so i spoke with a counselor from DC about what's been happening to me lately. about the crying and vascillation as to making a decision. She recognized that I haven't made up my mind yet, and that it's a good idea to ask myself the really big questions: what keeps me here? what are my priorities? what would it be like to leave? why or why not? would these crying fits actually stop if i went home?

So we decided it would be best if I made a plan, kind of went on my own little retreat and journaled through alot of it, answering these questions for myself.

Yesterday was a very tumultuous day.

I took a little boy from my community to the eye clinic in town 3 hours away. I'd spoken to one of the doctors who told me the care would be free for folks who need it. took the 5:30 bus. on the bus ride there met a man who actually farms dakka a.k.a. weed. He told me he gets 1500 rand per 50 kg which is smuggled over the wire by South Africans who then ship it to Asia, the US, etc. I was rather intrigued. His community is about half an hour away from mine. but we finally met with dr. pons and the first thing he said was "this boy needs to be taken for an HIV test urgently." It was a total shock. I had to bite my lip. The boy is only 12. I took him because his eyes are so incredibly red and look even scarred. two years ago they told him it was an allergy. The boy's flunked two years of school in a row according to his mother "because he can't see." I took him in thinking he'd get treatment and then maybe glasses. The doc also questioned me as to whether or not Phindu'd been abused. Of course I have no way of knowing that. But he is very very reserved. So incredibly quiet, it's hard to get a syllable out of him. And his mother is a very... interesting woman. Who is constantly complaining about having "no money! no money!" but I see her riding the bus from time to time. Her husband isn't home very much. I later spoke to Stella at our office who has alot of experience with abused children. She said there might be some kind of sodomy going on. But she suggested not coming right out and dropping the HIV bomb. Perhaps suggesting to the mother that more tests need to be conducted on the child and letting her be the one to take over that responsibility (a much better and more culturally appropriate strategy).....

I had to grab a tissue. The little boy is so small and fragile and to think of the life he is living... his little soul within his little body, so shut up because of what people may or may not be doing, have done to him. I bought him KFC (the illustrious KFC of Swaziland which people here love) and a new hat from the bus rank market that I let him pick out. Hehe. He picked out a black and red hat with an embroidered "Toyota" on it. It was too big for his little head. He even got to pick out a little toy with his kids meal and picked a Spongebob pirate. (I can guarantee you this kid has never seen spongebob ever.)

These little moments of confusion and happiness make me feel so happy-sad, empowered-helpless. Like I've done something, but far from enough. So frustrated with the world and especially this world, the third world, where these things are happening so so frequently. When you're a little kid they teach you all these wonderful little hopes and for awhile you carry them around like a bag of pennies to toss to fountains to wish and love. then you grow and see the world for what it is and how alot of those hopes are just illusions, projections, aspirations which adults couldn't achieve themselves so they've left them to you to work out. I guess I have to ask myself if whatever I did here would be enough for me... maybe failure would haunt me my whole life regardless of what I could wrote on my DOS.

I also heard back from Swazimarket.com who is interested in marketing the pins for the bomake in America. They think it would be alot better if i were involved (!) promising!!!

I also got alot of new books from the departing volunteers. An older JOnathan Franzen (<3), Ian McKewan, and Joyce Carol Oates. Eep! It's like xmas. So that will keep my feverish little mind busy for awhile.

till next time.

j

I am sitting in the library in Nhlangano... and the rush and pour of exquisite expression I want to flow from my fingertips just isn't happening.. I hate how whenever I pay to use the internet here I just get this stage fright.. it's so bizarre.. A complete 180 in how I used to communicate.. I used to find it so impossibly hard to write letters.. like the computer was just an extension of my mind.. and how it's funny.. writing letters has become this process.. therapeutic and routine. I know you all would rather get real letters anyway =)

So yeah.. things are finally settling down.. this new life I've created for myself is becoming more real.. less insane everyday.. but then there are moments where I'm like.. how the fuck am i going to do this for 2 years?

I was telling mark on the phone the other day.. I don't think I would have been able to completely dismantle my life in Philly the way I did if it weren't for some tremendously crazy all of a sudden change like this. This is the most self-discovery I've ever engaged in.. personally.. academically.. emotionally.. psychologically. It's wonderful.. to do it grave injustice. But I really feel myself growing as a person.. maturing in so many ways but then making huge realizations about how much i will never mature.

