it’s not so much that i want more, it’s that i don’t want not-enough.

i have my own definition of not-enough. my not-enough is likely far less than that of most people in industrialized countries, and likely far more than that of most people in so-called developing countries. nevertheless, it is my own personal definition of not-enough and i fear it and i resist it (not the definition, the actual state of not-enoughness).

today, while hiking in the mountains of bosnia – a hike filled, by the way, with ample enoughness - i realized that i have been bound to not-enough through my resistance to it my entire life.

over the years, i have made thousands of decisions, big and small, that shaped the form and quality of my life - all based on my fear of and resistance to not-enough. the career that i disliked and let slowly drain me until i was simultaneously desperately unhappy and a numb empty shell. the experiences i missed, choosing instead to work hard and “save” that money for later instead of living life more fully in the now because i needed to have that money waiting in the background ready to jump into action to beat down the not-enough when it threatened to come around. thousands of choices out of fear of the not-enough.

you get what you resist and sure enough i found myself facing down not-enough awhile back. i have far less in terms of money and material things today than i did a couple of years back, but in losing those things, i gained a fullness of life that i had chosen to forgo while trying to protect myself against the not-enough. in the process, i thought that i had left the fight against not-enough behind.

but today in the mountains, i found it lurking around again. thinking things like i can’t afford to buy expensive food like cheese and broccoli when i go to the market today, because if i do, well, soon enough i’ll be facing not-enough.

today in the mountains i also realized that until i give up that struggle, until i stop resisting not-enough, until i make friends with not-enough, it will continue to play out in one form or another in my life.

so i bought broccoli when i got home. no cheese. one step at a time.

happy hour at home tonight

"rat" = war"bendova" = bandsrat bendova: bosnia's battle of the bands

so for the last few weeks or so, i've been watching rat bendova, a battle of the bands tv show out of sarajevo. you know the drill. a bunch of bands perform each week, and somebody gets eliminated at the end of the show.

amongst the usual array of bands that have been playing clubs for a few years, there's a trio of kids that i love. and i mean kids. the santos brothers lead guitarist is 16, the bass player is 14, and the drummer is 12. check 'em out doing a little zz top followed by "born to be wild":

exercise for india, training for thailand

where z and i hike above banja luka in prep for southeast asia

it ain't over 'til it's over,but i hear tell it's almost over...

so, i got news that the last bit of legal paperwork required to finish off the little mess i found myself in just over 2 years ago was finally filed today in the states today.

it took this long because the paperwork couldn't be filed until the, uh, person, on the other end of the contract actually fulfilled the contract, and that is something that the, uh, person, failed to do until recently.

the reason i can't say it's over yet is because i still haven't seen the last bit of cash that fulfilled the contract appear in my bank account, and until i see it, it's not actually over.

so..... on this, the eve of the almost over, looking back on the events of the last 2 years, if i had known it would have taken this long and i'd get so little of my life savings back from the uh, person, i would have just gone straight to court day 1 without mucking about.

wait, i take that back, i just wouldn't have trusted that the, uh, person, was a man of his word in the first place.

but hey, you live and learn. 

and boy have i lived and learned since then... so although i am now life-changingly poorer in pocketbook, i'm also life-changingly richer in heart and soul - and for that, i'm grateful.

you chop 80 kilo of cabbage and what do you get?

cabbage, salt, water, a giant barrel and a little time'll get you all the sauerkraut you can eat - and more...

banja luka living: how i dry my clothes and heat my flat

and lately when drying my clothes and heating my flat, i like to listen to

yeah, but can your barista do this?

a gorilla sitting on a rock reading a book.

cheese in a can? cheese in a can?

whatever.
try pâté in a squeezy bag...

the simplest things....

