Dearest ones,
It's been too long. I'm sorry. What a slacker I've been. Okay, not true. I actually had many, many deadlines last week and then needed some time to recover.
I have been in LA for 3 months! It's been a period of adventure, exploration, discovery (self and other), learning, working, meeting people, being uncomfortable, learning to be okay with being uncomfortable, carving out a home, tentatively taking root, hello's, goodbye's, homesickness, melancholia, elation... I could go on and on.
Let's see if I can open a window for the butterflies.
Moving to LA was difficult and easy at the same time. Easy because I had reached a point where I was feeling cramped in Johannesburg. My feet were itching and I needed to push through the glass walls and ceilings. This adventure has broken open the shutters and flooded my everything with sunshine and a cool, sweet breeze. I read in some book or other that the shift from home to Elsewhere is like the shift from being in a cramped room and trying to rearrange the furniture but having no space to do so, to being a big room, or indeed outside, and being able to arrange the furniture any which-way you choose. I can move my furniture once more, and stretch my legs, and breathe easily. So I spent the first few months breathing freely and exploring, and being enchanted by everything. That was the easy bit.
The difficult bits, besides the actual picking up and moving, which was hella daunting, are the homesickness for times and places that don't really exist anymore, and the way that moving the furniture has stirred up the dust, bringing to my attention things that have lain sedentary and hidden for much too long, and need to be dealt with, like the fact that I really don't deal well with being outside of my comfort zone, and learning to be comfortable with discomfort. I'm getting better at it. I'm also getting better at just letting things unfold, and waiting and seeing, and trying to find the tricky balance between that and hustling for what I want.
What I'm truly loving is pushing myself at school, and seeing how much I've gained from working at SECTION27. I'm capable of a lot more than I realised in my last degree. Seeing that, and pushing up against my limits is daunting but exciting. I want to see what I can do if I push, but I'm scared of discovering my real limitations. Self-sabotage is often so easy, so tempting.
Thanksgiving is in less than two weeks, and I'll save my gratitude for a post on that, but I will say that I am so terribly grateful for this opportunity, and exposure to the incredible people and experiences here. In the past week alone, I attended talks by Melinda Gates and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Racism. My projects at school are fascinating, and involve international NGOs and public interest litigation, and then of course there's IJP. My professors are incredible thoughtleaders. My peers are intimidatingly smart and I'm learning as much from them as I do from my readings and professors. I feel so privileged to be here, so lucky, and so grateful.
In other news, I visited John in Santa Barbara this weekend. I took the train up on Friday afternoon, and watched the sun set over the mirror.flat sea. Santa Barbara is beautiful, a small coastal town, without any highrise buildings. All of the architecture is Spanish-influenced, so it's noticeably in theme. I visited the Farmers' Market on Saturday morning, and strolled through the organic produce listening to a cute guy sing covers of Johnny Cash and marveling at the berries and rainbow coloured swiss chard and beautiful flowers. We also drove into wine country, through tiny, quaint towns reminiscent of every small town seen in any American movie ever, including Solvang, a complete replica of a Danish town, right down to its Danish pastries. Last night I saw Foster the People live at the Santa Barbara Bowl - they were excellent. If you ever get a chance to see them, do. Finally, today, after a beach run in the early morning, we headed through to Hollywood to catch Kinky Boots, a musical, at the Pantages Theatre. Just another weekend on the trot. It's been a while since I've done any exploring and it felt good to stretch my legs, and to ride a train. Below are some photos. Have a look-see.
Much love all the way from my Westwood corner.
xx
