All posts by Jahnavi Newsom
My Life is on Fire
Since making the decision to bike to Brazil only three weeks ago, I feel like my life has exploded into a non-stop fireworks display.
This is fun and exciting, but also hectic and stressful!
I will say this, however: I have learned a valuable lesson about purpose and energy in my life by making this decision.
Making the decision to follow through with a life-long dream and aspiration has lit a fire under my ass like nothing else ever has!
I no longer know the meaning of ‘lethargy’ or ‘stagnation’. (Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean)
The world looks more colorful, and my outlook on life is much more positive. I feel extremely motivated, but am also cherishing the everyday occurrences of my Austin life and my time with Addison. My life here is so idyllic, I realize, and my relationship with Addison is so wonderful, fun and nourishing for my soul. I love my pets, I love my band, and I have been having so much fun living here in Austin, biking around, swimming at Barton Springs, going out with friends and training capoeira several times a week with my group.
Many people have called me or written to me, warning me about the perils that lie ahead of me, telling scary stories or sharing nerve-wracking statistics about kidnappings, rapings and murders in Mexico and Central America.
I am touched to see how much so many people care about me.
I did spent a good part of last week considering that maybe–just maybe–someone would say something that would make me realize I don’t have to go. I thought there was a small chance that I just hadn’t heard the magic words that would make this aspiration go away.
Addison has been so cheerful and supportive about me leaving, that I actually had some 
concern that maybe he was relieved I was going away and would be happier without me. But after camping at Big Bend together and holding him as we lay in our tent under the desert moon, he admitted to the profound sadness he feels about me leaving and his fear for my safety and our relationship.
I felt strangely calm as I cradled him in my arms, and finally knew that I would never hear the magic words that would change my mind.
I know now, for certain, that there is nothing anyone can say to make this feeling go away inside of me.
I am more afraid of being apart from Addison than almost any other aspect of the trip. When we’re together, we’re unstoppable. We work in such congruence with one another on a daily basis, and then still want to spend the evenings together. It’s a sleepover every night! We listen to audiobooks, play music, drink wine, talk about hopes and dreams and ideas, and sometimes keep eachother awake lying in bed because we still have so much to say to one another. We meditate every morning, and are dedicated to supporting one another’s peace of mind and well-being both mentally and physically.
I finally found my ideal partner, and now I’m going to bike away into the sunset??
Who does that???
I don’t have a conclusion or moral to this particular blog post, just wanted to share some of the mental and emotional transformations I am having as I prepare to leave.
My Patreon account is almost ready to rock. You’ll be the first to know when it’s up!
Also, more than likely I will be traveling to Panama with another cyclist who contacted me recently. Having a companion will be a great relief to me, so I’m crossing my fingers and looking forward to it!
Thanks for reading this and please share your thoughts in a comment below.
Love,
Jahnavi
Dark Dreams, a Bright Future
During the wee hours of Thursday, October 8th, 2015 I received a dream.
When I awoke later that morning to start my day, everything had changed.
How did I go to sleep thinking about band practice and how many classes per week of martial arts I needed to do in order to graduate and feel good about my skill level, and then wake up the next morning with my priorities completely shifted?
How is it that, now that I am established in Austin and thoroughly enjoying living here, I decide to walk away from it all overnight?
I will share the dream with you that I had, but let me give you a quick snapshot of my past for some backstory.
On January 16th, 2013, Addison (my fiance) and I arrived in Austin, TX on bicycles. We’d ridden all the way from Brattleboro, VT with musical instruments and our dog Zoso.
The emotional journey I embarked on in order to leave what I perceived to be my permanent home (Brattleboro), to ride my bicycle across the United States and move to a foreign country (Austin) was tumultuous. But it was something I had to do in order to be where I am now. Quite literally.
But during our cross-country bicycle trip, I had a feeling that I never wanted to stop. I wanted to keep going South until I reached Brasil, the mother-land of a martial arts I’ve practiced for over ten years (capoeira). I wanted to leave North America and learn Spanish and Portuguese and meet people who thought completely differently than I do and knew how to live in community in a way that many North Americans don’t understand anymore. I had been talking about visiting Brasil and going back to Mexico and Guatemala for years before my U.S. bicycle trip.
Somewhere in all of this, after living in Austin for a while and then going back to visit my beloved Vermont, I had a severe concussion. Throughout my healing process I dipped in and out of various levels of depression. Over the next two years, I would tell many people about how I was going to bike to Brasil once the time was right, come hell or high water.
