The Dharmahouse: getting back to nature and almost meeting Radiohead

(the view from the Dharmahouse lenigh)

June 14 - 20

I learned of the Dharmahouse online on one of my favorite sites - Idealist.org (good source for all things in the non-profit sector). They´re located in this small town in the south of France and are in amidst the Cezannes Mountains. They have organized retreats but in between you can stay there and meditate, play in nature and and help out around the house. Very nice change of pace.

To get there I had to take a two trains and a bus. My overall trip was made two hours longer because the second train didn´t have any seats left so I would arrive at 8pm instead of 6. It was only during the last leg of the journey, on the bus, that I began to wonder about how exactly I would get from the bus stop/train station to the Dharmahouse.

The website had been very specific about directions up until the point of saying that the nearest town was St Ambroix. I had kind of assumed this meant that it would be walking distance once I got there but I realized that I didn´t have walking directions and it was getting obvious that we were definitely headed into the middle of nowhere. I pictured myself wandering around this town asking random french people if they had heard of this place, the Dharmahouse. I tried not to worry and decided I would just figure it out when I got dropped off.

The bus stop didn´t appear to be near much of anything. There were a few women getting off at the same stop so I started asking them if they were familiar with the area. Turns out one of them, Trish, was also headed for the Dharmahouse and had reserved a taxi, which was necessary to get there! (So my late train put me in at the same time as the only other person headed up that day. This is why I don´t believe in coincidences. I love when things work out in a way that is more perfect than anything you could plan. Not coicidence: Meant to be.)

So I spent five days with the Dharmahouse crew which was 6 people while I was there. Of course let me not forget to mention the Dharmahouse Madame, which was a black cat who happened to be named Lily (Katie she looks just like a kitten Mischief!).

We woke up to meditate for an hour each day at 7 and had "noble silence" through breakfast. For three hours in the morning and again in the late afternoon (after a lunch and a siesta) we worked on projects around the house and on the land. There was another hour meditation in the evening and then volunteers took turns each evening cooking dinner for everyone.

Not a bad way to spend time...trudging around in rivers, picking wildflower bouquets, washing clothes in a bucket outside, carting rocks around, debating whether to brave the compost toilet ("Thunder Box Saloon") and picking greens from the garden for salad. These days were spent with some really beautiful people.

Nick, the former punk rocker who currently runs the Dharmahouse most of the time, informed us my second night there that someone from the band Radiohead had emailed him to ask if they might be able to bring their composting to the Dharmahouse because they were touring around France with about 60 people´s worth of organic waste. Ha! Of course he told them that would be fine, and there were brief dreams of meeting the bandmates and jamming out on the Dharmahouse lenigh.....unfortunately they never did turn up :(

Nice to know that they are friends of green though!

The views all around the house were really breathtaking. Mountains in every direction you looked. I heard a real cuckoo for my first time....I don´t know that I realized there was a real one outside of the ones that you used to see in cartoon clocks.

So I had planned to head for Barcelona, Spain, on Friday the 20th after my rest at the Dharmahouse. Half my visit there had passed and I hadn´t even started to make arrangements for travel to get to Spain. I was also finding out that there was some truth behind what everyone in Marseille had been telling me, that it was very difficult to find a couch to surf in Barcelona. It was starting to seem that I might have to actually resort to staying in a - GASP - Hostel!

As luck or whatever would have it, a fellow Dharmahouser, Kieran from Galway, was planning to leave to visit a friend in Barcelona on Friday as well! So I booked the same trains as him, and he even offered to call his friend to see if I could also stay at his place. As Smash would say....Good Times!

So it´s on to Spain! The next portion of my travels will be significantly more difficult as I will no longer be in places where I speak the language.

Alors, au revoir la France........à la prochaine j´èspére

PS I just wanted to say to friends and fam, thanks for the comments! I think of you often and it´s really nice to read words from you. Miss you.

