(no subject)
Other than the fucking cold, which is hitting LA as well, I am glad to be back in SF. Back in the land of smart people, public transportation, big city feel. Towards the end of the trip, Honolulu was starting to feel provincial. Sure, there are elements of cosmopolitanism like the amazing radio show I picked up on evening freeway dashes around the island, which seemed to be coming from space or the modern ancient vortex, it was a place where people were really rude drivers, like the meager 3 feet around their car they claimed on the freeway was their only sphere of control in life and they had to defend it til death with clenched fists. Not unique to Hawaii, such selfishness was pretty small minded.
That said, I put my name on the waiting list for the beginner hula class starting next April. Who knows where, but it comes highly recommended, and it's something I enjoy for now. Can always quit any time, as with anything.
Got my shots for India during lunch. Hep A, Hep B, typhoid, flu, got blood drawn to test for Hep B. Feeling a bit like a pin cushion, but it is a thousand times better than getting any of those actual diseases so I guess I don't have a choice. This is the new, responsible me talking. The one who makes long-term decisions and takes decisive steps to do what's right, not what's easy.
So there's two and a half weeks left before my trip. Kind of weird it ended up like that since I just got back from a trip, but that's fine. Traveling to Hawaii was a good way to ease back into feeling comfortable about traveling and feeling at home on the road. It had been so long since I went anywhere. A year and a half passed since my trip to Uzbekistan. I spent the time focused on work to the exclusion of everything else. Now I feel re-centered, reminded of what is important: love, stability, feeling centered in the various realms of existence: mind, body, spirit. That's why I need to study hula: a way to experience that centering for at least brief moments.
I am most excited about the trek in Nepal. Sleeping in tents under the stars on the side of a mountain. It sounds so romantic, like a gypsy or a Louis Vuitton ad. Very "elsewhere."