journals, diaries, letters, blogs.

Writing, for myself, is a therapeutic tool.

Then again, so is sitting and wool-gathering.

But when I do that, I wish I’d brought a pen and pad along.

I've forgotten some of the best prose I've ever dreamed up for lack of a writing device.

I can never remember those clever turns of phrase.

They’re a one off.

My old phone held hosts of audio notes. Ramblings I’d listen to later on and laugh at.. Scribbling down the droll quips in the process.. Deleting them to make room for the next..

Back home I’ve a large quantity of journals.

Housed in safe keeping, a world away, in my pop’s spare bedroom along with the other few things I’ve held onto…

I’ve written essays, and plenty of pure drivel.

Philosophical quandaries, delusions of grandeur, occasional rants..

Journals are an excellent place to expel the toxicity in one’s life.

Occasionally one goes back to re-read the idiocies scribbled down..

Some encounter with an ex, a disagreement with a sibling, memories, or infuriating conversations, desires, and fantasies.

They’re private, wild thoughts. Intimacies meant only for one’s self.

A cloistered purge of words. Written and ensnared on the page, shackled in ink.

Where they won’t haunt you anymore.

At least until you've re-read them, musing as to how you could've been so foolish.

There are few things more dangerous than reading another person’s diary.

What you find held within is another version of the diarist.

A private expulsion of all of those secret thoughts and deeds.

Real and imagined.

Half-finished thoughts or entries.

Full pages of rants.

Scrawled notes without context.

As someone who keeps a journal, I have only once been tempted to read the ramblings of another without permission.

It sat there, on the table, in plain view after a disastrous weekend in the country.

I was, admittedly inebriated, and tried to reason with myself.

Attempting to absolve myself in advance for cracking the spine.

I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

This gross invasion of privacy and betrayal of trust that seemed so tempting to my addled brain. I knew the friendship was over anyway, so what was the harm?

I knew better, though, the representation of a person on the page—is not a representation of the writer, but of the thoughts that they grapple with.

I knew, also, that I couldn’t keep it to myself.

There are good reasons to keep secrets, but they are few in number.

I admittedly have a handful, but, they tend to be the private sort.

Ones that don’t affect anyone but myself.

Or those kept on behalf of others. Things that do no harm.

Had I opened even the first page, I knew I’d have to admit to it.

First to myself, the sojourn I knew better than to embark on…

And messy aftermath of losing someone’s trust permanently.

Now, though, we have blogs.

Online journals, shared without such concerns.

All written with various motivations, with differing results, our private thoughts splashed about the internet. Is it vanity that makes us choose to do so?

An idea that what we have to say is important, perhaps?

I like to pretend that no one reads this blog.

That mine is hidden amongst the hundreds of thousands of blogs that populate this online network.

Though I know better, I still feel as if I am writing in my moleskine to myself.

Working out a problem as I tap at the keys.

Letters, too—and emails—provide an outlet.

But those are written with the recipient in mind.

Private, still, but a shared thought, fear, frustration or happiness intended only for one other.

Much to the dismay, I am sure, of the late, great Bobby Britain, I write the bulk of my ramblings without an audience in mind.

This note, however, is not one of them.

Sister mine,

Please desist in the excavation of pages contained in chronicles left crated and dusty.

Those thoughts are mine, and they were not written with distribution in mind.

You will not enjoy what you find within... Some things are, and should remain, private.

Yours truly,

The author

The above image has been borrowed from Notebook Stories, as my SD card, now unable to transmit data, has gasped her last breath in Africa. 

the teats.

It’s absurd how political a playground can be. Hierarchical social groups and cliques. Leaders and followers. Nerds, geeks, jocks, loners, bitches, troublemakers, ditzes, gossips. The labels that are assigned by adults and children, alike, which are then perpetuated and regurgitated thoughtlessly, and endlessly for all time.

The basketball courts for one group, the kickball diamond another. The swings, the see-saw. They were all reserved turfs. They would shift from time to time, but they always remained reserved. You needed to belong to a group to achieve access.

