Journals

I suppose everyone has a story about what sets their sails, with the usual roundup including boredom, sense of adventure, lots of time and a fair amount of cash on hand.   What set me back on the road was experiencing more or less dismay after returning to the States, following a semi-exceptional adventure. Somehow bussing around Mexico and living in Brasil the Fall of 2007, left me despondent living in my old city. Everything felt super 'linear' in San Francisco. No drums on the busses, no dancing in the sidewalks, no sunny beaches, no intense heat and definitely no passion. Just five months of wandering around the City, in a quasi limbo, wondering what the next move was going to be.   I suppose fate/kismet was at play a bit more than serendipity or coincidence, because one ordinary day my eyes glimpsed a lone postcard, promoting Hip Hop Sin Fronteras annual Cuba Caravan event. Immediately I was confused and intrigued all at once. I couldn’t figure out how a group of hip hop heads chose to: a) link up with an interfaith organization to protest the embargo and b) go to Cuba illegally. But, more to the point - how and why were they telling everyone (including the government) what they were up to?   All that being said, I knew the 2008 caravan dates were a bit off for my schedule, and I had a lot of life 'stuff' up in the air. Besides, I was having a second set of signs open up to me that included woo-woo precognitive dreams about talking animals, the Virgin/Guadalupe, and four Indigenous brothers (which was odd if nothing else, because I only have two bio brothers and as far as I know, we‘re all Black). All of the dreams were pointing me in the direction of the Southwest. Mentally flipping a coin, and calling it heads, I opted to take both journeys (why not?): following the spiritual path with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist in the mountains of the wild west during the summer of 2008, and the Cuban Caravan for the summer of 2009...   The year between journeys felt like an immense expanse of time, especially since I realized I had exchanged laying in the sand + watching the boys play capoeira on the beach during the ‘winter’ in Brasil, for piles of snow and 7000 feet of altitude/spiritual solitude/awakening.   Fast forward from the summers of 2008 and 2009...I was discovering that I don’t nest well and cabin fever clashes horribly with dissertation procrastination. What to do, what to do, what to do? Apparently, if you are me: stay frustrated with the dissertation re-writes and start sending emails to the good folks with Hip Hop Sin Fronteras about their work and joining the caravan. Turns out I was in luck - 2009 marked the 20 th Cuban Caravan, there definitely was space for me on the Western Hip Hop Route, and even better still: they had no qualms about me riding to Mexico and bailing on Cuba.   Before I knew it, Winter finally turned into Spring and two weeks before the caravan took off, I got an email from the coordinator stating that the Hip Hop Route was not happening. Instead I would be cruising along in an old school stick shift bus with three guys named Woody, Sandino and Yogi. Hmm…me + 3 guys + an old, rickety bus traveling the highways and roads through the desert, mountains and flatlands of the great West and Southwestern States.   I was sold. But don’t get me wrong, the whole thing still sounded iffy.   Looking back, I should have known right then and there with certainty, that nothing - and I mean NOTHING - was going to go the way I thought or planned. What followed were some of the most amazing/interesting/frustrating/challenging/intense hours, days, and weeks of my life in 2009...