6,000 Miles, 70+ New Friends, and a Lot of Borshch

Hello! It's been a few weeks, but I'm home with a headcold and it has finally slowed me down enough to sit down and tend to my blog.

First things first: I am required to say, "The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Ukrainian Government.”

And on we go:

Here's just a quick run-down of my journey from West Sacramento, California, USA to Chernihiv, Chernihivs'ka Oblast, Ukraine. 

• Saturday, March 11th: Hauled many, many bags and caught a red-eye flight to Washington, D.C. First success - bags were all under the weight limit! First failure - I forgot to keep my luggage receipts for reimbursement. 
• Pro-tip: Have a good backpack! I used my backpacking pack as one of my checked luggages, and it made my life much easier than if I were trying to roll everything.

• Sunday, March 12th: Landed in DC, locked my bags in the hostel, grabbed Mexican food with a local buddy, and then walked over to the Capital Mall to meet some of my new Peace Corps compadres. It was so great to meet in person with the people I'd been connected with for months via social media. Love you guys!!!! 
• Pro-tip: Fly in to your staging city a touch early so you can explore! Your extra day or two of lodging won't be covered, but your flight will be. Also, make sure you have arrangements for storing your luggage while you are out and about. 

•  Monday, March 13th: We checked in to our hotel in Georgetown for staging. We did some icebreakers, and tried to soak in lots of information that I am pretty sure none of us remember. Also, we got cupcakes. Or that might have been Tuesday. I don't know, but I do know I got the peanut-butteriest peanut butter cupcake that I have ever had in my life. No regrets there. My sole regret is not packing a giant tub of peanut butter for my life in Ukraine. 
• Pro-tip: If you have even the slightest inclination to pack peanut butter with you, PACK THE PEANUT BUTTER. 

• Tuesday,  March 14th: Departure day! And also, Stormageddon! Winter Storm Stella really sounded like she was going to delay our flight, but luckily that wasn't the case. We got some pretty pictures of snow, and still made it out on time. 

• However - we did have to entirely re-pack the luggage compartment of the bus because we failed to fit everything in the first time. I like to think of it as our first hands-on training exercise. 
• Pro-tip: Plan how your bags will go into the bus in an organized way (big, hard-shell suitcases can go in first, with smaller or softer ones on top. Carryons will quite possibly end up on your lap. Don't just throw everything into the bus and hope for the best. Especially if it's snowing and gross outside. 

Look at all these beautiful people. They each have over 100 lbs of luggage. 

• Wednesday, March 15th???? It was that vague sort of time that happens when you are journeying across time zones. Anyway, we transferred through Frankfurt and had to take some little bus around the tarmac for a ridiculous amount of time, and then spend a ridiculous amount of time waiting on the stairwell up to the plane. But it wasn't real time, right? It was, like, surreal travel time. 
• Pro-tip: Lufthansa Airlines serves free wine. It's a long flight - enjoy. But also drink some actual water, because you will hit the ground running upon arrival.  

• Wednesday, March 15th - I am pretty sure this was, in fact, Wednesday, March 15th. We got to Kyiv, hopped a bus to Chernihiv, and had some info crammed into our heads that we were too sleep-deprived to remember. We got to a hotel in Chernihiv, and then had a lovely traditional Ukrainian welcome ceremony with salt and bread. This hotel was to be our home for the next three days, until meeting our host families. 
• Pro-tip: Have some business casual clothes in your carry-on, along with your toiletries and anything else you will need for the first few days. We didn't get to unpack until meeting our host families, so I had to live out of my carry-on bag. 

And now, just writing all this has made me really tired!!! Long story short - we made it! 

Ode to Indiana

It's an uncommonly sunny late-November day in Indianapolis; the kind that beckons for a walk in the park. But first, a blog. Leaving my adopted home only a year and half after I loaded my life's possessions into my Prius and drove some 2,3000 miles to get here is, apparently, what it takes to get me writing again.

"And you decided to come here?" 

That's what people always ask me when they learn I moved to Indiana from California, where I lived a 10-minute walk from the beach and could go watch baby seals during my lunch breaks.

"Why the hell would you come here?"

I came here for work, technically. But the job was just a happy accident - something tangential to the experiences that have made me love this place. It feels more honest to say I came here to dance all around the city with my new friends, walk to the beautiful Central Library in a snowstorm, and watch how quickly the cornfields grow in summertime.

