All things good and simple

We finished off the semifinals in a rather pathetic effort. Our team came out as you might expect a team made up of quite a few teenagers; players were thinking more of the four days off promised to us if we won than of the actual game. We started off down by ten points and didn’t settle down until the second half. We managed to pull off the win despite our poor start and celebrated with our fans afterwards.

I was exhausted after the game, having played all but 20 seconds of the game after a week of two a day practices. But I rallied and celebrated with my teammates at the local Italian bar where we all dominated at DJaying and took turns saying hello to the president and doctor of the football team as well as a professor of some of my teammates. I love small towns where everyone parties together. As soon as I walked in a woman came over and led me to the football team president to say hello. Apparently he’s a fan and my trainer laughs at how he claps even when I miss a shot or screw up.

So four days off. Generally I would be out of here, off to some wonderful central Europe city or finding some cheap flight to somewhere exotic. Instead I am hanging in Ruza for the weekend. I don’t feel the need to escape here, my time is winding down and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. I want to grasp onto these last moments I have here because I know soon I’ll be on a flight home, leaving my life here, never to fully return to it. I’ve learned that much having moved around: once you leave, you can’t ever really return to what you had.

But I didn’t really want to spend the whole weekend doing nothing or drinking too much. So, I decided to do a number of things. One I planned on fasting, something I had been wanting to do for a while. Second, I was going to go to the kid’s home to use my free time to brighten their day a bit. Third, I had a traditional Slovak goulash party on the agenda.

Friday afternoon I picked up ice cream sandwiches, pictures at the photo shop from our VIP party with the kids last week, and my teammates Efoma. We walked into the kid’s home to running and hugging little ones. Talk about feeling welcome. They grabbed onto my hands and led me to the back room where everyone was gathered, practicing for their dance competition this coming weekend. The group was really talented, had their outfits all coordinated and had obviously worked really hard to get the choreography down. It was fun to witness their growth; they had set a goal, worked for it, and then performed to grand applause. It’s really great to see all the ages living together as well. I think the kid’s home is a really good situation for them; they have discipline and adult help but they all nurture each other as well. Older kids are teaching younger kids dance moves and kids hug each other constantly and siblings get to live together. It doesn’t feel institutional at all; it has the communal feel of summer camp.

Plus they are really good about finding the kids individual talents and giving them opportunities to expand in that area. One teenager is a really good chef, so he cooks and bakes often and even whittles wooden cooking utensils. He gave me a spatula he had made himself. Another is a really good dancer and he takes lessons and hopes to make dancing into a career. A young woman I met is going to nursing school soon.

Most of the kids seem pretty happy although I can’t imagine how much work it’s taken to get them to that point. I am in total awe at the organization of the house and the love contained within it. The adults nurture these kids constantly but also maintain a disciplined environment. Everything is clean and tidy and the kids are extremely well behaved. The worst behavior I
witnessed was someone trying to take my camera away from another kid and yet they resolved the situation on their own without any real conflict.

But it isn’t a carefree environment of course. One girl was visibly sad. I had met her a few times and each time she had her hood over her head. I thought she was just shy or liked to hide a bit. But she never seemed sad until the other day. I just hugged her over and over again since I couldn’t communicate well enough to understand what was wrong. Then one of the social workers told me that she had lost her hair due to an infection and was feeling bad about the loss. I told her about my best friend losing her hair from chemotherapy and tried to convey to her that she was still beautiful. I could tell she brighten up a bit, she became more involved in what we were doing and even smiled a bit. It just served to remind me how similar we all are. We all want to feel beautiful in some way; we want others to understand what we are going through, we want to feel included in a group. Adults are exactly the same way, we just mask and manifest these feelings in other ways, most of which ensure that people won’t empathize with our situation and in fact push people away. Kids are a little easier to read and they have a vulnerability that makes you want to help them get out of their funk.

