In The Dark

I realize today as the sun is setting and I am heading towards a much deserved shower from my first self motivated run since October 15^th (a 10km in 42:57 according to my notebook of such matters, which also happens to proclaim in bold letters my first (and last) 30 km week in quite sometime) that, much like silence I’m not used to the dark. There has never been a time in my life when it has in anyway been truly governed by the passage of the sun across the heavens. It has always rose and set on its own timetable, and I have gone about my life on my own timetable as well, especially during college in St. Paul where it never truly got dark at all (which was also always a little creepy). If I wanted to go running there were always street lights around and even sports practices could be done under the stadium lights if needed. If I wanted to go somewhere I just jumped in the car, flicked on the headlights and off we went. The impact is also magnified by living alone up on a hill in a one room house. The scenery at night consists of my house & the dark; with an occasional jaunt over to the bathroom accompanied by the faint glow of the hospital a short ways down the hill. Yet another part of life that comes from a much more natural existence (with emphasis on the nature part) than I have ever encountered on a regular basis. What a world we live in.

~105 North Tower
Just reaching Full Dark
74.7ºF, 82% Humidity (thanks Mom & Dad :o)

Home Again

Its really fascinating to watch how with slight, imperceptible changes can radically alter my entire outlook on things. I go from the depths of PGD (post-girlfriend depression, to keep with PC’s love of acronyms) to feeling alright again about site and life and my current lot in it. I’m now even more convinced that it truly has nothing to do with the outside world. It is a dance to be had inside the confines of my skull. Productivity is definitely an important part of it all too. I spent my extra day in Manila, first sleeping through Pittsburgh’s awesome win against the Broncos that started 4am, and proceeded to spend the rest of the day bumming around my friend’s apartment in spurts on the internet and watching the BBC. A very normal kind of day for those of you who have regular access to such novel items, but for me it was revolutionary. The time to let my mind wander in a more natural state to discover the various bits of my mind that were burning for some obscure bit of knowledge. Mostly I was researching law schools, interesting job opportunities with a law degree and ways of gaining some economics credits while I’m here. As luck would have it the London School of Economics offers a “Diploma for Graduates” which fits the bill of what I am looking for rather nicely, if a bit of overkill. Still trying to work out some details on that one, but the point being I had the time and leisure to make such searches and discoveries and to formulate some kind of plan for the next six months. Still a lot of work ahead, but having goals and directions to wander in is wonderfully refreshing after so much time feeling utterly lost.

On a tangentially related note, of all the things I thought I might learn about while I was here, life with a three month old was not one of them. Dale & Sonali are proud new parents and suddenly have a large amount of their time taken up by a small object that alternates between eating, sleeping and crying when he gets a bath. Cute little bugger. On top of that they are still gracious enough to allow their home to be mine, and relaxed enough about it to make it feel as such. Truly wonderful people. It feels good to know that I can still create family anywhere. Not a substitute for those that I have left behind, who I still miss very much, but just a bit of an addition, an extension. Sometime more temporary, sometimes for a lifetime. (trying to explain to people that I really do have a little sister, just not by birth can sometimes be hard, so if you get confused by people asking about one sometime Mom & Dad, I apologize.) It also feels good to know in a very concrete way that kids are going to be awesome and wonderful but certainly not anytime soon.

Putting the Pieces Together

There is so much pain & suffering in the world. Everyday. Every hour people face situation that are unimaginable. Situations that are unacceptable. Situations that should not exist.


Life goes on here & will continue to do so. People will wake up & continue on. Continue to live, laugh, cry, enjoy the company of their families. There people's live will go on regardless of exactly how their trash is collected or if they have a working recycling system, or if they finally properly use & maintain their water systems so they operate at an optimal level for as long as possible. Or if they learn how to use Eco-San toilets or how to compost with Black Soldier flies. Or if they learn to plan ahead better & see the big picture & start at the beginning of a project or actually care a bit about work beyond receiving their paycheck.

Some of these things I can help.
Some of them are for them to change.
But life goes on here & will continue to do so in a decent fashion regardless of my presence or work.

I want to be somewhere, or learning & moving in the direction of a place where that is not the case. Life, everywhere, will always go on, no matter my presence in it, but I want to be in a position to make needed, helpful changes in peoples' lives or at the least to be able to sit and cry with them and together muster the energy to keep moving. Whether it's a roof that no longer leaks & a floor they won't fall through. Or another bedroom so Social Services won't take a child away from a family. Or help with a vast, strange, scary legal system, or just letting the world know that peoples' lives are being trampled into the mire & that's not ok.

