srce moje...tracing the journey.

my beloved is in the process of leaving the Balkans, where he has made his home for the past three years. where I made my home for one glorious, complicated year.  and so my heart is in the process of reminiscing, looking back and letting go of the comfort of having that intimate link to a place i came to love so much, even though it broke my heart sometimes.

thinking of when i first arrived in Sarajevo in the middle of August and was instantly in love with the [wordiness alert, this is from my journal:] "clear sweet sunny days backdropping the gorgeous colorful mountainous landscape and the beautiful multicultural milieu of people in the cafes and goods in the markets and church bells ringing and minarets lighting up at night and imams intoning calls to prayer and the river flowing on and on under many bridges through the middle of it all..."

and the day i made to the journey from Sarajevo to Belgrade, reassuring myself that "as i leave this beautiful scarred city, i know i will survive and maybe even learn to thrive in the one i will soon arrive in... i think i am already growing in my ability to recognize the cyrillic letters and sound things out correctly when i see it.  bouncing inside the bus, through tunnels, alongside rock faces, past pine forests and fern patches, we have now come down from the high hills to a more rolling landscape of fields and small towns. hello hay bales and humble houses and huts. the little trickle that started hugging the road's curves in a shallow ditch a while back has since gradually widened into a lively stream and then a broad channel in a gorge below us - and oh - now we have crossed over it on a bridge and i can no longer see it from my side of the bus, but i know it is still there, feeding this land, quenching the thirst of people and creatures, carving its cool, calm power ever deeper and wider, branching off into new waterways, to spread the gift, the youth, the life."

i didn't always feel very youthful or lively for my first few months there. despite some wonderful moments, overall i felt more like this:

i struggled under some shadows of uncertain expectations and rocky living situations and frequent colds and sickness and feeling like a failure a lot of the time.

sure, i smiled in the sunshiny joy of my language lessons, my daily work of caring for little children with special needs, my mini-adventures of walking and navigating public transportation around the city, and texts like this from my coworkers when i was too sick to go to work: "ok dont vory bi god love you"

but it wasn't until, oh, about November that i finally started feeling comfortable in my skin and surroundings again.  i realize this is fairly typical cross-cultural transition timing, but there were also a few real changes that made a big difference.  i moved to a new apartment and "woke up under the skylight, blue sky with wisps of clouds floating by, the sound of the streets being washed and the pigeons flapping about. i tiptoed to look out to the adjacent rooftops where they perch and greeted them this morning...i went to the pijaca/market and had friendly exchanges with the people from whom i bought: a chunk of pumpkin, a bunch of paradajz i luk (tomatoes and onions), some mandarin oranges, pola kila pečurka (half a kilo of mushrooms), i 250g brusnica (dried cranberries)...and trudged delightedly back up the hill...passing Everest Kafe, and the Crna Kornjača, and a Zdrava Hrana (health food) shop, and some creative graffiti...i LOVE MY NEIGHBORHOOD!"

i started having more opportunities to travel around the region...to hike to a waterfall and play in the fall leaves or the snow or the spring flowers in Kosovo/Kosova...to go to concerts in Novi Sad...to spend time with MCC partners and regional directors in Sarajevo, and go hiking in the hills there...

life really blossomed.  blooming and growing, like edelweiss, the hills are alive, with the sound of music... :)

and i had awesome Canadian neighbors who moved in to the apartment below mine, and who invited me to share in their weekly crepes and their city-exploring adventures and their Christmas and Easter celebrations just like another daughter/sister...(and who dressed up as this endearing totem pole for the kindergarten's multicultural dress-up day!)

and i had a gig with a choir, a gospel choir! the only gospel choir in Serbia! who were the warmest, loudest, lovingest :) spiritual community i could possibly have been welcomed into. we sang all over Beograd, and in a few other cities, too.  music. friendship. joy.

and i had, unexpectedly, a boy, who tenderly cared for me when i was sick...who encouraged me to be gentle with myself and see the beauty in my role with the children...who traveled with me all throughout that "land of raspberries and honey-bees, hills and haystacks, abandoned houses and bullet holes, churches and mosques" ...who held me and helped me poetry-slam a bob dylan ballad when my grandpa and another dear friend in the U.S. died on the same day in May...who asked me if he could ask me to marry him yet, and then saw me off on the plane back to the States in July without a definite answer...who said YES YES YES YES YES when I asked him over Skype a couple months later!  who put the perfect eco-friendly vine-shaped ring on my finger this past December...who returned to the Balkans in January and has persevered through these final months of his term there... and who is coming home to me SOON.  srce moje...now we'll journey together for the rest of our lives.  God.es.good.

getting intimate with the ingredients of life

"So many creative pursuits demand a period of solitude for the germination of projects - writing, music-making, painting. The same can be said of cooking. Aside from music, food might be the most social of those pursuits, but it is that time alone that allows us to develop an intimacy with our subject - here, the raw ingredients that will become a meal. Without distractions, we pay closer attention to the behavior of our materials, and gain a nuanced understanding of their qualities and how they come together to create a dish...

"Cutting pounds of carrots, potatoes, parsnips, or squash asks that the cook yield a little to the process - those tubers don't offer themselves up easily. And that's where the process becomes a hypnotic, almost trance-like activity. There is the gentle resistance of the fibrous vegetable and the slow, careful push of the knife, over and over...

"Those moments to myself, lost in the rhythms of chopping, prepping and combining, are often what I crave most from cooking, whether it's for thirty minutes, three hours or all of a Sunday. Later the house may be filled with friends and family. There's little that I love more than that ritual - spending time with the people I care about, eating together. But I relish the time prior to the meal equally, that hushed, engrossed period where I am alone with my materials."

words by Kimberley Hasselbrink
from Kinfolk magazine, volume two

amen.  i think that's what i've been doing over the past few months, in my little experiments with banana and pumpkin bread and muffins, with squash stir-fry, with sweet potato curry-fry, with red pepper/tomato/basil sauces, with blackberry/red wine or blackberry/strawberry/peach sauces, with fresh tomato/green pepper salsa, with taking some avocado and salt and a lemon and adding dollops of hot pepper sauce to make guacamole, or adding tahini and garlic and olive oil and cumin and coriander to make a mediterrannean style dip, as i did last night for our Sunday night community meal with dear friends...

and these videos are some of my new favorite images of food in motion, ingredients blended with beauty and imagination. watch below, then go Google 'kinfolk videos' for more of these addictively simple yet luscious celebrations of the earthy materials, weathered hands, and vibrant communities of living things and beings that feed us...