In my younger years, I was a bit of a loner. It wasn't that I didn't desire to have friends, but I found them inconstant, and prone to participation in the societal dance for acceptance and approval, a cotillion for which I had never catered to, nor been invited to participate.

I was an attractive, pale, skinny blonde girl with light hazel eyes, rocking a pair of pink plastic glasses. I have a lovely singing voice. I was the kid you sit next to during quizzes or exams. Physically, I developed early—around the sixth grade.

I was picked on and bullied consistently.
People I’d never met perpetuated rumors about me. People I’d rarely interacted with created them.  

It wasn't always so bad, but I found one has to develop a thick shell. It backfires on occasion. That thick shell gets heavy, and you can come to resent it from time to time. That you would be required to wear it in the first place. Why should you have to shoulder the arrogance of confidence as a protective shield?

But then you develop actual confidence. And then you’re derided for that, too.

When I was younger, I was considered too pale. I was asked on a weekly, sometimes daily basis if I was albino. Often by people who knew better, but were trying to get a laugh. Albinism is a genetic disorder in which a person has partial or complete loss of pigmentation (coloring) of the skin, eyes and hair. I do not happen to be albino.

As an aside, people who are born with albinism often face ostracism, and occasionally, violence, from their community. I can’t say I've dealt with even a fraction of the issues someone who lives with such a disorder faces. But I wasn't left untouched.

I was told constantly that I needed to get out in the sun. Go get a healthy tan. You’re too pale, don’t you ever go outside?

This was during the first waves of the tanning bed craze. The early nineties, when people were overcooking in beds. Turning your skin orange was fashionable. (There seems to have been a recent resurgence in popularity).

And for a minute, I tried in vain to tan. My sisters have the right skin for it. They could achieve a ‘healthy’ tan. I turn lobster red. Insanity would have been repeating the same process and expecting different results. I learned my lesson. I burn. I gave up on the hopes of ever achieving a so-called ‘healthy glow.’

People have never shut the hell up about it.

For ‘white’ people, I’m just too white.

When you’re ‘too’ anything in our culture, it gets brought up constantly.

As a child, I was frequently apprised of being:

Too pale

Too white

Too ghostly

Too smart

Too intelligent

Too opinionated

Too insubordinate to elders (I’m from Indiana. Some of my fellow hicks deserve a healthy dose of irreverence for the insane things that they say).

Too loud

Too precocious

Too political

Too outspoken

Too talkative

Too vulgar

Too literal

Too subversive

Too plain        

Too pretty (?!)

Too self-aware

Too stupid to know I was supposed to be attracting boys (a specific confrontation with a bitch named Jessica in the sixth(!) grade in regard to my haphazard ponytail… how I wish I’d had made a comeback then to such absurdity)..

Too confident
Too active
Too reckless

Too much of a show off (for enjoying singing, and being quite good at it)

Too much of a know it all

Too direct

Too honest

Too assertive

Too stuck in my own imagination

Too happy

Too energetic

Too enthusiastic

Too comfortable with my own body

Aren't most of the things above, good things?

Is it people’s insecurities that make them so at the ready to stifle others?

The last on the list triggered this current rant.

I am comfortable with my body.

I like it. Whether I'm 85 kg or 65 kg, I’m an attractive and shapely woman.

I don’t really work out, and since I was once a dancer for a decade and a half, my body still keeps a decent shape. (It doesn't hurt I walk several kilometres a day through deep sand, though).

I’ll admit my shoulders are a little broad, but, they help me heft things during stints of manual labor, so I really can’t complain too much.

All in all, I like me. And I don’t feel an apology is in order for not being self-conscious about the way I look.

I have average sized breasts. Not big, not little. They’re just there.

I do not wear, and have never regularly worn, brassieres.

Since I started to develop at age 11, I rarely felt the need to wear a bra.

In athletics, and while dancing.. Sure. Wrap ‘em up and strap ‘em down.

But daily life? I never saw the point.