Efoma and I got some dance lessons from the experts and then watched the little kids take the stage. They all got up and started shaking their stuff to rap music; little eight year olds were dancing better than I ever could. It was the cutest thing!

After the dancing, we hung out in the rec room a bit, taking pictures and trying to spread around the attention. Kids kept jumping up into my arms or climbing into my lap to snuggle, so generous with physical love. Then it was time to go outside and play basketball. As I walked down the stairs, I had one kid in my arm and two others holding my hands. Talk about feeling loved.

Outside I spent some time talking to one of the social workers, Lenka. She had studied in the states so her English was perfect. Her and her husband worked at the home and obviously had a connection to the kids that made them feel loved. She said the kids gave her just as much by always smiling and reminding her of what is important in life. I felt the same way. The kids kept asking when we were going to return and I promised Lenka that next time I would bring them some new basketballs.

I drove away both happy and sad. It makes me happy to give and get so much love but it makes me not to want to leave here, to not want to leave these kids. And yet, I know that this is my life, that moving and meeting and touching new people is a part of it. But my heart aches because I want more time with them, I want to help them, I want to learn from them, I want to continue to visit, to get hugs, to give and get strength, to tell them over and over how wonderful they are.

Saturday
The next day I woke up to more sunshine. I went for a run looking over my beautiful city and all the surrounding hills. Then I got ready to go to the ‘goulash party’.

It was SO much fun. I walked from my trainer Johnny’s house with his wife Susan and his daughter, little Susan, through a small village on the outskirts of town. We had gone running as a team in the same area last week and I spent the whole time marveling at how beautiful it was. We ran by a stream, up into the mountains, looking at forests and sharp green grass.

Walking through the village on this bright sunny Saturday morning, we could see people out hoeing their gardens, planting crops next to goats grazing on the side of houses. Every house had a small plot of land, bright flowers in front, work sheds in

back and people that looked very content tilling their little piece of the world at the base of the mountains. It looked like a very nice life.

We continued walking about the stream path, past the lake and a man teaching his son how to fly fish. There were other goulash parties along the stream and everyone was out riding bikes or horse back riding with their family. I walked along totally content,, listening to the stream running down from the mountains and breathing the fresh air. We could smell wood fires burning and it made me think of camping, and nature, and all things good and simple.

We arrived at our plot, the cauldron already on the fire and lots of men going back and forth from the river to the fire, holding ice-cold vodka and chilled wine. It was an absolutely perfect day, the sun was shining and the bright green of the grass, the dark green of the forest, and the blue of the sky made it seem like the world had just woken up from the winter.

It felt very tribal, very traditional, very organic. There was a mix of different people, from middle class people in their Volkswagen and babies, to young people riding motorcycles, 75 year old grandmothers arriving by bike, to working class men with no teeth and another with a cane and a hump back. Everyone was drinking liquor with %50 alcohol, kept cold in the stream and smoking. Age differences and socioeconomic classes seemed totally irrelevant. They’d all been friends for years.

It was entirely unpretentious. Someone had a guitar and started playing Slovak songs while everyone sang along, clicking together spoons and playing the tambourine over the trickle of the stream, while others fell asleep in the sun or played soccer in the grass. One woman was gathering flowers in the meadow to make tea. Much to my relief, there was no hemp clothing or bongo drums, no Whole Foods grocery bags or talks about the burning man festival. People just came as they were. There was no feeling of trying to recapture nature or get back to anything we’d lost. We just were living. And it was fabulous.

After a long day in the sun, it was time to go to the soccer game. It was a beautiful evening and as the day slipped away, I watched our town soccer team play below the mountains with old men screaming at the refs behind me. Everyone in town was there I think and we all cheered as our team went up 2-0 at the half. It was spectacular. Unfortunately, it’s entirely probable that the referee was paid off since every call went tfo the other team in the second half. So I joined in on the rants, mad because our team should have upset the first place team Instead it was a tie and we all walked away bitching about referees in Slovakia.

