9 Things I recommend to everyone

9. Planet Earth: I'm awestruck by the natural world, and this colorful series gave me hours of wonder. "Caves" is my favorite episode because I've been in caves maybe twice, but mostly the series gives us a closer look at climates I thought I knew. Also, the photography will knock your socks off.

8. Jackson Browne: Amazing musician. Few people can make poetry with both words and notes. He can, and makes it seem easy. He also writes about subjects most people don't (aka not love).

7. Tribal belly dance: It rocks! You feel grounded doing it, it's about dancing with other women rather than performing, and the music is more of a fusion: mixed traditional and techno or rock. Plus the costumes are colorful and not too sequin-y. 

6. Political commentators:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, a blogger and writer for the Atlantic. Always makes me think.  http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/
• Rachel Maddow, I'm so glad she has her own show that I can watch it on itunes. Smart, fun, interesting.
• Keith Olbermann, I like him almost as much as Rachel. More smart commentary if you're solidly liberal. 
• The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, it is commercial free and goes more in-depth than other news shows. Discussion of issues on the news? No way!
• Fresh Air on NPR, Terry Gross is always talking about a book or issue that I've never heard of but find fascinating.

5. The Gift, a collection of mystic poetry by Hafiz: His poems are so playful and full of meaning. Uplifting for the bad times, joyful for good times. 

4. Milk: makes me want to fight -phobias; makes me believe in love. 

3. Anything by Malcolm Gladwell: He'll dazzle you with his writing. He'll make you love sociology as much as he does. He'll make you rethink everything.

2. The Corporation: This documentary is great if you want to be angry. Admittedly one-sided, but still insightful and informative. 

And the thing I would recommend for all other world-traveling book-loving twenty-somethings: 

1. China Road: Rob Gifford is a great writer with a British wit and years of experience in China. Not only a bisection and examination of this gi-normous country, also one of the most epic road trips ever. 

Yo soy

Call me Hannah. That's my name. I'm horrible at talking about myself, and I want to just list my attributes, but that doesn't tell you much. So, experiences I've had? Semester in Europe, moving across the country (twice), sleeping in a foreign airport, performing in an elementary school talent show, donating hair to Locks of Love, opening a gig at a coffee house, stage managing two professional plays, listening to Basque poetry, working at an AIDS foundation, belly dancing with some great women. Someday I'd love to: bungee jump.

My big personal project right now is being more honest about who I am, with myself and the people around me. It's still pretty nascent because I'm unsure how or where to start, but it's a puzzle I want to solve. Consequently, I've rewritten this post five times to be less fake. I'm kind of a writer in that I write a lot--it's almost a tick rather than something focused. It's a survival instinct, perhaps.

I'm currently in Portland, OR, and I'm trying to relearn my city. I grew up here, and in some ways it mystifies me that it's so popular. Yeah, it's an awesome place, perhaps the best city for me ever, but how did word get out? I keep meeting people who recently moved here, but I never ask why. Maybe they heard that Portland is cool, which I guess it is. Yeah, we recycle, biking is big, trees trees trees, beautiful, artsy, I know. But how did the Pearl get so trendy, the Eastside get so funky and cool, how did no one else come up with Voodoo Donuts first, when did North Portland become it's own neighborhood? How can all these disparate pieces be so close together? I guess that's the conundrum of cities, but somehow it feels like these are awfully close. I'd like to explore the city, but I need a partner in crime. I've done with solo exploration for now. Still, I'm not traveling geographically, but I'm plumbing the depths of my soul, which is more time-consuming anyway. The world will be there when I'm ready.

"No quiero que mi cara de vieja sea triste." --Angeles Mastretta

Je me presente. . .

Hello, my name is Steve, and I am a (fairly) recent college graduate with artistic aspirations and an addiction to change. *applause, Hello, Steve* I live in France teaching English and told myself before I moved here that I would have written a book by the time my contract was through (in a little less than a month now), I would have learned to play the guitar, and I would have mastered the French language. I have not written a page of anything particularly book-like, my guitar repertoire is limited to simple chords and the opening chords of Rufus Wainwrights "Gay Messiah" and Zeppelin's "Tangerine". My French is pretty good, and so far I'm not bored by anything here, but I'm already making plans to move to a crowded and polluted corner of ther earth called Jogyakarta. So what is it really that has gotten me here? What keeps me here? Where am I going from here?

I moved here mostly because of someone I was attached to, whose love for me manifested in the hard lessons of non-attachment he dished out for me. After that I cut myself loose from my own problems and went on single, and discovered the people that surrounded me. That alone I am blessed by their company and they are inspirations to me. The people are what keep me here... yeah sure, France is about wine and cheese and fashion, blah blah blah, but lets be real, those things are only worth the taste when you have people to share them with. I'm staying on next year to get a masters degree (thanks France for offering affordable education) because rather than being a "lost boy" in this land, so often dreamed of by hopeful, fashionable vagabonds in love with the 1930's Parisian cliche, I'd rather make my brain do some work. This year of 12 hour work weeks is nothing if not leisurely, but it feels uninspiring (this could just be some American neurosis for productivity that sleeps deep inside me somewhere)... I need a fire under my butt, and the utopian universe of the university is like a nursery for me. This baby's goin back to school!

Since this blog is subtitled as an online bookclub, I'll leave with a quote that felt true to me from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, a 1930's Parisian cliche itself:

. . . [T]he monstrous thing is not that men [sic] have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

He concludes this passage by saying quite literally that life is shit. While that is true, he ignores that very miracle he says we are waiting for, it is right in front of our eyes, that is, that there are roses in the midst of all this shit. Depending on your situation in the quagmire, this is either monstrous or miraculous. I'm a lucky one I guess, where do you stand?

hey assholes (said affectionately)

Why are you wherever you are right now, and why do you think people around you are there too? Are your reasons different or better than theirs? See my most recent blog post for fodder. And if you've been to France: agree? Disagree?

welcome

to a random brainchild, an experiment. My vision: like-minded young 20-somethings connecting online, from all over anywhere, consulting, sharing, and generally being awesome together. I respect and admire everyone who endeavors to be a part of this (even friends of friends who I've never met...feel free to invite anyone along who you think would be a good addition to the mix). We can make up prompts for each other, or shoot questions out there, or this can evolve and morph into...whatever. Everyone can edit and add and change anything: list of favorite websites, blog list, favorite books, or whatever. It can be serious and silly, intellectual or not. To begin: who are you? Where are you? What are you up to?

I'm Annette. I'm in France, right now and for the next few months: L'Isle sur la Sorgue, outside of Avignon, and will be in Biarritz this summer. I'm adventuring: my goal is to teach English on as many continents as possible. Europe: check. Next...? I also figure that I lived approx. the first 22 years of my life in the U.S., so I'm ready to spend the next 22 (or the majority) elsewhere... I'm working hard on living in the moment, enjoying the good life right now (friends, wine, food, fun, random adventures, being more spontaneous and having to have everything planned out), and not worrying too much about my next step, or where I'm going to be in 1, 5, 10 years, or how I'm measuring up to the other people in my high school graduating class. Easier said than done.

"Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it." -Kahlil Gibran