Marseille Cont´d: Leashed bird guides at Les Calanques and expert french lessons

Since my visit in Paris, I´ve been hearing about Marseille´s famed Calanques. They get described to me in french a couple times, by people in Paris and then in Lyon but I still don´t quite understand what I´ll be going to see when I visit them. Like a jerk, I forgot my camera that day but this photo actually appears to be the particular calanque that I visited.



Calanques literally means "creeks" but as you can see from the photo, that doesn´t quite sum it up. Marseille, and also Cassis just down the road, has rocky cliffs along the sea and there are these little inlets that you can climb down into.

I went on my own and forgot the directions (normal) so was a bit unsure of what I was doing to get there. Luckily I´m never to proud to ask for directions, because I know I inevitably need them. I took the metro to a certain stop and picked up a bus line which I rode to the very last stop. The bus driver pointed in the direction of a hill so I started walking.

It was really nice to be on my own this day. I had heard that it was about an hour hike down into the calanques and that in general it was a pretty physically intense feat so I was a bit surprised to see an old woman walking up ahead of me. I´m not saying that old biddies cannot hike, but she didn´t look like she was geared up for hiking down rocky hills on this particular day. I ended up walking next to her and noticed when she greeted me that she had a black bird perched on her hand, with a red leash attached to his foot from her wrist.

The woman spoke perfect french but was just visiting from Madrid. When I asked her about the bird and if it could fly, she replied that of course it could and flicked her wrist to start him going. Unfortunately for him the leash had only about a 5 foot lead so he reached the limit and when his foot caught, he returned to her wrist. Mean trick. I asked her if she thought he minded being leashed and she said simply that of course he did, and that she was sure that he hated her right now.

She walked me up to the viewing place and turned back after pointing me in the direction of a specific calanque. The scenery was indescribable and just kept getting better the further down into the inlet I got. There are beautiful paths most of the way and then some rockish climbing for shortcuts. Once down in the inlet there are different little beaches where you can sit out on the rocks and go for a swim in some very cold but perfectly clear turquoise water. This was a very good day.

I still haven´t figured out why, but when i was floating and my ears were under water, it sounded like rice crispies. You know, like snap crackle and pop. True story.

On my last night in Marseille after my day in the calanque I was definitely exhausted so I ended up hanging out with Ludo´s girls and watching Edward Scissorhands in french. Antoinelle and I started talking and ended up having a french pronunciation lesson which was hillarious. We spent a good bit of time doing french R´s (the reason why my KReid loves the language so much!). She was sitting there and explaining in french about the vibration and going back in forth with me doing r´s. Some kind of symphony that was.

The next morning we were having breakfast and I found out that the thing she had been working on so diligently the night before was a french grammar quiz for me! This was probably one of the sweetest things that´s happened so far. We sat for an hour or so and she explained different concepts to me, gave me little quizzes and corrected them for me. 58 out of 68. Je ne suis pas completement nul en francais! (:

Marseille: France´s oldest capitol has flying babies gone wild

June 9-14

Okay, so Marseille. Who wouldn´t love the blue sky and the clear hot sun of this proud city in the south of France? From the minute I stepped out of the train station, I was done for. My host, Ludovique, proudly informed me that Marseille was actually the original capitol of France, hence the national anthem being "Le Marseillaise".

So my host was Ludovique, and her two daughters, Colombine and Antoinelle (12 and 11). We stayed in her flat which was in a neighborhood called Le Panier, just next to Le Vieux Port (the old port - Kev you would´ve been floored to see some of these boats that were stationed in the port. Talk about lifestyles of the rich and famous!).

The first evening I met up with some couchsufers that Ludo knew were getting a drink in her neighborhood. During conversation I heard noises that would seem to have been produced by an infant, but they were coming from the night sky above me. Strange. Zaz, a Marseille CS host, looked at me and Danny Tan from Singapore, and said, they sound like flying babies but it´s actually the seagulls. I swear to you they sound like babies.

