Thank you to everyone who has read this blog over the past several years. It has been a real outlet for me and a definite source of encouragement and inspiration. I am almost certain that I will be deleting it within the next several weeks (or perhaps making it private), however, I will probably have another website in the future - perhaps a year or two down the road - and if that's the case, I hope you'll find me there and then. If you'd like to keep up with me, please find me on Facebook, which is the only social media platform I anticipate maintaining. Just include a note with your friend request, indicating that you've followed me on this blog, and I'll welcome you into the fold.

I've learned a great deal from the time I started this endeavor until now. Much of what I've shared in my writing seems self-indulgent and immature to me now - even embarrassing, sadly - but I suppose that's all a part of the growth process. I promised myself not to do too much hand-wringing for past mistakes, but it's in my nature to think of these things and get a bit red-faced because of them. Nevertheless, my sincere apologies to anyone I've offended with an unkind word or unflattering description. Forgive me; I can be a real idiot. And have I mentioned that I've learned a lot these last few years?

I hope to continue to write, and I hope to publish something I'm proud of someday, though that is not my sole focus. I'd simply like to become a better writer first. I appreciate your support and kindness as I've attempted to work all this out. We don't have enough kindness in the world, but those of you who regularly comment here do your part to make up for that. Thank you.

Cameron

World - I'm still interested in you ... are you interested in me?

You just seem so distant.

I know I've done all the wrong things.

Had all the wrong marketing plans.

Went to all the wrong schools.

Lived in all the wrong places.

Never stayed as long as I thought I would.

But still, let's talk...

Saw a photo of this message, which was spray-painted on a wall. I thought it was worth sharing here. I've had similar thoughts, though none stated this succinctly. Note: some of the things listed are good things; it's the overall message I appreciate.

Go to work,

send your kids to school,

follow fashion,

act normal,

walk on pavement,

watch T.V.,

save for your old age,

obey the law,

repeat after me:

I am free.

An article with loads of 'truthiness' from America's finest news source.

This coffee shop - located in a white bread, working-class town in the Midwest - only plays music from Parliment-Funkadelic. I like funk as much as anyone else, but five days per week, eight hours per day? I'm about to go insane. I'll refrain from making too many Old Gregg references here, but I can see how George Clinton 'nearly lost his mind' and said 'I'm done with 'dat' and booted that ball of you-know-what to the bottom of the ocean.

One of the real tests in life is when you must deal with the realization that things have not worked out the way you had hoped; that things might never work out the way you had hoped.

We all experience many small disappointments throughout our lives - from not getting the promotion at work to getting cut from a high school sports team - but I'm talking about something much bigger than that. I'm talking about those larger-than-life dreams we all harbor (or harbored) at some point: that special someone you had your heart set on; the career you prized above all others; the dream of "seeing the world"; the goal of being a successful musician; the relative or friend you had hoped would be healed.

When these plans don't succeed - when we have the drive but not the talent, when the loved one dies despite everyone's prayers, when we never manage to make enough money to travel, when the relationship sputters despite our best efforts, when we can't seem to find the right opportunities to make the career a reality - we are faced with a difficult decision. We suddenly must decide whether we will give in to despair (or anger), or whether we will accept our station in life with grace and kindness.

This topic is more than parlor talk for me and for many people I know. At my age especially, you begin to realize that the world is not your oyster, that the well-intentioned promises of "you can do anything" are not true, were never true. Dreams begin to die, just as the weight of one's body begins to set in. This is the age at which you begin to realize that time does in fact move quicker as you age. And so how do we accept these things - the unworking of hope and time - with hope and grace?

I'm trying to figure that one out myself. I'd prefer not to be despairing or angry, for the people I respect most are those who have learned how to accept their fate with a sort of hopeful kindness. Certainly there is life yet to be lived, and "when a door closes, a window opens" (and other trite and true sayings of the sort). But if it's not too ungracious, I'd like to say that we shouldn't gloss over the pain that exists when things simply do not work out the way we had hoped they would.

You'll be glad to know that in Middle America, there is a man in a coffee shop proclaiming himself a "conservative's conservative" and railing against NAFTA and other things he might not understand all that well. And he's against "tree huggers" and "socialists" (just a personal thing: people should be required to give a specific definition of that word before using it, as it's on the verge of losing all meaning in "merika"). As I look around this crumbling rust belt town, I wish there were a few more socialists and tree huggers. Interestingly, I've found that "socialist" areas full of "tree huggers" usually offer a high quality of life. And they're usually quite beautiful. Anecdotal.

I won't argue about any of this with too much conviction or vehemence. It would just be nice if people traveled more often and maybe held their views in tension with evidence that flies in the face or their views. I try and do that, though I clearly fall short from time to time. It's difficult to do, admittedly. It's definitely easier just to go with something and not be bothered with nagging doubts about the worthiness and intellectual purity of your cause.

You might also be interested to know that in Middle America, young kids are very sincere, and they bring their Bibles to coffee shops and have urgent thoughts about theology and the like. It's nice to listen to it all, and it isn't too much different than how I might have been many years ago.

I don't feel particularly engaged by any of this, but it's great that people have views and that they like to discuss them. I respect that, though the politico at the table next to me ("candidate for congress," I just learned) does use the word "despise" a bit too much. That language makes me feel tired. He's a furious, angry white man - that much is clear. I know rage and I know it isn't helpful in the long-run. Positive energy trumps negative energy every time, which is why I'm on the verge of telling him, "If you want to get elected, try a bit more whimsy." Just a spoonful of sugar. That sort of thing.

...so the deeper question is, Why does the media cover a radical fundamentalist pastor of an underwhelming flock of 50 (in a Florida backwater) who wants to burn the Koran, thus turning something stupid and redneck into an event of international importance? This story could have died a quiet death. Or rather, it didn't even have to have a life in the first place. I suppose this is the sort of thing journalists talk about at media forums that are broadcast on C-SPAN at 2 a.m.; forums that only people like me watch. Now, back to silent programming.

