Not in Kansas anymore.......and why we aren't in Belarus

When all the signs are in cyrillic (which you don't read at all) and the buildings all look like Soviet-era high-rises, and your first meal you are offered is borsht, well, you know you're not in Kansas anymore.

That's right. Au revoir Paris! We left this morning on an early flight to Kiev, Ukraine where I write to you now from a sweltering but cute, old apartment my friend Sasha lives in with his family (read: mother, brother and his family). He has lived here in this same apartment since 1982 when it was indeed a Soviet high-rise.

There's so much I want to share. It's been quite a week. Warning - this may be my longest blog post of the journey.....

Let me start backwards. I sit in this heat, with fortunately a nice breeze drinking a delicous cold compote drink after a filling home-made meal by Sasha's mother. Caroline has fallen asleep behind me on the couch we'll be sharing for the next two nights and Sasha has gone down to the store, possibly for a beer or vodka or maybe milk for his mama, I'm not sure. We're tired because we got to bed late last night after enjoying a last evening in Paris (we dined out instead of picknicking by the Seine), and then getting up early, early to rush to the Metro to catch the bus to get to the airport.

It was amazing to have a friend to pick us up here in Kiev at the airport! In the sea of cryllic and Russian and Ukrainian syllables flying over our heads, it was such a relief to see a friendly and familiar face. Sasha and I met last year in France at Vajrayana Seminary.

But backing up again, to the question that has most burned my mind all week: Why are we not in Belarus???

We tried. We tried for something like 3 hellish days to make the plans work. We were jetlagged, yes, we were cranky and homesick and unsettled (love Paris, but next time will either successfully pin down a home-stay or make a certain plan for how many nights I want to stay - we had to move almost every night, to a different room, and then shuttling back and forth between hostels).

Why Belarus in the first place? I thought I had to go back to where "I" came from (my ancestors, that is). I thought I had to go back to heal the past. I thought, well, I thought a lot.

When it came down to it, we were pushing and pushing to get there and nothing, NOTHING would work. We would get online and find a bus ticket, trek to the bus station only to find out the bus left the following day and would take FORTY hours, getting us to Belarus with only a day and a half before my visa expired (visas were required to procure before we left for Europe, mine cost something like $300). Then we would go back online and find a plane ticket, get through all the steps to book it and realize that I didn't have my passport with me (number was required) because it was at the bicycle rental shop where we had rented bikes from. So, we biked to a travel agency thinking that maybe we could have them help us, but they couldn't. Not unless we wanted to pay about a thousand dollars. So we biked again, and it thundered and poured and we were soaked to the bones and I lost my sunglasses and my day pack fell in a big puddle, and......finally we returned the bicycles, I got my passport back, we went to a cyber cafe and.....

The next flights we could find for a reasonable fare would only get us to Belarus with enough time for us to land and basically take off again for Ukraine. Not enough time to get to Pinsk, not enough time to see where my great-grandparents were born, not enough time to do some healing work (practice) by the mass graves where my great-great uncles and their families were probably "buried" after they were murdered in the Holocaust. Not enough time.

It was incredible. All this effort to try to get there, and every path blocked. Obstacle after obstacle.

So, we spent time by the Seine. We practiced for more than an hour in Notre Dame (powerful place that), and we gave it all some space. Next morning, we tried again. No go. So, in a quick moment of insight, we looked up a flight to Kiev, skipping Belarus. GO! Green light! Affordable and on Friday (today), so we booked it!

That left us with a few extra days in Paris to enjoy. So, we enjoyed: the Louvre, Notre Dame, the "Merry" section of town, the Seine, the Sorbonne, the base of the Eiffel Tower, lots of espresso's, some gorgeous parks and gardens (Paris seriously knows how to do these well, very, very well), and other enjoyable moments by other ancient buildings and parks and monuments. Most of it was quite simple. We didn't have a lot of money to spend on doing things, and both felt strongly that relaxing was more important than trying to see everything in Paris (unlike a few of our hostel-mates we met who had crazy-packed itineraries).

Then, I think it was yesterday morning, I had a bit of a humongeous epiphany. It feels personal, but is completely central to this whole ROOTS journey, so I would like to share.

I can't heal the past. I can't go back to the Pale of Russia where my great-grandparents came from. In fact, I don't need to go anywhere or do anything, my ancestors are all already with me all the time. What I did need to do was to TRY really, really hard (spend way too much money and time and stress and tears and pain) to get there and then fail, only to realize that I didn't need to go in the first place. I experience my ancestors present with me now. Here, as I type on this keyboard, melting from the heat, they are here, clustered around my shoulders, not necessarily curious about what I am writing, but interested regardless. They are here, in the way my hand moves through space to brush a fly from my forehead. They are here in the way I take a deep breath through the humidity. They are hear in the strong beating of my heart. They are here in my tears. They are supporting me (just as they all support all of us) and giving me strength, and there is nothing I need do other than continually wake up to life, to love.

This was massively important for me to recognize. The gauze covering my eyes, my heart, my mind could only be lifted by trying really hard and failing. In the failing, I actually won far more than if I had been able to simply travel to Belarus as planned.

So, now I am here, enjoying my mind and very extremely humongeously full heart, traveling now for myself, not for those who have gone before - because they are already here with me!

Tomorrow I will spend time by the large river Dnipr (dnepr in russian) which flows from the Prijapet which runs through Pinsk in Belarus, and continues through this new capital city Kiev (though historically, Kiev is called the heart of Russia - the birth place of Russia) and on down south to Dnipropetrovsk (which used to be Ekatrinaslav - where my other great-grandparents were born). So, this river Dnipr is very important to me. I plan to do a sukhavati for all of my ancestors by this river, calling down the dralas and blessings of them, so that they may be free, and so that I may free to experience their freedom.

That's how it feels, anyway.

The river. And the trees. That's what it always comes down to for me - the river and the trees. I don't know what I'll find here in Ukraine or even in some ways why I am here. But here we are, and I know I have this work to do by the river, and I know I want to see the steps in Odessa where my ancestors walked down to the ships, leaving their homeland Russia behind forever.

So, why are we not in Belarus? It was necessary for us not to go.

Instead, we are here in Ukraine! Awaiting the next series of adventures........