...are not always so simple.  internet access has been, well, let's say, a bit of a challenge.  i'm good.  i'm in bosnia.  i'm just not all hooked up in the whole hey-look-at-me,-i'm-in-touch-with-the-whole-world kinda way....  i'm sitting in a cafe/bar at the moment, blissed out by the fact that 1) one of the employees here could not only speak english but 2) also knew about computer/router/internet stuff and so, 3) i was actually able to get an internet connection after only 45 minutes of rebooting the establishment's equipment and dicking around with my nic settings (and spending as much on beer for the "free" internet connection that i would have spent for an entire month of unlimited internet access at home), and 4) after all of that, convincing the employees to let me plug in my laptop (only plug in the place is behind the bar) since my battery can barely hold a charge anymore....

now, completely soused and satisfied with my tiny victory, i say "screw the spellcheck, i'm just gonna post!"  i'll try and get some photos and other stuff up within the next week...

cheers!

my brain, my pusheror after the low, the high

did i say i sang the praises of kajmak?  forget kajmak, i sing the praises of my all powerful brain. 

after the flood of chemicals (was it something i ate?) that laid me low, that led me through rapid cycling ups and downs and downs... and downs over the last week…  as fast as it came, it lifted.

and today, i am basking in the wonderment of sitting in the midst of men, big men, smoking drinking scary men, hard men, negotiating car deals, arranging official papers with an off-duty border agent.

it is what it is, and what it should be.  perfect in the moment.  once again.

my little flat and the first snow

we found a great little furnished 1 room flat in ½ of the upstairs of a 2 storey house and moved in on the 1st. we got our first snow 2 days later.

it comes with a kitty that sits outside our window sometimes

pondering the snow in my backyard

tea teodora spent the weekend with us

i did not do this to her

the power of my tantrums or, i’m always in a good mood when you are

after 2 weeks in bosnia i find myself having a bit of a, shall we say challenge, adjusting to the abrupt change from summer in budva to winter in bosnia, sharing a teeny room with z’s mom and brother while we try to find a semi-affordable flat, not being able to get the food that makes my body feel good, and coming to terms with the difficulty in getting basic things – like medical attention for z - taken care of. so much of a challenge that i’ve thrown a temper tantrum or two after a series of particularly frustrating events.

so today, feeling unusually happy despite the fact that we are on a very long walk to an m:tel customer call center after our second day of spending all day trying to find someone to help me get internet access after the usb internet modem I recently bought stopped working after just 10 minutes, i looked up at z, who looked a bit pained and asked him “are you in a bad mood?” “what is a mood?” “you know, like happy, sad, nervous…” and with the softest eyes and most beautiful smile in the world, he said “i’m always in a good mood when you are.”

i sing the praises of kajmak

kajmak (pronounced kai-mak), the yummiest cheese ever in the world. z’s mom likes to buy lots of whatever kind of food that he tells her i like (and she happens to remember) when she goes to the market. this time it was kajmak. it looks slightly like small curd cottage cheese, but tastes more like england’s clotted cream. for those of you who have had clotted cream, you know what i'm saying!   mmmmm……

got my mind on my money and my money on my mind

the currency in bosnia is the convertible mark. the currency in montenegro is the euro. the currency of my country of origination – and thus firmly ensconced in my head as the measure of what I’m “really” spending - is the american dollar.

one of my many mini-theories is that if you’re always converting the local currency to your currency of origin, it sets up a dynamic where you’re always a visitor. so i stopped thinking long ago about what the cost of bread in montenegro, or the cost of eggs in bosnia “really” was in us dollars. so now i just think of 1 as 1. euro, mark, dollar – whatever – it’s just 1 monetary unit.

ok, so maybe in terms of the impact on my finances in absolute reality, that “a monetary unit is a monetary unit” thing didn’t work out so well for me in montenegro where 1 euro was "really" around 1.6 american dollars, but here in bosnia, where 1 mark is currently about 80 american cents, my theory works out really well.

and i definitely don’t feel like a visitor.

get yer ya-ya’s on!

the serbian world for egg is jaja, pronounced yaw-yaw. makes me giggle every time I hear it.

bye bye budva, bye bye

i'm not ready to leave, but somehow the time has come.

october in budva

day tripping in bar, montenegro

bar, your basic centuries-old walled, fortressed city in the mountains
(i'm tired. it looks like it's going to rain.  do you think it's going to rain?  do we really have to climb around up there today?  i'm hungry.  i have to pee.  hey, are you taking a picture of me?..)


montenegro has had some pretty big earthquakes...


did i mention the mountains?

is that a vanillice in your pocket?

sweets from my sweet this mornng.  i wake up to a crackling noise.  z's just come back from his morning walk and he's pulling a small bag out of the pocket of his jacket. "hey what this? how get here? someone must put in when i walking by pekara*."