This past year and a half has been both difficult and phenomenal. I've been decomposed and put back together again. Shaken and stirred. I lived in a developing country off the coast of West Africa - a few stories there - and traveled to a handful of North American cities for the first time, including Boston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, La., Savannah, Ga., and Seattle. I spent nearly a week in New York City last spring - the most amount of time I've ever spent there during any one visit - and also visited a few cities in England I'd never seen, including York and Cambridge. I also saw Lisbon, Portugal, - thanks to a missed flight - and have flown along the rim of North Africa at midnight. I spent a good four days in Chicago, walking along the river and looking up at the wall of skyscrapers. I read dozens of books. I Got threatened, got sick, got insulted, got over it. I learned another language.

Sort of.

And was it all worth it? That's impossible to say. But sometimes, in the presence of wealthy friends, I have the suspicion that they might trade places with me. Hard to believe when I look at their lives. Harder to believe when I look at mine. And yet I wouldn't do much differently. A few things, of course,...but not much.

I suppose if I could change something, I would love people better. It's difficult to see friends who have fallen by the wayside, people who were intentionally or (more often) unintentionally hurt. I can think of a few off the top of my head. Or the immature ways I've reacted over the years to insults and disrespect (or disdain) - be it from a boss in Nashville or a student in Africa or even from a close friend or acquaintance. It's sad that after all the life experiences I've had, and all the contemplation and religious training, my ego boundaries are still so large and sensitive and heavily defended. I suppose that's why, when I consider a new life of acquisition and achievement, a life devoid of those very things often seems much more appealing. Those ego boundaries don't need to get any bigger or more heavily defended.

Hard to get a handle on a place after only a few days, but I like Seattle. I don't pretend to understand the people, but the city is equal parts gorgeous and gritty. My appreciation for things here is enhanced by the fact that my good friend Joe and his wife live in a beautiful house that overlooks the water and the downtown Seattle skyline - all of which I can see from the hot tub on Joe's second-story balcony.

Reality awaits, but for now, this isn't too bad.

Just a moment to say that I've returned from South Carolina and am back in Nashville. Later today, I will be back in Michigan, and then, tomorrow, off to Seattle.

Hilton Head has a gorgeous beach and a confusing series of private-public roads with guard shacks and country clubs. There is no discernible city center on the island. Everything is in a strip mall. People wear the same clothes and eat early.

Nashville is as it was. And not. Strange how a place can feel so much like home and not like home at all. The faces in the coffee shops are all different. The house on the corner burned down. I don't know or recognize the waiters. Everyone looks 20 years old. There are new restaurants and businesses. Many of my friends are restless. They talk and laugh about people I've never met.

For all of that, a long August and early September of catching up with people I love is not to be regretted. Life is not just what you do or produce, and it's good to be reminded of that.

I am thankful for these weeks. I won't forget them.

It's a good thing you're not here.

I keep saying "double rainbow" like that guy in the YouTube video. If you haven't already seen it, don't waste your time. But know that I do an impression of it.

I'm sorry not to have posted here of late. Or actually, I'm not sorry. I took an unintentional two-week Internet fast (okay, I cheated a couple of times) and I must say that I recommend it heartily. It really clears your head. So much so that you can actually begin to think in complete sentences again, and even occasionally write in them. I am now trying to just check email twice per day for less than an hour total. I don't pretend that I will always be able to do that, but it's a worthy goal going forward.

I am also happy to report that the writing is going much better. It's actually good that my hard drive died and that I lost some of what I had written before. I needed to start over again. My agent recently told me something like, 'Don't let your emotions overwhelm the narrative,' and I felt that his advice was extremely helpful. So I am feeling, if not good, optimistic, about the chapter I finished today and sent off. No predictions as to what will happen, but the work is improving, so I am glad of that.

Off to Nashville on Saturday.

Back from Northern Michigan. The drive up wasn't nearly as long as I remember; the forests, not nearly as thick as I recall; the water, just as beautiful. I'm glad to have seen so much more of the world since I first started spending summer vacations 'Up North' (as the area is called by Michiganders), but there's something wonderful about returning to the source of so much childhood wonder. I felt that same sense of wide-eyed excitement this year that I felt as a child, particularly on the day I stood waist-deep in water, far from shore, with turquoise waves nearly knocking me on my backside. Odd to be my age and feel no older than 11 or so.

It makes me sad to listen to the news these days. Tonight I realized that every item on a news station involved someone blaming someone else for something bad that had happened. Every single news item. We live in a sick world, but only because we are sick. It seems that until we acknowledge that we are each the problem - not some political opponent, race, nationality, law, political party, business, group, etc. - we will never get anywhere.

I saw a catalog the other day that was thrown across the couch. I picked it up and immediately saw this leather coat, which is the exact sort of leather coat I've wanted for five years. Then I looked at the price tag: $795. I know it's leather people, but that price tag is criminal. That could feed several third-world children for an entire year. Even in a recession, conspicuous consumption is all around us - and the catalogs will continue to make their way to our coffee tables and couches. Lord have mercy, and lots of it: I still kind of want the coat. But my soul.

Things are about to turn around for me. I just know it. Or I am about to turn around. Which will have me going the right direction. In the meantime, my computer's hard drive crashed today, so I am having that replaced tomorrow at the Apple Store in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Aren't Apple Computers supposed to be really great and cool? A really cool computer is one that works in my opinion. And yet, even with the spate of problems I've had of late, the Mac experience is still probably better than my experiences with other computers. I just seem to lack the touch. Others hang outside of car windows with their laptops, or use them while bobsledding, and never have a single problem; I make five-course meals for mine and the hard drive crashes.

Enough of that. My month of vacation is coming, with trips to Northern Michigan, Chicago, Nashville, South Carolina and Seattle planned. Hopefully after all that relaxation there will be something productive to announce or introduce in September. And yet, isn't it always when it seems as if nothing is happening that something significant is actually happening? Something is invisibly ripening - like spring before the first warm day that announces its arrival.