Ok I still laugh like crazy over Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But I understand the way I work in groups and deal with stress... and how much caffeine had been a part of my personality in America! Haha.. of all things. I wonder if you're reading this Ash ;D

Man.. I haven't really felt incredibly homesick yet. I think it was reading Ash's email about day to day stuff back home that hit me the hardest: life goes on with or without you. I am beginning to wonder if Jay will still come and visit.. or anyone for that matter... and i think you should. I think you should experience life here if you can. It's just different, beautiful, fucked up, fun, scary, a million different things all at once.

Today I taught a class about HIV/AIDS at a high school with 3 other trainees. It was so incredibly fun.. but challenging.. breathlessly scary at times.. and just incredibly joyful. I think I will be learning this week where my permanent site will be. We will spend a week of OJT (On the job training) at the site next week.. we meet our community counterpart (the person who is going to help us do our job for the next 2 years hopefully)... I think I've decided to request being placed near a school and a clinic.. I love teaching high school aged kids.. and I want exposure to health care.. another interesting thing I wouldn't mind working with is a home based care organization.. these are faith based organizations that go to peoples homes who have aids. they do nutrition counseling and all kinds of stuff..

the language isn't happening at the pace i would like.. but i've sort of got really motivated to put in all the extra time.. My time is almost up so I'm going to post the peace corps address where you can send me real snail mail at the moment.. and i'd devour anything you send.. and if you do send anything send pictures and postcards or posters or articles.. anything else you want =)

just know i love you all.

you are all alive and well in my memory.

yours.

truly.

justine

justine spisak, PCV

US Peace Corps

PO Box 2797

Mbabane, H100

Swaziland

Africa

Wow. I don't know if anyone will read this since I am not available on instant messenger, but my head is a flurry and i am writing this from Swaziland's capital, Mbabane in an internet cafe.

So wow. I can't even express everything that is going on inside my head. Training in Philly was great. Traveling the 17 hours + 2 hour delay to get to Johannesburg was murderously excruciating. We stayed in a hotel that was just so beautifully amazing and surprising. Today we flew to Swaziland on a small plane... half of us at a time.. and looking out the window the world was just a patchwork of farmland and cloud.

I lost my little black journal on the airplane, so I think my very first few entries and impressions are gone unless some good hearted person decides to return them. The hotel here in Swaziland is also very nice. The volunteers that greeted us are just so excited to see new people... new faces.. just something new.. and I'm sure I will be able to relate once we get back.

Mark surprised me the night before we got our shots and left with flowers and probably the most perfect going away gifts.. himself and hershey's chocolate. This is perfect because I hadn't packed any and in Swaziland they only sell Cadbury! Hot damn! So it is going to be the hottest of commodities.

The other volunteers are really nice. We are still getting past the point where everything is nice and there are just pleasantries.. I know it is just an initial feeling right now, but I feelmore ... connectable? to the volunteers who are already here.. kind of like I am in the wrong group? I should've been with thes econd group? but I don't know if that's just way too early to call or what.. But I only have a few more minutes.. I just have to say I miss cuddling and laughing about sarcastic everything with everybody. I will update this whenever I get the chance and when things perhaps aren't so stressful. I get to meet my host family tomorrow... I'm not as anxious about this as I should be yet... Luke, the one guy who is already here paints a very strange and mixed picture of life here. He said his first night he cried himself to sleep. He was half joking.... I think. But I am still excited and exuberant.. which is probably why they are so happy to see us.. because we remind them of themselves at the beginning. Overall. Great site to get placed to. I've got to go.

love.

always.

just.

justine.

what do i value? what are my convictions?

are we really who we want to be?

can we ever undo what's been done to us?

am i capable of selfless love?

is anyone?

who are we really trying to make happy?

when was the last time i really laid a scalpel to the bare skin of these questions?

and will they bleed answers when i do?

i still can't decide if i wore the right or wrong shoes for a new york city downpour. alas... not even conor oberst in all of his dark, digital wonder could have drawn me back downtown once i was dry.

on the train back it felt nice to let my brain flip through the days and the details and the why-did-he-stop-calling's? and then it struck me that the only one making me feel better at that moment ...was me. that's what i needed.. not luggage tags.. or keychain compasses. but mark thanks for taking care of me. you've got loud ridiculous humor, the absolute best kind.

