Near Wild Heaven

Surrealism. That's what this is. A few days ago I went to meet the so-called newbies - the fresh batch of Peace Corps volunteers - at the airport. Slightly dazed but eager, they were full of excitement and questions. They'd literally just stepped into the next phase of their lives. It was so easy to feel excited for them and to rattle off answers just as quickly as they could ask them. Everyone on the staff and all the current volunteers were all smiles and laughs. Later, I felt like I'd been momentarily possessed by some happy-go-lucky, huggy spirits that sought to falsely portray PC life. I think they may have succeeded.

My answers to the soon-to-be volunteers were never lies - it is a great time and you do make great friends and it is the best of times (and the worst) and it is totally worth the struggles...sometimes. How does one give a snapshot of PC life that is accurate but not disheartening? That's encouraging, but realistic? That's hopeful, but not toooo hopeful? I attempted to lace my answers with clever wordings and sometimes just by throwing back questions trying to get the question to be narrow enough that I could give honest, positive answers. I was walking a fine line, and probably just confused people even more. Hell, I think I confused myself.

Some time ago the country director dedicated a letter to the topic of these little online journal things - about how they inform and influence incoming or potential PCVs. This is a quote: "the attitude of an RPCV who's been home for two years is often a whole lot more positive, balanced and, I submit, realistic than many PCVs who are in their first year at site." Hm. The letter when on to state that "we all have a responsibility to prepare the newest members of our team for Peace Corps". I often think that some of the staff considers that to mean pumping people full of facts about the country and quirky stories - and both are indeed useful. However, there's a certain Peace Corps reality, the most influential aspect of it, that we face that people don't outline well - the emotional journey.

Everything here feels so raw and every emotion tends to be extreme. A great time feels like you are having the time of your life and a bad time seems like you are three steps from checking yourself into a mental ward. The ping-ponging of your emotions even seems out of your hands. One moment you are dashing towards a touchdown and then some invisible linebacker comes and slams you so hard you can barely breathe. You're playing dodgeball - not with a soft, plastic ball, but with a mace. Think I'm exaggerating? Think again. Every day I wake up unsure about how I really feel, unsure if I am capable of playing the hand that the day will deal me Often it seems like a game, but then other times it feels like my life and sanity are the trophies I hope to be awarded and it just doesn't seem so fun any more. It feels very unsafe.

But, there is the other side. You'll laugh harder with and feel more connected to your fellow volunteers (and faster) than you have to people in years - perhaps ever. You really share a huge life experience with people - you lean on each other, encourage each other and get to know the ins and outs of each other with profound clarity. When you have even the smallest success it feels greater than the enormous ones you had back home. You reintroduce the concept of "first times" into your life, and that can be really amazing. You reshape and redefine yourself. You get to know yourself in a way you never understood before - your strengths and weaknesses, your assets and liabilities and you'll do it with people also growing and expanding - people eager to learn and share. It feels very safe.

Confused yet?

Shortly after leaving the airport, I began my multi-hour journey home and absent-mindedly put on REM's Out of Time. Turns out the album hits a lot of the themes of the PC experience. It is an Endgame - it seems like the rollercoaster is over and then suddenly there's another hill and dip. You're so close to freedom - you're unshackled from the expectations and pressures of home and family and professionalism... "those barricades can only hold for so long"...you "breathe at the thought of such freedom". There will likely be the saddest dusk you've ever seen (or at least feel like it) and you will turn towards believing in (and hoping for) miracles with a tired head and a heartache...Half a World Away. You move in a still frame, howl at the moon; morning will find you laughing; up and down....Low. Knocked silly, knocked flat, sideways down - these things they pick you up and they turn you around... I've everything to show, everything to hide... I would give my life to find it, I would give it all - catch me if I fall... Country Feedback is all too real.

