Do Not Look Back

Nor should you read the next post after this one, when scrolling down. It was going to be a post but then I changed my mind and really just wrote about nothing.

Sometimes life is like that. We get ready to do one thing and then we turn around and do something else. As for me, I happen to be living that very moment right now. I am in the Peace Corps office, where I have a sore ankle where I kicked off some skin, and I came here in a taxi from the Caribe station because the rolling duffel bag was heavy and that was how I kicked my own ankle out, and that had not been my intention. My intention had been to walk.

The upside is that I have a package from home which had been intended for a "I am sad in Los Patos" gift but will now make a great "starting out in Puerto Rico" package. So far, the director of security and the director of the education sector have both given me some very impressive double takes. Clearly my appearance is not expected, but it shouldn't have been. I left three months ago, and I just have told some people that I am "Passing through" and have come for my package.

Actually, I am hovering in the lounge right now. The volunteer lounge. It is a safe place because I look like everyone else except instead of my face on a badge I have a plain red badge which I received in exchange for my passport at the front door. Wifi is nice. I missed wifi. Then there is a party tonight. I may go to the party. I may not. I do not have a costume. I will go as myself, a Traveling Minstrel/Poet/Singer/Storyteller currently on viaje por La Republica Dominicana.

Here is my plan. I will continue traveling through the country, visiting with friends, and all of that. Then, I will go to Puerto Rico. No clue what is going to happen to me in Puerto Rico. Something. Hopefully something cool.

Or hot. I really want to live somewhere hot.

Libre Wolf

Washing Clothes

Hi

In a bit I really want to wash my clothes. It is a simple enough wish but hard to accomplish. Apparently this morning there was no water. Then I just heard now that there is water. But I do not know for sure. So I will do my best to get this water and I will wash my clothes in the bucket and be happy because it is freaking hot right now and I really want to get wet. Washing clothes is a wonderful way to get wet.

I am also trying to put together the rest of my viaje in this country. In a few more days I will be traveling again and tomorrow I will do a mini bit of traveling, which is the second reason I really want to wash clothes today. That, and I don't have many clean ones left. Haha.

So, I think I will leave this blog post here and try my best to figure out whether or not it is possible.

Blog Post 1

Once again I find myself typing out a post in the dark. Which is to say, I am sitting on a bed in a dark room with the electricity out, except I cannot find my internet stick in my bags so I am typing this into Word and hypothetically I will post it when I go to Barahona this afternoon. Or this morning. It is raining outside, or at least it was pouring a minute ago but from the fact that the chickens and birds are now louder than the rain I do not think it is quite as bad.

Some of you are no doubt wondering how this trip has gone so far. All I can say is it has gone as wonderfully as I had hoped, and there are enough good parts that I can disregard the fact that I have literally been craning my neck around corners when passing by certain places where I know certain people are possibly at, just so I do not have to see them. As of now I am down to just avoiding one person and that is probably for the best, no matter what someone hinted at about time changing people. Time does not change people quite that much. Would Caesar have wanted to chat it up with his old pal Brutus if he’d survived the Ides of March, even if the other people in their circle of friends had described his change of heart as eloquently as Shakespeare’s monologue? I doubt it. Knives in the back hurt. A lot.

But that is unimportant. I have other Rubicons to cross, and I cannot be bothered with the one I already built a bridge over. What matters now is that the bright Caribbean sun shines down on me every day when it is not raining and the sparkling river is as fun to swim in as ever and the turquoise Caribbean sea still churns its white waves against the white rocks near the vast green mountains. This is where I am. This is what I am doing:

Get up. Hang around the house, maybe read a book. Well, probably read a book, chat, wait for breakfast, nibble at food, brush teeth, sit on porch, read more book, chat some more, hang out, maybe watch TV if there is electricity, eat lunch. After lunch, go to river, chat with old friends at river, swim in river, chat some more, go back to house, visit with old host family, do whatever, see volunteer friends from neighboring communities, eat dinner, watch more tv if there is luz, walk around Los Patos a bit, maybe read more book if there is luz (light) and hang out with the family here until I go to bed at some point in the night. It’s really quite relaxing. I know it probably sounds boring but I’ve never had a vacation quite like this one before. It’s different not having a schedule for my days.

And it is very different from how things were during the diagnostic, which was much more packed than the average volunteer’s diagnostic. For one, I am avoiding the school where I spent hours every day and the Center I was supposed to be reopening like they are centers of plague. I went to the school my first morning to give the map of Los Patos back to the sub-director, who’d given it to me during my service. It was made by a volunteer but really it belongs to the community. So I darted into the school like a polar bear plunging into the water after a seal, delivered the map, and fled. Then yesterday when I stopped by the sub-director’s house I apologized for my abrupt and probably rude behavior by explaining that I was scared somebody would ask me when I was going to be working in the Center or coming back to the school. It wasn’t unreasonable either. Kids have been asking me that ever since I got back here.  I do not want to answer. They don’t like it when I say never. But that’s the only answer there is.