always.

jds.

ps. don't forget to look up the cheshire cat's book. i'll be expecting a full report.

today maureen and i wrapped our brains around a birdhouse. i have to laugh. it's so funny that we're giving this so much thought and theory. two college degrees and a birdhouse.

but wow. i'm going to miss you. i wish i could pack you. i wish you weighed less than 80 pounds and had dimensions less than a suitcase. like that poem you wrote me when i left for college. when i go home, i'm going to find it. i'm going to miss snickering with you about all the ridiculous things we talk about and being snobs about all the horrible writing in the world and how babies are pretty gross. oh buddle. wherever i am i know that i am going to be thinking that you would be laughing if you were there. i promise to start laughing twice as loud at juvenile things just to make up for it.

yours.

jds.

I want to meet someone with the wit and looks of Alan Alda, the intelligence and humanity of james michener, the style and sensual manliness of clark gable.

This week started off so sour but now it feels so sweet. My interviews went amazingly well and I feel so encouraged.. like I could take off into the atmosphere. Dr. Howett as it turns out traveled through Swaziland when she presented her work on SDS at the world AIDS congress. She gave me the names of places to visit and said she will find the contact information of people working on the AIDS pandemic in that region that she knows (as well as the minister of health of Swaziland).

One day she and her colleagues traveling on a road stopped to look at some soap carvings boys were selling.. they noticed the pins they wore from the Congress and began pressing them for information, hungry for someone to tell them something true. the belief systems of these people is preventing western medicine from doing any good. the traditional healers of african tribes tell their people that westerners hold some kind of conspiracy and are in fact the ones infecting them with AIDS in condoms, etc. How do you overcome cultural baggage like this to ever make headway in the swampy mess of infection? She gave me the pin. It was hanging in her office.

Sometimes I lose sight of what's important. Sometimes I amaze even myself that the choices I have made have led me to a place that really makes me happy and gives me this kind of personal satisfaction. At the same time, I draw a breath and look back at the moments of pure carnage that my social life has been. But I think the only thing that has saved me from the wreckage and re-wreckage has been an indestructible sense of self-worth. I don't know where it comes from, but it's there. I know I'm a good person and that I deserve something truly amazing and sweet as all life is.

And I may be a lot of things: proud, complicated, insecure, jealous, independent to a fault.

But I know that which I am not, I have never been, and testify to never be: a simpering doormat who can't walk away.

just.

justine.

It wasn't rolling in the grass in Rittenhouse or expensive cotton sophistocation or the feeling of leaving the earth breezing past the tall mirrors on Sansom in the sunlight (although I decided long ago that someday I will most certainly own one).. it was the ten minutes Ashleigh asked me about my fears. I could tell she was examining my expressions, she was listening and I felt like she truly wanted to know. I felt heard and understood and like I had somewhere safe to pour all of those thoughts. It was like.. I wanted someone to ask me about it for weeks, but I just didn't know the question. Like I couldn't express it because no one could hit the right button.. or maybe just no one was trying to.

It's like there are things hidden inside us we want each other to find.. maybe they're not even that hard to find. It just takes someone who wants to look. And that is truly okay with whatever sleeps there.

So the seams of all this silky life are slowly drawing together like a curtain call.

a soft and slow saturday. here and gone. the temporary anticipation of a new wave dance party never materialized so i'm here reading and trapped inside my head because my hearing's still shot. today i felt anxious to get out of the city maybe for just a day...

i miss my car. i miss speeding on the highway with music flying out the windows and that addictive feeling of escape. maybe if the weather ever warms up i can find a way to the coast or catch a train and visit friends in nyc.

i think i'm lying though. i really have no idea what to do with myself. i have no routine. and there are things i really want to express, but i can't seem to condense the weird cloudiness of what they are into anything coherent. i think i'm just waiting for something to happen. and holy hell i know it's about to...

jay has these pictures in his apartment of a bridge over a river back home. fifty feet above still water and they'd jump. no matter how many times they did it, the descent came with a rush of fear. it's like.. i know the water's coming, but i don't feel scared yet. and it makes me wonder if i haven't conquered too many fears already. why am i like this anyway? why do i always want things to be so difficult? why do i want the life i want? and why do other people want anything else but this? and what is it anyway? sometimes i honestly can't tell if i'm truly running towards something or running away. and then there are times that i honestly don't want to know the answer. maybe it's that i have a sense that these aren't mistakes. these things are just for me and they will in essence become me, experiences, that will never leave me, that i will always have. something that becomes a permanent part of me and that aren't going to disappoint me. who knows what i'd be doing right now if anything had ever worked out the way i intended it to. there we go... a positive spin on the let downs of life.