Unrelated to any of that, here's an article I saw in the New York Times about tattoos. I have nothing against tattoos, unless of course they are visible compensation for invisible material.

It has been hard-going, this writing.

I'm so thankful to be home, thankful to have long-suffering parents who will let their adult son pile his bags and books into a guest bedroom; a place for him to relax as he tries to rebuild his life. And yet all of this relaxing is surprisingly unrelaxing. That's largely due to the fact that I want to be on to some new challenge by mid- to late-September, which seems so far away, but really isn't. You can spend a lot of nights in your old bunk bed, staring at nothing in particular, thinking about the future and imagining all kinds of depressing scenarios that might unfold, if you're not careful.

But being here is also stressful because of what I do day after day. And you might ask, 'What is that?' That would be sit in at a straight-backed chair and stare at a small computer screen, trying to write as if my life, future happiness, prosperity, health, friendships, and general well-being depended upon it. Without getting into too much detail about what I am trying to write and why I am trying to write it, I will say that the words have not come easily. Each word has to be coaxed out like a frightened child it seems. My last book - admittedly not very good - was called 'a rambling blog post' by one book reviewer. My frightened child still hears those words every day, making it difficult to get any work done. Call me thin-skinned that I still hear those words three years later, pathetic really, but it's true, I do hear them. It's also why I spend so little time on this blog: God forbid that all my writing tuns into one rambling blog post.

I suppose you could say that I have a confidence problem. I read others' essays and think, 'Why can't I write like that? I can't even string a sentence together it seems.' I pick up a book and have to put it down, so dismayed am I by my own lack of focus and writing ability. I look at a creative writing program and can't even bring myself to fill out the application form, so dismayed am I by my lack of prospects and, simultaneously, others' extraordinary output and skill.

I often think I put my eggs in the wrong basket, opted for the wrong line of work. I showed promise in many subjects, was a good speaker, funny at times, but here I am at 33, no line on the horizon, trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

President Obama, in a recent commencement address to graduates at The University of Michigan:

"For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized, more set in our ways. That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Now this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from; that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. That's why we need an educated citizenry that uses hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, 'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.'

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It's essential for our democracy."

-Barack Obama

As an addendum - I do think it is important not to merely read other viewpoints, but to have friends and people you genuinely care about who hold them. There aren't many things I am qualified to speak about with any degree of authority, but this topic is one of them. I was a conservative's conservative, went to college with them, studied political science, was a journalist, and am now a moderate with a diverse group of friends along the political spectrum - from right-wingers to left-wingers to everything in between. I also deplore the biased, thoughtless journalism we see these days on both the right and the left. News organizations don't even pretend anymore - they're just going after "their audience" and selling whatever kind of product you want and selling it how you want it: downy soft, with salt, without, no high fructose corn syrup, organic, design-your-own, with longer battery life, or with a heap of righteous indignation. Frighteningly, we now live in a world where you can almost go your entire life without reading or hearing an opinion that doesn't agree with one you hold. For a moderate, this all feels like being the child of divorced, squabbling parents.

There's a game I play - it's called Drink as Much Coffee as Possible and Write Until You Realize It's All Terrible.

I love getting in a zone where it seems as if what I'm writing is actually good - even if it isn't.

There's no other way to get writing done than to try and get yourself into a delusional state and write until you snap out of it. It's almost like hypnotizing yourself.

Most of you have probably heard of Someecards - a funny [and occasionally, "they've gone too far"] sort of company that makes physical and digital cards for all occasions. I thought this recent card was hilarious. Unfortunately, most of us have been to weddings where this card would be appropriate. Maybe even our own.

Just a quick post to say hello. Have I only been in Michigan for a week and a half? It seems much longer than that. Pleased to report that I'm feeling better, well even. Definitely feeling a bit antsy about the future, however: what to do with myself, where to go. Trying remember how to fly again. Believe I can. Believe I will.

I am back now. Sleeping in a comfortable bed. Lazily walking to a fridge filled with more things than I can count in a reasonable amount of time. Huge windows everywhere framing a green world. Water from a tap. That sort of thing. I never fully realized that I grew up in one of the greenest corners of the world, a place with some of the most freshwater on the planet, until I lived in Cape Verde. I had lived in a desert before, all those years ago with S., but they watered the hell out of those golf courses and resorts and apartment lawns in Palm Springs. So it wasn't all that bleak. Cape Verde, in the interior of Santiago Island at this time of year, looks as if mosquitoes the size of prehistoric birds swept across the landscape in some kind of plague of biblical proportions. But instead of sucking blood from humans, they sucked the color out of everything. My image driving from Tarrafal to Praia a week ago is of a lone dark figure on an unpaved rocky trail, a trail that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and the wind blowing like a man blowing on an anthill. That lone figure covered his face from the small rocks and dust that swirled around him. And it all felt downright post-apocalyptic, or pre-historic. The romance of a desert, of semi-arid land, evaporates pretty quickly when one has to live in it.

And so there were dry times this past year, which perhaps explains the scary ex-wife dreams I've been having lately. That was another dry time in my life. But the dreams are more frightening than mosquitoes the size of prehistoric birds. All that freedom sucked away, eyes everywhere, like Orwell's 1984. No freshwater. Blood in the water. Everything up in the air.

Ants on an anthill.

So I can now post again, now that I am officially finished with the Peace Corps.

I am back in the US of A with no return ticket to Africa.

It was a long year. That's clear to anyone who knows me or reads these ramblings. But I have to say that the Peace Corps was beyond gracious with me - the staff in Cape Verde bent over backwards to help me in every way they could throughout my stay there. Granted, I was at the northern tip of an African island - a somewhat remote place that still left me feeling out on a ledge much of the time - but I forged some strong friendships, not only with my Cape Verdean teacher colleagues and fellow Peace Corps workers, but with the Peace Corps staff as well.

I am now in Boston, having arrived here from Cape Verde at 10 p.m. this evening, and am roaming the corridors of this spacious (and surprisingly nice) airport in the early hours of the morning, short on money but long on time. And some have asked, 'What's next?' To which I can only reply (with any degree of certainty), 'a flight in a little over five hours to Detroit.'

