Aleeeedaaaa

In the Car by Alida Bockrath

Okay, it's only Wednesday and it's been a full week of news and changes for dear and old friends. My friend Boreas just informed me that he is moving from his native Bay Area to Kauai in May. My friend Andromeda is getting married and having a baby. Today, we all got an e-mail from our friend Aleeedaaa, who lives a life that some of us only DREAM OF. Listen to this e-mail that she wrote to us today from her house sitting gig in Oregon:

So, I was supposed to go "chalet sit" in Switzerland next week for a month...and then wonder onto Estonia. But my friends trip to Australia (who I was chalet sitting for) fell through at the last moment...

So now I'm thinking about Costa Rica. Land of sun, jungle, snakes, large spiders...and surfing camps. I've been looking into volunteer work. One option is six weeks on an exotic fruit tree farm, deep in the jungle with no electricity or running water. Days spent hacking jungle with machete, harvesting fruit, drying seeds, cooking, washing myself and cloths with a bucket...walking 45 minutes to get to road to take two hour bus ride to closest town to buy our weekly rice and beans. Hmmmm.
There are some pluses. Being awoken by Howler monkeys, complete isolation and beauty of the jungle, but working in thick rubber boots to avoid the 200 types of poisonous snakes found in Costa Rica and avoiding large spiders (size of out stretched hand) who have webs all around the volunteers shack...may be the down side.

The other option is living in a village with a family and hot running water and patrolling the nearby beach at night to protect and find sea turtle nests & eggs...taking the eggs to be incubated, hatched and then released into the sea (get to see little tiny baby sea turtles!!)

Then there's a week of an All Girl Surf Camp: yoga, massage, daily surfing lessons, bungalow with a pool, endless costa rican food cooked for you...

I think our friend Kirstin said it right, that a lot of us have that little man in our heads that says no, when we think of these wilds plans. Aleeedaaa just doesn't HAVE that little man. Her plans are always EXOTIC and she, for the most part, DOES THEM. Did I tell you that she also has an apartment in Paris? Before you get all these ideas in your head that she is an heiress and independantly wealthy, I can assure you that NO, this IS NOT TRUE. For the most part, she makes her living from her INCREDIBLE paintings. She is a true artist of life and to get an e-mail from her with all these options is to make your head dizzy with fantastical plans. It is to look out from your window on the 27th floor in Manhattan and say, WHY NOT? It is to wonder why the heck you worry about RENT, RULES, SCHOOL LOANS, and APPEARENCES when you can maybe be in Costa Rica or chalet-sit in Switzerland?

Then the little man says, "no." and I go back to work. Curse you, litte man! Curse you!