insomnia

it's not that i can't sleep, really. it's more that my productivity increases exponentially as the hours drop past midnight and i need to be productive every once in a while because it's good for my self-esteem.

that i am productive late at night does not mean i'm totally coherent (and maybe i'll be sobbing a different story tomorrow when i read over tonight's work and find a jumbled mess that's only fit for the scrap pile.) to an incoherent mind, the previous paragraph could be construed as bragging. look at me, always posting in the middle of the night just to show how cool i am. and so so productive. ha ha ha, you wimps, sleeping like babies. (not really, of course, but i'm dying to use the movie quote that comes later, so i have to stretch a little bit here.)

there has been discussion among the roommates lately about traits that we have no control over being perceived as gifts. example: lindsay praises eve for her ability to feel deeply and eve praises lindsay for her ability to go to sleep early. and no one praises my ability to stay up really really late.

and the anticipated movie quote:
"i can't believe you're bringing this up right now. it's like those people who brag because they're tall."

in other words, lindsay would like to stay awake past 11, eve would like to contain her emotions, and i'd like to be on the same schedule as normal people instead of nightshift watchmen. what's a girl to do who gets her best work done in the middle of the night? sleep the day away? enroll in online classes? trade the sun in for 24 hour tanning beds? (not for looking good, of course, but for health purposes.) or continue to pass days operating at 45% focus, taking one hour to grade a paper when it should take 10 minutes? what's a girl to do?

ps i wanted to write a post about how if i tweeted, i would have broadcasted to the world last night, "i'm eating soggy cereal with a fork." (because i was, in fact, eating soggy cereal with a fork.) the post would have made an argument for why this tweet would be acceptable in my eyes because it's actually a commentary on the current social/cultural/political context, which would have made it unacceptable in the tweeting world by nature of its gravity. but then i remembered lindsay's post that implicated me as being too dependent on the web and thought better of it.

i shouldn't disparage twitter just because the majority of what takes place there is silly. forgive me.

addendum

please PLEASE read a fabulous essay, "How we wrestle is who we are," found here.

for now we see through a glass, darkly

i am grateful for day after day after day after day. i bet i could trick myself into seeing a fresh start every five minutes, but something about going to sleep in the black and waking up with new light makes it easier to begin again.

i am grateful that even when i make the same mistake forty-seven days in a row, there is always the chance that day forty-eight will be a different story. and if day forty-eight isn't my day, maybe day seventy-three will be.

i trade off between finding this whole setup of life a little monotonous (there's never anything but days and nights; have you noticed? nothing else in the mix) and absolutely soul calming. when you are trying to change something as unwieldy as my heart, day after day after day after day is exactly what you need. and when i go to bed at night, i say, "tomorrow. you and me, heart. we're going at it again."

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For inspiration:

"But life is not all eloquence and adulation: life is wiping the baby's bum; it is a bad case of croup; it is quarrels with one's spouse; it is disappointment, distraction, indignities by the dozen; it is the death of friends, wife, son, and brothers, carried off like fluff in the wind; it is alien evenings, cold stairwells, frosty sheets, lack of love; for what does the great spirit need that touches the body but the touch of the body as the oratory needs silence, and revolution peace? We are nourished by our absences and opposites; contraries quench our thirsts.
--
To be--don't we know by now?--is to burst with energy and enterprise like a hive of bees. It is to draw from just that daily drudgery, which you contend has betrayed your genius, all its sap and substance--siphon it dry--and seed new sentences with life. Begin again. Oblivion is miles away and only moments off. Begin."
-William Gass, "Emerson and the Essay"

winter's on the wing

today was a lovely lovely day. i did many things that i needed to do and very few things that i was supposed to do. i feel great about this. i feel less great about it being 4:30 am and still being awake, but this is my fault for putting off cleaning checks.

i needed to go up the canyon today to see that the world is still beautiful, despite being stuck in limbo between winter and spring. i could have seen this in the city, but i tend to be hardheaded and i respond much better to shouting. and have you ever seen the provo mountains? they're beauty shouters, right up in your face.

today, dave stole the show (in the human category anyway). he brought me the car keys, went biking with me, waited periodically for me, tried to teach me how to launch a snot rocket (would this skill be beneficial or detrimental for me do you think? if i can get the guts to do it properly, i think beneficial. i'm all in favor of new skills), made me a delicious turkey/cheese melt sandwich, and saved me a seat at institute. dave usually steals the show.

hopefully, next time i write, i will have one less bad habit. wouldn't that be cool?

Katyn

this movie is not for the faint of heart. i saw an edited version and closed my eyes for a fair portion. even the trailer makes me cringe. and yet some things belong in the collective memory of the world, and the massacre at Katyn is one of those things. i can't close my eyes on history, and i hope that the awareness i gained from this movie regarding the cruelty we are capable of inflicting on each other makes me a better, kinder person.

this movie is beautiful, both in exposition and cinematography. i left the theater a changed person.



some of the things i learned from Katyn:

people (and, by extension, countries) can change in significant and fundamental ways.

people need time to mourn and the freedom to inhabit their memories.

stories that aren't told are forgotten.

love is stronger than cruelty, even if it doesn't look like it in the short term.

my courage hasn't yet and may some day be tested in extreme ways. i hope i will be ready.

you know i love the winter

but i sure do start missing the rain.

that's all.

just because love is complicated doesn't mean i shouldn't try

i found a new song i like. maybe you will like it too. maybe not.



this band ("the very best") includes a singer from malawi and a production duo from london.

anyway, the song has me thinking about ghana and my short short time there (even though malawi and ghana= totally different stories). i try to be so correct when i think/speak about my specific role and my country's global role in other countries. i try to remember i'm a tourist coming from a life of privilege, and i try to remember that one measly month doesn't give me much claim to a place. (immediately i chastise myself--"you american! always trying to claim things!")

then i see these pictures of kids i still pray for and i ask, who cares about correct and borders and intellectualizing everything? a person's a person, no matter how small. often i think about views of the world, and how my particular lens came with a built-in levelizer. the levelizer attunes me to social, economic, mental, emotional lines; in other words, it marks the boundaries of us and them. do you have this lens too? i don't like mine, mostly because i let it bully me. i think you break the levelizer the same way meg broke IT to free charles wallace: love.

i don't like the fact that my current turmoil regarding foreign aid makes me feel like ghana shouldn't mean as much to me anymore. i was just another one of those idealistic college students looking for a summer adventure, and for a small sum, i was dropped into a world that was way over my head and heart. did i hurt more than i helped?

anyway, i wonder about posting these pictures because the kids have no idea. they can't even conceive of a computer; most of them have never experienced electricity. or at least they hadn't four years ago. i wish i could know where they are now: if they are still in school, staying out of trouble, happy, healthy, strong.



fatau in the front, right after he shaved his head. cheated like crazy in class. idirisu to the left, trying not to smile.

soloman and abdaman. notice how they put my stickers on their buttons. can you tell that these two were the class clowns?


fadilla. so shy. one of three girls in my class. three! at one of the village parties, she came and sat on my lap.


grace.




















mutala. my youngest student. the bigger boys would rush to the van so they could carry my bags--mutala wanted to hold my hand as we walked to the classroom. mutala me manque.