Shelter Half

Shelter-Half

NYC

After a 2 year stint, I found myself back in NYC for New Year's Eve. It was a quite epic trip with family coming in from Los Angeles, Atlanta, and San Francisco. After scouring the various hotels that could accommodate a big group at a reasonable price, we opted on renting out a two-story apartment with a back garden and a rooftop via airbnb. It was smack in the middle of East Williamsburg and a few blocks away from my old studio loft space. It felt familiar and distant. The apartment was owned by a creative couple, one in music and the other in fashion. In a word, their apartment was sensory. Every piece of the apartment seemed thoughtful, slightly quirky, and attached to a story. The apartment was comfortable and cozy and piqued my curiosity throughout. I would not mind staying again at their humble abode and recommending it to friends.

Being back on the subway and on the streets again brought back some introspection as I gathered my thoughts about the city. I equated New York City to an abusive relationship you just couldn't get out of. One that you know is not good for you and you want to leave yet there's something about them that keeps drawing you to them. A bit sadistic. You put up with their abuse because you see a light at the end of the tunnel. That beyond the random things thrown at you on a daily basis, you can see yourself getting stronger and wiser as your relationship deepens. You're hoping that the abuse will subside and you can learn to love each other fully, yet it always seems just out of your grasp. You tell yourself that it's unhealthy though you are captivated by the connection you share. I had to ween myself off New York. Distance myself. Forget about it's quirks and things that I was drawn to. I convinced myself I was over the city.

Yet two years later, I found myself among the highrises and the characters scattered among the sidewalks and the subway. I found myself roaming the streets late at night from one place to the next, to one scene to the next, soaking up everything like it was my last night out before heading home. The trip felt like one long day where I didn't know where the last left off and the next began. The days were marked by the routine to the shower- cleansing myself from the night before, preparing myself for what the next day would bring. The trip was vices I found so familiar from the indulgences of food and liquor to the quiet subway crushes between stops and between bars. Transience was settling back into my system and I remembered that individualism reigned supreme in this city. Thoughts about how smothering and alone the city could be at the same time triggered my synapses. Though as lonely and how extreme the city had pushed me, it pushed me. It made me feel alive and that something was real. Life was real. I could feel the weather, the people, the noise, the city itself. Everything had a purpose. And me being intertwined within the synergy of the city made me feel like I also had a purpose.

....

GETTING WEIRD IN JAPAN

Japan has a special sense of nostalgia for me. Back in 2003 it was the trip that told me there was a world outside America and ways to live beyond the 'American' way. I had never traveled solo before and it showed me how to travel and be on your own. It is the trip that kept me from leaving my school and the one where I met people who encouraged being outside the bubble. I find coming from growing up in a suburbia it is hard to break free from that comfort, but the trip trumped that feeling. The trip could be defined by my sensei who told us to "go out for the night and come back with a story." Being back this past year was strange. It was the first trip I had been to in awhile with a fellow traveler. Two weeks into the trip, I started to feel the need for home. Like homesickness, but more in the sense that you want to feel the world around you is a part of you. You need to feel like where you currently are is your home for sake of sanity. The cliche of 'home is where the heart is' never rang truer.

The thirst for wonder was exchanged for thirst of settling in. I was treating Japan as not pass through tourism, but parallel living. Living a life I had somewhere else in somewhere new. I did things I would do at home. I ran the streets for fitness sake. I explored the canals of Kyoto on bicycle. I opted not to see museums in exchange for roaming around the parks in the morning. It may not have been the best experience for someone's first time, but for me, it was what I needed.

Regardless of what experience I sought, I had a wonderful time in good company. The food quality is the best I've ever experienced across the gamut of different varieties and flavors (possibly due to the density of the city, the attention to detail and effiiciency in Japanese culture, and the underlying need to survive and stand out as a new business in a large city) and the culture itself was refreshing. There was an appreciation for beauty, a respect for design, and a polite welcoming spirit found throughout the city.

 

INDIA

Time in India was the biggest culture shock for me. It's funny how it seems to be many a woman's mecca journey for soul satiation and self discovery. I met her in a time where she was in the middle of such an excursion. It had been awhile since my last trip and as wanderlustful I had been at times, I was in a different place so it took me a bit to warm up to new adventure. India was an eye opening experience due to how vast the land is yet how dense the population is at the same time.

New Delhi was a clusterfuck of pollution and intrusion as personal space was limited far greater than anything I had seen in New York. We stayed mostly in the backpacker's district where streets were unkempt and everyone thought she was Japanese in an effort to relate, when in reality it festered a quiet resentment towards ignorance.

I found beauty outside the confines of the capital which most of these pictures encapsulate. My favorite place being a spot called Hampi which lay in the south. A boulderer's paradise, it reminded me of Pride Rock from the Lion King. The area we stayed required crossing a river by a single boat which ran infrequent. Visitors and locals alike would pile into a small boat and be ushered across to the other side though a few adventuresome folk would dare to cross the river via stepping stones that were sparse and unmarked. More than likely you would be submerged into the water if you went this route.

We spent most of the day fighting the scorching heat via renting a motorbike and weaving through the city. She held tight behind me as I worked my way through the dirt roads and aqueducts. We drank masala chai looking over pride rock as the sun set across the horizon. We found a tipi large enough to hold 30 backpackers under its shelter and was encouraged. The nights were spent mostly at the hippie cafe that would serve Western food with island drinks over conversations about life inside and outside the present. The population was so small and the people were trusting. You could leave and come back to pay if you forgot your money. You could pay the next day. Money was negligible and karma was currency. I became fascinated with the energy of the bar. Music would be the type found in a downtempo Eastern European bar. I conversed with a Swedish furniture maker about his life living on a docked boat and his aspirations of becoming a dj with his ipad. We bonded over the sample Warren G. used on "Regulate."

The simple life experienced here was humbling. Life was lived simply with nothing more and nothing less. They were driven to be happy, and no other motivator was needed. Not money. Not power. Not fame. Life was simply being present with the moment.