Broken Open

"Broken Open" is one of the themes (big theme) woven into my life these days. It started with moving from an apt. where I'd lived for 10 years to a new digs up the hill from Union Square. The move unexpectedly cracked me open, shook me up, pulled out my entrenched roots. This experience of dis-ease forced me to slow down, forced me to look at parts of myself I didn't want to see or know about. I began to long for community more than ever.

As we finished the trip in Mexico, sat on the patio of the hostel in Guadalajara, I declared that the kids of the Casa had not broken me open, i.e. had not reached deep into me. But as I reached American soil, as the frustrations of group living faded away, I slowly came to realize that the entire trip had broken me open and embraced me.

Even on the plane from Guadalajara to New York City, I felt the aloofness of the American lifestyle wrap its cold fingers around me. I sat between one woman who just didn't care to talk and another who slept, but when she was awake, and plugged herself into a handheld movieplayer. I walked through the door at work on Monday noticing that most people didn't seem to care or notice that I had been gone. I asked myself, "Where is the community here? Who is going to embrace me?" They are both real and rhetorical questions. I will be sifting through the questions and answers for a long time I think.

-Andrea


Next to being in pictures, the kids LOVED to take your camera and take billions of pictures.