the passport

After nearly seven years of traveling pretty continuously--a journey that I started chronicling in this very blog--and priding myself on having the whole life-on-the-road thing down, my bag was stolen and with it my valid ID, including my passport, and most of my credit cards. With about 16 days before my departure date from Cairo, I hit a new level of pre-travel stress.

I was bummed about the expense and, most of all, the inconvenience: the hours of dealing with local police, the US embassy, Philippine call centers to cancel and reorder credit cards which I had just recently activated, and chaotic Egyptian government offices to secure an entry stamp for a fresh US passport. I skipped practice and found myself irritable with those tasked to help me, I ran around the last couple of weeks in the hot Cairean summer using up all my stored-up yoga cool. I was upset and, then, upset about being upset.

I vacillated between being hard on myself for carelessly leaving my bag just lying around in an apartment and being spitefully angry at the thief who must've seen it through the open window while the flat was unattended.

Ultimately, I was having difficulty with loosing control—and, I know I’m not alone with this being a biggie. I was pulled out of a safe and steady rhythm. I was out of my comfort zone--and hadn't been challenged in this way for a very long time. As much as I would love to be all Zen about it, I have not been blessed with that uncanny ability to relax into difficult situations, finding receptivity towards calm and peace loving solutions the way we might expect a good yogi to. The truth is situations like these put me on the defensive, my fists tightly closed, arms close to the body, ready to block any more punches.

Also, I was attached to the passport itself. It had been my companion, my gateway (eternally grateful for the ease of travel that comes with an American passport) and witness.

Accidents and thefts, they are determined by so many factors. Still, I blamed myself for being so casual with such precious cargo, shouldn't I have known better? Haven't I been traveling for some time? The truth, however, is that since I'd arrived in Egypt at the end of last year, I wasn't exactly traveling but I wasn't settled either. I was in my own limbo, going from month to month with an idea of moving on but with little initiative to do so. Each month, students asked if it would be my last. Offers to teach elsewhere came and went, but I wasn't actually budging. 

Since packing up my life in the Philippines, I started to seriously travel in 2011. After my first Mysore trip, my life turned fluid. My lost passport, issued that same year, was a testament of it. I went where I was invited because the truth is I didn't know where to go myself. I only knew that I didn't feel right living where I was last living. But as to where I belonged, I didn't have the slightest clue. I felt like I was looking for a home but the more I traveled the more conceptual "home" became. When my father went to visit my sister in NY, I tagged along. When a boyfriend went to teach in Europe, I followed. Once the yoga school opened in Mysore, I would go there to study with my teacher. When it was time, I'd go home to the Philippines, usually when I was tired or broken-hearted, because, as it turns out, we cannot live in other people. And, when I started to teach, I went where I was asked, wherever there was work, wherever there were students. 

After some time of not having a home of my own, I started working on making peace with myself, so that I could be at home with myself--an amazing but difficult process. I even tried to put down roots in the Bay Area during this time. By that point, it was already 2015 and I was travel weary, often getting sick while transitioning from one country to the next.  Living in one place turned out to not be so easy for me, either. After the years of movement, I couldn't quite stomach the stillness. It put me in such close contact with my own loneliness, my longing, and my fears of failure that after only 8 months (the longest I'd been stationary in the last 7 years), I jumped right back into my comfort zone with absolute gusto: I packed my bags, freed myself up to go to Mysore and then spent the next year studying and teaching and wholeheartedly filling my passport with stamps.

There is a part of me that grieves for the stolen passport with its worn cover and its bulk of extension pages. It chronicled my life, a collection of entry and exit stamps, it was a story of movement, adventure, discovery and healing—some of it sad, it’s true, but much of it incredibly soft and gracious. But I also recognize the symbolic significance of these fresh unmarked pages—that it is time for something different, to let go of those old stories, which I have been so attached to. I will most likely always be a traveler but I would like to identify less with where my life is lived and more with how I am living it. Sometimes, we need to loose who we believe ourselves to be in order to make room for who we are becoming, that way a new journey can begin.