I have been looking into door-to-door sales, working as a short-order cook, or trapping lobster - but I think I might try to write for a while. I genuinely feel, for the first time in five years, that I might have something to write, by which I mean I might have something to write that is interesting and mature and maybe even worth reading. But one never knows. And along those same lines, I am also thinking of MFA programs - especially ones that pay me to attend. Vanderbilt has one in Creative Writing that pays your tuition and gives you a fairly generous stipend as well. Which can only mean one thing: it's ridiculously competitive.

But what's not?

I suppose 'ridiculously competitive' is something we say to stop ourselves from doing something, or from feeling ridiculous if we fail. Of course, maybe 'MFA' (or PhD, MBA, etc.) is just something we say, too - like a way of avoiding giving a real answer, or avoiding the real world a bit longer (for it always comes calling and we always must answer).

Doing something, anything, in London might be nice too. Or Montreal. Or York.

But I do love me some Nashville.

I'm long on cities and full of time to decide I suppose.

Time-full.

That's what I'll tell people.

Time-full.

I rushed down to the Internet Cafe a few moments ago after learning from my parents that my Hotmail account - which I haven't used on a regular basis for some three or four years now - was hacked. Having your privacy violated in such a way, and violating the privacy of others in the process, is particularly distressing - especially when you consider the sensitive information that must be in the archives of that email account.

All of which is to say, my apologies if you received a strange email from me today. Please do not open it. And for anyone that might be wondering, I have not taken to writing mass emails in a foreign tongue. While I don't know the contents of the email, I do know the subject line was not in English - and the attachments it included were likely porn, forms requesting your social security number and bank account information, or viruses waiting to infect your PC.

I have now closed the Hotmail account, changed other passwords online, and will only use my Gmail account, which is listed on this blog. After closing the Hotmail account (I don't suggest using Hotmail by the way), I attempted to send an email to everyone in my Gmail account history - but my contacts numbered well over 1,000 and I don't have time here to figure out how to break the list into halves or thirds. Not to mention that Gmail was trying to make me comb through the list to eliminate any 'invalid' email addresses, which sounds like an all-day affair. I am so frustrated. I am sure you can identify if you have ever had anything similar happen to you.

Let's hope the worst of it has passed - that this is just a minor inconvenience for all of us. It's the last thing I need to worry about right now.

No would should choose the writing life if other lives are available. I would say the same about the acting life. You run the risk of being poor and one day realizing you have nothing but a CV of odd jobs - short-order cook, longshoreman, waiter, data entry drone, marketing assistant, or most tragic of all, freelance writer (so close, so far away).

You run the risk of never being 'successful'. Though that word deserves more discussion.

And yet there are certainly more difficult lives. I worked construction for part of a summer after high school. I was not strong, or strapping, or anything you might look for in a construction worker. I was not averse to hard work, but the work required of my thin 18-year-old body was as foreign to me as the books I read during lunchbreak were to the men who ate their white-bread sandwiches and smoked their Marlboros and bragged about their sexual organs being tired from all that copulation with faceless waitresses. These were people who occupied a world I knew nothing of. I was not of their world either and they let me know it. A book or even a newspaper at lunch was an affront to them and they would mock me, though even then, I knew their cruel taunts had little to do with me. I was a bit like Tom from 'A Glass Menagerie' who would escape to the bathroom at the factory just to write a line of poetry, only to return and be derided by the others as 'Shakespeare.'

Nothing worse than a man with smooth hands with pretensions of learning I suppose. Or a man who wants to create something when everyone knows that's what tools are for. And I wondered if I should despise myself for that or not. And sometimes, on those days when words are a trickle, or the spout is dry, I still wonder. I feel like the fool of the world and I want to join a boxing club and show those construction workers that this man who reads books can hit them square in the face and take their punches and bleed and make them bleed, too. A sort of latent male-ness to show that I have rage and I am not doing a woman's job.

I think of those construction days now because I again know how it feels to be derided and to not fit in and to be unfit for a certain type of work and to be misunderstood by people who look at me like an ancient alphabet. Irrelevant without the time or desire to figure me out. And that vague scent of disdain that lingers like the trash that on certain days burns slowly over this city.

I think of those days, 15 years past, because I have finally decided to be a writer. I think in my heart I have decided it. After two haltering, embarrassing efforts and years of writing some good (and very bad) newspaper and magazine articles, I know of no other thing I can do. Something, someone, made me this way. I might never be a great writer - and I will undoubtedly have other jobs and some of them I will not just muddle my way through, but will execute with intelligence and success - but I will always be a writer. If only acknowledged by me, in my heart. Which is enough for me. Those who are writing to feed their ego - (I know a few) - should stop now. Just stop. Just stop writing until you can accept that you might never be appreciated, or even very good, and are just as happy (or painfully obligated) to do the work you feel you must do. The writing work.

Why are so many 'religious' people so unkind? The woman in the Internet Cafe, always irritated with me, huffing when I pointed out this morning that I paid for 30 minutes but only received 29. A minor point, granted, but she turned and huffed, 'Americano' under her breath with disdain. I blew up. Told her she had a great deal of religion - she is always chanting Catholic songs in Portuguese, ones that she sings at mass on Sunays - but has very little kindness. She proceeded to yell at me for five minutes. I heard little of it and understood less.

I understand so little.

Forgive me.

You have to love this quote, which I saw in TIME and which inspired me to write an email to the magazine (with my Internet time so limited here, I had about thirty seconds to write the email, and naturally, upon re-reading it, discovered a small error).

Here is Garrison Keillor commenting on the sustainability of the book publishing industry - a quote I've shortened a bit for brevity's sake:

'I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea...the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75.' - Garrison Keillor (taken from an article he wrote for the Chicago Tribune)

I haven't read the article, but I had quite a strong reaction to his comments - things I won't go into here because they are technical and probably boring. But I will say this: Garrison Keillor (who has already made his money as a writer and can now throw the rest of us to the wolves - like an absurdly wealthy oil tycoon munching on the stub of a cigar towards the end of his life, talking about what a shitty business oil is - 'no money it!' - that sort of thing) writes and hosts a successful radio theater program.

