Jen Goes to Amsterdam

3:30am Saturday morning and I’m in a car with two strangers making the 45 minute drive back to Amsterdam. It seems poetic that this is how my last night is spent. The sun is coming up in the distance since during this season Holland stays dark for only five hours as a joke on me. My flight is in less than 12 hours and I can’t help but smile as I recount the series of events that brought me to this very moment. To me, only the most bizarre of events equal success. In this case I think it’s best to start at the beginning...

My first few days were spent getting lost between the canals and districts of Amsterdam, locating coffee shops, taking photos, and learning mushroom culture as I watched the cyclists almost run me over. Anne Frank’s Annex and the Van Gogh Museum were as climactic as I'd hoped, and after a day I finally allowed introspection to swallow me whole. The Dutch are calm and happy, and very tall-- which resulted in me barely being able to see myself in the bathroom mirrors.



By the time I was midway into my third night, I found myself surrounded by six Aussies, in a team meeting in the middle of the red light district. After helpfully suggesting (as per request) which prostitute one of my new friends should pursue I slowly crept out of the trip I’d been riding since we ate the mushrooms hours earlier. I’m holding someone's hand, partially just for stability. They invited me to a "show" (of an adult wish-I-hadn't-seen-it nature) when I met them at lunch earlier and since there were two girls going with them I figured why shouldn't I...we’re in Amsterdam are we not? Before I knew it I was in their room preparing for said adventure with Sauvignon Blanc flip cup, quarters, and splitting boxes of mushrooms. Had I not met these new friends 10 minutes earlier, I’d have thought this was just another night. Minus the mushrooms.


The backpacker hostel I stayed in was called, "The Flying Pig" and had a reputation that preceded itself. I wonder to myself when I'll be too old to feel comfortable at backpackers, as I smell consistent waves of pot coming through the windows. The mushrooms were a new feeling: stationary objects were moving unmistakably and I saw faces in curtains, but other than that things were pretty conservative. I did see masks of elders in the tree leaves and had 15 hands, but it really seemed normal at the time. It made cruising the Red Light District bar-hopping and playing games in the side streets at 4am a little more interesting.

It's not just the legal drug usage, I'm enamored with this city. I'm surprised at how easily my absolute loyalty to New York has been diminished. My last night the plan was to watch Neema perform her closing show, spend the night in cast bungalows hours away, and then catch her tour bus back to Amsterdam the next day and hit the airport. At 3 in the morning in the midst of an epic goodbye party, we realize the bus is not actually leaving the bungalows until an hour before my flight. And that, my friends, is how I met Caspar and Oscar. And how it came to pass that I am in their backseat on this highway smiling as the sun comes up, driving back to one of the greatest cities I've ever visited.

Venture Still

Where are you now.

I could say I'm in boxer shorts and a light pink sorority t-shirt, throwing every outfit that reminds me of a late 60's hippie into an over-sized suitcase. A suitcase I'll be dragging down the street tomorrow evening two-handedly towards the uptown local E train. And outfits that will be perfectly suited for my week-long trip to Amsterdam to visit my Kenyan sister, Neema Ntalel. I'll get to the train entrance and figure out how to haul the bag (that will most certainly cost me an extra $50 and be marked with a big red tag that reads: "HEAVY") down three flights of stairs and through a turnstile during end-of-day prime commute hours.

I enjoy riding the train to the airport. It's therapeutic as I shove my ipod speakers into my ears and mentally prepare. Anticipate. Feel the beginning of the venture.

It's midnight. Typing at my computer and looking out my first windowed room that faces a brick wall, I try to summon the state of emotion I was in the last time I packed my bags for JFK and another life. But I can't. It's easy to speak vividly of change when you need it. It's easy to dig down, so deep into the belly of belief systems and philosophies when you question your own; when life goes dark and history turns pitch black and we fumble blindly through the journey just to grab onto anything we can in order to survive (BREATHE). But right now...right now I feel pretty fucking great.

But just because I don't need it, I still want it. I want the extremity and novelty of a new experience and a new world and a reminder of all things raw. Another update of my mental state and reality check with perspective. Sometimes we need a little magic in our lives. And if you don't believe in magic...you'll just have to make some of your own.