* that would be the the local bakery that makes amazing treats the likes of which i've never tasted in the states...

the winding down

sigh. it's winding down. the angle of the sun, the ever so slight cooling of the water. and the grapes. look at them. they were once so full and fat and vibrant. now they're, well... winding down. sigh.

brunch before beach in budva

fuel for frogging around in the adriatic all day

you're never too old to rock the adriatic!

photo by nico and/or chris

i am exhausted

i mean, really, bobbing around in the adriatic all day, every day is simply exhausting. it's all i can do to drag my butt back home and eat whatever fabulous meal zeljko has prepared for me.

the last 4

why host just 1 or 2 couchsurfers at a time when you can host 4 at a time?

seriously though, it really is much more fun to have a houseful. well, at least for me. maybe not so much for the surfers who have to sleep on the floor...

anyway, joining agata - and then swapping out agata for lucia - to make the end of our hosting season in budva especially crunchy and mellow:

nicolas, from the french speaking part of belgium,
and who is not a fascist

chris, also from the french speaking part of belgium,
also clearly not a fascist

and lucia from uruguay (although most recently dublin, ireland),
a hitchhiking, spanish-teaching, dog-loving vegan (who added a few dishes to zeljko's repertoire),
and who, although we did not specifically discuss it,
i'm pretty sure is also not a fascist.

agata of the couchsurfing, sailboat surfing variety

agata, immigrated from poland to the u.s. when she was 4, now back in poland on a fulbright scholarship.

agata, come and gone so quickly.  ok, maybe i pushed her out, but it was so she could take advantage of a free, yes free, croatian island hopping opportunity that had just dropped in her lap.

andy and mau: our unintentional surfers

we met andy and mau (maureen) from england at the prince, our favorite pub/internet cafe in budva. they were vacationing north of budva and had bused here for the day to check out stari grad and enjoy the beach. we immediately hit it off, so we plied them with beer, they plied us with beer, and after much mutual plying - we lured them back to our place with promises of the best balcony in budva, pasta bolognese, and more beer. many, many hours later, after the last bus back to their place was long gone, we had our next batch of couchsurfers. i think that there's nothing better than couchsurfing, except maybe for spontaneous couchsurfing...

romancing the worm. ringworm, that is.

texas tea. black gold.  ok, never mind.  guess you had to be there. 

look, it climbed up on my lap, made biscuits, then promptly fell asleep.  what was i gonna do?  well, what i didn't do was touch it, despite my overwhelming desire to do so, lest this happen to me again.

unstable angina

that's what it turned into.  i'm pretty sure.  i think z's previous episodes were of the stable variety, but last night's had all the earmarks of the unstable variety. and that woke up all kinds o' fear in me.  he wouldn't let me call a doctor (there's no emergency room option here) but once it passed, he finally agreed to go to a cardiologist when we head to banja luka bosnia next month.  next month.

but the really good thing about last night was that it reminded me - again - that we're all just passing through and we touch each other's lives for such a short time. last year i made a conscious choice to actively love and serve (yes, i said serve) and bring happiness every day to this soul whose path has converged with mine, and there's no excuse to fall down on the job for even a moment because every moment could be the last.


eddie vedder's rise from the into the wild soundtrack

stari grad (old town) in kotor monenegro

i could live on this street


or this street


or here


or here (even though it's not actually in stari grad...)

the migration patterns of the happily disallusioned

so i had a little issue come up the other day. i had to get out of montenegro since the 90 days i could legally be here on just a passport were about up.