A couple of weeks before loosing my passport, I decided I would return to Cairo at the end of the summer to continue to grow the program that I haphazardly started over a year ago, to also grow my relationships with the people I love there and, in tandem, to grow myself too. It's a mighty frightening thing for one so fluid to chose a clear and determined path, but it's definitely time.

As much as I would have liked to avoid the inconvenience of loosing my old passport, the new clean passport reminds me to not fall into old patterns, to not retreat into the allure of travel and adventure, that the most precious sights are to be found inside, and, that for me, right now, that means planting roots.

So I go now, with my new passport, to satisfy my still-unwavering wanderlust and likewise my need for inspiration and learning. I travel now to teach, to visit with friends, to plug into the vibrant ashtanga community in Europe and at the end of the two months to see my teacher in his workshop in London. And then I will go back to my own life where I will work to find all those things (wanderlust, inspiration, learning) in the everyday interactions with my relations there and the places that I daily inhabit. I have heard that this is how it goes, when one returns home.

search for home

Life on the road...

In the summer of 2011, I sorted through my belongings in Boracay Island where I had nested comfortably for nearly 5 years, selling half of my things and packing up the rest to place into storage in my father’s house in Manila. For me, it was a bold decision; I had plans to visit my sister and mom in the US for the summer and then India in the fall, but beyond that I had no idea, I just had this overwhelming sense that it was time to go, that moving forward also meant leaving the place that I had, for some time, called “home.”

It had occurred to me that in my adulthood I went where I was called, never with any clear intention to put down roots. Living in the Philippines seemed an accident. After university, I originally planned for a year of work and travel in the region, then I lingered, never thinking it was permanent. It took me a couple of years to cancel my health insurance in the US, for example, and nearly seven years to work on my residency in the country where I was born. I accept now that I had chosen to live in the Philippines, but I must admit I wasn’t totally conscious of it.

Where was I to live after studying yoga in India? I didn’t know. Though I love the Philippines, I wasn’t sure if that was where I really belonged. Traveling came with the idea that I was also in search of a home, a home of my deliberate choosing, a place where I could continue to grow and live the way I liked, that suited my needs, which had changed since first moving to the Philippines in my early twenties.

So, I have traveled. Not always to the places where one might expect. A couple of destinations, I have chosen for this purpose, with a real desire to try things out. Though mostly, I have played the “accidental tourist,” ending up in places through forces outside myself, herded here and there through some person or desire to study yoga or work opportunity.

Needless to say, the so-called “search” is still on--I write this while flying between Rome and Cairo.  I have just been in Barcelona for two months, Egypt previous to that, Japan before Egypt, largely driven by work, without forgetting this homeward intention.

At some point, I thought, I would find myself in a place that would click, a community I deeply resonated with, that I would instantly know by the measure of happiness I felt in the place.

The great irony is, of course, I have been happy just about everywhere, many places appealing to one aspect of my personality or the other.

In Japan, for example, I loved the sweetness and the diligence of the students. I liked how everything worked like clockwork, the trains were always on time, there was a certain ease in living. I enjoyed Kyoto particularly, the energy of the river running through the city, musician students practicing along it, hundreds of years-old shrines and temples raising the city’s vibration.

Like a madwoman, I liked Cairo for pretty much the opposite reasons. I struggled with the chaos, lack of infrastructure, and socio-political instability, but recognized that along with that came this incredible spontaneity, like anything can happen—contentiously, not always a good thing—but when it’s good, it’s indescribable. I admired the students for their vibrancy and outspokenness, their ability to revel in the crazy, their resilience amidst insanity. Cairo’s frenetic energy is intense, but I loved how it brought the practice to the everyday.   

And then there was Barcelona, its cool Mediterranean energy in the streets, in the culture, in the students’ practice, the natural warmth of its inhabitants, easy going and friendly, familiar and demonstrative. I loved the people, the opportunities for spiritual exploration and alternative living, the sense of community—it’s at once a big city and a small village. I loved its city landscape, its architecture sandwiched between beach and mountains. 