..yeah. probably running away.

xo.jds.

After being sick all week I finally made it home to Wilkes-Barre. It's so very sweet not to have to pick up after yourself or take the train.

The doctor I went to see in Philly didn't want to prescribe antibiotics because it would be bad for both me and society. Well... Screw that. Because every part of my body above my diaphgram one by one became slowly infected. And my primary care doctor gave me the antibiotics. So now I toast thee Dr. Greenblatt with every pill I pop and I wonder if our preoccupation with the over-antibiotification of america isn't just making sick people suffer? Seriously, I don't remember being this sick since I was a little kid with chicken pox. And you give me no meds? Fie!

Also, in case I haven't told you yet, I'm going to Swaziland! It's official. Well, after I finish the paperwork rigamarole, it will be. But I accepted the invitation. It's a tiny country (a wee bit smaller than New Jersey) surrounded by South Africa on the West and bordered by Mozambique on the East, which then extends to the Indian Ocean. I couldn't have picked a better geographic location. Seriously. It's inland. It's in the South. It's temperate. Politically, it is going to be a fascinating experience, as it is one of only a few absolute monarchies remaining on the world. They have a King, Mswati III, in whose hands power is concentrated. But it's also my understanding that a democratic party has become vocal in recent times.

When I called to accept my invitation, the guy who answered was kind of stand-offish and strange. At first he asked me what I would be doing there. I gave him the short version as I expected he just needed some reference point. And he was like... um.. ok what does that mean? And he was honestly pretty rude. So I launched into job interview mode. I guess he had served in the same region doing Agro-forestry and traveled through Swaziland. He said the people are friendly, but you're going to have to work at it. Every day you wake up you'll be challenged and things change unexpectedly all the time and that makes it hard. But the best thing you can do is learn the language. He suggested checking out some Zulu training tapes before I go as all the languages stem from the same origin. (SiSwati being the language I will learn). Although I thought French would be more useful, I am only too glad not to be molding my little mind around something that would otherwise be so inaccessible. I can learn french somewhere else, is what I'm saying. How often do you get first hand experience with Bantu languages? Bantu or Zulu? I think I need to figure that out...

x of o.

j of ustine.

picked up my diploma today. walked it home in cardboard. a huge white envelope like a bedsheet.

ordered ten million transcripts from offices in every crevice of brotherly love.

i was walking home and passed a man with a shirt that had a big marijuana leaf on it that read "legalize it. lawyers smoke it."

making the transfer between orange and blue i dodged all kinds of people to get on the train. who sits next to me? but the one woman i took note of. old but trying not to look the part with bleachy blond hair extensions and a smell like the worst cheap perfume ever to emerge from the deepest pit of hell to impose misery on the human race. i got boxed in by the window breathing into my sleeve listening to track 4 on transatlanticism. i thought for 3 minutes they may have re-routed the el to China.

so it's sunday. i'm in bed trying to disappear from the cold earth beneath this down and i'm sick. there's an ache like icey needles up my back and my jaw. i want a trap of warm blankets and a lap to rest my head. this room is too empty and it's just too cold for april.

I really haven't written anything in awhile although it seems like a lot has been going on. i started working at the nutrition center again. however, any wages i may have incurred last week have already been spent. tara and matt came from richmond for her job interview with the school district. i know with tara it's not a matter of did she get it or not. they need teachers. it's a tough district. she gives a shit and expects a lot from her students. i limitlessly respect her talent. funny how i'll be maintaining the equilibrium of philly. they move in, i move out. i know i've studied too much because the first analogy that came to mind was an ATPase pump. jesus.

so i've decided people aren't very interesting if they're not changing. and we can't change if we don't have the freedom to. the field to play on. the space to create. or someone who loves us that embraces the flexibility of who we are. after conversation with ash i feel like diving off the second floor with abandon screaming, "this is not all we'll ever be!" change. grow. shift the volume of your life around the atmosphere and LIVE. and hopefully our aim will strike that something better we're striving to be like cupid in its lonely, waiting heart. i guess what i mean to say is i never want to pin anyone down in their clothes. i want to let other people change, too. i'm just confused about how to reconcile this passion for the new and exciting with the stability and comfort that makes my heart race with fear in the dark when i think about never having it.

