Karinakah Day 2: Action

I invented Karinakah in October of 2008.  My birthday from the previous year had been a miserable one.  I had recently moved to Vermont and was feeling quite lonely.  My wonderful friend Molly had invited me to a party at her house that night and said she'd even make me a cake.  Unfortunately when the actual day came I was suffering miserably from allergies and had to stay home.  It was a cold, rainy night and I remember looking out of my window at "downtown" Jeffersonville, VT feeling silly and sad.

The next year I decided that that would never happen again, that in fact I would celebrate my birthday for 11 days total:  the 5 days before, the actual day and the 5 days after.  Then the pressure was lifted from the actual day and I could entertain my extroverted vanity a bit longer.  While sometimes I shy away from being brazen because of how others might judge me, usually I don't mind.  Creating Karinikah is a perfect example and one that exemplifies the word of the day:  Action. 

So in celebration of today's word I marched over to the beautiful catholic church next to one of my south side schools and asked if I could see it.  A maintenance man named Apolinar, with tufts of grey hair peeking out of his CFD hat, let me in and settled himself in one of the pews while I wandered around. It was beautiful and the orbital stained glass windows reminded me instantly of visiting Sainte-Chapelle in Paris when I was fifteen.  The colors were mesmerizing and the marble pillars humbling.  In the middle of the pews was a baptismal tub whirring away like an abandoned honeymoon suite jacuzzi.  But the most beautiful thing was the silence...then the echo of my feet, of Apolinar occasionally shifting in his pew.  Suddenly I wanted to sing.

I haven't sung in a while.  I simply haven't wanted to.  I was even a little shy about it because I knew my voice was rusty but the acoustics...I had to have these acoustics.  After asking permission from Apolinar I sang the Lord's Prayer.  The last time I sang it was in a catholic church in Charleston, South Carolina a long time ago.  But instead of singing under my breath and seated in a pew like I did then, I sang full out and standing in the middle of the church.  My voice bounced off the walls forcefully and a little off key but I didn't mind.  With the swelling of the finale, notes I'd just sung would swing back to me with an insistence, cocooning me for the next note.  And I smiled and I cried and I shook Apolinar's hand with a "muchas gracias" and went home.

There are times of acceptance and surrender.  There are times of action and courage.  I like both very much and am learning more and more to not confuse the two.

Karinakah Day 1: Acceptance

I have a reminder on my phone that goes off every day at noon. It simply says, "Music, writing, athletics and Ireland".  It's there to remind me of the things that make me happy and the next non-Chilean place I'd like to visit.

I think of it today for two reasons: 1) I have made no steps towards any of them in a while and 2) It's the first day of Karinaka, my 11 day birthday celebration and the word of the day is "Acceptance".

Acceptance that I am not as ambitious, tidy, fit, rich, well mannered and time efficient as I should be. Acceptance that I haven't forced myself to do the things I enjoy because...I don't feel like doing them. I don't feel like doing a lot of the things I used too.

One of those is judging myself and others. I'm tired of it. Tired of there being a right way to live and of having to wait for everything to be perfect (every dish clean, every email sent, every facade polished) for me to be ok. And I'm tired of judging other people as not being ok because of...whatever. I mean, really, who cares?

This place of non-judging doesn't feel good but it doesn't feel bad.

And here I am doing one of the things I love without even trying.

It's been too long since I've written.

Lately there is a thick, quiet comfort in the doings of my life. Complaints and praise mix like paint and I am equally colored by both. Occasionally one hue wins over the other. Still I am what I am. It is what it is. And I sing some song, dance to some everlasting mental dance party, completely oblivious to opinion's colors and rejoice in my reality.

Chicago Love

This is a letter I just wrote to my dear friend Molly. I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!

"Aw, sad news, Mol! I can't make camp this year due to the new job. :(

I'm going to miss seeing folks like you that I love with all my heart but there is no cell in my body that has any desire to return to Vermont right now. It's weird but I think I OD'ed on Vermont and now have not a fledgling desire to return. The good news is that all that rural living made me endlessly greedy and grateful for the city life.

Every day I experience something new in Chicago: a new street to wander down, a new stranger to talk to, a new hole in the wall to eat at. I am so so SO happy with my life here. I have my bad days, sure, but I love my Spanish speaking-teacher coaching-numbers crunching-kindergarten/1st grader helping-job, I love my heavy/death metal, horror movie loving, skateboarding bro-dude roommates and our tidy slum in the wonderful neighborhood of Logan Square. I love the latino neighborhood kids that run up to me every day after work and ask about my day in Spanish. I love my gym where I dance to Salsa Bootcamp, Hip Hop dance classes and Zumba and I am not remarkably weird/sexy/different at all. I LOVE seeing all these beautiful men of every size, flavor and color every day. I love sitting in front of the Casal windows at the Art Institute and being moved to tears by such beauty. I love that I saw Gillian Welch perform last month and next month I'll see Mano Chau. I love that I'm treating myself to a trip to the aquarium on Saturday. I love riding the "El" to work downtown and reading all the way there and back. I love going up to the ninth story of the beautiful downtown library with an indoor "Winter Garden". I love going to that same library and playing piano after work in their practice rooms between the opera singer and the girl who can play the Amelie soundtrack perfectly. I love going to the lake and swimming at the super gay beach, playing bocci ball while techno music blares. I love that I can eat Ethiopian food whenever I want to. And that some days I might just need to speak all three of the languages I know to get what I want. I love that I met an amazing Australian woman and a so sweet woman from the Ivory Coast in less than one week and I have plans to hang out with both of them soon.

I love the chaos, the stink, the noise of the city. It feels like opportunities are ready to burst out of the seams of such constant change and I welcome them all ravenously.