Afterwards it was time to meet up with all the boys from the goulash party who had continued the festivities at a dive bar near the soccer stadium. Since I was attempting to prepare for my fast, drinking was not on the agenda but it was entertaining to hang with the guys, all of whom had been drinking virtually the entire day.

Sunday
Today I am fasting. Its not quite lunchtime yet and I’m hungry but feeling good. Its liberating not revolving my day around food and I’m very excited to cleanse my body. I’m not doing it to lose weight but it does feel good to feel skinnier. All week I’ve been cutting down on food, attempting to prepare myself for the ultimate of no food. Every thing I ate was with a goal in mind, choosing even healthier options than usual, knowing that my body would thank me.

I’m fasting more for self-discipline and health, although I think on the path to spirituality, food is an important and often neglected part. Its one reason I could never understand church potlucks filled with mayonnaise filled salads and Crisco casseroles. It seems to me that if you really have found spiritual salvation, you wouldn’t feel empty and need to comfort yourself with food. The body, mind connection is very real to me and I like the idea of learning more about it by bringing my
awareness away from food if only for a day. The body as your temple has always rang true for me.

It feels weird not eating. Its not that I’m hungry, which I am, its more that I feel a little odd not revolving my day around meals. I woke up this morning and thought about breakfast of course, it’s generally the first thing I think about. I never skip breakfast and yet I had to find a new way to organize my day. Drinking water and cleaning my apartment just isn’t the same as drinking a cup of coffee and boosting my metabolism with food.

I’m realizing how much of my enjoyment in life is based on food. And yet when you take that away, you are forced to find nourishment in other places. I’m looking at the hills while I drive in a new way, I drink water with a new appreciation, I’m thinking about what I want to do today outside of meal planning. It’s freeing. Its not comfortable but it’s a new way to approach things and in that it is exciting.

I went to the lake today and walked around, read in the sun and generally basked in the warmth of spring and nature. I was a little hungry but mostly just relaxed. I concentrated on getting my nourishment from the beauty all around me. The mountains were green with dark trees or carpeted with fresh, lush grass. In the short distance were the snow capped Tatras. The sun was reflected off the green lake and the river poured its freezing water in loudly. It’s a lot like Washington really, but it’s literally two minutes from downtown Ruza. It’s absolute paradise. I felt like I was on a meditation retreat except this is my life. Central Slovakia really is incredibly beautiful.

The health benefits to fasting seem to be well documented. Since your body doesn’t waste energy on digestion, it spends its time taking inventory and cleaning. It rids itself of dead and unproductive cells and flushes out built up toxins in the organs.

Like I said, I’ve wanted to fast for a while. I’d read a lot on the subject and really believe that our bodies do have an innate power to heal itself, that too often we end up poisoning ourselves instead of just letting go and letting our body do what it does best. However, basketball training doesn’t allow low blood sugars so I’ve put off actually doing a fast. With four days off however, I figured now was the time to try.

I watched a lot of people fast in Turkey during Ramazan and was always amazed at their self-discipline. To them, it wasn’t such a big deal. They fast for Allah and didn’t think much of it. However, abstaining from water all day and then gorging yourself when the mosques announce the end of fasting at seven pm didn’t seem like the healthiest option. Nor do I think that drinking cayenne pepper and maple syrup is a very healthy way to clean out my colon. I figure natural is the way to go and so I am doing what people have been doing for centuries for physical and spiritual benefits; I’m fasting for a day.

I’m thinking a lot about the kids today. I’m not pretentious enough to say I am fasting for them but I think gratitude is an important aspect on the path to spirituality. Seeing such hope in young people that have been given nothing in their life changes my perspective on my own life. My attitude towards struggle has shifted; the problems we waste energy on are all pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. And so, this weekend, motivated by a group of fantastic, talented, beautiful children, I’m cleaning my mind and my body. Out with the toxins of feeling sorry for myself, of magnifying insignificant things, of creating anxiety or struggle out of boredom. I’m busy letting myself be me and I have some cute little kids to thank.