it's been such a confusing time, too. at first i was uncertain as to what i do and do not have the right to feel. that is, until i realized that if i feel anything at all it is my right and i vowed never to undermine my own emotions again. that doesn't mean i don't respect yours. and can anybody tell me why we protect ourselves most militantly at moments that should render us the sweetest armistice?

buddle, i love how you teach me about derrida.

shawn, good luck with your vintage cali girl.

jen, i love how you appreciate my random literary extractions, explore & fall in love with them, too.

jay, shins. wednesday. i'm so excited my heart could burst.

np. thursday night will live in my memory long past june regardless of how many conversational escape hatches you can engineer.

always.

justine.

I just returned from the craziest day.

In fact, I just returned from the Peace Corps send-off party at the free library. I don't know if I really felt it in the pit of my stomach before, but I am excited. After today, it's just... now. It's here. It's real. There are people and there are testaments. I can attach them to my fabricated and false ideas of what this is going to be like and they are tangible, I can see them, and feel them, and hear them and god! I could really just explode with lack of ability to express this feeling. I feel like I watched my life completely change in one day.

So I talked to a woman, Jaime, who served in Burkina Faso. I was really excited to talk to her because she basically WAS me. Her future plans. A white female going to a far off African country to serve in the health extension. She told me there was never anything to be afraid of. "You are their circus." Everywhere you go, people stare at you and they want to protect you. You're their prized thing. You miss anonymity. You can't feel lonely in a place like that. I WANTED to feel lonely, she said. Another woman said she served in Togo with a women's empowerment program. The only of its kind. That was basically an information sharing program. For example, they taught women French so they could travel to other villages and trade their wares for more money, etc. She said that yes, she did feel disconnected from her friends. Understandably so. She mirrored what I had said though.. by now you know who your friends are though. And those are the ones who you can just fall back into place like you never left. I know who you are. And so do you. Jaime said she used to bike 30 km to the capital every weekend to use the phone to call her boyfriend at the time. They're married now. She decided not to go to medical school. She's a grad. student doing research at penn now.

There was this guy Jim, who served from 80-81 in Northern Cameroon, the Muslim part of the country. He hiked through the rainforest with pygmies who were hunting for elephants. I don't exactly recall if it was sanctioned by the government at the time. But anyway, Jim had a lot to say about the sickness that you will undoubtedly encounter in the Peace Corps. He had dysentary and hookworm. You can get dysentary just by brushing your teeth in some bad water. Signs of a parasite are dandruff, weight loss, incredibly chapped lips. Jaime said she coughed up some worms once. Jim said that the pygmies used to have boils from which maggots would emerge............. So... is it official? I'm going to be LIVING in an episode of fear factor.

I met Charlotte, who is an English major at Temple, nominated to serve in South American. Mark, a former film major from Boston U. also going somewhere in Africa, but in September. Doug, finishing a Literature degree from Temple, going to Mongolia June 3rd. Remember that thing I wrote after our trip in high school??? I'll post it here because it is one of my favorite things I've ever written. But this is what I wanted, even then. And it's here.

And I took a cab home. The night felt like warm milk and whispered over my legs beneath my skirt and we passed the landmarks of the last five years of my life. The Greek architecture of the art museum and the boathouses where i decided i'd like to be married with nice wine glasses and fresh flowers and mcilhenny's sanctuary of constellations. It all seemed so ephemeral and then I was home. And home felt like a hotel. Like a stop on the regional rail. Somewhere I knew I was just passing through. And I thought about it all. And I felt ready.

xo.

jds.

Wow. I'm beat. It's only 8:45. I've just gotta get on a schedule though.

Went for some rather humongous and delicious burritos w/the Tanwarrior tonight @ this place called the joint next to the tower records on south st. Now I was just looking some stuff up about the peace corps. You know, one of the reasons that really pushed me over the edge in deciding to do this, apart from the traveling and challenges and learning languages and crazy all out adventure, was the promise of an entire new subculture to which I would belong. And really FELT like I belonged to. There is even an organization for peace corps writers, people who interpreted their experiences and published them. And so many communities of returning volunteers. It's a new way of belonging to the world =) And now that college is over, I want, nay, I will soon NEED that.