During my first full day I walked the city with Danny. We walked all the way up to Notre Dame de La Gard, which is a really beautiful cathedral up on a hill at the highest point in Marseille. I´m not usually affected very profoundly by churches, but this one was really special. One section of walls was made up of huge stones that each had an engraving (some dating back to the 1700´s) that was a thanks dedicated by different ships to the cathedral for protecting them on their journeys.

After a while I noticed that I could just faintly hear chanting. So I went looking, hoping to find a group of monk´s locked in vocal meditation of some sort. What a special thing to see! Unfortunately all I found were speakers. Ha. "Put the chants on shuffle on the iPod your Holiness!"

But back to the flying babies. There are two islands off the coast of Marseille - L´Ile D´If and L´Ile de Friole. The Chateau on L´Ile D´If is the one where the Count of Montecristo was kept imprisoned in Dumas´famous tale which has apparently been adapted for cinema 23 times. I took a very fast boat ride out to spend a day visiting the two islands. After checking out the prison chambers in the Chateau D´If (creepy), I wandered around the island for a bit. Those that know me will not be surprised to know that I may or may not have wandered off the set path a bit...

So I´m walking around and hop up on this rock wall and all of the sudden I see these Huge fluffy baby somethings running around making hell of noise. I have just enough time to think to myself, "those are the biggest baby birds I´ve ever seen! Oh they must be baby.." SMACK. It felt like somebody really hit me upside the back of the head. I had made the biggest nature faux pas and gotten too close to animal babies!

PS these seagulls are the biggest ones I´ve ever seen in my life. They really have a wing span of like 4 feet. So picture me, covering my head, running for shelter as this massive seagull circles in the sky above me. Hillarious! I was seriously disappointed when I looked around and saw no witnesses. Really, did NO ONE just see me get divebombed by a bird?? My friend Annie would say she told me so. She hates birds for what I thought were always silly reasons. No longer.

Lyon: Rivers, music and candy parties!

Some brief words on my 5 day stay in Lyon before I move on to hillarious stories about Marseille (:

My couchsurfer in Lyon was a music - singing - teacher named Yann Marek, originally from Paris. He was great and eventhough my later-than-expected train didn't get into Lyon until midnight, he greeted me with couscous and conversation!

Another couchsurfer, Ellen from Canana (eh?!), shared the "couch" with me for the next few days and she and I had a lot of fun touring around Old Lyon. France has a rental bike system that's amazing and I actually think they might be starting one in DC so I hope that it will catch on like it has here. Seeing the city by bike was a blast!

Ellen and Yann both play the guitar so that first night the three of us just sat around drinking wine and playing music...very nice moments.

Oh, I made a faux pas that gave us good laughs for the next couple days. I got seriously reprimanded at a fruit market. Okay, let me first say that this man was abnormally protective of his fruits and veggies. Also I think he just didn't like me in particular. So there Ellen is, pawing through the fruits at this market...then I got to pick up a peach and smell it and he starts in on me. Here's a brief recap of what he said to me in french:

"Don't touch the peaches! I'm saying it to be nice you know, I'm not mean....don't touch the peaches! Don't get upset though, I'm just saying it but I'm not being mean! But seriously, don't touch the peaches!"

I don't know if it's as funny now, but in the moment it was because he was going on and on and I was just standing there staring at him, like...okay I really don't care about your peaches, it's okay, I just want to eat some but you can pick them it's really okay. haha. It was just really funny because there Ellen was picking around and she doesn't speak french but then when I pick up just one peach..anyway maybe it's one of those "you had to be there" kind of things.

So the couchsurfing community is very tight in Lyon so we definitely went to some parties (:
I will leave the details out but there was another night spent on the Rhone River on a peniche (the french love their party boats!) and then a birthday party with the theme: "eat me". So everybody was supposed to look like or to wear something foodlike. There was candy everywhere! Pretty much everyone resorted to candy of some sort strung around their necks. PS French marshmellows taste better. I don't know if that's how you spell marshmellows.

