Zen or the art of living in Zuoz

I have lost track of time. Eric left just one week ago, but it feels like I have been here much longer. I don't mean this in a negative way. Despite the fact that I am alone, there hasn't been a minute of loneliness or boredom. I have settled into an easy routine. My days are relaxing and delightful. My biggest challenge is to train myself not to worry about the future. It is a strange feeling to just be and enjoy. On one hand I feel like I should be looking for work. On the other, I know I can survive for a while without income, and I want to take advantage of this privileged time to figure out what I want to do. I am afraid that if I rush the process I'll find myself pegged into a position I didn't really want in the first place. Then again, being Swiss and catholic (since they say so!) the idleness goes against my very nature and is saddled with guilt. Yet, I also know that I need to heal from the traumas of last year and that finding a new route for my life will take time. I will have to learn to be patient. I am repeating this to myself like a mantra.

I am also battling a major case of cultural schizophrenia, as I knew I would. I left Switzerland 32 years ago. You know me: I am happy in Portland, I love my community, I treasure Oregon's wild landscapes. Yet, during all this time, whenever I would go to Switzerland even for one week, I reverted into a true Swiss. I would use other languages, eat differently, walk or take public transportation. I would visit old friends, and always thought that I could stay and quickly ease back into a Swiss life. Many times it felt like the only reason I was going back to Oregon was that plane ticket in my purse. And then the plane would approach PDX and I would see Mt. Hood or the other volcanoes and wonder how I could ever think of not living in the Pacific Northwest - this is my home, this is where I belong.

Eventually I have accepted that I will have to live with this duality. Some immigrants never fully adjust to their new country, nor want to go back to the old country. I am fortunate because I love both, feel comfortable and at home in both places. Because of this history, I knew that spending an extended amount of time here would exacerbate the quandry. But I wasn't expecting it to hit me so early and so hard. Already I am catching myself thinking about how I can stay here forever. Or at least come back every winter for several months. Or at least one month... Relax - breath deep - exhale... One day at the time, you barely got here, live in the present, enjoy what you got without worrying about the future. I need my friends who are more zen than me to help me get a new approach to life, help me learn to live without a blueprint.

As for the less philosophical, day to day aspects of my life, I have now a rather well established routine. The alarm clocks go off at 8am. I sip the orange juice in front of the big living room window, gauging the day and checking the emails arrived from the West Coast during the night.



It usually is 9am before I have breakfast. By the time I am done the birds have started moving around and I try to identify them through the windows of the various rooms - which in effect give access to all 4 directions! Every morning I find an excuse to walk up to the village to buy something or ask for some information. Lunch and then it's off to do some cross-country skiing. I make exceptions: Monday it was a long walk, today snowshoeing with a group and a guide. I return home around 4pm for more relaxing time, tea with the special carnaval pastry, reading, watching a movie or TV. What a life!

Spending time up here must be the best remedy against seasonal depression: there is so much light and sun. Since I arrrived it has snowed pretty much non-strop on the north side of the Alps. Here we barely got a couple of dustings. The weather alternates between cloudless skies, sun with a few clouds, or clouds with sun! The valley is an oasis of beauty and peace. Unlike in Africa, here I do keep up with the world's news, but everything seems so remote, it doesn't gnaw at me the way it does in Portland.

I'll leave it at this for today. The next post will be more factual - I promise. Thank you for your comments and messages - they are always appreciated.