That's right - I said radio theater.

We could've easily written radio theater's obituary three decades ago, if not four, which makes me think that the only think more foolish than trying to make a living as a writer - or the host of a radio theater program - is trying to predict the future.

I see this year as an odd kind of success. Strange, because I am usually hard on myself and would view this situation differently. I have certainly made mistakes that I regret, said terrible things that I can't take back, and reacted in ways that are ugly and mean-spirited, and yet...

Thin clouds like bleached water roll over mountains dry as anthills. May 29 here and everywhere. But in wet and green, dear friends say their wedding vows. Elsewhere, people breathing their last. Someone falling in love. Someone falling out of love. A baby crying. An old man sighing. Hope failing, being rekindled. Someone getting hit in the face. Stabbed. Fear paralyzes. Ecstatic singing. Feast for the wealthy. Free lunch for the poor. Non-stop television programming. Radio waves crackling with angry voices looking for someone to blame. Somewhere, a simple act of kindness. Couples at lunch, nothing to say.

Welcome to the world.

It seems we have to look for the goodness in each day or we will give into despair, or perhaps worse, hide behind a wall of cynicism in which everything is stupid. But it is difficult at times, and yet having said that, the simplest things can bring consolation. The way the ordinary looks, glazed with rain water, standing beside the white chickens (to borrow a line from William Carlos Williams). I'd like to live in a world full of momentary, beautiful images and experiences, but then I walk on and see people hitting in each other in the face or a hillside littered with trash. Thirsty people. A thirsty planet. Images of an oil spill, tentacle like, prepared to strangle precious coastlines filled with plants and animals. Look at what we've done to this planet and to each other and to ourselves. And the only way out is the only way no one wants to go.

I have read many of the classics, but I still think that 'Gilead' by Marilynne Robinson - which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - might be the best book I have ever read. My trinity of literature is now 'Crime and Punishment', 'Gilead', and 'The Road' (though I could easily insert 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Night', or several others).

I realize I am a bit late to the party, but if you have never read 'Gilead', please do. It is a work of art - a book that one reviewer described as being so well-written as to almost have a sense of danger about it. Which is a strange thing to say, as it is not a mystery novel or a crime novel or a 'dangerous' book in the traditional sense of that word - it is about a dying pastor's letter to his young son, a boy he will never see grow up - yet the reviewer is right.

'Gilead' has a sense of danger to it.

Here is one of my favorite passages from the book, which I think is short enough to quote within 'fair-use' standards. By the way, 'Gilead' is published in the United States by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and in Great Britain by Virago Press. All rights reserved. Etc. Etc.

'Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitious resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.'

--Marilynne Robinson, 'Gilead'

What can I say, other than I take solace in my books and the few good people I know here who are unfailingly kind? More violence witnessed today and I had to intervene. I don't feel safe here any longer. Someone I know was stabbed last night and is in a hospital 30 minutes away - an oddity that is strange to think of on those quiet Sundays while sitting in the morning shadows, a cup of coffee in my unsteady hands. Odd to think of at the restaurant on stilts - a place where you can see the turquoise ocean and hear several other languages being spoken to the soundtrack of jazz music. Odd to think of when greeted by the kind restaurant owner who hugged me the other day, like my sister might. Odd to be hugged, touched, with no ill intent.

There are many things I'd like to tell you about my experience here, but much of it will have to wait. I know that makes for slightly dull reading. A post once every week or ten days about books I've read, or two sentences about the fact that I need to post, isn't particularly compelling. For now you will have to trust that there's a good reason for my reticence. I saw something particularly disturbing the other day - something I had never seen in fact, and a situation in which I had to intervene in order to assure a teenage girl's safety. It was jarring to say the least.

It did make me reflect on how often things are not as they appear. One can't really 'know' a place by visiting it for a week or two (or ten), reading about it in a magazine, or even reading a book about it. One can only know a place when you stay long enough to see it behaving badly - when it hasn't had the time to clean up the living room or mop the floors. When the niceties melt away. When you noticed the chipped paint. The dysfunction.

I have a sense that behind every culture is a savageness we can hardly imagine, especially those of us who have been kept at arm's length from such aggression because of our money or our parents' money or the privilaged positions into which we were born. So many of us can't imagine what's really beyond the magazine pages, nor do we want to. We'd rather just get the magazine or hear about the darker things of life second-hand. So many of us can't even imagine the darkness of life - or what it feels like to live in the midst of it - because we are blinded by advantages of birth we think we somehow earned. We didn't do anything though - we just won the cosmic lottery. I know the 'rags-to-riches, work hard' American mantra, but many of us did little more than get handed a winning lottery ticket - even if we did complete the essays we were told to write or show up for work on time.

I saw a photo in my Facebook news feed today and it brought back everything - all those buried feelings unearthed, if only for a minute. It's not what I want - not what I ever wanted (or not what I ever needed) - though it was hard for me to see that at the time, all those years ago. And yet chemistry (a smell, a look, a touch, a smile, an aesthetic) has a way of making one's common sense less common. If I talked to this person now, we would hardly have a thing to say to one another. And yet I am a memory person and the imaginary world of rememberances usually takes on an alternate reality all its own. The mind is a mysterious thing. It reassembles puzzle pieces and makes glass vases out of chipped plastic cutlery.

There are all sorts of mysteries that exist. Like a dream I recently had. Or why I woke up at 4 a.m. today and wrote for more than three hours without stopping - something I haven't done in years. I think I might have written a chapter for a book. Something is happening. I believe in it - or at least today I do - and when I can't, or don't, maybe you can believe it for me.

Recent books I've read (or in one case, am still reading) and loved, with brief reviews. Make of it all what you will, though I would be interested in your thoughts if you've read any of the following. Special thanks to Vanessa and her immaculate taste for the following selections.

