee replacement surgery. Her recovery
went well and during the process she bought a house and we moved
her. She had been living with a girl friend, a Chinese medicine doctor
and lover of nature and voracious kayaker. Her friend was perfectly
healthy last year.  I have not talked with my mom in a few days, but
her friend is in the end stages of cancer now. How fast it can go my
friends. I hope you are all well and eating as much organically grown
food as you can afford and doing cleanses to wash toxins away and
whatever other methods you can embrace to guard your health. Please
send our friend Carol positive vibes to aid her in a definitive
arrival to a glorious after world.

  This fall i am planning on opening my practice.The name will be
something like: Alphabiotics Netherlands; body alignments/balans
behandelingen.  I have finally gotten the zoning change and will start
off as a living room practice.  We have already gotten very nice
furniture and fung shuied the first floor. i will start off practicing
two days a week. So far i am the only alphabiotist in Holland. It
could be very exciting. In my 33rd year, i feel i can finally pull off
some sort of professionalism. Just the other day as we were walking
out of a small town a group of people called out to us.  It was
getting dark, and it is nice to set up the tent and cook dinner while
you can still see, but it is far more important to remain immersed in
the experience, so we went to hang out with the people that had so
kindly called out to us trying to offer us something to drink. They
were drinking Richard, something like Greek Ouzo, and although i love
cold alcoholic beverages, especially on a hot evening, i gratefully
accepted whatever they wanted to give. A large glass of cola for each
of us. Ron does not speak French. I was answering all of the questions
and it came to professions. I told them that Ron works at elementary
schools and therefore must return to Holland by September 2nd.  They
asked what i did and when i told them, one of the women told me she
had been suffering from terrible back pain. I offered her an alignment
and after very little hesitation and no introduction she was laying on
her bed and i was giving her an alignment. Finally giving something
back to the kind folks that take care of us. She insisted on donating
to our tour fund and i took that as a very good sign. It is all a very
good sign.

  At the end of last year when i returned to Holland after being with
my mother a few months, i got an itch to garden. I found a garden
plot. It is 520 square meters with a green shed on it. It is in a plot
of land collectively owned by our gardeners association. Fortunately
the land was willed to the association by two women over 40 years
ago. Actually the association sold that land two years ago, bought new
land, and had such a profit from the sale of that land they had enough
money over to build everyone the little green houses. No toilets
though. So my plot is on the corner, everyone that comes there sees my
garden first. That is a regular curse for a beginner, and everyone has
something to say, almost all of it very critical. While finishing
laying my patio this spring all of my weeds grew and that was
disastrous. So after planting my grapes, garlic, salad, herbs,
watermelon, beans, radishes, beets, corn, jalapenos, poblanos,
zucchini, okra, eggplant, asparagus, onions, pumpkins, carrots,
rhubarb, melons, tomatoes, etc.just in time to mostly be ready for
when i get back, i ordered two semi-trucks of mulch to keep the weeds
down for the summer (and 3 people to eat what is harvestable and pick
the renegade weeds). The suspense is wonderful, but it would be
ridiculous to call someone and ask how things are growing. I walk
along with love in my heart for my plants and i know they feel it.
Due to the low land abundance of water and the very high water table
on the island, even if it does not rain, i think most of the plants
will live and possibly even produce something.

  So the sun is a bit lower in the sky and i want to hold Ronnies hand
and walk towards the mountains.I hope you are well and your children
and parents are healthy and happy too. I am honored that you have made
it this far (and read my story). We will see how this adventure
unfolds for all of us. Thank you for your curiosity and support over
the years.

              Go Beyond!    gin