When I answer everybody who asks with 'I ALWAYS wanted to do peace corps.' It's to this that I really refer: I always wanted to find other people who were like me and felt like I did about bigger things; who weren't satisfied with just watching things on the news, but who maybe considered it all as a part of their own world, and felt some sense of responsibility for it. And who perhaps felt empowered enough to become part of a solution. Jen I think you were the first one I really connected with on that level. It's definitely why I started going to shows, because I knew I didn't care about the things 'other people' cared about in high school. I was seeking that connection. Of course we were all looking for something then. And thankfully I found it... Or at least I found some version of it... all angry and angst-ridden.

But when you're that young you're trying so hard to reconcile everything. Your parents, yourself, your clothes and your hair, and what does it mean if I buy this pair of sneakers that yes, for some reason make me look so attractive to the opposite sex, but no were stitched together by oppressed people in China from the hide of an animal with a soul (maybe?) that lived and died its entire life on a 10 square yard plot of earth. Some people got stuck there. But after all this time I can honestly say I'm looking beyond that now. While it's all essential to the process of post-modern upbringing, there is still so much else out there to do and live through.

What I strive for most has always been the ability to accept change in my life and the knowledge that I have left a place better than i found it. The latter was solidly ingrained in me by my parents. I think some people call it 'integrity'? The former I had to figure out for myself.

It's been said, "Sometimes a scream says more than a thesis." There is truth in that. But there is truth in a lot of things. And having heard a lot of screaming, and not much logic, I find that the screaming really doesn't accomplish much. It basically just alienates everyone who needs to be listening. But they don't understand your opinions and don't try because, well, you say things need changing and you offer no alternatives for discussion. The conversation always over before it ever even began.

So here is my beginning. I'm finally at a place where I can do something with my hands and my mind and my life. It feels like crawling out from a silk cocoon. I have a lot more to say, but this post is getting too long and no one will read it if it doesn't end...

love.

jds.

I love

-the part in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere confronts Julia Roberts in the bathroom when he thinks she's doing drugs, but she's really just flossing

-the scene in High Fidelity when John Cusack talks about how it was just good with Laura and she never put him ill at ease, and it shows them kissing all sweet in the dark on the bed in their shitty apartment.

-and the part in eternal sunshine when jim carey asks to keep just that one memory.

love.

jds.

i resolutely do in fact believe there is a place for artists in the world.

art is as necessary to the human condition as medicine or government.

i don't know one person who is complete without some method of interpreting, however futile, the very texture of life itself.

art is the human body's way of justifying its own existence.

and it makes me love being alive.

xo.

jds.

i'm showered and clean and need to attach my mind to something else for awhile. so here it all comes..

saturday i provided jay with alyan's pepper fries and falafel as repayment for my easter weekend transport. got the dish on the clueless clueless crush. i'm not sure what promise there is when a girl can't figure out it was you that sent her white roses and chocolates. and we remarked on the unfortunate scrutiny and childish behavior with which i am so plagued. if i had to justify it, i'd say it's my only means of protection though. and what's worse, in the past at least, the most accurate one. it makes everything so utterly terrifying. just ask maureen. god i'm so flawed.

there is nothing i love more than returning to places from the past in good company and good time. and friday was ortliebs. the time i remember most distinctly was when jen came to visit with michael and ducky and i wore that brown houndstooth dress with the belt and skinny socks with those mary janes that i loved that broke. jeremy finally had some republicans to talk to. jay and katie were still a unit. in fact, i think we were all still strumming as a quartet.. maybe.

so is it wrong that i think it's hot when you smoke? but pretend i think it's dirty. i can be the clean one. and i'll always try to figure you out. i'll take your hits like i'm made of cotton. because i know you don't know where my soft spots are. but i think you're learning. and i know you're not responsible for things other people have done in the past. it's like i grew some sinister evolutionary nerve and now those things i can't help do and feel are like the corrupted reflex arcs of my twenties.

xo.

jds.