I'm not passionate about these peoples' garbage.
I don't feel like this is the place for me.
But where do I belong then? What do I do now?

~Sitting On Top of the World 01.03.06
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Also Known As - Post Girlfriend Depression, at least in part.
That particular torrent was sparked from finishing A Million Little Pieces and the reminder that life is not so peachy for many people.
Still I feel better about life here again, or at least less bleak and have been approaching it one day at a time. I'm still not passionate about these peoples' garbage, but it seems the better question is not what to do now, but how do I become passionate about where I am? I have so many wonderful things going for me, top on the list being the dimension enshrined by Capitalism. I would have given a lot for a few more hours in a day while I was in college and now I have the hours in spades. Yet it takes more than one element to make someone happy and time itself is a neutral force; neither good nor evil. At the very least it is providing plenty of time to research where I want to go next. Right now I'm trying to find some online Econ courses to fill a hole in my undergrad. Anything that provides concrete movement in a direction will be greatly welcome.

I still struggle with passion and being excited to see every morning. It gets sucked out of me the minute I step foot into my office and become surrounded by people being moved by external forces, above all the desire to support their families by drawing their check. Motivations beyond that still appear to be instigated from above, whether the passage of a law that needs to be enacted or questions and results being demanded by the Mayor so he, in turn, has something to show the people so he can get re-elected. And it keeps spiraling on. I miss being surrounded by people who are truly excited for life and have yet to have their belief in the ability to change it ground out of them in a war of a attrition with time.
I also realized, after an entire evening of rousing, erratic, fast moving political & social conversation with a pair of teachers at the International School here in Manila (yes, he happens to play disc) that I also miss that level of intellectual conversation as well. I think it boils down to passion and caring again. Caring enough and being privileged enough to be able to follow the news and educated enough to want to form opinions on it.
I keep going back to the words of a Peace Corps staff person who works somewhere in the organization in DC. He said that PCVs do their best work when they find someone they can argue with, someone to kick ideas around with. I'm not sure I've gotten there yet.

Hopefully the past week will have helped. I spent the entire week with Jerry, one of my counterparts from the MPDO, in Tagaytay City (just South of Manila) at two conferences. The first was Peace Corps current flagship and required to access the small grants we can apply for through them. The Project Design and Management (PDM) workshop is just what it sounds like. We spent three days developing a project idea working from a Vision down through Goals, to Objectives to an Action Plan. A helpful exercise, though old hat for most of us. Try planning out how to replace someone's rotten wall and roof on a tight budget without careful planning :o). We put together a fairly convincing approach to developing some Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs) in our Municipality to collect and sell recycling materials. From there we went to a different hotel and attended two days on Solid Waste Management. Not quite as worthwhile, but still provided plenty of info to work with on the previously started project plan. Now all that is left to do is pitch the idea to our town, starting with the formidably named Solid Waste Management Task Force, and see what happens. Unfortunately those plans will have to be put on hold for a bit as Jerry is now attending to his sister who is dieing of cancer. Keep him in your thoughts. While leaving a half-day early to head in, he gets mad respect for sticking it out that long under the circumstances. Everything is still up in the air, but at least it's starting to coalesce into something. We're just still not sure what it is.

The Importance of Push-Ups

As I contemplate how I spent the last hour working myself around through a variety of distraction and useful enterprises to finally return to my “routine” of sit-ups, pushups and the like I realize how much of a blessing it is to have that hour to puts around before getting down to business. Reading my GRE book is hardly a waste of time, but hearts v the computer definitely doesn’t count as anything remotely close to a useful past time.

I think topping the list of personal achievements I need to gain at this point in my life, regardless of location or official occupation is a sense of discipline. I don’t want my days regimented into a boring, lockstep routine, but I need to be able to grapple with my mind to bend it to the task at hand when the time comes with much less dithering about. The root of my poor study habits and my tendency to write final drafts of papers the first go around in college all stem from this lack of mental discipline. If its time to workout, which deep down is something I want to do, then for the sake of all that is holy, work out! In the future I’m not going to have the luxury of time. It will be now or not today. Just because I haven’t done any push-ups in the past month and its going to hurt more to do less is no reason to dread those prospects. That’s the whole point anyway. Push your body to the limit. If I can’t discipline my mind and body now, and I was certainly unable to do it while Bridget was here, I’ll never be able to do it in a way that I can retain sound mind, body and soul during such a rigorous enterprise as law school. Regardless of where I am physically located in life, mental discipline should be the highest goal and here affords me the time to do it.

