mad thanks and love

everytime i get to the internet and load my email i feel overwhelmed by love and support. this happened just now. i opened my email and just started crying because there are so many kind and supportive words from so many different people. people from different countries, people who i've known only a few days, people i've known for a decade, people i was sure would have forgotten about me months if not years ago.  all of these people, all of you (if anyone is reading this haha), are absolutely amazing and i honetly feel so blessed to have everyone in my life.

i feel  i'm not uch of a person. just a plain average girl. nothing about me stands out or is remarkable in anyway--i tend to blend in with the walls so to say.  BUT, the people who i've shared life with thus far, and hopefully for the rest of my time, are stunning in evey way and have made my life anything but ordinary. without a doubt every person who i've shared  meal with or a conversation or even just passed by on the sidewalk have left a permanent mark on my life and have helped shape my worldview and have given me a great hope for this world. 

basically, thank you everyone, and you really have no idea how much your words mean to me no matter what form they come in...even just a fleeting thought.

i want

other volunteers have told me that they have made lists of things they want to do in their lives post peace corps (we have a lot of time to sit in solitude and think), so i figured i should make a list too.  here it is:

I want to go there alone, and leave with family

I want to love you. And him. And her. And them. And me.

I want to learn how to cook, and not just cook, but create a masterpiece of delicacy with spices and sauces and peels adorning the walls—like a canvas dressed with flickers of paint that were flung with simultaneous consideration and carelessness

I want to spend all day in bed doing nothing but eating popcorn and drinking root beer floats

I want to swim in the sea, dressed in only the glistening reflection of the moon

I want to get lost in the forest until truth has been discovered, and the most welcoming of trees has been climbed, lifting me to the sky for a baptism of light

I want to find peace. Not in a far off ashram visited by the wise, but here, and now, in the most ordinary of times

I want to eat caramel apples and ride a Ferris wheel because it seems simple and pure

I want to dance in the streets of Havana, chant in the hills of the Himalayas, and eat a baguette in the shadows sprung from the Eiffel Tower’s noontime chat with the sun

I want to again untie myself with the passionate African soil

I want to learn languages. The language of the soul while being engulfed by the mighty Navajo temples of soil and rock, baked under a sun known for its’ gifts of guidance. The language of the mind while discussing philosophy and politics with strangers on a street corner café in Prague, under the Bedouin sky in Jordan, beside Banksy’s mark in Palestine, to the sound of beating drums in Ghana, while drifting down the Amazon.  The language of the heart while watching a baby take her first breath and a dying man say his last goodbye. 

I want to sleep on the street where prophecies are told and bottles are finished

I want to write a letter of love to a murder, a rapist, a sailor and a saint. 

I want a small place to call my own with walls plastered in memories and vibrant colors, inviting all who enter to smile

I want to bury a box full of secrets

I want to believe that romance and love are true

I want to know God and all that God is

I want to jump in a puddle of rain and stand with the Zebra amongst the soothing sound of melodious grasses preparing for the storm

I want to be in a tent during a storm knowing all that surrounds me is being showered with life, while I’m inside being nourished with warmth

I want to remember my dreams

I want to spend a day in the park. Just you and me and we can lie in the grass and name the clouds

I want to kiss a soldier, and I want to stand with the pacifists

I want to make a grumpy man laugh, and get a child to ask “why?”

I want to make love to the rhythmic dances of shooting stars and the redemptive cries of monsoon rains

I want to meet an alien, and visit the moon

I want to swim with creatures that have yet to be named, and speak to people whose tongues are distinctive and unknown

I want to reconcile brothers and tear down walls and build welcome signs along the borders people cross for the sake of their children who remain in the distant horizon

I want to pick flowers along the pond, and learn an ancient poets’ song

I want the palm readers to be right, and I want the critics to be wrong

I want to seek hope in the most destitute corners, and I want to challenge the norm in the most comfortable settings

I want the horses to roam free and the buffalo to be

I want to fly through the sky and float with the wind

I want to paint for no reason other than I like color and getting my hands dirty, and I want to play guitar without a care in the world that I’m tone def and haven’t got a tune