the great thing about montenegro - since it's not a member of the infamous schengen gang - is that once you exit, you can just re-enter and the 90 day clock starts over. not true with those schengen thugs whose 25 (damn you switzerland for joining them in 2008!) member countries who, unless you manage to wrangle a temporary residence permit out of them, only allow you to stay a total of 90 days within any 180 day period. that's not 90 days in each country. that's 90 days cumulative across all the member countries.

so anyway, the point is that i had to get out of montenegro for a bit. and you know what that meant? roadtrip!!!!

after 3 months, yes 3 (hello!) friggin' months in one place, i was finally on the road again! ok, indulge me. it was only for a couple days, but it... was.... the.... road!!!!!

hitchhiking from montenegro to croatia was glorious! and when i say glorious, i don't say it, i sing it - glorrrrr-iiiiiii-usssssssss!

and i finally got to hitch a taxi!!!!

ok, it's hard to explain it, but i was glowing when z and i had to walk the 1.2 kilometers (uphill, mind you) of no-man's land between the montenegrin border crossing exit and the croatian border crossing entry. glowing! i know it seems a bit silly, but for some reason, there’s just something fun about walking a border crossing, about “pulling up” to the border crossing guard booth on foot.

now, if you're wondering why hitchhikers end up walking across border crossings, well, sometimes drivers go out of their way to take you all the way to the border crossing even though they're not crossing the border themselves. and sometimes drivers who would normally love to give you a ride decide they don’t want to have to explain to a border guard why they have an international criminal in the back of their car, if indeed you turn out to be an international criminal... in this particular case, our lovely just-gone-off-duty montenegrin taxi driver couldn't take his employer-owned taxi over the border.

so anyway, i wasn't glowing just because i walked another border crossing. i was glowing because i was on the road and there were very few cars on that road, and it was getting dark, and dubrovnik was still a long way away. who would be our next ride and when would they come? (ok, so it turns out our next ride picked us up just steps after the croatian border crossing guards allowed us entry, but it could have taken longer…)

but the point is that z and i were on the road together on our first long distance hitch. he was in thongs. cheap little rubber thongs and he was walking the border crossing with me - at dusk!. and it as okay with him! z was okay with it all!

i was ecstatic in the moment. i thought about alex and bruno from aix-en-provence now on foot in southeast asia. i thought about vincent and marie from paris - the "delighted caravan" heading to india. i thought about the last group of couchsurfers we had just hosted, all of them solo hitchhikers who happened to converge on our place at the same time, all of them from different parts of the world and all of them heading to different parts of the world.

i thought about all of us, all of us disillusioned with the trappings of conventional life and, all of us following our own migration patterns across the globe and happily - ecstatically - finding meaning in the places and people and moments along the way.

30 couchsurfers in 60 days

i tried to write about it - specifically the last 10 days of non-stop hosting - but i'm still too tired.  it'll just have to wait until i've had enough "me" time and feel like sorting through my thoughts and photos and stuff and junk.  until then, this'll have to do:

david, our australian marine biologist

florian, the german didjeri dude
and environmental conservation student

james, our international relations student
and danielle, our molecular biologist

uh, how many people am i cooking for?

the delighted caravan lands on our doorstep

our most recent couchsurfers, marie and vincent, collectively
"the delighted caravan", landed on our doorstep last night. both are engineers in paris, and in late june they climbed into a camper van and left their jobs and home behind in france to travel for one year. they should hit greece by september and then they'll leave the van behind and head out on foot to india. yep, that means trekking through turkey, iran and pakistan on foot.

so we talked through most of the night about work, life, travel, language, couchsurfing, politics and all that stuff. and they taught us a great line - "j'en ai ras le cul les couchsurfers" - to use with our next french couchsurfers. well it's great assuming they have a sense of humor and don't get offended easily... oh, you can try the free online translators on this one, but they don't quite reveal the poetry of it.

yuma salsero is in the house!

so there's this guy named yuma who is french salsa dancer and instructor and he's travelling around southeast europe and the balkans for 5 months organizing salsa workshops and public demonstrations - and making a documentary about the whole thing for french television.

he and the gang are taking a breather and staying with us here in budva before they head off to their next events in croatia.

sylvestre, the camera guy, is not a salsa dancer. he likes techno...