Know what to expect? Think you do? I hope not. You don't. It's better and worse than you think. Be prepared for that. For your skin to not feel like your own and finally feel like your own. Be prepared to feel like everything is finally real, and yet totally fabricated at the same time. Luckily for PCVs when you check your baggage in at the airport they don't have an emotional baggage limit. If they did, every PCV would have some serious fines to pay. Somehow there's this idea when you get on the plane that your physical luggage will go with you but your emotional luggage will stay behind or be transformed. Unfortunately, there is no on-plane lobotomy and the baggage handlers often make mistakes. You arrive as the version of you that you were before. What you do with that is up to you. You can ignore the demons or wrestle with them. You can fight or flight. The best part? It's all up to you. The worst? It's all up to you.

I think that Carl (the Country Director) might be right: the view of returned volunteers is probably more positive and balanced than those of us still in the trenches. However, I don't know that I think it's more realistic. At some point the rose-colored glasses come out and history, instead of being written by the soldiers in war time, is written by the victors afterwards. We all know how that works. If choosing between coming in as upbeat, positive and optimistic or negative and cynical my advice is to choose all of the above. They're all valid and all realistic. I say this not to overwhelm you or discourage you, but to take my responsibility to prepare "the newest members of our team" seriously.

Throw your heart open wide. Be prepared. Leave the expectations at home. It's going to be a bumpy, but amazing, ride. Welcome aboard!

Where's this going?

My job here is hard to define. I go into work for about 3 maybe 4 hours a day. They exhaust me. Utterly exhaust me. I wanted to do development work when I got here, but now I just want anything but a desk. And you know what work has? Lots of desks. It's not like an American workplace with job descriptions and goals and a general idea of what to do with your day. It's showing up, chatting, hoping something comes out of those chats, finding a new section of the wall to stare at and then leaving. Well, most days.

Last week and the week before, while everyone else was vacationing, I wrote and polished a proposal for a project I'd be really interested in doing - working collectively with my town's non-profits to move them in the right direction. The proposal writing process seemed to be endless and I'm sure there are still parts I could have polished. I was wiped at the end of it. Now, this week, my department is writing a proposal for about 60x more money in, oh THREE days. Am I going insane? Why yes, I am. Thanks for asking. I bust my ass for two weeks only to arrive at a week of stress founded on poor planning and lack of foresight. I need my old gym and a pair of boxing gloves. God, how I miss boxing!

In any case, so I read through this thing and it barely makes any sense. I'm torn. My professional ethics say "suck it up, it's only a couple days". However, I came here for many reasons, one of which was not to work all the live long day. To have better boundaries. To not be so professionally defined. I'm not sure what to do. The project itself COULD be good, but for this deadline? I think not. Too much work. Too much thinking. Too much planning that hasn't been done. It's frustrating. I think I am going to see if they'll take the time to redo it after the deadline with me to show them how it works, or how it should work. To see what a polished finished proposal looks like. However, in part I am also talking out of my ass. I have no clear idea of what a polished proposal looks like, I just know what makes sense, what's logical, what stands out...what looks "polished". I need to ask Peace Corps and other PCVs if they have an example. Something to work from. Hm. Another project.

Here's another problem: I am sick to death of not only offices but projects and proposals. I joined the PC to AVOID this shit. Now, here I am knee deep in it. I bravely jumped ship to dive into something new and just ended in another ship. Explains the headaches, I guess. I just don't know how to escape it here. Organizations want money, the temporary but fun and brag-worthy band-aid. And I'm an American. I am walking money. They don't see my knowledge or skills, just my link to the cash. The pursuit of cash kills development. If I was still interested in policy work, that'd be my grad thesis topic. It gives people, especially people used to depending on the government, an extension on their excuse to not take control of their own lives. To wait for the hero. It gives the idea that your world can and will get better with little effort from you. That there are free lunches.

I spent ten years (off and on) studying politics and economics. I joined the Peace Corps to do development work. Now, though both interest me, I'm unconvinced I want to do either of them for a living. I want to write, but I have to be prepared if that doesn't work...or, for something to do while I make it work. That sounds better. I'm qualified to do a lot, as a friend insisted earlier today, but what do I want to do? Where do I want to apply these skills (which are...??... somewhat unclear to me at the moment)? To what do I apply them? This is what this next year will be about for me, at least in part. Figuring out what's next. What all of my wacky live experiences are pointing me to. Identifying what feeds me and will fuel me too. Or, just figuring out how to make this damn writing thing go. That works too. Ah, so much work to be done...

