warm smell
warm sweet smell
of afternoon, of slanting sunlight,
golden
beautiful moment, I breathe deeply, fill my nostrils, savor
serene
light and soft
under my arm
nestled neatly in the nook between
my shoulder and my elbow,
as though it were always, forever
meant to be
almost
written in the stars
open breathe
again, deeply
jealously guarding the seductive scent,
my treasure
mine alone.
half of me is ready to
pounce devour destroy,
the other half resists, desiring to perch,
here,
on the cusp of the having for eternity
the flesh
(I perch)
is
(I teeter)
weak
(I fall)
fall
into the ecstasy of the having,
loving, worshipping that first moment
when the desire, the dream
becomes the real, the mine
all all all mine
it and I
I and it,
at last are one.
destiny fulfilled.
~An ode to sliced bread
M. McCrea
Monday, May 26, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Ants, Hem, and My Bicycle
It's a funny thing. Some days (e.g. when I forget that escalators are a real life thing and not some made-up fantasy in my head, when I realize "holy shit! I live in a foreign country!"), I almost feel as if I've lived here forever. Other days, I do things so idiotic that I wonder if I didn't actually step off of the plane from LA yesterday and somehow go through an eight-month time warp to the present day. Let me give you a couple of examples.
The other week, my friend M was sleeping over. We'd been up late talking, and I was exhausted and ready to crash. I sit down under my mosquito net and start writing in my journal (my usual pre-sleep activity). Then I notice something strange. One ant. No, two. No fifteen! Holy shit! There are little tiny ants crawling ALL OVER MY BED. Now, by this point in time I am semi-seasoned to this sort of thing, so I didn't scream. I just gingerly jumped out of my bed and ran into the main room of the house in my frantic search for bug spray.
"Gah!! M! How did this happen? Where did all these fuckers come from?" I asked in dismay, my voice reaching a pitch not attained since those voice lessons oh-so-long-ago (high school).
"Is there anything in your room they might want? Food? Candy?"
"No!" (What did she take me for? An idiot?)
At this point, M casually walks over to the foot of my bed and gestures toward an open cardboard box.
"What about this?"
Oh no, I silently curse myself, the Lemonheads!
Yes, believe it or not, after eight months of living in a tropical, insect-infested country, I had left an OPEN BAG OF LEMONHEADS sitting on the floor next to the foot of my bed. Way to go, Megan.
[In a somewhat ridiculous post-script to this incident, I left a skirt that had been soaked in hot chocolate hanging from the fishing line that connects my curtain rod to my mosquito net not one week after the Lemonhead incident. It totally slipped my mind until, hours later, to my dismay, I saw an army of ants marching along the fishing line as though it were a gangplank onto my sweet-smelling skirt. Good times.]
*************************************************************************************
I recently had a project that I had been working on since December go down in flames. I have yet to make sense of it, except to know that I am really really angry. However, I was flipping through For Whom the Bell Tolls the other day, and I came across a passage which particularly spoke to me. I feel like it speaks a lot to the whole "Peace Corps experience"--whatever that is. I also found it somehow comforting, and I hope you like it.
" How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man and really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time."
-E. Hemingway
*************************************************************************************
Sometimes I think that I must like embarrassing myself. That's really the only workable explanation for why I do it so much. So, without further ado, I present (part of the continued and, I'm sure, well-loved series) Megan & Her Bicycle.
The other day I was riding in to Tofol when I saw this car headed toward me, coming in the opposite direction. It was, in fact, quite a snazzy-looking car. The first thing I thought to myself was, Does someone on Kosrae have a Rolls-Royce? It had, you know, those little silvery side mirrors, a hood ornament. It was black. And then it hit me. It's Nina Rumina! (I LOVE this woman.)
It is customary here on Kosrae, if you know a person who's driving along in a car, to acknowledge them by yelling, "Nice driver!" (This actually means "you're hot," so it can be said either as a joke among friends or in a sketchy, lecherous fashion to a member of the opposite sex.)
So, excited in my recognition of her car, voice abnormally loud as I yell over my iPod, I shout,
"NICE DRIVER!!!"
The usual response to this is "Nice kom, pac" [trans: "you're hot, too]. I don't hear this, but I figure that it's just because Rumina wasn't quite as enthusiastic in her response as I was in my compliment. No worries.
Five minutes later, my (real) Nina Rumina passes by in her car. Fuck. I'm an idiot.
Coming back that same night, I was reveling in the cool night air, the gorgeous island views, and (of course) my newly returned (shall I say prodigal?) iPod. Now, every PCV has certain things that he or she misses more than others, and apparently my miss is singing (loudly) to myself in my car. I'm coming around this unpopulated curve in the road as "Don't Speak" comes on (which just so happens to be my favorite No Doubt song ever).
