Big Sur, California

An intrigued squirrel

Times Up! takes on Washington DC (featuring freedom, the protest bike)

Cheese Factory rd., rural Wisconsin

in my front yard in Madison

beautiful clouds as I left the country

Dancing Lessons from God

I am currently sitting in an airplane, in Bangkok. I am the only passenger on the plane, and as such, I am getting an interesting look at what happens in between flights. All in all, probably nothing you would not expect: a lot of disinfecting, some tidying, and a lot more natural smiles among the crew. Why I am on a plane with no other passengers is a symptom of this mis-planned trip back to Indonesia. But after a month and a half of almost constant movement, hanging out on a plane for an hour is just fine.

[Just got a tour of the plane and to hang out in the flight deck with the captain. I know we will have 500 girl scouts and one deportee on the flight… cool. The girl scouts are now boarding… they all have pink hats with their names on them…]

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And so I am flying back from my month and a half in America. There is no way that I can even begin to write about all of the important, incredible experiences that I had. I wish that I had documented them better, while traveling. But a few key moments, thoughts, ideas*:

• My aunt Bernadine, who lives in Los Angeles, drove me up to Berkeley, via Big Sur. We took the long way, two days, going slowly and stopping a lot along this incredible coast. The days were perfect--bright blue skies, no clouds—and the dry land was spotted with bright red and yellow plants that made the place explode into color. I fought off jet lag (which was remarkably mild) while Bernadine drove. Less dramatic, but even more pleasant for me in some ways was stopping in the little towns along the way. Going into gas stations to get gas station coffee, complete with those little multi-flavored creamers. So good. Honestly. And then taking that coffee and heading back to the beautiful road.

• Wandering around Berkeley and seeing my first infoshop, my first traveling kids, my first college, my first American kids/town/life in ages. I freaked out my first night there, just overwhelmed by it all, in good and bad ways. Didn’t like the feeling of being back on campus. Loving the incredible freedom of it all. The total freedom of having no one care who I was or where I was going or any of it. The owner of the hotel where my aunt and I stayed who, once my aunt left, and seeing my ‘bikes not bombs’ patch, went on for an hour giving me all the ways I could hook into ‘the scene’ as he called it—ignoring the fact that I was leaving in three days.

• Friends. Everywhere. Coming out of the woodwork. It is incredible how many people just gravitate to San Francisco.

• The incredible rush that was the East coast. I flew from San Francisco to Boston, where my lovely friend Dan put me up for two nights. Then down to New Haven where a friend’s parents put me up while I looked at an incredible forestry program, unfortunate for the town it happens to be in. The library at the Yale school of forestry is all skylights, and I wrote application essays while sitting in this clean light, next to a wide open window. It was a truly perfect day. Then, down to New York City for one whole night before climbing into a car with various times-uppers, and throwing freedom the protest bike into the back of a pick up, and heading down to DC, to, once again, try to make it clear that the president really just needs to give up. Spent most of the day on freedom, biking circles around the black bloc, who seemed kind of sleepy. Everyone seemed kind of sleepy that day, or maybe people were just tired of coming down to DC, again, to protest Bush, again. I know I was. But Austin had come down from Madison for the march, and I got to see him, which rocked.

• Things slowed down when I reached Ithaca. I caught a ride with some Cornell activists, and had a long conversation about the role of self development, self understanding, and through that, the role of mass protest, in activism. I wonder how many times that conversation has been had in the world? But this was an incredible time: me, an amazing activist girl who was only coming into her own when I was at Cornell and now is a superhero, and a firm committed lefty democrat way into electoral reform. In Ithaca, I did not put out a mass call to all the friends I still had there, but instead slept and saw the people who mattered the most. Shout out to Dana Brown, who continues to totally rock. I was so exhausted from the rest of the trip that I was not able to do all that I wanted to do in Ithaca… but the calm and the beauty were well appreciated.

• New York City. Critical Mass. My quest for discovering why I love the city as much as I do continues unanswered. But I have joined the many millions who simply love that city and its incredible contradictions energy passion everythingness. And riding in the mass, and avoiding arrest, has the emotional energy of everything actions should be. Once I understand what that energy means in the greater context of things political social and interpersonal, I will be so much further to understanding, well, what matters.