Vermont taught me how to be quiet, how to rejuvenate in silence, and how to enjoy bars. I use all these skills to keep me balanced. :) Whew! These are some sexy, energetic times, love."

Rule #1: Be Happy

An old boyfriend once asked me if I had any rules. I said that I didn't think so and then I remembered that I have two: #1) To be happy and #2) To be a good person or at least try not to be an asshole.

Sometimes I get confused with what it means for me to be happy. Sometimes I think it means to be perfect. Some examples of the imperfections I've been struggling with lately are wanting a new pair of black mary jane style shoes for work, wanting a few light shrug/open sweaters to wear with sleeveless dress and then expand my professional wardrobe, that I need to get my tattoo removed from my underarm to no longer have to cover it up in professional circumstances.

As I trudged to the car, cranky from the heat, to perhaps fruitlessly drive to Champaign-Urbana from Oakley to buy shoes and clothes, I was hit with a realization:

I keep doing things in hopes of feeling less stress, of feeling okay and it's definitely not working. The list of things I need to buy or do to feel perfect and, thus ok, will never ever end. So if I want to be happy something needs to shift inside of me, some energy change or focus. My outside experience reflects my inner experience and I need to get my cells along a common goal of vibrant awesomeness, not just hoping my outer experience unrealistically perfects itself.

Alright, inner world, let's get juicy.

What?

There are things that I love about my life currently. Oddly enough I am not enjoying them as much as I thought I would. This surprises me to no end. I've pined for city living, an awesome job, and a cool home for a while, some more than others. And here I am in Chicago (loving it) with a job that changes lives, is fun, that I'm learning a bunch, helping others and with great co-workers. Somehow the ecstasy I'd expected isn't happening. "But, Karina, you finally have an easily digestible answer for people when they ask what you do, where are you from, etc." So instead of demanding some final stop, some satisfaction (which is obviously impossible) I'll make a list of what I love right now.

-I love that the noise of the "L". Getting on the Blue Line and heading downtown in the sway of all the other lives, all the other problems. I don't feel alone even on these trains with strangers.
-The gigantic graffiti of curious ferrets only viewable from the "L" near my house.
-I love hanging out with my roommates Grumpy and Matt ("Radditude"-because he has such a rad attitude) who is positivity in a human bottle. Radditude is also a horror movie nerd and heavy/death metal fanatic and our apartment is an archive to every horror movie that's existed in the last 30 years+. Yesterday he blew my mind by mentioning his love of Lady Gaga and insisted that we watch as many of her music videos as possible right then, relishing delightfully at how I was speechless for a good 20 minutes upon discovering this.
-I love my summer school class!!! My latino kids are adorable and excited about reading. They call me "Ms. Vele" because they just can't get Lepeley down. I have an adorable drawing on the fridge that a student made that says "Ms Vele, te quiero mucho. (I love you very much.)"
-I love the people I work with. They all love their work and believe in it. They all support me 100% and the average time a Reading In Motion employee works is 10 years. Most of them have been there for over 15.
-I love my neighborhood, a nice wooded street by Palmer Square in Logan Square. There are a ton of latino families on the block and a group of kids have taken a shine to me. I exit the house for a run on any given day and I hear "Karina!!!!!" I am a Palmer St celebrity.
-I love my walk back from the gym. I jog there getting my warm up in and then either do basic strength training, Zumba or my new favorite Cardio Hip Hop which is basically high school dance team. For serious. It's high school all over again. We learn a dance routine in an hour and it is mad hard, mad fast and mad fun. The instructor looks much more like she should be going to a Phish show and not a Hip Hop show. She is crazier than I was in my early 20's and I love it.
-I love the Italian gelato place a block from my house with flavors like passion fruit, cantaloupe, and my favorite, raspberry.
-I love the old houses on Logan Boulevard like castles that have been split into three/four apartments and house all sorts of families.
-I love that my house is currently filled to the brim with metal heads for "THE metal show of the year" with Nunslaughter and Acid Witch. They are really such a nice and sweet bunch.
-I love that I see people that I don't know every day. People of every shade, old, young, speaking all sorts of languages, eating all sorts of food, with all sorts of realities of how life should be.

I'm also trying my best to be grateful. I suffer from the trials of having choices and of getting what I want and still wanting more. Basically it's the constant dissatisfaction that is life and the mind and the journey of experience/existence. My expansion continues and I am grate, grate, grateful. And patient with the fact that grateful/wishes fulfilled doesn't necessarily mean satisfaction.

Yeah, some days are just shitty. Nothing personal but still shitty, regardless of what you wear or what you do. And then it changes. The one constant in life: change. I'll just keep chugging along while people "ooh" and "aah" over Radditude's horror collection and chat about mad awesome shit in our living room.

New is good.

The Simple Need to Write

So it's been forever since I've written but I'd definitely thought about doing it much sooner than now.

I'm currently happily settled in Chicago with a job that I love and in an nice apartment with two really nice heavy metal dude roommates. They are great and I love our neighborhood. I love the city with it's noise, different languages and the smell of opportunity everywhere. I love the kids I work with, I love the teachers who are struggling fiercely and I love my co-workers who vibrate with how much they love their jobs. There is a lot of love and a lot of opportunity going on for me right now. But sadly, I have a tough time tapping into it.

So instead of constantly wanting something in particular, something finite that can be easily taken away or easily change its mind, I just want to be happy. Here I return to my favorite life goal/rule of all time. "I just want to feel good." That's it. Good feelings to feel, share and spread. Good feelings to accompany the new experiences as I stick with the process of missing/sadness/shock.

So maybe I'll come back to writing as well. Finish that book on exes and keep myself tethered to my daily experiences by recounting them in their vivid details instead of letting them slip thru my fingers as I float out into the clouds.