Food for Thought... Literally

I find it amazing how much food, or the lack of it can affect a person’s mood and abilities to think. I had another poor day this afternoon brought about mostly, I believe, by my lack of eating anything. I did not pick up any groceries in my time out and have not yet picked up any food here, so all I have at home to eat is the last of my oatmeal. Not being terribly excited about plain oatmeal, all I had eaten for the day was a small bowl of it, coffee, and a few chocolate covered espresso beans my mother sent me for Christmas. I guess, given that, its not so surprising that I crashed around two o’clock this afternoon to the point where I felt miserable, unhappy and incapable of really doing anything to change my mood. I finally mustered myself to go from a walk and thought about what I would do if I could do anything. What would I do if I was at home? I find that I miss thought provoking human interaction and sports the most. Even that line of thought wasn’t easy to pursue though and I finally ended up sitting on a water tank looking out over the valley thinking about the fact that I have so much time and could do anything so what did I want to do here? Write, Play Guitar, Read all came to mind but I couldn’t bring myself to do any of them. I finally went back inside around five o’clock and ate a can of tuna, bummed around the house and then a little later finished off the oatmeal, mixed with some mango jam purchased during our travels at a Trappist Monastery. Its amazing how much better I feel now. My return to full consciousness was almost palpable and my mood picked up with the extra energy, clarity and a little bit more positive thinking about life the universe and everything (ten points for the book reference there).

This has helped me realize a bit more how important it is to take care of myself physically, which has never been my strong suit. It also makes me realize that I should make sure I am in a very good place mentally before trying my planned three day fast. Might have to put that one off for awhile…

Beyond any of that, though, it has also cast a lot of light on the downward spiral of poverty and hunger. If I can’t brighten my mood in surroundings of my own making with all that I have available, how much more difficult must it be to keep a positive attitude, let alone try and think of innovative ways to change a situation when one is poor and starving? The world is an incredibly tough place to exist in for so many people. It again makes me wonder what exactly it is I’m doing where its not…

Neglect

I find it very ironic that the post that has been up for the last month and a half was titled "Updates!"

Over that month and a half the battle to balance living life and writing about it didn't really happen. Having not seen Bridget for the last nine months and being able to talk with her greatly outweighed any desire I had to dwell inside my own head enough to produce coherent written words. Now that she is gone however, the desire to write has returned as an outlet for my experiences and a way to process them, and of course to share them you.

Tonight I head back to my site from Manila. I plan on writing about a few experiences of Bridget and I's travels over the next few weeks as well as current events. Later this month I will be heading to a PC sponsored "Project Design and Management Conference" followed by another PC sponsored "Solid Waste Management Conference." I will be attending both of these with one of my counterparts, so it should definitely be an interesting time. From there I settle in for the long haul at site as there are currently no more foreseen events after PDM for the next few months.

So welcome back to my little corner of the world. Now I get ready to enter a whole new phase of my service. Seven months down and still plenty ahead. I hope you had a wonderful holidays and break from whatever normally keeps you busy during your days. I certainly did. For now, I leave you with my recollections of the Day After.

Happy Day After...

Time has returned to me. Crashing in with all its intimidating Sartrian potential to do with what I will. Or not to do.
I feel lost in its immensity. Wake. Sleep. Wake. Sleep. Wake.
Get up to a much emptier room than I originally went to sleep in the night before.
Lost. Consult the half-assed list from the night before.
Shave head.
Consult list. Cross it off.
Text to a dozen people:
"HAPPY day after NEW YEARS!! Yet another chance to mess up writing t date on something. I hope you had a great holiday n I look forward to seeing you soon. ~g"
Consult list. Cross it off.
I feel lost & keep moving because I should. Start walking to the LRT & pass a cheap internet cafe. Check my mail & the BBC. The world still goes on. Russia shuts off Ukraine's gas. Iran turns down yet another way out of their international quagmire. Bush still tries to defend a ill-defined spying program.
On the public transport. It feels good to be able to move with my own whims again.
Ayala. Errands - Jump drive #3, ID Photos for my dive certification & to document my bald scalp.
French Crepes, Fine Coffee, my book & Nat Sherman's off a borrowed light.
The couple who provided to original leaves ten minutes later & walks over with a box of matches. "Thought you might need these."
Humanity scores more positive points.
More coffee. More reading.
& I begin writing again.

Life begins again soon. Another phase. It starts by catching up with a friend from Manila this afternoon. Then the Peace Corps office tomorrow & then back to site. For now though, I just want to feel lost & small & insignificant. Just another small heat emitting fleck crawling around on the planet. I revel in my anonymity.
Tomorrow, though, I'll start again.