Tomorrow I’m going with some friends by motorcycle to a place called Bahia de los Aguiles. Apparently it is the most beautiful place in the whole country, a real eye opener, a beach alongside a desert located on the other side of the southern bend of the DR. It’s only an hour or so from Los Patos. It should be pretty fun. One never knows what time one has. I’d planned on going there at least a few times during my service but I never did during those six weeks so I am going to do it now.

Oh, and speaking of motorcycles, one of the good friends of my neighboring volunteer told me he did not want to see what would happen if I’d been able to live here on my writer’s salary. Just because I said I would buy a motorcycle of my own and start driving it. I think I’d look great cruising down the main highway in my sporty black helmet when I go to visit my neighbors or whatever. Apparently, though, that thought is rather terrifying to him. Wonder why. Haha. I’m sure I’d learn how to drive one without smashing into everything on sight. Eventually.

Now it is pouring again and the chickens have gone silent. Probably hiding. Oh DR. I remember you and your rainstorms so well. Some things really do not change. I’ll never forget the sound of rain beating down on tin. Even though this particular house has a cement roof, there is still tin over the chickens out back, and it is their roof I am  hearing while the lluvia beats its raindrops down upon them. Wonder if I dare go up to the chicken farm again. The farmer was a really great guy. Very friendly. But it is outside of the town, up on the mountainside, and I am not allowed to stray beyond the boundaries of the town without a guide. When I was a volunteer I planned on doing so eventually, when I gathered groups of kids or teens to go with me, but that is out of the question now.  That future does not exist.

So, that’s how things are going so far. I’m sticking to the good like glue and making every effort to avoid the bad. I have a lingering suspicion that she is avoiding me too. It’s not like nobody could find me if they tried. Probably the whole town knows by now which house I am in, and she always had a knack for knowing what I was up to the moment I did it. Perhaps she disbanded the surveillance once I was “banished.” Either way, out of sight, out of mind, and I would much rather spend time with the people I once considered my dearest friends. So I am. J

Wolf of No Country

Lobolius

PS: Better yet, I found the number of my internet stick so I am posting this from the bedroom. Perfecto. :)

Reflections upon a Shaft of Sunlight

I took a walk this evening at the setting of the sun. As I neared the park, I saw it.

I saw the shaft of sunlight hitting the yellowing leaves and my heart leaped for joy and in that instant of beauty and perfection I knew...I knew I would not stay away forever. One day the goddess would beckon me and whisper, "Come home, my daughter, it is time for you to come home."

Yet my wings have been itching and my flights are set. I cannot stay here, not now, not with my wings beating furiously every time I think of travel, and my heart set upon seeing those I know and treasured as friends. Not when I yearned above all else in the universe to revisit the Place Which Was, and which can never be again.

So I asked a simple plea of the goddess in that moment of stillness and perfection.

I asked for one last chance. My wings were shot and crumpled with pain after the First Disaster and I crashed bleeding to the ground, wounded and dazed for a month, before I could rise and walk away. And now my wings have mended and are thrashing madly, desperate to fly once again, but I have been patient. I have waited.

Patience, after all, is one of the keystones of the Druid way. The year's wheel turns season by season, moontime by moontime, and we can only live within that circle, we cannot change it to go faster or slower at our whims. I will take advantage of the flocks of migrating birds, like the little prince did, and I will make my escape.

Even he went home again, for he missed his rose. And he took with him his sheep, and the words of a fox.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

Hunting Schema

Hello Readers

Once again I am turning to you, as I did in the very first blog, from my home in Minnesota's Lake Country. Sometimes a dream gets deferred, forgotten, misplaced, vaguely remembered, and then, when tragedy strikes, it comes back to us clear and bright. And bit by bit, we find a way to make that dream come true.

This is a journey. My life is a journey. I am sitting quietly, peddling my written word as my wares, and preparing to take the greatest leap towards my oldest dream.

I remember when I was a kid, I knew I was going to be a writer. It was one of those things that we just *know* when we are little. Then I grew up, still thought, oh hey, I could be a writer, then gradually it became, well maybe, and then, I don't know, and then I was going to do this, or that, or anything else with my life, except I really did not know what I wanted to do with my life, so I was just going to go into the Peace Corps for a couple of years...maybe afterwards I'll have an idea...etc.

As you all know, Peace Corps did not last a couple of years. It lasted four months. Then I was forced to make up my mind, quickly, of what my next plan would be. A two year process ended up being solved in a couple of hours, and over the course of nearly two months, became a workable plan.

First step, which I am on now, is to earn money writing and selling written things to whatever will pay me for them. This has included transcriptions, articles, paid forum work, and Search Engine Optimization work. Nothing grand, but nothing too shabby either.

Step two, I am taking a vacation in the Dominican Republic. Just going to do it. Have fun. Enjoy what I should have enjoyed for two years in a few weeks. Do it with the freedom of a tourist and the friendships and connections of a Peace Corps volunteer. I figure after everything, I owe myself that much kindness. So I am taking the first, long-term, international vacation purely for fun in my life. No doubt that will produce plenty of blog material and I will resume my journals.