You know, I was just thinking despite all the bad press coverage how happy I am to see Charles and Camilla tie the knot. I mean, so what if he's in line to the throne of England... it's just a figurehead position anyway. When two people can finally get it together and say 'fuck you! we love each other!' to the dismay of royalty, parents, and peons alike... I think that's a pretty strong and beautiful thing. The only shameful thing is that it didn't happen about 20 years earlier. Just because a billion gay men are in still in love with his dead ex-wife, it does nothing to quiet the song of true love reaffirmed that I will toss onto the pyre of my romantic hopes.

I was also thinking how horrible the Last Star wars installment looks.. and how I am in the mood to watch the first three in order... this very second.

muah!

jds.

Lately I've been stricken with the sickening feeling of paranoia. All I know is it's gotta stop.

Last night, denim was kind of an intoxicated drag. the people had less personality than a deflated saline implant.

I really want to go back to Valanni. it was dim. and nice. and close there.

Today I read an article in the NYtimes about some environmental problems in Kenya. It sort of jerked me back to reality. At moments I have really romanticized what I'm going to be doing, and where I will be. I need to be careful. This is going to be harder than I ever could imagine. And the places I only passed by the last time on buses traveling to remote and clean compounds in the mountains will be the places I live and work.

I also got an e-mail from the Africa placement team today. Apparently I haven't submitted my medical information yet.

No kidding.

xo.

jds.

I want Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Not a one act satire

Sans resolution.

Resolve me into my components.

There is no center.

Vector

Director

Gasping toward every infinite horizon

That all add up to nothing.

4.6.05

So they're off. I have a real smile. Maureen told me I look two years older... and I think she's right. I finally feel like an adult. and when i talk things just come out... righter.

After my trip home, things are tense with my dad. But it's tension that needs to be there. But it just seems like the entire world is full of tension lately. In everyone's lives. Among friends. With parents. I just want something to feel really easy and automatic and warm. I just want to feel safe. For everything to be real and all the hard stuff and childish stuff to become invisible.

So I've been struggling with the question recently of whether to grow up yet and mature. As if it's my decision. And what does that even mean? I want to be things I can't even define. Well I guess to each their definition. Jen thinks we are always the same person really, we just add on layers, like we're onions of experience. And I think there is truth in that. I don't intend to change what's at the very deepest heart of me, that I think is unchangeable anyway, but I guess I mean.. to become a refined, responsible, woman. And to stop approaching things from the selfish perspective of a kid. And recognize things that I have to do... and actually get them done. Perhaps even with some expediency. Looking back, there are definitely patterns to me. I want to fix and forget the bad ones. Replace them. Make something better. I guess this isn't all stuff I can do in the next twenty minutes.

I am about to embark on one of the most intense experiences of my little life so far. It's easy to lose perspective of that. This all just may happen on its own... with or without livejournal entries to vainly sort them out.

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. "

R.W. Emerson on Self-Reliance .

i feel so incredibly inspired. i just feel like creating something. like using my hands and getting really dirty. i think i might burst if it doesn't happen soon.

it's my environment. temporal. geographical. social. i am so frustrated with everything, but passionate at the same time and satisfied, too, all at once, in one swampy mix. i am on the edge of my seat. and i can't wait to see what happens next, with my own life and with all of yours. it's like the future can't get here fast enough. i am so impatient for it. anticipatory. in that heart racey sexual blindfolded and waiting kind of way.

i want to just tie it all down.

to capture it.

then recrystallize it. into some pure and perfect form.

jds.

I had another dream last night about losing my teeth. i woke up at 3:30 drenched in sweat. it's funny how you can't tell the difference between what's real and what's a lie when you're dreaming. i guess it's hard to distinguish even when you're awake. but only three days until i get my braces off. i know i won't be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound but i think i will at least recoup confidence i forgot i had. or rather gain what i never had. and writing it all down it sounds something so seemingly stupid.

i remember when i decided to get them put on, r. was so upset, like it was the biggest deal in the world, and rather than telling me that he thought it was an excellent idea, i would be even more beautiful having had them, he was pretty active about trying to convince me NOT to get them. ... all of this of course made me only want to get them more.

so i'm off to rittenhouse with the tanwarrior to soak up the day and read and relax. then i get to magically return to freshman year with jay tonight at some show at temple. and for this i am giddy with excitement. maybe we can get someone to sign us into Johnson Hardwick and throw stolen fruit out the tenth floor window... and i can laugh like crazy while i make fun of you hiding from the RA and being thrilled with gravity.

jds.