Growth

The goslings are growing up. Their fluffy yellow has grown into the awkward teenage coloration of wet sand. Soon they will look like their parents and fly away.

I found my old passport yesterday while cleaning. The picture didn't look anything like me. There were no lines carved into her face. She looked fresh and ready to go. She was going to London and the year was 2000. She's heavier now and it shows, in her thoughts, her feelings, and in her thighs. That girl almost twelve years ago doesn't know what's coming. The work, the school, the marriage and divorce peppered with video games and alcohol. How could twelve years disappear without a fight? Why isn't there a face cream to restore hope?

Mango Margaritas in D.C.

I’m in the hotel lounge, waiting on my Congolese participants and listening to the rain outside. I wonder what the french word is for rain. It’s 5:30 pm and I could go to sleep or write in a stupor if my keyboard would allow me. I’ve met with a good delegation of Africans this week and I’m starting to wonder at my own place and purpose. On one hand, I want to support them in their endeavors to rectify human rights abuses and support them in their struggle to meet 1st country standards, but on the other hand it’s like meeting a child for the first time. Hesitant and awkward, wanting to make a good first impression, realizing that our country and many others have spent decades undermining their ability to function and be self-sufficient. I’ve realized that in the end, it comes down to money, and it sickens me. and now i’m back to work… I wish I could exist again.

It’s raining again. There is a general sense of malaise around the Center and it isn’t helping my focus. Obviously, since five minutes have passed since I wrote the last line. I drove to the book store during lunch to look up 19th century typography, a new interest that has inspired me to re-purpose three letterpress drawers into nifty shadow boxes… but I digress. While driving I noticed a surprising lack of sound coming from outside. The dirty ice and snow piled on the side of the road from last week’s snowstorm made more noise melting than the trucks and cars that drove around me. I wonder if anyone else feels stuffed with cotton balls.

Into the Wild

Was it the fog’s early morning grey dampness or the headlights that looked like lightening bugs weaving in and out of traffic trying to merge with each other that added a touch of surrealism to my drive into work?

Lately, I feel like I’m retreating more and more inside my head. I want to sleep all the time. I want to be quiet. I want to create, and I want to be left in peace. I’m torn and wallowing in my own self-consciousness. And it’s annoying. Even to me. I need a new job, but I have a decent job with decent people doing decent things, especially compared to my last place of employment. What I need is something greater than myself, but I really don’t want to be bothered by it.

I watched a movie this weekend about a man who graduates from college then takes himself off the grid. He reads Tolstoy, Thoreau, and books on edible plants. He meets people on his journey and they are changed by his honest search for truth. In the end, the man dies alone in a bus in Alaska. He’s realized that happiness can only really be happiness if it is shared. In the grand scheme of things, the man could be seen as a messiah, delivering people from themselves and their created misery, offering them a chance to find truth, not only in each other but in nature. So his actions and choices were not pointless. I understand this need to find truth and the frustration of constantly being distracted (enjoyably so in most cases) by society, which does not alleviate the selfishness of the desire or the impracticality of seeking such solitude, especially when you are happy with loved ones. There is a duality at play that I can’t seem to balance.