I begin crooning along with Gwen, first hesitantly, then at full-girl-power volume. I pass over the bridge going in toward Tafunsak, and I'm so excited by the night and the song that I completely forget myself. I'm now passing by hotels, people as I croon,
Touch me, touch me, darling
Touch me, touch me--
when I realize (to the tune of a curious and, possibly, semi-scandalized stare from a Kosraen: Oh! Shit! Singing on your bicycle isn't like singing in your car at all. People can hear me!!
Again, way to go, Megan. Great choice of song to belt out to the entire island of Kosrae. Not at all sketchy.
The other week, my friend M was sleeping over. We'd been up late talking, and I was exhausted and ready to crash. I sit down under my mosquito net and start writing in my journal (my usual pre-sleep activity). Then I notice something strange. One ant. No, two. No fifteen! Holy shit! There are little tiny ants crawling ALL OVER MY BED. Now, by this point in time I am semi-seasoned to this sort of thing, so I didn't scream. I just gingerly jumped out of my bed and ran into the main room of the house in my frantic search for bug spray.
"Gah!! M! How did this happen? Where did all these fuckers come from?" I asked in dismay, my voice reaching a pitch not attained since those voice lessons oh-so-long-ago (high school).
"Is there anything in your room they might want? Food? Candy?"
"No!" (What did she take me for? An idiot?)
At this point, M casually walks over to the foot of my bed and gestures toward an open cardboard box.
"What about this?"
Oh no, I silently curse myself, the Lemonheads!
Yes, believe it or not, after eight months of living in a tropical, insect-infested country, I had left an OPEN BAG OF LEMONHEADS sitting on the floor next to the foot of my bed. Way to go, Megan.
[In a somewhat ridiculous post-script to this incident, I left a skirt that had been soaked in hot chocolate hanging from the fishing line that connects my curtain rod to my mosquito net not one week after the Lemonhead incident. It totally slipped my mind until, hours later, to my dismay, I saw an army of ants marching along the fishing line as though it were a gangplank onto my sweet-smelling skirt. Good times.]
*************************************************************************************
I recently had a project that I had been working on since December go down in flames. I have yet to make sense of it, except to know that I am really really angry. However, I was flipping through For Whom the Bell Tolls the other day, and I came across a passage which particularly spoke to me. I feel like it speaks a lot to the whole "Peace Corps experience"--whatever that is. I also found it somehow comforting, and I hope you like it.
" How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man and really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time."
-E. Hemingway
*************************************************************************************
Sometimes I think that I must like embarrassing myself. That's really the only workable explanation for why I do it so much. So, without further ado, I present (part of the continued and, I'm sure, well-loved series) Megan & Her Bicycle.
The other day I was riding in to Tofol when I saw this car headed toward me, coming in the opposite direction. It was, in fact, quite a snazzy-looking car. The first thing I thought to myself was, Does someone on Kosrae have a Rolls-Royce? It had, you know, those little silvery side mirrors, a hood ornament. It was black. And then it hit me. It's Nina Rumina! (I LOVE this woman.)
It is customary here on Kosrae, if you know a person who's driving along in a car, to acknowledge them by yelling, "Nice driver!" (This actually means "you're hot," so it can be said either as a joke among friends or in a sketchy, lecherous fashion to a member of the opposite sex.)
So, excited in my recognition of her car, voice abnormally loud as I yell over my iPod, I shout,
"NICE DRIVER!!!"
The usual response to this is "Nice kom, pac" [trans: "you're hot, too]. I don't hear this, but I figure that it's just because Rumina wasn't quite as enthusiastic in her response as I was in my compliment. No worries.
Five minutes later, my (real) Nina Rumina passes by in her car. Fuck. I'm an idiot.
Coming back that same night, I was reveling in the cool night air, the gorgeous island views, and (of course) my newly returned (shall I say prodigal?) iPod. Now, every PCV has certain things that he or she misses more than others, and apparently my miss is singing (loudly) to myself in my car. I'm coming around this unpopulated curve in the road as "Don't Speak" comes on (which just so happens to be my favorite No Doubt song ever).
I begin crooning along with Gwen, first hesitantly, then at full-girl-power volume. I pass over the bridge going in toward Tafunsak, and I'm so excited by the night and the song that I completely forget myself. I'm now passing by hotels, people as I croon,
Touch me, touch me, darling
Touch me, touch me--
when I realize (to the tune of a curious and, possibly, semi-scandalized stare from a Kosraen: Oh! Shit! Singing on your bicycle isn't like singing in your car at all. People can hear me!!
Again, way to go, Megan. Great choice of song to belt out to the entire island of Kosrae. Not at all sketchy.
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