'The Discovery of France' by Graham Robb

A bit too academic at points, but give this book time and you will be stunned to discover a France you never knew - a magical and often backwards place that is (and was) much more diverse and disjointed than you ever realized. This book is loaded with historical stories and facts that today's novice backpacker or armchair tourist would never have discovered on his or her own. Robb helps explain Paris's obsession with the 'purity' of the French language (an obsession that exists even to this day) and the government's centuries-long campaign to rid the country of its hundreds of other languages, dialects, and bizarre subcultures.

'So Long, See You Tomorrow' by William Maxwell

This is undoubtedly one of my favorite books of all time - a work of American fiction that can articulate in one sentence what less-gifted writers would take three pages to say. A book of immense emotion and depth that recounts the smallest of incidents: an act of infidelity in rural Illinois, early 1900s, and the wrenching sadness and fallout that results from this betrayal. The book is full of plain-spoken characters whose true emotions are often revealed not by what they say, but by what they don't - and can't - say. These characters, though very different than I, are in my family tree, several generations removed. I somehow know them. You might too.

'Halflife: Poems' by Meghan O'Rourke

Though too obscure for some, most right-brained people who give this collection time will find O'Rourke to be the best young American poet of our time. In fact, she might just be a genius. I initially wanted to dismiss the book as the work of a self-styled Brooklyn hipster (O'Rourke lives in the New York City area) who only writes about things that other self-styled Brooklyn hipsters know (or care) about. How wrong I was. Take for instance O'Rourke's lengthy poem, 'Two Sisters', which is presumably about O'Rourke's twin who died in the womb. It is precious, savage, tender, beautiful, and unimaginably sad. That could just about describe nearly every poem in this creative, inspiring collection. Every writer should own this book.

'A Little History of the World' by E.H. Gombrich

This is a whimsical overview of world history, as told by your learned grandfather with a Ph.D. Gombrich, who died several years ago, felt that an intelligent child could understand most things, given that those things were explained properly. Though originally written for German children more than 50 years ago, this updated book in English (Gombrich, who as an adult became a British citzen, wrote the English translation of his own work), is, in its best moments, nothing short of poetry. This gentle book is packed with information that - while obviously just skimming the surface of complicated events that deserve a 30-volume series - gives adults and children alike a coherent understanding of the continuity of events that have shaped (and continue to shape) world history. Even erudite nay-sayers given to interruptions of 'yes, but...' will find this book informative and difficult not to admire. It should be required reading in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and universities alike. How many other books can you say that about?

I suppose the 'Type Fourness' asserts itself strongly in me during times of stress. In addition to not feeling well for much of this past year, my mom is currently in the hospital, I have had two grandparents in the hospital, and the one town I care about is now mostly underwater. Add to that a new physical ailment - in addition to the others - and I suppose I can be annoyingly maudlin about it all. Especially here on this blog, which throughout its existence has usually served as a way for me to work through my feelings when I wasn't feeling well.

But these feelings are real.

And as Viktor Frankl so wisely says, pain is like a gas. No matter how much gas there might be, it evenly fills a confined space. Yet even having said that, I acknowledge that while I am a feeler and have gone through a geniunely difficult time here, I am also well aware of those who have (or have had) it much worse - for instance, the lame elderly man on the side of the road who always sits with his metal crutch. Or a friend from Sao Tome who studied in Algeria for five years and, though surrounded by a community of other international students, was occasionally spit on by the locals as he walked down the street.

There are good people and bad people in every culture. Here in this backwater city in West Africa, there might only be a handful of really bad people - I just seem to have met them all. I wish there was an easy solution. It would be easy to say, 'If people just traveled more, they would have a bigger picture of the world and would not be so prejudiced against other races and cultures.' But that's not always true. And it would be easy to say, 'If people were more educated, they would be kinder and have a better understanding of other cultures and the world.' And that's not entirely true either. Sometimes travel and education actually enhance people's prejudices. One study I came across found that many Islamists, contrary to popular belief, were not ignorant people, but were often quite educated. Take the guy who tried to bomb the flight to Detroit some months ago. He was a top engineering student at a prestigious university in London.

And so, in my estimation (while acknowledging that I have not exhausted all other possibilities here) I believe we can only conclude this sort of racism and exclusivism is a spiritual problem (and when I say 'spiritual problem' I am not implying that we don't have enough Bibles or churches in many parts of the world, though there are places where that might be the case - but even then, that is hardly a solution in and of itself, as it can create the exact same divisiveness).

And unfortunately, bigotry is not only everyone else's problem - it is my problem as well. Last night, as I fell into bed, I wondered - really wondered - about the truth of the Gospel when history can be summed up in three words (no offense to Julian Barnes, who wrote a fascinating book called 'A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters').

Here is my Cliff's Notes version of history - 'prejudice, violence, retaliation.' If you don't believe me, buy a world history book and tell me if that doesn't just about sum it up. But my simple outline is not just a macro-narrative, it is a micro-narrative as well, one that I feel played out in my heart, especially under extreme circumstances such as these. And, being a Christian, or Christian-ish, that brings me to the Gospel. Why, if the Gospel is true, do we have so little evidence of its efficacy throughout history? I know its positive effects are not completely absent - the abolition movement, the building of charitable hospitals and homeless shelters, the movement to wipe out the staggering debts of third-world countries, and yet these seem mere side notes to the cascade of war, violence, bigotry and hatred that is the grand narrative of world history - much of this violence perpetuated under the guise of 'Christianity' or a perversion of some other faith.

And if the Gospel is true, why can I not seem to get it through me? I have a fierceness in me that is so much more apt to retailiate - to follow the predictable arc of history (predictable even amongst very religious people) - than to upend it as Jesus did when he prayed that his killers might be forgiven for they didn't know what they were doing. I just can't seem to get that kind of love and compassion through me. In fact, I can hardly understand it. Sure, maybe I can (and you can), in a comfortable arm chair in a first-world country over coffee, or in your cool urban church with its plush seats and hip pastor, or at a wine bar talking with friends. The Gospel, like everything, is easy parlor talk. But when you are really forced to confront it, what will you do? What will you think? I feel so confused - like an 18-year-old homeschooler at Cal Berkley.