To me, brassieres feel uncomfortable (yes, even when sized correctly) and I just didn't understand why, for so many people, my breasts were a major concern for them..

My father asserted on multiple occasions that my lack of bra was indecent.

My camp counselor complained, and tried garner support from other counselors to institute an underwear dress code policy (she was an idiot, and didn't realize she was flirting with a lawsuit, quite obviously).

Other females in my peer group would call me variations of slut, whore, and prostitute.

Strangers (usually women) would come up to me, berate me, and ask me why I wasn't wearing a bra.

This was all before I was 14 years old.

People consistently tried to make me feel uncomfortable about my own body, and my choice to not wear a miniature strait-jacket to reshape and artificially lift my breasts.

I've always wondered why it’s such a hot topic.
And why people think they have the right to discuss my breasts outright in conversation, as if they don't belong to me at all.

What is wrong with the natural shape of my breasts?

Who deemed it a requirement to hold them up in uniform half circle cups, just so?

There aren't any adverse medical side effects from not wearing one...

And in fact, a study completed within the past decade highlights that constant artificial support can actually make the muscles fibrous, and cause the sagging effect that so many women seem to fear.

Boobs. Boobies. Tits. Teats. Breasts. Jugs. Cans. Racks.

They’re just sacs of fat hanging around in the event I choose to have kids and decide to offer them up for feeding.

Breasts are constantly sexualized, and they’re something of which heterosexual males are so fond… Sure, they’re soft and squishy, and nice to get a handful of, but while breasts can be an erogenous zone… So is the inside of my elbow, my wrist, my neck. Skin in general—an organ—not a sexual organ, but certainly relevant in the general enjoyments of sex. We want to be touched. Enjoying sex does not make you a slut. And whether a woman is wearing a bra or not is not a litmus test as to how soon she’ll be primed for mating. 

Women who do not wear bras simply do not wear bras.

I live, now, in southern Africa.

Many, many, women here do not bother with a bra. Its just another layer of clothing in this absurd heat. Female PCVs often talk about how they're adjusting to Namibian women being so comfortable with their bodies. Males bring it up too, but not in the same way. They've been introduced to un-self-conscious breast-feeding, which doesn't happen often in ‘Western’ culture.

Because I’m an American, and therefore one of ‘them’ I get a lot of flack in regard to my unbound breasts. A lot of skeptical and suspicious questioning, or comments—by women particularly..

The origin of this particular tirade is this:

We trade slights more readily in our culture than we trade compliments.

And the compliments we seem to muster are so often offered wholesale and speciously.

The other day I met a lovely woman in our Peace Corps lounge.

She had just transferred to our group, and we got onto the topic of age, and shared ours in a round. She has fantastic skin, and I mentioned it.

Before she could even process the compliment, or reply, I was derided outright, by another woman, for offering an honest compliment. As if my mentioning that this woman has great skin was, in fact, an insult if one factored in her age..

What was inappropriate about this earnest compliment? 

Was this other woman offended I didn't compliment her, instead? If so, why?
It seemed a gross overreaction.

Later at dinner, the group reconvened.

Four women who had known each other for a year’s time, and our new addition.

At one point in the dinner, a remark was directed toward me, that it was “surprising that [I] wasn't a fan of Halloween, because I must really love those slutty costumes, because [I] don’t wear a bra.”

I must be honest, it left me reeling. Because I don’t wear bras, I should enjoy overtly sexualized and demeaning Halloween costumes? Forget that my current state of dress—baggy cotton pants and an oversized sweater—covering me from ankle to wrist was antithetical to the rude implication of the comment... I tried to shake off how offensive this absurd and thoughtless remark was, and move on… So I got around to ordering..

I asked the waiter for the bar menu and he brought me back the wine list.

I ordered wine.

It wasn't in stock. I figured I’d check out the list and make another selection.

When I realized he’d brought only a wine list and not the bar menu, he’d already moved over to the next table. It was a full house and a busy night.

