So I was supposed to drive to Ashland and see a show at OSF, but I discovered that the Pothole that Nearly Ate My Car last week actually really did nearly eat my car, and I need two new tires and a NEW WHEEL (wtf?) before the car is road-trip worthy. So much for saving up for a new tv…but, I decided to take advantage of a non-ideal start to the trip. Instead of dropping money on the car w/out having time to shop estimates around, I decided that the repair could wait till Monday. So I played hooky with the rest of Friday, burned some frequent flier miles, and hopped a last minute flight to Chicago.

Saturday morning I played in the Ultimate Frisbee Collective’s Finale Game*. As teams sports go, we were a scrappy group of theatre geeks, most of whom have some innate athletic ability but little or no talent for team sports. But for the past two years, we have played nearly every Saturday, rain or shine (or snow), and the ultimate game has often been the best part of my week.

For my efforts, and in recognition of being the only non-carnivore (also the only girl) on the team, I received a trophy shaped like a piece of tofu with arms and legs,** aptly named the “Facon [Fakon?] Award”. The winning team received a trophy with a piece of bacon on it, also similarly anthropomorphized.

In the afternoon Shinjinkai held the fourth annual fall-a-thon fundraiser, raising money for the zendo (rural retreat center) we are building in Wisconsin. I had planned to drop in, cheer and generally be supportive, but a minor injury sustained by someone in an earlier round meant that i got to jump in as nage for one of the later rounds. In 15 minutes I threw a contestant 305 times! The impressive feat isn’t the throwing – it was the guy taking the falls. Last year I took 206 falls and was pretty sure I was going to barf by the end. Anyway, it was so so so good to see all of my fellow aikidoka. Just being back in the room, the scent of the incense, the polished wood floors and textured mat under bare feet – it all felt so comfortingly familiar. I’ve been short on familiar and comfort, lately.

As I was changing into my gi in the locker room I looked at myself in the mirror and remembered how at first I felt so awkward in my uniform, it felt too big, goofy, poorly fit. I felt too tall, long-limbed, my balance too high in my body, i moved like a dancer, not a martial artist — no grounding, my center of gravity up high in my chest rather than centered low in the abdomen. I know those feelings of impossible awkwardness weren’t just born of insecurity because I see that look in new students, in their faces, in the way their gi hangs on their body, in the way they move on and off the mat. I felt that way for a long time. And I’m not sure when I started feeling at home in my gi, in the dojo, in the martials arts. When i started taking newer students under my wing and helping them through the maze of confusing rituals, when to bow, where to leave your shoes, how to sweep the mat in a smooth, even rhythm in step with the student before and behind you.

I’m not saying I’m accomplished or anything. On the contrary, the point here is perhaps that it took me two and a half years of training just to be confident in the most basic of rituals. Any wonder, then, why aikido is a martial art that takes a life time of dedication and study to master.

Since I moved to California I haven’t made any effort to find a dojo yet – there’s just no time for training. And I know how frustrated I would be if I were training once or twice a week, never moving forward or improving, just see-sawing back and forth. Right now there is pretty much time for work, and running. But being back at Shinjinkai for the afternoon reminded me that this is not a part of my life that I want to leave behind in Chicago. I will need to be patient in order to find the time to resume a proper study of it, but I’ll also need to make the effort to find that time. My profession isn’t one that just hands over free time if I don’t make an effort to wrestle some away now and then.

The trip at once was good for me to shake me out of my all-work-all-the-time routine here and remind me that I am more than the sum of my days and nights, that my life is bigger than the work I am doing here now. But I was confused all weekend that I was on vacation in Chicago and returning to San Francisco. I’d forget which airport I was coming from or going to, invert “back home” and “out here” when I was speaking about my new home or my old one. While waiting for my connecting flight in Denver, I had a moment of confusion when a Chicago-bound flight was directly across the hall from a San Francisco-bound flight. I’m headed home, but where is that? This weekend was restorative and troubling all at once. Restorative because it was a reminder that work is not me. I am not my job. I spend long hours at work, and when I’m there I work hard and care passionately about it. But it does not define me any more than any other single thing defines me. I am a sum of many parts, of preferences and fears and activities and plans for the future. I am martial arts and running marathons and making theatre and crafting things with my hands and wanting to explore the world. I am staying up too late and never getting enough sleep, hating to wear shoes and carrying around deep fears of vomit, spiders and mediocrity, a love for fireflies on Chicago summer nights and lingering over after-dinner coffee after a good meal. I am a terminally off-key singing voice and an aunt and someday maybe a parent, someday maybe a very good production manager. Right now I’m mostly working on the career part. But all in good time. My friend Callie handed me a bit of wisdom a few months ago when she pointed out that the great thing about getting to your thirties and facing big life-changing unrest like moving is knowing that you are not defined by your place. That you are still your same self no matter where you wake up in the morning. She’s right, and it’s a good feeling to realize that.

And it was troubling because being back in the community of Chicago makes me feel more sharply the lack of community in my new life. I’m new here, of course, and I know it takes time and work. But it’ll be an uphill battle, I think. Mill Valley is not a community where I am going to find like-minded artists or people my age. It’s an adorable and ritzy little Marin County hamlet that eschews chain stores and has polymillion*** dollar mansions in the hills where successful doctors and lawyers who commute to the city for their jobs raise their kids, disaffected spoiled teenagers who slump around downtown and congregate on the lawn in front of City Hall after it closes, looking as bored as one can possibly be in a town filled with the most spectacular weather and nature that one could ask for. I will have to go further afield to find my community.

* For some reason, the west coast is responsible for breaking up the band: at least four of the core players are in the midst of either executing or contemplating moves to various west coast cities.

** which seems to be working at cross-purposes, doesn’t it? Anthropomorphizing the thing that people eat who don’t like to eat things that have legs or eyes?

***I’ll make up words when I want to make up words. This is my blog. Bug off.