So, do you want to know why this California girl came to Indiana? Take a look and see:

That time we danced all around the city. If you've never seen Indianapolis, Naptown Stomp made a lovely highlights reel of some of the most famous spots!

Video credit to Kerry Kapaku and Doug Sutton, dancers are from Naptown Stomp. 

The Lindy 500.  Nowhere else in the world can you name a dance team the Lindy 500 and throw an Indy car race into your performance routine. And yes, you should watch both videos because you can never have too many Indy cars made out of dancers.

Seasons. They are this thing that happens in Indiana (albeit sometimes unpredictably, and sometimes with tornadoes).

Spring: Flowers and thunderstorms!

Summer: What, you didn't know there were beaches in Indiana?

Fall: Too wonderful for just one picture.

Winter: Nothing like the feel of fresh snow beneath your feet (assuming you are wearing nice warm boots - don't go out there barefoot).














My horse loves it here. I brought him to his new barn warning the trainer that he could be quite hot-headed and tricky, but his long days grazing out in the fields of the Midwest have made him pretty mellow. Tarquin has won the respect and affection of many - including the dressage judges! Our first ever horse trial together was here in Indiana, and we finished in second.

Photo credit: Michelle Rakotomalala

Photo credit: Lee Ann Zobbe

Indiana has been a jumping-off point to so many other great places, too. I finally made my country music fan pilgrimage to Nashville, Tennessee. I've eaten sooooo many tacos in Chicago. Went to the top of the arch in St. Louis. Had sweet tea in Atlanta. Danced in the snow in Michigan. Made a beer run to the next county over in Kentucky ("'s a dry county here, y'all. Go on up over the hill, about 12 miles, and just across the county line there's a Shell station that'll sell ya some beer...")

And now I'm jumping off to the next thing: Joining the Peace Corps to serve for 2 years in Ukraine. Stay tuned for a revamp of this old blog as I prepare for my big move to Eastern Europe! Until then, I'm flying west for a little while, to that land where my parents complain of freezing temperatures when it's 50 degrees outside, that land so wonderful and big and complicated it makes people the world over ask me why the heck I am anywhere else.

Thanks, Indiana! I shall see you again someday!

Photo credit: Michelle Rakotomalala

The Diary Project: Volume 1.1 - 1.2

Hello, and welcome to a more formal beginning of The Diary Project!

This is the first volume of my diary. I purchased it from a book order form, the kind we used to get on a regular basis in elementary school. My friends and I would pore over them, circling the items we wanted.
We got our parents' help filling them out, and we'd turn them in to our teacher with some money. Then our books would be delivered to us in our classroom. The resulting atmosphere was a beautiful blend of Christmas-day enthusiasm, and library-esque wonder. My very first entry in this diary is about receiving my book orders.

I have now typed up all of my 1998 and 1999 entries. Here are some basic stats: 

1998:

Total number of entries: 29

Top 5 themes/topics:

• School
• Complaining
• Horses
• Holidays
• Books, toys, and Beanie Babies 

Quote of the Year: "And school is terrible. People do dumb things for dumb reasons, too". 

This was on Friday, March 13th. I was not pleased with that day. 

1999:

Total number of entries: 51

Top 5 themes/topics:

• School
• Pets and Possessions
• Horses
• Holidays
• Traveling 

Quote of the Year: "Whooopee!"

My reaction to my parents agreeing to buy me a horse. It is in addition to many entries that included exclamations of "yipee!" "wow!" and "woo-hoo!"

They usually had to do with vacations, field trips, and horses. 

Reflections:

In both 1998 and 1999, I talked a lot about decisions. I decided things, or I was trying to decide them, or I couldn't decide them. It's one of the most striking patterns of verb usage in those two years of writing, especially since looking back on my childhood I don't remember deciding much. As an adult, I kind of figure my parents decided most things for me. But as a child, I didn't feel that way. In my diary, I ruled my world and I decided things - even if they were decisions my parents had influenced or made for me, I expressed them as my own. My parents have always told me they learned early on how much I craved having power to control my own world and my own life, and the fact that in my diaries I express agency and decision-making reflects their efforts. 

Fun observation: 

While typing up my old 1999 entries on my computer, I encountered an excited entry about an upcoming trip to Canada. I had commented some years later on the entry, once again going to Canada. I was typing up these entries while on a train, going to Canada. 

Original entry: March 18th, 1999: I’m going to CANADA! Yippee!

Comment on entry: 5/21/2007: Hey I’m going to Canada! Hell yeah, 9 y/o self!