So there were like 30 or 40 people crammed into this itty bitty french apartment, and I have no idea how it really could be true but we were there dancing drinking singing for 7 hours! Met all kinds of fun people - there were two young girls (19 or 20) who had hitchhiked all the way to Lyon from their homes in Estonia! Don't worry momma, I'm really not tempted by that (:

There was a great moment during this party when somebody started singing this french song called Melissa, by a singer named Julien Clerc. I've had this happen a couple times when I was studying in Paris, I'd meet somebody and they would break out into song when I told them my name. It's apparently a song about Melissa from Ibiza who walks around all the time in the nude, completely innocently. ha. I wanted to put it in here, but YouTube didn't have a great video of it.

So before you know it there are like 15 people singing this song! That was a great moment (:

Lyon is a beautiful and amazing city. I didn't have a lot of luck with weather but once things did clear up, I saw the city come alive. The rivers - the Rhone and the Saone - are very popular places to hang out and they have great paved roadways all along. I would not have minded staying longer, but it was time to head to...Marseille! To the sun and blue sky of the south of France!

Moments in a limbo space

I have some catching up to do!

I will not include too many details about my extra day in Paris, because there's too much to say about that...but it was an amazing experience. It's completely surreal to sit in front of someone that you haven't seen in 3 years and to pick up right where you left off! It was a difficult and beautiful time. This will only make sense to a few, but just had to make note that I finally got to hear in person a song called "las consequencias de tu intimidad". This is a very special song to me and to have it played on the guitar and sang to me was almost too much!

Ezequiel and I both agree that we don't believe in coincidences, but regardless the timing is both great and aweful. I will leave it at that for now.

par hasard

well. so where to begin about Paris?

Well first of all, I know some (maybe many!) people will think that the idea of Couchsurfing is crazy but I have to tell you, I don't plan to do my travelling from here on out any other way!

Here's what the Couchsurfing project is about, in their own words:


The CouchSurfing 2.0 Mission
Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time

CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding.
As a community we strive to do our individual and collective parts to make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal.
CouchSurfing is not about the furniture, not just about finding free accommodations around the world; it's about making connections worldwide. We make the world a better place by opening our homes, our hearts, and our lives. We open our minds and welcome the knowledge that cultural exchange makes available. We create deep and meaningful connections that cross oceans, continents and cultures. CouchSurfing wants to change not only the way we travel, but how we relate to the world!
http://www.couchsurfing.com/about.html


And it's magic. I got to Paris and found out how difficult, and expensive, it was to find a hostel so I found some interesting profiles on the site of people who live in Paris and sent them messages...they all wrote back and all of the sudden I had places to stay and new friends to meet! I arrived at my host Sam's apartment and the minute that he got home, we hopped on bikes and rode to his improv theatre practice. French people doing improv=awesome. The nice thing about improv is that even if you can't understand everything that's going on, it's still HILLARIOUS!

We got drinks with his friends afterwards, I met the other guy with whom I would share Sam's couch - Jesse from SanFran - and we had a blast! Over these past few days there has been dancing, cooking, partying on a boat on the Seine, Rockband with wigs on, a picnic, etc. This is the real Paris. I could not find these things or have these amazing experiences without having this organization (I should do a commercial)

It's amazing what can happen when you reach out to people. I'm discovering more and more that in general, people have such a capacity for kindness and generosity it's unbelievable. I've met several couchsurfers now and so far they're all great! Some of these people have really been all over the world... this is a different kind of living than what we see in general in the states.

Incidentally, the world it seems, is rather small and clever. My current couch neighbor, Delphin, and I, were walking down Rue de Moufftarde to a bar for a CS meeting yesterday evening, and who should I see walking along the opposite way but my long lost friend Ezequiel? This is a very unusual coincidence, it has been 3 years since we last saw each other here in Paris. I didn't think he lived here anymore, and I know he would never have thought to run into me here!

My plan was to leave for Lyon today, but I think I will stay another day or 2..