My sister, who is traveling through Western Europe and on to Thailand by bicycle with her husband, Erik, has been encouraging me from the start, and even sent me some travel supplies for my trip to Brasil (this included a pair of underwear that claims to be wearable for six weeks without washing–something I will probably not attempt to confirm). She has also hiked the Long Trail by herself, which was something she’d always talked about doing since we were teenagers.
Whenever we would talk on the phone I would tell her that I was working on making more money so I could save money faster and eventually embark on my Brasil trip with Addison.
Yes, Addison had to come with me of course! We’re The Love Sprockets (that’s the name of our band) and that’s what we do! We adventure by day on bicycle and play music for our hosts at night. Plus, I can’t travel through Central and South America by myself! That just wouldn’t be safe!
Yes, that’s the name of our band: The Love Sprockets. We perform in Austin a few times a month with our drummer (Pete) and upright bass player (Watson).
That is… until Watson announced he was ‘goin’ to Mexico!’. It was always something Watson had threatened, but we didn’t pay it too much heed.
“F** this sh** guys,” he’d say, after taking a swig of the Thirsty Goat beer he brewed 60+ hours a week at Thirsty Planet brewery. “I’m goin’ to Mexico!”
So now we’re scrambling to find a new bass player. But how do you replace Watson? He’s an ideal bass player in every way: hysterically apropos, high energy, fast talking, mustache-havin’ and a phenomenal musician. He’s also a cyclist.
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally.
Anyhow, let’s get back to my life altering dream, shall we?
So I was always telling people that I would go to Brasil ‘when the time is right’. But the time has not been right for Addison or I. We have our band, The Love Sprockets to play shows with and tour the country with. We have growing relationships with clients who want to pay us to do things that we’re really good at. I have my capoeira school where I get to train as often as I want and actually get good at this martial arts I’ve always loved.
On Wednesday October 7th, 2015, I went to sleep feeling completely satisfied and excited about my life in Austin.
Sometime in the early morning hours of October 8th I had this dream:
In my dream I was with my dad, my brother and sister. All of the people around us were getting randomly inflicted with a plague of some kind. They would see a black powder appear on their skin, and at that point it was too late–the black powder was a sign that the mysterious disease had already begun to set into their muscles and turn them grey and brittle. Soon after they would die a painful death.
We were sad for all of these people, but also feeling a surreal surrender to the unfathomable workings of Death and its suddenness at times.
That was when I noticed the black powder on my own skin.
The four of us took in this new information. I was going to die, and soon.
I sighed, and said, “You know what guys, I’m not scared of dying. But I am scared of being in terrible pain while I die.”
They nodded in agreement.
After this, I went into the bathroom by myself and began to wipe the black powder off of my skin with a warm, soapy wash cloth.
As I cleaned myself, I thought about all of the things I had wanted to do with my life, and the people I would miss. A vision of the little girl I was supposed to have with my fiance, Addison, flashed through my mind. I could hear my brother talking in the other room and I knew, somewhere in my waking mind, that he lives in India and I wouldn’t see him before I died. I would miss my friends and family.
I was sad about all of these things, but resigned to my fate.
That was when I remembered that I had not biked to Brasil yet.
In my dream, I fell to the ground, howling in anguish at this realization. I cried and cried and cried.
I wanted to get on my bicycle right then, and cycle until I dropped dead. But I could feel the crunchiness of my muscles and tendons and knew the disease had compromised my ability to pedal a bicycle.
Eventually I cried myself awake, much to Addison’s surprise, who was asleep in my bed next to me.
He tried to comfort me as best as he could when I told him about the dream. “You’re okay baby,” he told me. “You’re not going to die of the plague. Nothing bad is happening.”
I lay next to him silently as he fell back asleep.
And I knew something then, that I hadn’t fully realized before.
I’m not afraid of dying, I thought to myself. I’m afraid of not fully living.
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and when I awoke in the morning, I knew things could not stay the same any longer.
During what was supposed to be our meditation session, I unfolded my deepest thoughts and feelings before Addison, and for the first time, we were able to agree on this one truth:
It’s time for me to ride my bicycle to Brasil.
Not next year, not after I have enough money saved.
Now.
I’ve given myself a month and a half to prepare.
And I leave at the end of November, 2015.
I hope you will join me on this journey through my blog and Patreon (I will set up Patreon over the next couple of weeks and let you know when it’s launched).
Thank you for reading this. 🙂
Flood Waters At My Balcony
Here’s a piece I wrote for Real Travel Stories:
I was nine years old when my parents told us they were moving our entire family to India. I had lived in a small town of North Carolina most of my life, and knew little to nothing about India, except that I didn’t want to go.