The reading, the writing... the living

One of the major joys in my life that I allow to slide by unattended to is reading. The time commitment is an issue, as is my tendency to throw books with bad writing across the room in anger. When a book is worth it, it's really worth it. When it's not, I want to sue for my time back (though at my current wages, it's not really worth the suit). All good books give the reader at least one morsel to chew on for a long time after the actual read - one of my last reads, On Writing by Stephen King is no exception. It's a sort of chit-chatty book about how he became a writer and what to avoid or do in one's own writing (and avoiding a alcohol dependency seems to be part of it).

I'm a major believer in loving a book - really loving it. The first thing a good reader should do to a book is crack that damn spine. A lot of time and heart was put into it and a reader should go in expecting dirty hands - treating a book like it's a fragile, sacred thing only decreases the reader's comfort and increases her distance. My copy of Camus' Stranger has been so devoured that it's held together by a rubberband. All of my notes are in it - each read in a different color so I see how my perception changes, how my connections to Camus do too. My library at home, and a library it is, is a private collection - not just of books, but of notes, underlines, stars and an occasional circle. I go back to books not just for the author's words, but for my own renewed take. It's all I can do to not mark the hell out of a book, which makes relying on borrowed books incredibly difficult. If it's a fluffy read, fine; but if it's a good read, or even one that triggers something in my mind, I want to bend the page, make the words stand out in some way... come on! The author would want me to!

Stephen doesn't have anything to say about my philosophy of reading (probably because it's just so obvious), but he does point out that a good writer is a good reader and an active one. One doesn't create in a bubble and she should be aware of what others have already done - especially what works and what doesn't. The beginning writing mimics good styles and through such flattery begins to tease out what works and doesn't for her - it's a creative playground. Agreed. (Shocking that I haven't been doing either particularly well...)

Stephen also states that a good writer must be a truth-teller - someone completely open and honest.... and (this has been one of my chewy morsels) that "if you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days of a member of polite society are numbered". I've never really prided myself on being a member of "polite society" and think of it as quite a fake bore anyway, so no great loss there. However, how truthful can one be in one's writings without completely ostracizing oneself? Plenty of people have written memoirs about both their personal and professional lives, but how many of those documented people still speak to the author?? I wonder. And think the answer's: very few. I don't consider myself a dishonest person with the people in my life, but I don't think I openly and publicly dissect them either. There's some cruelty in that, even if it's only identifiable by the person themselves. It's something I struggle with though. This blog is introspective, but still rather private. I've mentioned people but not gone into full-blown analyses. There's something incredibly dishonest, and even cowardly, about airing that much laundry to the world, especially when it's not your own. But...when what you see and think about are PEOPLE and RELATIONS how do you not write about what you see? How are you honest but respectful? I guess I still hold on to being polite. Hm.

Another nugget Mr. King threw out there was: "fear is at the root of most bad writing". This (coupled with the fear above) really has me thinking. See, my writing has been complete and utter shite lately. No focus or clarity. No particularly deep thoughts or anything close to an epiphany. Just garble. I feel good as a person, but as a writer I'm running on fumes. I know/think/feel that it's possible and, even typical, to be happy because something is being successfully avoided. I don't think happy people are necessarily avoiders (though I have my suspect) but I do think avoidance can lead to the illusion of happiness. The fact that I have no clarity or focus (or drive even) makes me wonder about the sincerity of my current state. Truthfully, I feel like I've hiked to a plateau and am catching my breath before the next big climb. I'm not staying here and it's not who I am. I'm just getting some refreshments, refueling, taking in the scenery and then starting on my way again. I know this isn't the summit or where I want to be, but I'm ok just enjoying the breeze for now.

Worse thought: happiness is the root of most bad writing. If so, what do you choose? Answer's not so easy on this end. And I suspect I'd choose the writing. In part because I link it to the journey. To the quest. In part, because it's a part of me that has to live. In part because I do believe that permanent happiness is an illusion...and that's the part of polite society that I have no shame bucking.