It seems sometimes that seeing more of the world hasn’t narrowed down my choices, but has alarmingly increased them.

What I’ve started to realize, however, is it’s not so much about searching for a home, but more about choosing one.

The last year of travel, staying at least two months in one place, has shown me that I can be happy pretty much anywhere, that truly "home is where the heart is" and that I can grow pretty much anywhere so long as I stop and relax long enough to lay down roots. That our humanity makes us a different kind of plant, we can grow regardless of the condition of the soil, so like as we like it.

And what of the search? This projection of some future home continues to echo in the recesses of my mind, but living not searching has become more and more important.

For now, I am happy wherever I land. When I arrived in London a week ago, I got a "welcome home" message from my friend of 20 years. When I returned to Barcelona, I was welcomed home by friends who picked me up at the train station. This evening, I landed in Cairo, where I entered my friend's flat, the one I lived in for two months last year, and felt at home. 

When people ask me, "Where do you live?" My answer is not always straightforward. Most of my things are in Manila. I'm from the Philippines. I also grew up in the US. Most of my heart is where I am standing at this very moment, but bits of my heart are also in other places that I've put energy into recently, where I loved, where I have been loved. 

At some point, I reckon, I will choose one place to plant myself, but for now: Where do I live? I guess my best answer, the most honest if not a little supercilious, is I live in the world--and yes, very happily.  

manila madness

Nothing makes sense in Manila. And for what ever reason, everyone seems to be ok with that. Everyone's complicit in their total disregard to the law. All sorts of laws. Legal laws. Rules of engagement. Laws of time and space.

I knew it the moment the plane landed, just a couple of days ago. We'd barely come to a stop when the springy sounds of seat-belts being hastily unbuckled could be heard throughout the cabin and people were springing out of their seats to race--where? to what purpose? The seat-belt sign still lit up. I breathe and think to myself, welcome...home.

I've come home to reconnect with family and friends, to unpack, do laundry and repack for India. "Home" right now is where I have the remainder of "my stuff," which is literally stuffed in my old room at my dad's house. Though its been 5 years since I've lived in this crazy city, I still feel its madness. I come home here regularly to visit family and friends and to plug into modern day urban living--necessary when living on a 7-kilometer island like Boracay for the last 5 years.

And while this trip is short, 6 days left now, I am buzzing with the frenetic energy of a developing city, progress amidst abject poverty, people rushing and yet maintaining a snail's pace, so completely different from America's land of plenty--even in these times of economic instability.

I try not to make judgments--I used to all the time, when comparing my two homelands. The US and the Philippines are just different. Plainly, simply different.

Part of what makes the Philippines special is its difference too. I love the heat, so humid, so sultry this rainy season. My practice yesterday morning was, for me at least, the perfect temperature, flexibility so supported by this beautiful warm air. The warmth is in the people as well. I could feel it instantly coming into the shala where I practice. In comparison, people in the US are so serious.

I love the feeling of festivity that seems so inherent in our culture. It's early October and already there are signs of Christmas. And this flagrant love, nay, obsession, for the holiday is most apparent in my own family home. As I first drove up the decor outside was in full support of the up and coming Hallow's Eve. Inside, however, it is a bizarre Christmas wonderland with garlands, holiday knick-knacks, and trees (yes, plural. I'm almost horrified to admit it, but when I arrived October 6 there were already 2 Christmas trees up, fully decorated. The second tree pictured above is dedicated to my niece, which hopefully explains the Hello Kitty theme). Then there's the little Santas (also plural) from different parts of the world--it must be said that my family does gravitate towards the extreme of the extreme here, but they are tapping into a national consciousness that wholeheartedly embraces Christmas to death.

Its weird to be home. And home is crazy. But if I'm to be completely honest that's what I like the best about it.