• Ann Arbor. 24 hours with everyone’s favorite southern football player turned impassioned anti-poverty law student type. Vote Josh Tetrick for president in 2034. I was so overwhelmed by the time I reached Ann Arbor, Michigan that it was all I could do to actually go the meetings I had planned, and then catch the train to Madison. I did have some lovely lying and sleeping on the grass on the quads. I was so incredibly lucky with weather on the trip. So beautiful, the whole time. And the couple of days it rained were days when I could appreciate it—staying inside and curling up somewhere.

• Madison was wonderful. So much better than I expected, although I must admit, I did not expect much. The leaves were in their bright reds and yellows and the air was crisp. I went and picked wild fox grapes in the farm plots by Eagle Heights, exactly where I had picked grapes 15,16, 17 years ago. Nothing has changed there. I picked two huge bags, which my mom is making into jam and wine. I had the dog with me and just the fresh air of the farms and the lake. I went back to Aldo Leopold’s farm, back to the Wisconsin River. It has become a pilgrimage. I saw the friends I love. I got along with my mom. Most of the time. Was very sad to leave.

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Of course, the trip was not all beautiful weather and perfection. It was work and meetings and endless, endless movement. I was so happy to turn my bags upside down and unpack in Madison—it was something that had been so impossible during the trip.

The official motivation behind the trip was to visit grad schools, and of course, I did. Here is the run down:

Berkeley: Beautiful town, good program, but unfortunately, only a PhD program. All I want is a Master’s for right now—I need and want to apply myself to real work. But! I will certainly apply. Then I’ll see. Probably choice 3 out of 3 at the moment.

Yale: Incredible, drop dead awesome program. I was amazed by how smart the kids were, how much experience they had, how interesting the classes were. There was a great sense of camaraderie among the kids. Unfortunately, it also comes with the stigma I feel about going Ivy-league again, and with New Haven, CT. But if I get accepted, almost impossible to turn down. Totally applying. Choice 1 outta 3.

UMich: As I said, I was exhausted when I got there, so my impressions may be a little off. Beautiful campus, good program, but with a very strong America focus. Their international people rock, though, so, that’s a plus point. A firm second choice.

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And now back in Indonesia. I am long off that plane in Bangkok, and four nights into being back in Indonesia. The transition to being “on the other side of the world” is always hard, and this one was no exception. I had a really incredible time in America and felt truly surrounded by love. Leaving that to go any where would be hard.

I am back at the Center for International Forestry Research until mid-December. I have been in the offices for a few days, and will be heading up to Jambi tomorrow for the week. Then back to Jakarta, partially to get my computer looked at (I think it has had one too many bumps) and partially to get my grad school applications closer to done. I will be so happy when they are all completed. So, so happy. Then, back to Jambi for a month. I’ll write more when I have a better idea of what I will be doing.

As for this moment: I am living where I lived before I left, the village of Rawa Jaha, right outside of the CIFOR compound. It is actually a lovely small village where everyone now knows my name. There are large vegetable plots where people grown corn and cassava, and the chicken run around freely, as they do in every small village. If avian flu ever actually hits, it will be horribly devastating. Chickens are such an integral part of life here. It is the fasting month, Ramadan, and so the village mosque wakes everyone up around 2 to make sure they eat. Now, I could be wrong—I was tired—but I could swear that at 2 am this morning they had a guy singing “Ayo! Makan tahu, makan tahu, makan tahu! Ayooo!”, meaning “Come on, lets eat tofu, eat tofu, eat tofu! Come Ooooon!”. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don’t think I was. This went on for at least 20 minutes, at which point I fell asleep again.

Coming back has been almost normal; only a few things have really gotten my attention. First, I went to the market last night, a normal night market full of vendors and people. After my time in America, I was amazed by how incredible the food all tasted and by how squalid the place was. The food in the stalls is all cooked in front of you, so it is perfectly clean, but just the density of people and rats and smells and puddles and muck and delicious spices was so so different from America with its suburban sanitation. I’ll take spice and squalor any day. The other thing- I rode my bike on the wrong side of the road. Took me a while to figure out why everyone was driving directly at me. Classic.

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So, off to Jambi tomorrow, back to Bogor in a week. My dreams of being less nomadic are just not materializing, at least not yet. Some day? I hope. But in the words of Ithaca street graffiti: Smile. Life is Rad.

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* If we had an awesome adventure that did not get mentioned here, it is most certainly not because it was not awesome and more than worthy. But, remember, not all adventures are blogable. I mean, my old high school teachers read this blog. Sorry, Mr Keys, must preserve my dignity somehow...