By the way, I'M IN CANADA! RIGHT NOW! Woohoo!!! 

 

The Diary Project: Introduction

Hello everybody!
I have been meaning to start this project for a while, but various graduate school assignments have monopolized my time until now. Finally, after two shots of whiskey and a glass of mediocre Cabernet Sauvignon, I've typed up the entirety of my diary entries from the year 1998, which I began as an 8-year-old and ended as a 9-year-old. I definitely drank neither whiskey nor wine at that age.
(I currently have the tipsy hiccups. It makes it hard to type).

My latest project is what I am calling "The Diary Project."
I started writing in a journal when I was 8 years old. I called it a diary at the time, because I liked that word better than the word "journal"(although since learning that "diary" implied "daily", I have amended my language to calling my work a "journal").  Since starting on January 26th, 1998, I have kept a journal or diary of some sorts, continually, since I was 8 years old, and I have filled up 8 volumes.
Over the course of the next few months, I intend to read through my entire diary. We will see what I find out about myself. If it was worth writing about back then, what can it tell me now?

My life history - scrawled in various colors of pen and pencil.

My excursion into 1998 has brought me something simultaneously startling and comforting. Somehow, my casual 8-year-old promises have come profoundly true. Here's an excerpt from May 22nd, 1998 (almost exactly 16 years ago):

"Tomorrow I’m going to Montaray. Now I take riding lessons. The first horse I rode for the first 3^^lessons, was Babe. Now I ride Rosie. In Montaray, there’s a horse named Prit. He’s nice. He’s reddish with white frome his forehead to his nose. He’s my best friend. I rode Smokey. He did everything right when you told him! He’s sandy colored with a black mane and tail. Don’t worry, I’ll take you to Montaray.

When I wrote this entry, Monterey was a vacation spot for me and my family. I grew up in Sacramento, and my parents and I would often make the 3.5 hour drive to Monterey for the weekend. And of course I worked in some time to visit horses when we were there. 

In 1998, horseback riding was something new that I was just beginning. Every family vacation involved a ride on a horse for me. And today, my horses are dear, dear friends of mine. 

I moved from Sacramento to Monterey 1 year ago, for graduate school. I moved two of my horses to Pebble Beach Equestrian Center, where I had met Prit as a child. I walk regularly by the stall where I met him. It's usually unoccupied. The trails I went on as a child - today, those are my playground when I have the courage. 

That diary I promised to bring with me 16 years ago is here, in my desk drawer, in a little apartment at the corner of Jefferson and Larkin Streets, Monterey, California. That promise was only made for a weekend vacation, and yet it is still true. Dear diary, I have brought to you Monterey with me. 

It's amazing how we can sometimes be true to ourselves without even realizing it. 

Cantering on Babe. My first canter on her made in into my diary on July 1st, 1998.

Cantering to a jump on Tarquin, October 2013. Pebble Beach, CA, where I met Prit and Smokey as a child. 

 

What's in a name?

"O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet" ~William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II We had a talk about names the other day- a seemingly fluffy exercise in my weekend workshop class on counseling skills. What is your full name? What's its story? Significance? What's your attachment to it? In groups of four we answered these questions, one person at a time. And for the first time it hit me - hard - what's not in my name. My name is Cortney Copeland. Nice and simple. Nothing hidden there. I was almost Cortney June Copeland, according to an unofficial birth certificate I found during one of my childhood forays into old cabinets. June was my maternal grandmother, though I never knew her. My parents couldn't agree on using that name, and never picked a different one. On all my legal forms I just put a dash through the section for middle name. I might have ended up Cortney June Maska-Copeland, had my mother chosen to keep her name and do one of those hyphenated deals that seem to be popular among couples lately. I could even have been Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland, had my maternal great-grandparents not been required to Americanize their name when they immigrated to the USA from Poland. Is Cortney June Merczejewski-Copeland really the same person as Cortney Copeland? Because as my name stands, it obfuscates so many realities. The reality of my immigrant roots, of my connection to the pariah side of my family - marginalized by the strong strain of schizophrenia running in their blood, by poverty and "disfunction" among my mentally ill aunts and other relatives. My name hides these things. It erases them from what identifies me. Juliet asks Romeo to "Deny thy father, and refuse thy name." She asks him to turn away from the blood feud tied to being a Montague, as I've been turned away from all things on my mother's side of the family. Granted, I've fared much better in life than Romeo, and I can also understand why he'd want to no longer be a Montague. At least family doesn't practice blood feuds. And we do have Thanksgiving dinner together, schizophrenia and all. I mean this in no way as a statement of absolute opinion on naming decisions. People have their reasons for giving, taking, or leaving a name. But now at least I understand that little twinge of discomfort I feel when somebody I know changes their name for whatever reason - I am still grappling with the changes in mine. What's in a name? The visible bindings that would compel me to call my mother's side of the family my family.