Six months later, I stepped out of the plane onto Indian soil for the first time. I can still recall the unfamiliar smells, the hot, dusty air… and people. So many people.
We arrived in Calcutta, and somehow, miraculously, were able to get our ten trunks of belongings, our suitcases and personal bags into two different taxis. It was all an overwhelming blur for this jetlagged, nine year old girl with skinny arms and smuggled gold coins in her belly-bag. My dad had slipped a few gold coins into each of his kid’s bags so that we could bring some of the family savings with us, un-noticed by authorities. It felt like a big responsibility to me, to not lose those precious coins.
My chubby, blond-haired, blue-eyed brother was jammed into a taxi with my dad, and my mother, sister and I were squished into another taxi. We wound through crowded streets, amazed at the local driving tactics. Horns were used constantly, whether to beep at a group of cows or people that were blocking traffic, to beep at other vehicles, or to hurry old ladies across the street. Whenever we stopped at a busy intersection, beggars would try to jam their hands into our windows, which terrified me. Especially the ones who were missing body parts from leprosy. I thought if they touched me, I would get leprosy too.
Sometime later—I could not be sure if it had been hours or days—we arrived on the banks of the Ganges River in the holy land of Mayapur.
When I tell people about my childhood and moving to India at the age of 9, a common question right about now would be, “So are your parents Indian?”
My answer is always, “No, my dad is American and my mother is French.”
And although my name is Jahnavi, I am definitely white!
Once arrived in Mayapur, a fleet of bicycle rickshaws transported our trunks and bags through the city.
As I was jostled along in a rickshaw with my dad, I was entranced by the colorful dresses of the Indian ladies, the perfume coming from the flower merchant stalls and the constant shouting and calling in this foreign language.
And there were the smells… cow dung, sweat, urine, smoke, food, flowers, freshly washed clothes, compost heaps mixed with trash, goats…
We bumped merrily alongside other rickshaws, bicycles, mopeds with entire families squeezed onto them, lorry trucks and taxis. I said to my dad, “Well, you certainly don’t need to go on a roller coaster ride when you live in India—you just need to take a rickshaw ride!”
We got a room on the second floor of a hotel that overlooked a large temple in Mayapur. My siblings and I were happy because the hotel room had a verandah. My brother and I would play with our toys on the verandah and pretend that our heroes were nearly falling off into the abyss. We discovered that we could go up onto the rooftop, where the entire city of Mayapur stretched out around us.
The next day we went to a large prasadam hall (‘prasadam’ is food that is offered to God first) to eat lunch. We sat on the ground alongside hundreds of Indians, and our food was ladled out onto huge banana leaves. Soup was poured into little, water-tight bowls woven out of coconut leaves. We ate with our hands. It was delicious. My dad poured drops of grapefruit seed extract into our water so we didn’t get the runs.
When we finished eating, we carried our banana leaf plates out back and threw them onto a heap, where delighted cows gathered to feast on our dinner-ware. Sinks lined the walls and we went and washed our hands with soap and water.
We hadn’t been in Mayapur more than a day and a half before it began to rain.
It rained, and rained and rained. We stayed in our hotel room as the streets filled with water.
The next day the water had reached the second story of our hotel. My dad lowered himself off of the balcony and onto a boat, then set off to find more boatmen to carry the rest of our family and belongings to the next state.
We waited in that room with our anxious mother for two days, living off of sweets they brought us from the temple. My sister read a lot, her long, frizzy hair framing her heart-shaped, serious face. My mother would sit staring, sniffing her hand or inner elbow area, jiggling her leg distractedly. My brother and I ate the sweets with relish, and played with our plastic dinosaurs on the verandah.
I remember watching people swim by our door, laughing and talking with one another as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be swimming down the street. I saw snakes swim by also, sliding across the top of the water as though it were a solid surface. Boats drifted past with people calling loudly, selling flowers or food.
The temple services continued as though nothing had happened. The floor inside was elevated enough so that when people came to sing and dance in front of the deities, they stood in water that was only thigh-high.
My dad arrived late on the second day, in a big boat steered by a man with a pole. We formed an assembly line, passing suitcases and trunks along down into the boat, and carefully climbed down from the balcony.
The boatman pushed off, and we drifted away from the hotel, and onto the watery streets. Eventually he navigated us out of the city and onto open water, floating above the submerged pastures and rice paddies, here and there the tops of thatched huts poking through the surface.
The sun was low on the horizon, and turning everything a fiery orange, including the water.
My dad smiled then—whether for our sake or because he was actually thrilled, I’m not sure. But here we were, in India, just like he’d planned.