I figured I’d ask again on his next pass. No rush.

He comes back. I ask for the bar menu. He says he doesn't think there is one. I ask if he’s sure, and which beers do they have? He tells me there are only three beers, not enough for a list. (But fails to tell me their prices or options).

Although I have ordered from the bar menu a half dozen times, and was surprised, I didn't pursue it, because it seemed silly to argue the point. I’d just settle with wine. He’d told us at the start of the meal that he was new, and I figure he’ll find out about the half-size menus stored at the bar at some point.

I ordered another bottle of wine instead.

No big deal.

This second exchange took about thirty seconds, tops.

He left the table, and the three women I knew well jumped all over me for being rude.

For asking someone for a bar menu?

Wouldn't it have been rude to argue the point, go get the menu from the bar two rooms away and wave it in his face? Did I do anything remotely close to that? I didn't think so.

I was taken aback.

How is it that these women who were wholly nonchalant when another suggested that I must like to dress ‘slutty’ because I don’t wear bras, are so wholly offended on behalf of a stranger being asked a standard question in the course of his job?

Who else am I supposed to ask for a menu or drink prices?

The gardener?

And why is the perceived offense more important than the insult you've just dealt to a person you’re dining with? Was it because he is Namibian? Does that automatically make him someone to protect? And isn't that protectionism more than a little insulting?

I’ll admit, this soured my mood for the rest of the evening. I felt ganged up on, and then was told I was making people uncomfortable by my mentioning that I was offended by the belittling comment made toward me. What?!  What is it I’m allowed to say or talk about?

Should I talk about the music and the size of the room? The number of couples?

Peoples from so-called 'Western societies' have the strangest sense of entitlements.

This occurs to me often in the arrogant way that Americans, in particular, feel that they have the ability to embark upon any topic, without having any expertise or first-hand information, versus the trivia they've accumulated second and third-hand. Masters of bull-shit, we are..

There are also the times, too, when someone will point out cultural, or personal choices that break from social norms with derision and ignorance. Dismissive of difference. As if people should just get used to ‘the way it is’ for the greater good. Don’t disrupt the flow.

Plus we can be loud, brash, and often thoughtlessly cruel in the manner in which we speak.

Why am I considered rude for telling someone honestly and earnestly, without aggression or viciousness, that they've said something I know to be disrespectful or untrue? Why should I be treated like a caricature of myself, simply because some people find me to be ‘different?' I am not impervious to insults or slights. They hurt, and they piss me off. I have no problem asserting my right not to be taken down a few pegs simply because someone dislikes me or my choices—especially in things that affect them in no way, whatsoever…

It's too bad that it might make you less uncomfortable if I were uglier, had acne, a darker skin tone, and less long blonde hair. Or if you’d like it more if I were stupid, unintelligible, or depressed. Or for any resentment you may have for my possession of a body type that I had nothing to do with, apart from acquiring my parent’s particular combination of DNA.

I feel no need to apologize for things outside my control.

Furthermore, these are things about myself I have no desire to change.

Work on yourself. I’m doing just fine.

I once had an ex-boyfriend (in my mid-twenties) tell me that I should put on a bra because if it turned cold that night, ‘people would be able to see that I have nipples’…

See that I have nipples?

Doesn't everyone have nipples?

Why might someone knowing I possess them set off a frenzy?

Some people are just hopeless...

The above digital art illustration, 'Boobs' by UK designer Tiago Caetano, can be found here. 

distractions.

I didn’t so much ditch the last half of school today.. As much as I fled.

Fridays are my favorite day of the week. Not only because of the obvious. All of my classes are within the first four periods of the day.

Which means I’m done by 9:40am. Three solid hours of work and class time, and my obligation has ended for the week. I’m free to beg off and bolt.

Today, instead of heading home, I made for the government(ish) office in my little village in the middle of the bush. They have wi-fi. Mostly, it works..

Here’s the thing about our little arrangement on my borrowing their broadband..

I refuse to sit in the office.  They offer, nicely, every time I stop by..