Dagoretti Corner Tour

I can't stop reminiscing lately! Austin takes us on a tour of one of our many homes while living in Kenya...

Mothers and Their Daughters

There’s a photo of my mom and I...I was about two or three years old. We’re in Little Grass Valley camping for the week; I was dressed in overalls. I’m sitting on her lap with my hands wrapped around her neck and she’s swinging me back to make me smile. In the photo both our mouths are open and we are mid laugh. My dad is in the picture too, he’s cooking breakfast for us all. I think this is one of my favorite photos of all time. Whenever I think about how much I love my mom, I picture this photo. It’s perfect; it explains everything that my mom means to me. Then I picture all the times I wake up in my parent’s house to find my mom in the kitchen or living room, and before I’m awake enough to speak any words, she comes over and just hugs me, and rubs my back. How can one person have the ability to just know everything, and be everything you need?

To be loved by my mom is the best feeling there is. I will never stop needing her. She knows when something is wrong or right before I even dial her number from across the country. The one faith I will always have, there is no substitution for her. None.

Nothing takes the place of a mother-daughter relationship. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I've heard it's not easy, but hands down my mom wins. The amount of love I have for her is completely intangible, owed only to someone who taught me that kind of love herself. To all the mothers out there teaching real love, thank you...for making this world a better place.


Happy Mother’s Day Mommy. Thank you. I love you <3

On the Streets of West 12th

It was four in the morning and they were dancing in the streets. I was confused at first, and watched from my window as she performed some sort of celebratory jig. I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of the fearlessly rogue street crossing that ensued, or how two people were having that much fun walking it out. They probably had really awesome Italian grandparents. Either way, La Esquina still wouldn’t let them go downstairs...so that happened.

It was as if they had been drinking gin and sodas all night, after three wrong orders of gin and tonic...even if it was the best gin behind the bar. They might have even had a dance-off on the d-floor...because when is a dance-off ever bad? He owed her a pedestal, even after he put her on one, and perhaps even a dinner that didn't involve a sports bar...but it didn’t suck. I think it should have been a good sign after the great white shark appeared at Spring Lounge, but apparently the Maritime Hotel has three dance floors, really bad cell phone reception, and mysterious wine-cork curtains. It also has a great meeting spot at the bathrooms, given you’re talking about the same bathrooms. Ariel views wouldn’t have even helped. But all in all, it was worth leaving the bottle he just bought for the night.

It’s as if he had to use a GPS tracker to find her, or maybe even a game of Marco-Polo, but when he did it was like finding an ipod-filled Easter egg in the middle of a fiercely competitive elbow-throwing hunt. This sort of thing would never happen above 14th Street. I kept thinking what type of rubble-rousers would pretend they were at an 8th grade dance formal, but then again who would think to wear a windbreaker jacket to Southside? It was the sort of thing that could even intimidate a girl with a Swiss army knife in her purse. But he had no chance. He should have known from the beginning; the irony of the pet shop next door might have said it all...

Metro Moments

There's something I never could quite understand about airplanes. An enormous piece of machinery, flying thousands of miles up in the air. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to me. But then again, neither does the remake of "We Are the World" with Lil' Wayne signing Bob Dylan's verse...but I still dug it.

The other day I had a love connection on the subway. I was riding the local 6 train downtown from the upper east side. I had just shown the Goodfellas actor, Paul Sorvino, a few $3M properties uptown and was heading back to the office. This stranger was incredibly handsome and after exchanging a few smiles I was certain he was to someday be my husband. As I stood up to leave the train he handed me a page he tore out of the book he was reading, with his name and number hastily scribbled on the corner. I wish I could say the story ends here. Only after we met for coffee did I find out he was only 20 years old, a student at NYU, younger than my little brother. I swore off "love at first sight" immediately in that sobering moment.

At least once per week I see the +254 Kenya country code show up on my cell phone. When I pick it up it's one of my kids asking me to Please Miss Jennifa call for me back! I think of the time some my students walked me 45 minutes home after school, up a dirt road on one of the hottest days of the year. Now I've traded t-shirts for blazers and flip flops for boots, dirt roads for a concrete jungle, but it's still where dreams are made of. And if I close my eyes I can still see my kids there when I look down. It tends to keep me in perspective...I'd have to say.

