JOLENE BRINK

A “short” note before I repack my bags and say goodbye to Paros.

At 2 a.m. tomorrow morning (tonight!) the HISA group will sail to the Greek island of Samos, before passing through customs into Turkey. We’re traveling to Saluck, an “authentic” Turkish town on the Aegean coast (an approximate eight hour drive from Istanbul) where we’ll be ten minutes from Ephesus. Our directors say this Roman site is one the best preserved classical cities in the world. Given weather and conditions, we’ll most likely return to Paros on Monday, October 22nd around midnight and resume classes that same day.

Offda …

This week I’ve been a mole in the photography darkroom, a scribbling poet during my free time and a fledging student of the Tao. On Tuesday afternoon, our group piled into dusty cars and drove to the Tao center in Naoussa. We sat in a semi-circle with a Zen Master, in a dimly lit room full of cushions and bamboo floor mats.

He said, “When you return home, they will sense something is different about you. They will sense that you have changed. You must understand, that the first twenty years of your life should not dictate who you’ll be for the next seventy years of life. You came here with a backpack full of experience and troubles, which you thought were gems. They are really rocks and stones. Let go of them.”

He also spoke about the argument between the head (the brother) and the heart (the sister), which stop us from achieving our goals. We need to find a balance between both, something I think everyone realizes, but rarely acknowledges. It was a cleansing experience, painting this entire week with a different personality, similar to weeks when I have time for yoga.

Afterwards, we went upstairs and ate at a Tai restaurant. I ate a heaping bowl of Pad Tai overlooking the Aegean, sitting with six amazing girlfriends.

I couldn’t say any simpler how happy we were...


Thinking more about the next seventy years…

*I think I want to start a literature/sustainability/poetry magazine, find an internship with an independent publishing company. Maybe work for a larger newspaper…

*I want to publish poetry and pursue a PhD in creative writing or at least an MFA from a well known school (Berkeley? Columbia?)…

*I could do travel writing for a while or I could just travel and work, backpacking in New Zealand for a summer or a coffee shop in London …

*I still want to apply for a Fulbright next spring. I want to study poetry in Armenia or Bosnia for year …

*I want to learn how to cook. Lately I’ve started buying spices and experimenting with vegetables and rice dishes. I want to know how to eggplant taste good and how to bake bread …

*I want to learn how to drive a moped (they’re everywhere here) and do more hiking (even around Minnesota) …

*I’d like to live in a city like San Francisco for a while, but I want to raise a family some place quiet … on a big farm where we could run around in mud boots and grow ridiculously huge gardens, less television and more mess in the kitchen making supper or time taking walks or swatting mosquitoes …

*I want to travel even when I’m old. My favorite tourists are the old couples sitting on benches at the beach. They don’t say a lot, but I can tell they’ve lived a lot.

So I’m off to another country!

My laundry is drying on the porch (everything hand-washed yesterday!) and my stomach is growling for lunch. It's time to be in Greece again ... I’m gratefully amazed at how many responses to this blog I’ve gotten from friends and family.

Thank you so much for your e-mails, every word counts. Good luck with your own journeys, I’ll talk to you soon.

(watch the Gomez video!)