Step three is where I throw myself into the current of my fate and hope for the best. More specifically, I am moving to Puerto Rico. Details still TBD, but I may either select a pleasant looking town on the west coast of Puerto Rico I've had an eye on or a suburb of San Juan. There, I will find a job, an apartment, a vehicle, etc. I'll work to pay my bills during and write what I can and what pleases me by night and on weekends. I intend to do this as long as Puerto Rico pleases me. If it really pleases me I might not leave. If my writing work really takes off and I can support myself on it alone, I may consider other moves, but for now I am keeping my sights low and attainable. I haven't the heart for a second failure so soon after the first.

So, if all goes well, in two months I will be a Dominican Wolf again for a bit, and then a Puerto Rican wolf. Or should I give up the wolf act altogether and say I've become a chameleon?

Lobolius
The Minnesotan Wolf

Shifting Ground

Dear Readers

Yes, I am writing to you from this fabled platform once more. No, I am not in the dear Dominican Republic, a country which has quite brazenly stolen my heart and captured my dreams...as all those who read my facebook should know! I am in Minnesota, my travels on hiatus, and my brain spinning like tires in the mud, while my life struggles to find purchase and move forward.

I won't quit. One thing I've learned in life is that a person quits first in their mind, then in their behavior. I won't let my mind quit. I'm going abroad again as soon as I get the pieces in order. To decide anything else is, simply put, quitting.

I choose not to discuss here what happened to me, and that is a deliberate decision. It was dumb, it was thoughtless, it was cruel, it was a chain of mistakes which I couldn't see until they blew up in my face and sent me out of the country. Or maybe I saw them and chose to look away. Hindsight is 20/20, but the past is the very quagmire I am trying to escape from. See paragraph 1.

How do I plan on going abroad? Well, it dawned on me at the Miami airport that all I'd ever wanted was to write and travel, and I still have my hands, I still have my ambition to travel, and I still have as much writing skill as I have ever possessed, which only needs work to hone it into something money earning. Why not, I asked myself, just put the pieces together and patch a new life for myself out of what I have wanted most all along?

There was no reason not to. The funny thing about a dream being broken before your eyes is that if the despair doesn't break you, the anger makes you stronger. It is as if I can think clearly about what I need to do in order to achieve my dream of becoming a travel writer for the very first time. It's always been one of those dreams, floating at the back of my head, but I never was totally serious...oh wouldn't that be lovely, I thought.

Then came Los Patos. There were days there when I almost saw myself living there, writing, soaking in the sun, looking at the beautiful Caribbean sea. Then Los Patos was torn away from me, and I didn't know what to do. Two years of my life, pre-planned, worked towards, which I had been so eagerly embracing--GONE. Dead. Vanished. Stolen. Call it whatever word you like, that dream was no more.

So, as I picked up the pieces of that dream, nearly crying from the agony of my loss, I made up my mind. One, I was not going to let the loss overwhelm me. Two, I was not going to give up my dreams of travel, I would just have to rewrite them a bit. And three, I was going to throw myself headfirst into the current and become a travel writer. Even if first I have to do whatever form of work gets me paid. Ha. Not quite whatever, but I would sell my writing skills and keep food in the mouth and shelter over the head.

That's what I'm at right now. For the sake of the whole shelter and food thing, I am also planning on peddling my skills as an English teacher, possibly in Ecuador, but that is only a stepping stone on the broader road, which now I seek. It will be mine, if I have the courage to claim it.

Lobolius
Worldwide Wolf

Quotes of the End

Not like this is the end. This blog is about my journey, and even though my journey through the Peace Corps will end prematurely, it is not the end of my road. Like all adventures where one does not see the end, the ending came unexpectedly, but I still am more than I was when i went into this, and I will be more after my next one and so on and so forth.

Failures are made only by those who fail to dare, not by those who dare to fail.Lester B. Pearson

The Highest Ambition

To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being.
John Lubbock

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.  Paulo Coelho

I bought the alchemist in Spanish yesterday. Of all the things I wished to take away, it was that book.

Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work. William Arthur Ward

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Anais Nin

Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful. Mark Victor Hansen

and most importantly

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other, all to gain. Diane DePoiters

I will not despair, but I will admit, at this moment, I am at the edge of the known, the edge of my dreams, and I do not know what my next will be. I had not anticipated this, but sometimes the most difficult decisions are also the right ones, and I made the right decision. I shall not say more. I have said more, perhaps, than I should, because despair is a dark feeling, and I have battled it like Gandolf and the Balrog. It shall not pass. I shall continue with my story.

At this point, I will pause in my journey, recooperate, and emerge stronger and more determined than ever to do what I must do. I just don't know what that will be yet. Part of my heart will always linger in Los Patos, but the past is the past, the future is the future, and I will prevail.

Thank you to everyone for your support through this difficult time. 

Dominican Wolf