I always had a sense of 'alone-ness' growing up.

I was quite a bit older than my brother and sister, and before they were born, I even had an imaginary friend.

I physically injured my closest childhood friend accidentally - or so it seems in my memory - and the prevailing memory from my childhood is me climbing to the upper reaches of an impossibly tall tree (or so it seems in my memory) after the event and crying for hours (or so it seems in my memory) until my mom coaxed me down.

I never saw that friend again - her father wouldn't let me.

I made the Homecoming Court in high school - was I popular? If I was, I didn't know it - but I only felt as if I had a couple of real friends. And for a good part of my high school career at least, I had virtually nothing to do on the weekends.

I had that same 'alone-ness' when S. left, and then P. That aloneness one feels when one finds himself in places that suddenly seem, or are, foreign.

However, Cape Verde has quite nearly topped all of these experiences. I have experienced depths of loneliness here that are difficult to articulate. Not a by-myself-ness, but a sort of heart-wrending aloneness that transcends words. The Peace Corps might not prefer for me to share this, but it's true, and I try to write what's true (or what's true in my memory), here. I have been ridiculed, mocked, provoked, threatened numerous times, and been physically confronted since arriving here. I spend most weekends alone. I retreat often to my imagination, which means I once again have an imaginary friend whose name I sometimes think is 'God.'

Time drags on - the days at least. Live in the moment, right? And yet I check the date repeatedly throughout the day. Yup. Still May 6. Someday I will undoubtedly - though hard to imagine - look back on much of my experience here with fondness. Memory cannot be trusted. I think I'm remembering that correctly. Still May 6.

I have been mourning the fact that nothing stays the same, which I suppose is our hard-wired longing for the eternal. And yet. I have also been downcast by the fact that you can never really return - something that strikes me as a profound truth these past few days. You can never really return. A certain poem by Matthew Arnold is appropriate here. If I could only remember it.

Ate a mango two days ago.

I guess they're in-season now.

Or nearly so.

Guy tried to hit me with his car the other day and then cursed at me.

I won't go into my reaction here.

Blue skies today, per normal.

One minute left at the Internet cafe.

It is hard to love people who don't love you.

Easy to love those who do.

I now understand racism first-hand.

It would be nice to have wings.

Fortunately, I have my imagination.

Am thinking of my mom today.

It is easy to get trapped in our small worlds, but no man is an island, even if he lives on one. The world spins madly on and two recent events that have impacted me personally have brought that fact into stark relief. The first event is one that is not appropriate for me to discuss here, other than to say that someone I care about was very hurt by a dramatic, unexpected event - a tragedy that extends far beyond the walls of my friend's heart and has impacted children, communities, and many other families. The other event is related to the flooding in Nashville and middle Tennessee. Michigan - where I was born - and Tennessee are the two places in America closest to my heart. And a huge percentage of my friends live in Nashville or its surrounding areas. So I am worried about them after hearing that the river that runs through the center of Nashville has flooded quite severely and that people are being a evacuated. A quick glance at a major news website also indicates that nearly a dozen people have died as a result of the flooding. Tennessee is known for extreme spring weather, but the extreme nature of this flooding comes as a bit of a shock and it is difficult for me to be so far away from it when so many people I love are there. I am anxious to be home in July and to see what life holds from there.

My body is heavy. I feel a bit like I am running through chest-high water in blue jeans. But you just keep going. Helps when one of my students tells me, 'Mr. Cameron - I really like your class.'

Let's focus on the positive, or as Old Gregg would say, 'all things that are good'. Here's one. When I was in London earlier this month and visited the Apple store, I learned that I had arrived 30-some days before my service plan expired. Which means all my computer repairs were free. I essentially now have a new computer. They even replaced the plastic casing around the keyboard. Unfortunately, the computer is still in London. I am not.

I keep checking the post.

I also need to post here.

Soon.

Was in York for a few days, which is why I have not had a chance to post here for a while. York is highly recommended and is in many ways the 'second city' of England, at least historically it is. The Vikings were there and then the Romans and then the Normans. Everyone had their turn. A significant place which is also very haunted. I took a ghost tour which left its mark and during which I learned, at the end of the tour, that the guide had a strange experience that I too have had. There was some degree of consolation in knowing that someone else shared that experience - one so strange that I have only told a couple of people in my life. I think it explains my interest in ghosts. I have no explanation theologically for apparitions, and I think that it is dangerous to get too involved in seeking them out, but nevertheless, they remain a longtime interest for reasons I won't get into here. On a lighter note, I could very easily live in York - not too big, not too small, incredibly vibrant, great restaurants, and stone gates and walls which surround the city, each with a story to tell. The town is anchored by 'The Minster', a cathedral of sorts but a place referred to as a minister rather than a cathedral due to a minor distinction between the two - a distinction that seems a bit ambiguous and difficult to explain, even for the experts. I am headed to Cambridge today and was in London yesterday, which is where I will return tomorrow. Visited the Sherlock Holmes museum, in honor of Rory, though found it to be quite disappointing. But Baker Street is a nice area and Vanessa and I stumbled into a great 'after work' bar that was slightly upscale but not too much so. Nice crowd and good mojitos. It was a wonderfully sunny day yesterday, and we had a nice hour or so in the park, basking in the glow of that yellow-orange orb which shows its face all too rarely of late. I also saw my friend Tom, a philosophy professor originally from Nottingham but a Frenchman in his own right, having lived in Paris for a decade or more and who now teaches in Normandy. Tom and I have now met in three separate countries - trying to figure out what the fourth shall be. Tom suggested third-world. I suggested Montreal, Canada. Had a wonderful sushi meal with Tom and Tom's sister and his sister's boyfriend upon returning from York to Crouch End, a neighborhood in London. Tom, as he is prone to do, ordered some of the best liquor I have ever tasted, and then while the rest of us were finishing our meals, snuck off to pay the bill. He also graced us with his rap that he wrote some ten years ago about French women. It was the third time I've heard it and I think it gets funnier each time. Oh, my bag arrived about 36 hours after I landed by the way. Could've been worse and yet this trip could hardly be better.