I want to road trip cross-country, living off the hospitality of strangers whose lives are far more complex than their neighbors may perceive, eating in diners filled with old-timers, smoke and coffee, visiting holy sites and bars, blue grass concerts and under ground dance battles

I want to live freely, but remain bound to what is right and just

I want to invite those without four walls into my home. And speaking of that, I want to be rich so they can each have a bed and meals until their strength is regained and they are ready to step outside the door again optimistic about the day

I wan to learn to create beauty everywhere I step, leaving saplings where my feet have walked

I want my students to prosper and defend themselves against the cruelties of corruption and wealth

I want to be here and there all at once

I want to live in the camps that have dehumanized so many worn out souls in the hopes I can help people remember they are a name, not a number; they are individuals, not a mass story on the nighttime news in a distant place they have only heard rumors of being true

I want to adopt a child whose parents are gone.  And I want to love that child and help that child grow and discover him/herself and what she/he believes to be true

I want to walk through the snow, the light fluffy snow that carpets the world with hope, smoking a black clove, until I reach the perfect balance of being cold and hot all at once, of reaching a state of internal peace while still being eager to work diligently until the wars are over.  Then I want to go inside and sit by the fire and fall asleep to the sound of another voice reading stories of foreign places and close neighbors

I want the world to treat each color equal, but never forgetting to recognize and celebrate the qualities of each hue

I want each girl to grow up knowing she is strong and beautiful and each boy to grow up knowing he is beautiful and strong

I want lifelong lovers and devoted partners to be free to marry, and I want exhausted wives to be able to divorce[1]

I want the polar bears to have ice, and I want the farmers to have water

I want to grow a garden in the middle of a city. A safe garden. A place for people to play and sit and think and talk and dream and wish.

I want to jump from a plane, falling without restraint, and once I reach that point of either realizing there is no need for answers and clarity, or realize I have the key and the chest with all the answers has always been mine, I will pull the chute and gracefully glide back to ground where I will be swaying in a field embraced by the sun, preferably with an ice cream cone in hand

I want to know something is true, and I want that truth to be good, and I want to believe in that truth, and I want to be a part of that truth

---

[1] In the Philippines it is nearly impossible to get divorced, especially if initiated by a women, especially a poor women. 

typhoon mourning

Those from the days before warned us of this day

Like brail they engrained their belief, “all people are people through other people,” into the heavens where we seek hope, and the ground where we find enough gravity to stand, giving us momentum to push forward to tomorrow

But this truth has been cloaked as we shout and drink for no reason other than the death of another

Humanity fragmented, and we wonder why and how and when will it all stop. But we continue to wave flags in jubilee, filling the streets with festivity, ignoring the fact that flags are nothing but symbols of man-made lines that divide us from them and them from us and you from me and me from you…the outcomes of wars and lost lives all sacrificed for the flag.

And today another man falls, but we can cheer and praise this death as he is no man at all but a symbol of terror and murder—a monster feasting on the flesh of innocence, biting venom into the veins of life.  But what divides monster from man and man from monster? Is it the act of bloodshed without blinking an eye, without stepping from the body in remorse? Is it such hatred for a brother that cheers flood the streets like early typhoon rains? Is it the destruction of an earthly shell so that a mother and father can’t return their seed to the soil from which we all thrive? 

We must remember the words of the wise. The earthquake of pride and fear crumbles the tower, unlocking your fingers from mine and mine from yours, making my tongue foreign to yours, and leaving my eyes jaded by the debris of blame and judgment. Small particles of dust unseen by the mirror, but vivid to a soul of any other creed.  And these particles bond forming machines without hearts and killers without consciousness’. 

So one team rejoices while another mourns and plans for revenge, and the cycle continues just as souls vanish to light the skies, trying to illuminate the words for a future. So with dust in our eyes and poison on our tongues we prance around forgetting the typhoon always remembers to flood our streets, reminding us we are all human.