Live your best life

Much-needed advice from my Uber driver on Friday night

It’s been a tumultuous spring, to say the least. It’s also been beautiful, as the Bay Area is wont to be. Every day, the sea breeze blows in, carrying the barest briny scent, some times more than others. When it’s foggy, for example, I can really smell the sea. It’s lovely and bracing. It feels healthy. The air is clean and clear here.

My garden is thriving. I planted four tomatoes, two peppers, and lots of flowers. The Violet de Bordeaux fig is loaded with her lacy, deeply-lobed leaves and a bunch of figs that are already big. The persimmon is graced with a dense coat of tender, light-green leaves that will deepen in color as summer emerges.

Flowers are everywhere. The feathery yarrow I grew from seed along the pathways and around the Meyer lemon are developing their flower heads, and they’re all different colors. I can see some hot pink ones; the rest remain a mystery. I also planted penstemon! Technicolor lavender blooms of Showy Penstamon pop against the sandy paths. The bright red penstemon near the patio is setting flowers, and I added three more to the area because I enjoyed them so much last summer. They were a favorite of the hummingbirds, and they bloomed for months on end. And then, a dark-leaved purple-black penstamen near the zinnia and the persimmon… I planted two of those. No flowers yet. They are a mystery.

The big-leaf maple will probably be too big, or that’s what everyone says. My friend P. seemed to think it will be a problem for the neighbors. I can’t see how beautiful green native trees that block our view of very-urban Broadway and the painfully glinting cars atop the Toyota dealer building across the street can be anything but a good thing. But, then, I am me, and not everyone has my sensibilities or belief system, it seems. I think it will be just lovely that my bigleaf maple, if allowed to grow, will in short order enclose the neighbor’s painfully exposed second-floor balcony in a curtain of tender green leaves, giving it a tree-house feeling and effect.

The Peace Corps is off. I found out the Thursday before last that I have been rejected for failing to disclose my medical conditions, which, yes, is absurd and Kafka-esque since I have none. I passed my medical, including the endless lab tests they were requiring up to within days of the drop-dead deadline, even the test that was so obscure Kaiser said they didn’t even do it… I got everything in by the deadline, and then they said I failed to disclose I: 1) have suicidal ideation; 2) have hallucinations; 3) can’t hear, 4) have serious joint issues, and 5) have foot problems.

They asked me to write a statement about these omissions, which was easy to do since they were all ludicrous and asinine assertions. And then they rejected me anyway.

My friend E. said she thinks I was DOGE’d. I of course requested an appeal, and they began ghosting me. Mind you, at the same time this was going on, I was receiving my flight and detailed staging information.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach for days. I’ve been planning to serve in Tonga with the Peace Corps for a year. I was packing. I was selling furniture. I was making plans. I was buying things for the post. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would pass medical clearance.

Last Tuesday, after being ghosted, I wrote directly to the head of the Peace Corps, Dr. Allison Greene, attaching pdfs of correspondence, doctor’s statements clearing me for service, etc. Her office responded within the hour, asking if they may share my email and attachments with other departments. I said, By all means, yes. Anyway, it’s making me sick to write about it. That’s sufficient.

It was a blow.

So I booked a one-way ticket to Mexico City and reserved a room in an AirBnB in Condesa for a month. I still need to leave the flat I’m in so my son and I can begin cash-flowing on the building. I thought I would still sell everything, store what I couldn’t bring myself to sell in the garage, and take off for Mexico.

Since I’m an EU citizen, I wanted to go to Spain, but I just can’t afford that yet.

And, now that I’m no longer a Peace Corps volunteer, I’m no longer giving notice on June 4th to the contracting agency.

I spent several uncomfortable days and weeks thinking about how to mask my location in Mexico from my client, but decided this morning to just tell them I’ll be working from Mexico temporarily.

I had coffee with my friend R. the other day. He said, Keep a place here. Go, enjoy Mexico, check it out, but keep a foothold in the Bay Area.

Technically, I do have that… I mean, I own property in the Bay Area. But, if I had to come back suddenly and everything was rented, I’d have nowhere to live, obviously, and could not afford an AirBnB here.

I could rent the one-bedroom that’s coming up on June 1st in my son’s building near Highland Hospital. It’s not a great neighborhood, but not the worst by any means. That’s probably what I should do.

Last night, I watched “Arctic,” a Mads Mikkelsen survival film. It was good, gripping. But it left me feeling decidedly unsettled. I began castigating myself, as I am wont to do. The voice said, You have no idea how good you have it. Look at how you take everything for granted. You have a beautiful home in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Why are you dismantling your home and your life? Why are you disrupting everything again? You’re courting disaster. Wherever you go, there you are. Don’t you know that yet? You’re de-stabilizing your life, and your Self. Again. To what purpose?

Lorenzo Stanchel is the man’s name who picked me up for a short Uber ride on Friday when my friend E. and I decided to change venues. He was extraordinary and quite possibly delivered by God. He began almost immediately to tell me that I have dominion over my Self and my Life. That my life is my own, and no one else’s. That it is my responsibility to cultivate a great attitude. That my thoughts create my reality (which my son has been telling me for years). He called me “Queen” not once but twice (!) and said, Go forth and live your best life. It is entirely within your own control.