The Trial of Mediocrates

Back in high school, my friends and I used to joke that there was an ancient Greek thinker named Mediocrates, who wasn't quite as good as Socrates or Hippocrates or any of those men we see carved in marble today. He halfheartedly tossed around the idea that mediocrity was the way to go. But he never really asserted it, or advocated it. That's why his work hasn't been preserved so well, you see. He created it but didn't fight for it. 

Despite having made the guy up, I didn't know until just a few hours ago how much Mediocrates has affected my thinking. Maybe this hypothetical philosopher really is as influential as his more famous brethren. So many of my decisions (or lack thereof) are based on what Mediocrates tells me to do.  

Why?

While mediocrity does not get awards, it also does not get punished. 

Effort, however, sometimes gets punished. Excellence, even, gets punished. It separates you from people. Sometimes, when you try really hard, people see something different in you - and that changes things. Like that time in a high school literature class when we had to get up in front of the class to read a poem from the textbook. I picked one about war, and anger, and pain. We only had a few to choose from, so several other people read it too. But I planned where I would pause dramatically, where I would be loud, where I would be heavy with pensiveness. I read that poem with all my heart in front of the class, and it felt amazing! Thrilling! The teacher was beaming. But when I looked out at my classmates, they looked... scared. Awkward. Like I just crossed a line I wasn't supposed to cross. We were doing okay until I took it too far. I was no longer like them, the people who just got up and read their poem as if they were just themselves, in a classroom, reading a poem. After crossing that line a few too many times - getting too high of a grade and ruining the curve, trying too hard and looking like a teachers' pet, getting too scary when I played an angry character in theater class - I guess I learned to stop. 

I remembered Mediocrates this evening after I watched my friends dance in a low-key Jack and Jill competition at the local blues fusion venue we all frequent. They were amazing, and fun, and.... I knew I loved dancing with all of them. How could I have not taken the opportunity to do so and be celebrated for it together? Why wasn't I out there with them? 

Because I was afraid to be seen trying. Not afraid of failing - no, I'm a decent enough dancer - I was afraid of dancing my absolute best with and in front of people who know me. It seemed pretentious, foolish, like thinking the big present under the tree is mine and taking it in front of everybody before realizing I'm wrong. 

Mediocrity is safe. When we are mediocre, we are right there with everybody else who shares the big part of the bell curve. But when you - yes, you, I'm singling somebody out but am not willing to make it me - when you really, really try, you grow. You change. You find or perhaps even create parts of yourself that weren't revealed before. You challenge others to see what you can do, to look at you and reevaluate their conception of who you are and what you are capable of. And perhaps you impact those around you in some way - you make them feel or see or think something they weren't experiencing right before. When this happens, you lose the control of self-image that comes with sameness. People may love you or hate you rather than just liking you well enough. Perhaps you inspire people, or scare them, or make them laugh. Whatever you do, when you try to be good at it you are set apart and then you have to grapple with yourself: Who are you really? Because you aren't just who you thought you were, and now everyone can see this you whom you don't even know.  

Much safer to be mediocre, and leave excellence to the people who are good at it, right? Some people are allowed to get away with being impressive or talented or beautiful, so we'll leave it to them. So don't mind me, I'm here chillin' with my buddy Mediocrates. We'll passively enjoy your awesomeness without ever acknowledging our own ability to engage it - after all, we would't want to intrude. 

 

Interestingly enough, in some facets of my life I have been able to leave Mediocrates behind. While riding my my horses, for instance, I can try with every fiber of my being. Yesterday my big Thoroughbred gelding was terrified of some equipment along the arena fence. He balked, he spun, he skittered, he ran backwards - he did all sorts of things that are very scary when the one doing them weighs 1,100 pounds and can throw my comparatively itty-bitty human body in the dirt - but he eventually cantered bravely up the rail, because the gaze of my eyes and the lift of my hands and the weight of my seat and the tallness of my spine and the pressure of my legs and the depth of my breath all told him "We're going for it! We're going to keep cantering and we're going to make it!" That kind of attitude gets very important when you start throwing in wooden obstacles to jump over. 