I didn’t know what to expect next, but it didn’t matter. It was beyond my ability to imagine, so I just took in the moment.
I sat back and listened to the sounds of the boatman’s pole pushing through the water.
Swish… swish… splash…
A big white bird flew across the fiery sky, squawking rhythmically.
A cow stood on a pile of debris, chewing its cud, seemingly un-perturbed by the ocean of water that surrounded her island.
And our boat filled with my family moved on, steadily and quietly.
Letting Go
A few months ago, Addison (my fiancee) bought me a book called “Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm” by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Throughout my slow-growing meditation practice, I’ve been aware of ‘levels’, perhaps not unlike a video game, that I have to ‘overcome’ in order to get to the next level.
Many times this involves gaining certain tools, making certain mistakes or have certain experiences before I can ‘pass’ that level.
A few months ago (and even now) I’m in level ‘Fear’.
I’ve recognized how incapacitating Fear is, and how incredibly free I am or will be when I am no longer afraid.
I imagine living without the negative voices in my head that are constantly instructing me and giving me their opinions from a fear-based place, and simply making choices based on intuition.
I imagine being one of those people who laugh and smile all the time, and are totally unafraid of rejection.
In fact, these people seem to no longer require approval in any way.
I’m going to grow up to be like that. 🙂
In the meantime, I am reading and re-reading the last sections of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, ‘Fear’, and doing the meditation practices he has laid out.
I wanted to share this exercise and part of this chapter with you, because not only is it a wonderful practice, but the writing is eloquent and hits home with me every time I read it:
Letting Go
“Breathing in, I observe letting go. Breathing out, I observe letting go.
This exercise helps us look deeply at giving up craving, hatred and fear. This concentration helps us touch the true nature of reality and brings the wisdom that can liberate us from fear, anger and despair. We let go of our wrong perceptions of realitys so as to be free.
‘Nirvana’ literally means ‘cooling’, ‘the putting out of flames’; in Buddhism, it refers to extinction of the afflictions brought about by our wrong perceptions.
Nirvana isn’t a place to go or something belonging to the future. Nirvana is the true nature of reality, things as they are.
Nirvana is available in the here and now.
You are already in nirvana; you are nirvana, just as the wave is already the water.“
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Thank you for reading this post. 🙂
Don’t forget to share your thoughts below…!
A jar of angry mice
Do you ever find yourself battling voices in your head?
Especially when you’re trying to write?
It can be very distracting, when all of your different mental personalities are reading over your shoulder as you type, giving their two cents.
I don’t know about you, but I receive opinions on everything I’m doing whether it’s taking a shower or running a stop sign on my bicycle.
There’s always imaginary, alternate-ending stories that play out for every occasion of my life.
Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, shared this great exercise for helping to quiet all of those voices.
So, here’s what you do:
“Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up.
Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse.
Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar.
Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the trail, drop it in he jar.
And so on.
Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head.
Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won’t do what they want–won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often.
Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle.
Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices.
Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to your.
Leave it down, and get back to your [writing].
A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them all in the head.
But I think he’s a little angry, and I’m sure nothing like this would ever occur to you.”
I hope that helps, or that at very least, you cracked up a little reading about it. 😉
Have a great day!
By the Pale Moonlight–another look at characters
Hey, so last week I shared some thoughts about character perspectives in books vs. movies, and a funny story from Anne Lamott’s book, ‘Bird by Bird’.
A song I wrote recently (‘By the Pale Moonlight’) has an interesting character perspective switch half-way through that I wanted to share with you. I based the song on the well-known French song “Au Claire de la Lune”.
“Au Clair de la Lune” is a common French folk song that dates back to at least the mid-18th Century. In 2008, the earliest known recording of the human voice was digitized, and the unknown singer on the recording is singing a small snippet of “Au Clair de la Lune”.
In this song, the story begins from the perspective of a lonely poet/author, who is knocking on his friend’s door so he can borrow a pen and light his candle in the middle of the night.
Back in those days, if you wanted to stay up all night with creative ideas or wake up at 3 in the morning and write something down, you’d better hope you have ink for your pen and some coals left in the fireplace to light your candle with!
A couple verses in, the perspective changes.
Is it from his friend’s perspective as he watches from his window, or just an omnipotent perspective?
Here’s how my english version of the song goes:
At your door I’m knocking
By the pale moonlight
Lend a pen I beg you
I’ve a word to write
Dark now is my candle
My fire burns no more
For the love of heaven
Open up your door
My friend cries in answer
By the pale moonlight
“In my bed I’m lying
Late and chill’s the night
Yonder at the neighbor’s
Someone is astir
Fire’s freshly kindled
Oh get a light from her.”
