Having been a few places in my time, folks often ask me what my favorite country is. For this, I don't have a simple answer but fortunately, I don't think anyone is looking for a simple answer. I generally have two (three, four) suggestions: the Slovak/Polish High Tatra mountains, my former home Iceland, Tasmania for obvious and surprising reasons, and Laos.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting pretzel-legged on a deck that overlooked the Mekong river, chatting with some new friends. I don't really remember what particular poison was being passed around nor which card games were being played, nor do I remember which melodies were wafting through the air. Instead, I remember our piles of sandals lining the deck and that I was just really happy to be there.
Down the street, we could pay about a dollar fifty for a plastic bowl filled to the brim with whatever delicious, unidentifiable, mushy foods we could fit inside. We would stroll through the market, stopping for coconut pancakes or to speak with young students learning English, running our fingers through wooden windchimes and ending our evening with freshly sliced pineapple; juice running down to our elbows every time we took a bite.
Most nights were quiet if you wanted them to be; it was easy to settle in and drift off into a peaceful slumber. But one night, I woke with a start because somebody was pounding on our door and saying something about a "fire" and how we should "get out" and "pack our stuff" and "burning" and "let's go."
I calmly opened the door and walked out onto the deck, and peering through a thin grove of banana tree silhouettes, everyone's beloved Utopia bar was burning -- or rather, being consumed by hungry flames reaching for the stars.
Startled and afraid that the barrier of banana trees would not be sufficient to shield us from any rogue flames, I returned to our room and suggested that we pack our things and move to the street.
When your entire life fits into a backpack, it's surprising how quickly you're able to jam everything inside when push comes to shove. But once we reached the calm nighttime streetscape and threw our backpacks into a pile...what then?
I began to notice a shuffle, a rumble in the otherwise peaceful neighborhood. I saw folks with bins of water running from house to house, spigot to spigot, and heading straight towards the conflagration.
So, I followed.
I ran, barefoot and blind, towards the end of the street where women were handing out bins and running the outdoor faucets. We lined up, filled up, and sprinted as steadily as possible into the flaming structure, so as not to lose too much precious water on the way in.
While I was filling my bin, the woman told me: "We didn't call the fire department." And that's all she said.
Confused, I wondered aloud if maybe someone should? But by the time I formed that thought, my bin was full and I was on my way to the fire. Inside the bar, folks were holding flashlights to light the way for anyone carrying water to the burning balcony. It was slippery, we were barefoot, there were rocks and furniture all askew in the darkness. It was a maze, an obstacle course, a death trap with the flaming light at the end of the tunnel being just as dangerous as what it took to get there. Men from the village were climbing steady beams to get a better vantage point and aim, and we were passing bins of water to whichever one of them needed one.
This went on for what seemed like forever, but it was probably something closer to an hour. Once the flames were under control, we cautiously (but probably not cautiously enough) entered the smoldering structure to snuff out any remaining embers with buckets of water. It seemed unreal to me -- the mighty Mekong was just down the bank, but we didn't have a viable way to pump that water up to where we needed it. We also didn't have a way to involve the fire brigade, because the donated fire trucks were from European towns with much wider streets and they would have never fit down ours.
Instead, it was up to the neighborhood to save the neighborhood. Well, the neighborhood as well as the neighborhood's guests. Apparently not as eventful for the neighborhood as this night was for the neighborhood's guests, the untouched bits of the bar were up and running within a day or two of this catastrophe. The yoga balcony was in shambles, but the pizza oven was back in business, thank the Universe.
But at the end of the night, we returned to our rooms and re-unpacked. We were soaked, we were somehow unburnt, our ankles were miraculously unsprained, and we were filled with adrenaline and pride for a community that, in one fell swoop, became ours.
Here's the point.
I want to always be the kind of person who runs towards the burning building with water, but I also want to always be the kind of person who can lie on a pillow next to a pile of ashes, and sink into my own head while staring at the part of the ceiling that hadn't burned down.
I want to find productivity with my community, but solace within myself.
My vibe over the past few months has turned incredibly inward, in spite of all of the new outward necessary things. Since moving to Oslo I've found a new community but I've also sanctioned a great percentage of my time for myself, and just myself.
A few months ago, my heart broke. Really, really broke and the thing that hurts and sucks is that there was nothing anyone could do. Nobody had done anything wrong. But to salvage whatever I had left looking forward, I decided that it was okay. The things I had needed from that relationship just weren't going to be available moving forward, and I would have to find them somewhere else.
Grief is nonlinear. Fortunately, life is nonlinear so mathematically, that means that there exists a nonzero chance that at some point, my nonlinear grief and nonlinear life cancel each other out. Unfortunately, though, there's pretty much an equal chance that they'll constructively interfere and in that case, I will never stop crying.
Either way, whether it's because I've reframed my needs or met a ghost or that I'm killing it at work or got a new therapist that I adore, I've decided that I don't want to fall in love right now. Nevermind romantic love; I don't want to fall in platonic love for a little while. Just until it's right again. Just for some quiet. Instead, I want to learn how to better self-soothe, manage, survive without so much heavy reliance.
I just want a tiny quiet space, and it has to be okay if that tiny quiet space occupies the, as I've said before, vast and nebulous real estate inside my own head. I enjoy spending time in my room and singing Icelandic lullabies to myself while I do the dishes. I enjoy rest, and I have time for it. I do not need to be tougher; I need more peace. I need foundation work and to understand my wide extroversion but more importantly, my deep introversion. I want to be free.
I can be free now.