Made it to London, though TACV - the national airline of the Republic of Cape Verde - managed to misplace my bag. I think it's in Portugal somewhere. Or endlessly rotating on a luggage belt in Dakar, Senegal. That leaves me with a hoodie, a wool stocking cap, and the jeans, socks and underwear I arrived in. Oh, I also have shoes and a broken computer (planning on visiting the Apple store here before heading up to York for a while). It is not a foggy day in London Town - nothing but deep blue skies in fact - but everything will be sunnier when (or if) my clothes arrive.

The trip here was mostly smooth - TACV only left 45 minutes late from Praia, which for TACV is like leaving an hour early. I also enjoyed reading the airline's in-flight magazine, which included articles in Portuguese and corresponding articles in English, which were undoubtedly put through Google Translator. The results? Remarkably bad. But to call the English translations bad is really doing a disservice to the word 'bad.' Or the word 'translation' for that matter. I wish I could recall a sentence word-for-word, but I will say that Google Translator must be quite fond of the word 'patrimony.' I also enjoyed the fact that the writer of one of the articles was clearly waiting on some fact in order to complete his piece, and so, as a temporary place-holder, he wrote, '------?????.' You'll be pleased to know that Google Translator very accurately related this in English as, '------?????.'

Arrived in Lisbon to find the airport something of a ghost town. My credit card worked, which made me quite happy, and I ate two slices of Pizza Hut pizza in a vacant food court, nearly choking on plastic after my fork exploded and left shrapnel in my food. I had two hours between flights, so I visited the slightly posh 'Made in Portugal' store, which had fine wines, overpriced chocolates and the exact brand of olive oil I buy at a third-world market in Cape Verde every few weeks. I scribbled down some thoughts about presentation in my notebook and the perceived value of something purely based on presentation. Think of it - people in the developing world picking a container of olive oil off a dusty market shelf with children walking barefoot through the streets as a well-dressed American in a suit plucks the exact same container of 'authentic Portuguese olive oil' (for ten times the price) off a futuristic-looking shelf in a pristine store as a souvenir.

Finally on the plane bound for London - this time a TAP Portugal flight - I sat next to a Spaniard and his wife and tried to recall my Spanish, all while debating in my head (before I uttered my prepared phrase) whether what I was about to say was Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, or none of the above. I am more linguistically confused than I have ever been. And now I can't even speak American - I have to speak English, though I am quite proud to say that I have a fairly good command of British English. I know that's not a shopping cart but a 'trolley' and that an eggplant is an 'aubergine' and lots of things are brilliant, but in a different way, and that you wear a 'jumper,' not a sweatshirt. 'Etc., etc., etc.' To quote Radiohead.

I hope my clothes get here soon.

And what does 'patrimony' mean anyway?

I mostly get it based on my knowledge of prefixes and suffixes, but when was the last time you heard that word? I'll probably hear it today whilst visiting (no definite article here) hospital or fighting cramp (not 'cramps') after a run.

I'm currently in Praia, the capital of the Repbulic of Cape Verde: a place that to visitors undoubtedly feels like a dusty backwater (contradiction in terms?) but after living in Cape Verde for 8-plus months feels a bit like the center of the world. Actually, tomorrow I am headed a place feels a lot like the centre of the world, London (via Lisboa of course - speaking of which, I really do need to try and make another Lisboa visit sometime soon just so I can see more than the carriage museum, though what a spectacular sight that carriage museum was. I'll always have the carriage museum).

A quick correction unrelated to anything else in this post: 'Arabian Nights' (as I soon learned as I got further into the story, and as my friend Don was so good to inform me in an email) does have an overriding motif. More on that later.

Other quick things of little import: Cape Verde is abuzz over a new type of Portuguese beer called 'Ego' (made by Strella). I wish I taught university students instead of eighth graders. I am not afraid to wear a knit stocking cap in 90-degree F weather. I have to fill out a report, which I am not anxious to do, hence this post. I recently finished the book 'The Historian', which was both immaculately researched and ridiculous. I recommend it with reservation. In fact, I recommend many things with reservation, including this blog. I also reserve the right to be ridiculous.

Something absurd about seeing a pimped-out truck in Cape Verde drive by blaring Peter Cetera singing the line, 'Like a knight in shining armor from a long time ago.'

This is not as odd as you might imagine. For all the popularity of hip-hop here, some other unlikely artists are strangely popular in my part of Cape Verde, including acclaimed American folk singer Tracy Chapman, James Blunt, and the one-and-only Phil Collins. Don't nobody hate on Phil Collins now, though I must admit that it still looks really dumb when some car with phat rims and a driver who resembles P-Diddy leans to the side while blaring 'Both Sides.'

No electricity in this town for all of Saturday. In this part of the world, few people have generators - or 'mow-ters' as they say in Creole - and it gets very dark. So dark that you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. My neighborhood on Saturday evening was strangely silent - no neighborhood children whooping it up, no women yelling at each other in the streets. I couldn't even hear my neighbors, who are my landlords and live above me. They are usually stirring, but nothing. My roommate was gone. Everything seemed odd, and then got odder when a man who I think is violent and a drug addict started pounding on my door. He continued to do so, screaming mostly unintelligable things. I thought he might try and break in - through the window, or maybe just try and take the door down judging by the force of his blows on the door. I grabbed a stick I have that is akin to a baseball bat and yelled through the door at him in Creole - told him he was drunk, to leave, that I was calling the police. He cursed at me, told me to shut up, etc. I wanted to open the door, in the pitch black, no one around, and swing my makeshift baseball bat as hard as I could at his face. I was surprised at how close I came to doing this. Probably better that I didn't.