Great Wide Open Me

A year ago today I was in Philadelphia having one of my last Starbucks, bored out of my mind (as I always am at conferences) and taking thoughtful glances around the room trying to predict who I'd happily share the next two years of my life with. I remember some faces clearly. Mainly Megan's, Harmonie's, Chad's, Kate F.'s, Brian's and JAG's - all people who, I am happy to say, surpassed my predictions. The rest fall into a sea of faces for me. I didn't go out of my way to talk to many people then, doing as I tend to do: going deeper rather than wider. We were given one of those ice breakers (the premise of ice breakers being "see, we're all dorks now, so relax") where you match people with statements describing them. I think very few people filled my slot in that day - and my sheet was nearly empty. I'd wondered for a second if it was the beginning of me checking out of the experience, but I know now it was really the beginning of me checking in.

Who I was at staging (Peace Corps lingo for "get used to paperwork, folks") is fuzzy. It seems so long ago. I'd just left my family and some friends in KC. Family in St. Louis before that. Friends in Chicago before that. And a life in New York before that. All in less than a month. Everything was in forward motion. Everything was a possibility. I like to think of life in chapters and I'd just closed one and was eagerly awaiting the next - wherever it came from, however it went.

This is one of those long chapters - the ones you wish the author'd split into pieces so you could just go to bed. It's two years and some change. The beginning was full of doubt and a lot of tears. A lot of tearing myself (and various things I'd built around me for comfort) down to make room for something more genuine and authentic. Something more me. I find myself in a stretch now where everything seems almost too good to be true. Work is picking up. I have a life filled with good, caring friends and a social schedule that I can barely keep up with. I've come out of the other side of something - something I still have yet to fully identify - as a version of myself as close to the real thing as I can remember having in the last decade. The laughs outweigh the tears 20:1, at least. Some days are hard, and there are aspects of my growth and evolution that I still struggle with. When I entered this I allowed those days and struggles to define me and sometimes swallow me whole, now they merely serve as a reminder that I still have work to do and encourage me to tip my hat to the work already done.

I wasn't sure why I started this chapter allowing myself to fall apart - to almost shatter. Looking back, I think there's a certain strength in weakness - in allowing your parts to seperate and to go wherever they want to go. Likewise, there's a certain weakness in strength and keeping all your ducks in a row - showing the world the "collected" you. Allowing the pieces of you to drift requires a certain confidence that they have a home to begin with and that they are mature enough to find their way there. It also requires a spiritual strength, one that allows the center of you to hold strong in the mist of a major storm - to not just close your eyes and hope for the best, but to take the helm, let your heart leap out of your chest to and be fully aware of - to fully feel - every drop that hits your face.

Being some place for two years has a few built-in difficulties, the biggest being you're not permanent, though it's too long to act like everything is temporary. You invest and then leave, sometimes investing to leave. I like the idea of not feeling like this is the end - that this is my life. However, I've never been one to establish something temporarily. I'm present. I invest. I care. I don't understand people who think the best way to live is like today is the last day of your life. There's no sharing, no connecting there. And while that's the scary stuff, it's the good stuff too. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was anything in my life that means a damn to me. It's all been a lot of effort and a lot of time. Not all of those investments worked out, but those that did more than made up for those that didn't. I know I'm only mid-chapter because there are still plenty of investments I've made in this experience that the jury is still deliberating. Plus, I know that the most permanent investment I've made here is me... and that's nowhere near completion either.

I think about those days in Philly and wonder how I could have missed all those other faces - some of which mean a great deal to me today. I'm thankful that I've had this time to recognize and share with those people and look forward to another unpredictable year - knowing that the way this works there'll be at least as many downs as ups. I look forward to sharing myself - my full, flawed, fulmmoxed self - with those who care to share themselves. I look forward to working with my town for another year, to seeing what I can offer them and what they can offer me. I look forward to traveling - emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually - in pursuit of greater comprehesion of both myself and this crazy world we live in. I look forward to the laughs, and even the tears if they mean that I entered with an open heart and was earnestly affected.

That form - the ice breaker in Philly that I ignored - was the beginning of me. It was the beginning of me saying "This doesn't fit and I'm not wearing it." Both my clothes and my skin are feeling a lot more comfortable these days and I've never regretted ignoring that form - or the many others I've ignored since.