Horseback riding has taught me to try 100%, because sometimes 99% fails. Sometimes 99% means you gallop to the groundline of the jump but then crash into it because at the last second you had a shade of doubt. It means you get run into the arena fence because just enough of you believes that the horse isn't going to turn. But 100%? Never, never has it failed me on the back of a horse. And that is the scary part. If you give 100%, you can't stay within the safety of your known problems. You can't just stop at the jump before takeoff - you have to stay with your horse once he leaves the ground, no matter how ugly it is. Giving 100% means you go somewhere that scares you. So, through horseback riding, I have learned that if I can't get my horse to do something, it's because not all of me wants to get it done. Part of me is still listening to Mediocrates, but instead of protecting me he's going to get my ass hurt. 

Zemo stopped at this jump twice, and then I remembered to ride like we were going to get over it. 

 

So, back to this dance contest - why didn't I enter? Why didn't I dance, even when I can be so confident in situations where much more is at stake?  

Perhaps I'm just a little scared to get to know myself, because that girl whose strength convinced a terrified horse to keep on going and whose intensity over a poem drew uncomfortable looks from high school classmates - that girl invites new tests and judgments and responsibilities her way. Making it over one jump brings on the next one, and makes people watch to see how many strides I get and what track I takes, and emulate what I did well and fix what I did wrong. Making an effort gives people something to work with, but it's scary because I don't always know what I'm giving to whom. An effort has consequences that everybody can either tear down or build upon. And if I had danced, my goodness, people would have looked at me. My effort might have made them feel something, and then it wouldn't just be mine, it would be ours. 

Mediocrity, meanwhile, seems safe because it keeps people from testing you and from judging you. It keeps you from having to share yourself. 

Tonight, mediocrity kept me feeling full of regret on the sidelines, selfishly hogging all my potential to myself because I was afraid of what people might do with it. And meanwhile my friends danced, seemingly unafraid of putting their effort out there where I could see it, and claim it as something of ours upon which I can reflect and build not only my conception of them but my conception of myself. 

Thanks guys, for your efforts. For your dances, of course. 

Mediocrates, this trial has shown you to be a miser. Go drink some hemlock.  

 

Dance, my heart!

The greatest journeys may travel not a mile.
I just got back from one that never left a room. I drove home racked with sobs, grinning and laughing too. That's what journeys do. That's what we want when we watch these great movies of stirring adventures, isn't it?. We want the tragedy lightened with a chuckle, the big-belly laughter dampened by a tinge of sadness. The moment of triumph, the shock of failure.
Fear. Relief. Love.
This is what journeys are about.
I keep looking elsewhere for them. I drive thousands of miles, fly thousands more. Anybody who reads this blog will know I only write when I'm traveling.

Well I'm traveling now. Traveling on a journey that started while snuggled on a sofa with friends, just watching dance videos. Traveling through love and anguish and insecurity and jealousy and just plain WOW how did they do that?! Through beauty, beauty made of suffering or of death or of the littlest seemingly mundane things. I will say of dance what I once said of literature, a number of blogs ago: it makes the ordinary a work of art. And not just the ordinary. Pain, addiction, love, loss, desire, business, humor - dance paints it all with the art of the human body. And after a few too many YouTube clips of SYTYCD, the floodgates of my heart were overrun. Open one emotion and you open the possibility of them all.
I shed a few quiet tears, and tried to maintain at least a little bit of composure as I hugged a friend goodbye. All I really wanted to do was bury my head in his shoulder and hold him tight and cry because life is so...
One word won't do it.
That rush of feeling when you see the person you love, that breathless awe at the first glimpse from a high vista, that crumbling when things fall apart, that warm comfort of familiar old friends...
We can communicate that in a dance, a look, a touch. A much needed embrace. A breath.
Poets can put it into words, I guess. I'm not much of a poet.
I'm restless because I sometimes forget that it is the emotional side of the journey I long for. The world is small compared to the heart. And when the world stops inspiring me, I don't always remember that that other, greater territory holds possibilities both endlessly gratifying and terrifying. But oh, how today reminded me. I am risen from the dull pain of apathy, freed from slow panic of boredom. And I'm kind of a mess. A laughing, crying mess who can't even write the term paper I left my dear friends for because this story was demanding release.
It's been a good journey. And this should make for a great dance someday.