bring it on!

let's see, what's happening in the couchsurfing world tonight? well, in the photo you've got mirko from serbia, me from the states, marcella from italy, zeljko from bosnia, and elodie and christian from france. and arriving later, fran the spanish guy and david from chile. that's 8. another late night. another dance party on the balcony...

involuntary compassion

sigh. i annoy myself sometimes. it's crept up on me and i can't make it go away. involuntary compassion. compassion for the person who stole from me in such a prolonged, cruel and ugly way. sigh.

gautier, gautier!

i'm particularly fond of hosting hitchhikers.

although the couchsurfing community is a pretty open, many people don't have the flexibility in their schedules to host someone who might arrive today, or maybe the next day, or... and when your hitching, that's just kinda the way it is.

so since i am ultimately flexible at the moment, i especially want to help out hitchhikers.

enter gautier, a reggae musician from amiens france travelling solo through the balkans for the summer. he's an eco-minded guy and after spending a little time with us, he's headed to my favorite place in the world, zelenkovac.

the dance party continues

me and ivica down by the schoolyard. ok, actually, me and ivica up on the balcony, but whatever.

the budding artist downstairs

our downstairs neighbors for the past couple of weeks, vanja, ivica and their son joban, are from podgorica, the capital of montenegro. joban did a portrait of zeljko the other night while we were hanging around on the balcony. not bad!

and then came stacey and dave

out with the old, in with the new. after gloria and daniele vespa’d off into the sunset, in came stacey and dave.

stacey’s from connecticut, speaks mandarin chinese, has been couchsurfing since 2007, just finished school and is on her way to china to teach english for a year. dave’s from london, has hosted a gazillion couchsurfers there (been in since 2006), does volunteer work with the homeless, and pretty much wants to find an abandoned hollow volcano evil supervillian base to live in. hmmm.....

then, after an evening or two of local beer and fun conversation, they were off on the rest of their summer balkans tour.

gloria, daniele and the vespa tour

when i heard that gloria and daniele, 2 couchsurfers from bergamo italy, were travelling through eastern europe on a vespa scooter - well a knockoff made in india - i knew i had to host them.

ok, so they may be a bit crazy what with the whole travelling around on a little teeny motorscooter with two people and a bunch of luggage thing, but they're also pretty resourceful cooks and they managed to put together a yummy italian dinner for us despite our woeful lack ingredients...

the end of naked july and the beginning of fun-with-vestibular-neuritis august

vestibular neuritis. gotta love it. this bout was a doozy. kept me in bed for a week.

how can you go wrongwith with tuna, peas and rice?

weird, just weird

look what i stumbled upon tonight.

it's kinda weird to see conan o'brien in budva, just squeezed in there amongst the montenegrin, serbian, croatian and german television shows...

naked july

so when i proclaimed this past month "naked july" i had no idea that it really was naked july... in chicago.

july started out hot and muggy and just kept getting hotter and muggier. you never really dried off after getting out of the shower, and a couple of quick showers a day was a necessity. so why bother getting dressed at all? thus begun naked july.

amaretto cookies and balsamic vinegar!

we bid a fond farewell to our couchsurfers davide, margherita and cristina from bergamo, italy today. and although we'll miss them, we have the amaretto cookies and balsamic vinegar to remember them by. yummmm!

payette is a valley, city and county in idaho and a kayaking couchsurfer from petaluma

...which is only about 10 miles from where i stay when i'm in northern california.

and she came to visit us in budva.

and after leaving us she made her way to kolašin, montenegro where rumor has it she had quite the lovely time.... and then to my favorite place in bosnia where rumor has it (oh, i have my sources...) that she was a huge hit with the local guys.

that makes the 2nd 40-ish solo woman from my old neighborhood passing through here in less than a week! what's happening in california?

like a raft, mf'r

i cling to you like a raft. 
you've seen so much damage yet you're still afloat.

like i've been foundering in an ocean for years,
i pull myself up onto you and sink in, finally able to breathe.

sveti stefan redux

blue water...


dribbly rock formations...


and a mythic tree root