Back in the summer when I was morose pretty much all of the time, going through some kind of Paris hangover slash end-of-the-dream grieving process in which I rejected all aspects of my life...I went to the doctor for a check-up.
My doctor went to med school with my mom. She is the only family friend who sees me naked on an annual basis.
This year as she listened to my heartbeat and asked me to breathe in and hold, I started sobbing. So rather than check for heart murmurs, she spent the rest of the appointment handing me Kleenex. After a particularly snot-nosed soliloquy about how I didn't know what to do now that I was back from Paris and I felt trapped and I wanted adventure and blah blah so confused blah, she said,"You want to write and travel." And I stared at her while she snapped my folder shut and stood up. "Do that," she said, nodding once and leaving me in stunned silence.
It really was that simple. That was exactly what I wanted. A few weeks later, I attended the week-long residency in Banff. Not exactly exotic, but writing and traveling nonetheless. And then I spent the entire fall season driving to microscopic podunk Alberta towns while Boyfriend worked in the field and I holed up in hotel rooms to write.
So, the need to be specific comes to mind at this juncture. Because Cold Lake was NOT what I had in mind when I imagined myself writing and traveling. However, it is kind of neat to realize that I did get if not what I wanted, at least what I asked for.
Recently, I've started to think about traveling further afield. I've been making moves towards returning to Paris to write the second draft of my novel/memoir. I've started lobbing emails to Craig's List roommate ads and shopping around for plane tickets. But I've had trouble actually committing to anything solid. This is partly because I haven't sold my car yet and therefore technically have no effing money whatsoever, but there is something else. Something vague that I can't put my finger on just yet.
And in one of these moments of vagueness late last week, an email popped into my inbox with the mouthwatering subject line: Got Your Passport Handy? Inside was a message from an old colleague telling me that he realized I was on my way to Gay Paree, but there was this little project that he thought I'd be great for. It's a photo/story documentary to be shown in galleries in which I would travel with a photographer to document the impact of clean water projects on the people of Haiti, Zambia and India.
Let me just repeat that: Haiti. Zambia. India.
Aw hell, one more time:
VOODOO-TASTIC HAITI
ZAMBIA-AS-IN-AFRICA
INDIA (MY SECRET COUNTRY CRUSH)
Can you freaking IMAGINE?! Of course, my family members are shrieking as they read this, thinking I'm going to die in Haitian militia cross-fire or get bombed in the Mumbai airport. And of course, I don't actually know what my chances of getting chosen are because the project leader is off until January 5th. But the very existence of a project this incredible – not to mention the possibility of being involved with it myself – makes my stomach do flip-flops.
Not to mention the absolute RANDOMNESS of receiving a gift like that in my inbox. I mean, Viagra ads, you expect. Opportunities to travel the world and write, you don't. But what the hell, maybe you should.
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