To the neighbor’s house then
By the pale moonlight
Goes our lonely author
To beg a pen to write
“Who knocks there so softly?”
Calls a voice above
“Open wide your door now
It is the God of Love.”
Seek they pen and candle
By the pale moonlight
They can see so little
Dark is now the night
What they find in seeking
That is not revealed
All behind her door
Is carefully concealed
And in my version of this song, I finish up by singing the first line in French (what they are saying in French is a bit different from the English version):
Au clair de la lune
Mon ami Pierrot
Prete-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot
Ma chandelle est morte
Je n’ai plus de feu
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu
If you want to hear me play the full song, just click here! (the song starts at around 4:40 in the video)
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. 🙂
Please comment below to share your thoughts about writing, characters, or song-writing (or anything else this topic made you think of!)…
A perspective on characters
The writing project I’m in the middle of right now has caused me to examine characters and their perspectives in a deep, inquisitive and sometimes confounded way.
(I can’t tell you what the project is exactly, because I’m ghostwriting and that’s just the way it is when you ghostwrite)
When you watch a movie, unless someone is narrating during the scenes, than you need to base what the character is thinking by their actions.
But when you read a book, the author has the ability to paint inter-weaving stories and perspectives for you. In one scene you can see the world from the perspective of the main character, while in the next scene you’re seeing everything from their arch-nemesis’s perspective. And who knows, maybe the following scene will be from the perspective of the detective’s hairbrush lying on the bathroom counter. Or an omnipotent perspective that sees and knows all.
Having options is great, but they can sometimes be overwhelming as well.
Learning more about who my characters are, without judgement or a need to change them, is a good place to start.
So I opened up Anne Lamott’s book on writing called ‘Bird by Bird’, and found a section where she talks about characters. The story she shares at the end of the section made me laugh out loud, as well as left me feeling better informed and inspired.
Here’s the lead up to the story:
“You are going to love some of your characters, because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.
But no matter what, you are probably going to have to let bad things happen to some of the characters you love or you won’t have much of a story.
Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences, and we do not all behave perfectly all the time. As soon as you start protecting your characters, from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and pointless, just like in real life.
Get to know your characters as well as you can, let there be something at stake, and then let the chips fall where they may.”
Here’s the story:
“My Al-Anon friend told me about the frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of the night. The wife kept dragging him in before dawn so that the neighbors wouldn’t see him, until finally an old black woman from the South came up to her one day after a meeting and said, “Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him.”
And I am slowly, slowly in my work–and even more slowly in real life–learning to do this.”
–Anne Lamott (author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies)
I’d love to hear your perspective on characters and your experience with bringing them to life–
(or killing them off, if you’re more of a George R.R. Martin kind of author) 🙂
–Just fill out a comment below…
A look at song writing…
Have you ever “fallen in love”?
You know, when your hormones are so jacked you can’t see straight, and just the thought of the other person sends you into state of unencumbered bliss?
I’m guessing this has probably happened to you, even if you don’t want to admit it. 😉
What I always find interesting about falling in love and about human beings in general (‘interesting’ is a nice way of saying ‘really fucking annoying’) is that when something is happening to us that we perceive to be really good, we can’t help but dread the potential end of it.
As always, we fear death.
The death of relationships, the death of the life we know now.
Even when we can recognize how healthy and normal change is, we can’t help but fear it subconsciously.
Well, at least I do, anyways. 🙂
So during the last bout of falling in love I did (which was about three years ago, thank God), the song Dark Angel was born.
This song asks alot of questions…
But does not provide any answers.
Here’s how it goes:
Dark Angel
“I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
Yes, I’ll be your innocence if you’ll be my sex appeal
You’ve got everything it takes to drive this situation wild
I saw you first, I saw you first
I saw you first and now you are mine
But I’m losing control of this situation all of the time
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
Are you the one to make my blind eyes see?
Or are you my dark angel of death?
Are you my terminal breath?
I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
Yes I’ll be your calling if you’ll be my answering
You’ve got everything it takes to make a murderer of me
And are you the best thing that’s ever happened to me?
Are you the one to make my blind eyes see?
Or are you my dark angel of death?
Are you my terminal breath?
Are you the end of my fears?
Or are you a hurricane of tears?
Are you a hurricane of tears?
Or are you a hurricane….
of tears?”
Listen to Dark Angel by clicking here
Thanks for reading this blog!
I’ll be back next week… 😉
~Jahnavi