Happy Anniversary Kenya

 

Haiti

Please
I want to talk about real things
Even when it stings
And your eyes water until they get sore because you want to do more but can’t do more but you could do more if you tried to do more...You ask what for and I say explore like never before I won’t keep score but I will implore you not to ignore to think of the shore where homes hit the floor in a sudden downpour, bodies faced war and a little bit more than spirits were tore, just get down to the core and DO MORE
Please



These things
Are happening a few hundred dollars away make a difference today...
If you can
And solve real live questions to real life problems
Some of us just talk about it while others are out there doing it
Be the verb not the adjective
Someone told me that once
I think he got it from someone else...
But that’s not really the point.

I Remember

He was almost five, and so alive
All alone, but still he’d strive
He could thrive, and survive
On one bowl a day
Of rice and corn
Another baby born
To a mother with AIDS, HIV
To her god I hear her plea
Please, not me
Oh god not me, I won’t be
Here to see
My baby turn three
Just set me free
Don’t take him, please take me
So he set her free, and she left this land
And now instead of hers, he holds my hand
I try to step quick but I’m in quicksand

This boy turns six and tries to change fate
He runs to school, but he’s already late
So we run hand in hand, not too slow
I made him a promise that I wouldn’t let go
But it’s getting harder for him to breathe
He needs a break, too often it seems
He coughs up blood and I hope this doesn’t mean
He’s living with a disease unseen

He tells me it’s his birthday today
But he’s still sick and cannot play
I know I’ll have to take him away
To get the test he tried to delay
So still I sit and hold his hand
As the doctor gives the test we demand
And the result comes back seven years too late
And I hate the world for this moment in fate
I see in his eyes what I won’t let him see in mine
This little boy will die, in time

And I wish instead the energy could leave me
As it left his mother, so swiftly
Anything but this little boy
Why couldn’t death just pick a new ploy
I look at him but do not weep
If he can’t jump I’ll have to leap
Skin so dark and eyes like stars
Wide enough to chase speeding cars

So time it came and time it went
And soon this little boy’s spirit was spent
But I held his hand as he said goodbye
As I promised him, I would not cry
And as the night became so still
I sat and let the quiet fill
All the air and every thought
And all the love this little boy brought
And when I look at my hand I still see his there
I’ve never seen a more beautiful pair


He was almost five
And so alive…



***Do something to help this holiday season. Be the change.

Holidaze

If I’m being honest, I think I owe it to myself and to anyone else reading, to write a few words pertaining to what happened next. There’s always another page, always another story, always a next.

It’s been slightly over one month since my return to the big city. It has blurred by in a mixture of express trains, walk-up buildings, and quite entertaining dates when I can find the time. I'm in real estate, I hear myself casually drop at least three times a day, maybe because I'm proud of it, maybe because I'm prospecting, or perhaps just because I've begun to breathe it every waking moment. You have to, this is New York City. Go hard or go home.

Coming back to New York was a multi-faceted experience. Everything looked different and the same all at once. I was a new me, I had a new perspective, I was better, stronger. But no matter how far I had come, some things were still there, as expected, waiting. They begged to be reckoned with, beckoned my temptation and I fell for it...but only for a second.

More often then not I find myself thinking about my time in Africa. I think about how even though I so strongly wanted everyone to feel it, to learn from it, to understand it...I've come to accept that it really was for no one other than myself. I'm the only one who can truly understand, who can truly learn from it, who can bring to mind in a single heartbeat the kids, the smells, the sound of Kenya. And I keep it with me, every day, along side my grocery list and taxi receipts and weekend plans. Most people don't have the time it takes to truly hear you, but all in all, I realize I don't need them to.

It's true what they say about reciprocity, you know. When you're finally ready, when you're finally done, when you can finally say goodbye...it doesn't matter if the other person is there to hear you, to know it. You won't need them to know either way. Because the only one who ever really needed to say goodbye...was you.

‘Tis the season...Christmas in New York. Coffee burns my tongue as I sit behind a window watching the snow fall; I think about plans to ice skate in Central Park and new romance amidst apple cider and spiced rum. New beginnings, new endings, and an anticipation of the unknown. Love Actually and Miracle on 34th Street play repeatedly on DVD players and TBS specials, the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center is advertised in the New York Times, and once again I know...anything seems possible.