Quirkyalone

Join Me to Launch the Brazilian version of Quirkyalone!

May 02, 2010 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Featured, Travel

The quirkyalone movement is arriving in Brazil!

Santa Teresa, a hilltop neighborhood that is often compared to Montmartre in Paris for its bohemian atmosphere, rich cultural life, and (to me) intoxicating architecture is hosting an action-packed literary festival FLIST the weekend of May 15 and 16 and I am going to participate with an event to launch the Brazilian version of my book, Sósingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis (in English, it’s Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics). Here’s a formal invite in English then in Portuguese! If you are nearby, please come by and be sosingular with us.

When: Sunday, May 16, 3 pm

Where: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, just opposite the Parque das Ruinas

What: A book launch party for SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis. Join us to learn about the quirkyalone movement worldwide and to talk about single life in Rio. Meet other quirkyalones (or sosingulares) over cairpirinhas!

A quirkyalone is a person who enjoys being single (or spending time alone) and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately; relishing equal doses of solitude and friendship; attracted to freedom and possibility.

For more information, visit quirkyalone.net.
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Quando: domingo, 16 de maio, 03:00

Onde: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, em frente ao Parque das Ruinas

O quê: A festa de lançamento do livro para SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis.

Brazil Travel Writing, Coming Up!

Apr 14, 2010 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Single Life, Travel

A preamble before more posts to come: Hello dear readers! Since mid-January, I have been traveling, or wandering with my intuition and Lonely Planet as a guide, in Brazil in the South, the Northeast, and back to Rio again. About three months remain in my unplanned adventure. I resolved not to write much (publicly) while I was traveling because I wanted to keep my experience private. Something inside me told me that my experience needed to be completely my own, and not turned into a work product for worldwide consumption. The Internet makes us free, but also more constrained when the audience is potentially everyone and the work forever etched into Google’s memory.

Now I’m changing my mind. I want to take the next three months and see what it’s like if I share more of my experience with an online audience. I can’t promise consistency because the lure of experience is so great, who has time to write, edit, proofread, create links, and post photos? Somehow all these other travel bloggers like Sherry Ott and Two Backpackers and many others document their daily adventures. I don’t quite understand where they find the time, but they do. In the interest of adventure and shaking things up, let’s see what happens when I let my thoughts roam beyond my fantastically light little netbook. My writing will probably be less travelogue, and more meditation on the things I’m learning about Brazil and myself. The perspective will be de facto quirkyalone, since it’s just moi, right now, traveling Brazil in search of some transcendent experience–who knows what, at times!? Stay tuned. I look forward to seeing what the journey is like when it’s shared (with you).

My Big Life Churn

Jan 12, 2010 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Travel

A preamble: First, apologies for the long gap in posts. I’ve been distracted from blogging by much tumult in my life, a combination of family stuff and a long-anticipated dream that has required much planning. As I post this, I am sitting in Logan Airport at the Fox Sports Box bar, sipping a Cosmopolitan and using the fabulously free holiday wifi provided by Google. I’m about to fly to Brazil for 4-6 (or really, who knows how many) months for a very unplanned adventure. Below is something that I wrote to explain this period of my life to myself (and others). In many ways, this is an extremely quirkyalone journey, but in ways that might not be immediately apparent. How much I will write and share online, I haven’t decided. Check this space, or my personal site. Somewhere along the way, or when it’s all over, I’ll be posting stories and reflections.

“For me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.”—Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel”

I am officially in a “life churn” mode. When I’m feeling more Australian and mystical, I might call it my walkabout. I like the violence in the words “life churn”; there is something comfortingly accurate about the language. There is something violent in making big life changes. For me, that was disassembling my apartment of four years. My couch is scattered to the Craigslist winds. A friend is driving my Corolla “Martha,” and my belongings are in beautifully taped purchased boxes (a move so adult and unlike all my others) and squeezed into an 11 x 6 storage unit.

Three suitcases worth of clothes for all seasons are at my mother’s house in Rhode Island, where I am staging my vagabonding adventures. I obsessively compare flights on Kayak and Vayama. I’ve purchased way too many Lonely Planets, because it’s way too hard to decide where to go. For the next six months, I will mostly be on walkabout: so far the known countries are Iceland, France, and Brazil, but honestly anything could happen. That is largely what I am seeking: the unexpected.

My friend Chris coined the term “life churn” a few years ago when we were walking through Prospect Park in Brooklyn. We were talking about our respective homes, where we had lived since college graduation (New York City for him, and San Francisco for me) and whether we should move.

We’ve both been stay-ers for the previous ten years and wondered if we were missing out by being so faithful to one city. Chris suggested that life churns are good for you: they shake things up and get you out of old patterns and into new ones. It’s part of the whole “change is good” philosophy (or assumption). The term “life churn” sounded genius to me, and I filed it away as part of my private lexicon.

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An Unexpectedly (Quirky)alone New Year’s in Rio de Janeiro

Jan 13, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Featured, Solitude, Travel

My friend Jenny just reminded me that I have a New Year’s problem, which tends to emerge in a particularly virulent way when I travel. The problem is mad indecision. I feel the full force of the road not taken. In San Francisco, I can accept an uneventful New Year’s Eve with close friends, but on the road, I can’t get it through my head that New Year’s Eve doesn’t have to fulfill a vision. Three years ago I couldn’t decide between staying in New York with my friends Jenny and Adam or spending the New Year with my father and stepmother on Cape Cod, which in retrospect, seems insane that there was even a question. I was suffering from insomnia at the time and was afraid of being exhausted and out all night in the frigid New York  cold. I chose safety—the Cape Cod with family option—and cursed myself when I found myself on a couch with my father watching Seinfeld at 11:30. I didn’t sleep anyway, so annoyed with myself for choosing the Most Geriatric New Year’s Ever.

This year I spent New Year’s week in Rio de Janeiro, which is an experience I will never forget. Jenny asked me “What was the high and low of your trip?” All I could think of was New Year’s Eve, a focal point of anxiety for days leading up to the trip, and a story to tell. I was in Brazil for a spontaneous weeklong (second) trip. The flight was purchased in mid-December. No, I don’t have a boyfriend there, which is what everyone assumes. I had just been in Brazil in September. The stars had aligned with a bizarrely cheap ticket and a place to stay for New Year’s, the high point of Braizlian partying for the year, second only to Carnaval. I have this Brazil fascination, which I haven’t completely understood yet.

What I want to tell you about is New Year’s. It’s a first-world problem to have too many choices, but the pain from being unable to decide is real.  I am not as brave as I come off. In fact, I am still shaken by the telling of this story. But I did experience about five minutes of quirkyalone bliss in the midst of this adventure. Because of that . . and because it strikes me now that New Year’s 2009 was also the the tenth anniversary of this birth of this concept (I first uttered the word “quirkyalone” on New Year’s Day 1999) I want to share this tale.

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