This is the government(ish) office where the four other persons who could be referred to as pale in my village are frequently found (well, at least three of them). They manage the cattle ranch which employs the vast majority of the population in this odd little cattle region..

Except for the clinic nurse, myself, and the other teaching staff at school (and most of the 386 learners); everyone in my village is employed by the ranch.

It might not make sense, but something just feels wrong treating those offices as if they were my own personal space, to come and go as I pleased... Even when I’m given leave to do so...

Anyway, I’m off early.

And since the internet – the real internet, not the achingly slow connection provided by my 2G USB adapter – is a rare treat, I had things to download, update, and install. Pressing things. The constantly warn you the digital apocalypse is about occur if you don’t update your operating system alerts, because you’re still working a few versions or plug-ins back.

And did I do any of that before my computer died?

Nope.

Like an impressionable child distracted by a shiny object within their field of vision, I was distracted by skype. How funny to have a video chat on the lawn as people are streaming around you. An unexpected treat for this Friday.

Sixty some days till Malawi?

Sixty days…

Lake Nyasa, Nhkata Bay, Malawi

this is africa, ne?

It doesn't always feel like I live where I live.

Despite the mud huts, the donkey carts, and epic tracts of sand traversed..

It’s surprisingly easy to forget..

Yet, something about wading amid deep hippo footprints and elephant
dung, pushing aside papyrus looking for a private spot to piss, on an island in the middle of the oKavango, really does trigger a realization as to one's current locale.

The weekend was spent near the mouth of the Zambezi [Caprivi] Strip around Divundu.

A couple of nights sleeping next to the oKavango River in an old hulk of an RV camper, with the sweet grunts of hippos as a lullaby through the night.

It was beautiful.
The icing, though, was the boat ride, piloted by an experienced guide, and an abundance of wildlife.

Palms | Kavango River

African skimmers | Kavango River

Bundled papyrus | Kavango River

Carmine bee-eater | Kavango River

Look closer, they're shy.. A lesser jacana. | Kavango River

Kids fishing | Kavango River

Pod of hippos | Kavango River

Crocodile | Kavango River

Fish Eagle | Kavango River

That shadow there? Its an elephant. | Kavango River

African skimmer eggs | Kavango River

Fishing | Kavango River

Bird in flight | Kavango River

Goliath Heron | Kavango River

Lily | Kavango River

vultures, and eagles, and parrots, oh my.

Well. Just when I thought I'd be spending a lazy day in the capital...

I found myself, instead, on a birding adventure at NARREC — a non-profit organization whose primary focus is to provide professional care and rehabilitation facilities for injured, orphaned and misplaced wildlife in order to facilitate their release back into the wild. 

We showed up a little later than we anticipated.. According to the directions on their site, take every unmarked left... They meant all but the third (fourth?) one, one could assume, as we found ourselves in the hills at a dead end originally. 

There are a host of birds currently at the centre; among them, various eagles, falcons, vultures, owls, parrots, as well as a number of mammals and reptiles... My favorites were two birds in particular. One, an injured White-backed Vulture, was a sweetie that would swoop over to the fence for a nuzzle. The second, a rescued African Grey Parrot, was capable of throwing its voice to sound as if it was speaking Afrikaans, which was a little jarring at first. Ek praat nie Afrikaans nie. But then we realized he was just trying to convince us to stay longer at their enclosure. I admit, I'm a sucker and stayed for a while with this last flirt. There may have been an Eskimo kiss or two.. Nose to beak. He was a spunky bugger. I considered thievery briefly. 

Visiting Windhoek? Check out the NARREC site for more information. Also, more here.

White-backed Vulture | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

Cricket or Grasshopper? | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

Black Eagle | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

African Grey Parrot | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

Flora | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

Deceased Fauna | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

King of the Ants | NARREC | Windhoek, Namibia

places to go.

It’s been 14 months abroad. One year of service. They even gave us a certificate, making it official. I tucked it away and it ended up crumpled… I kind of shrugged and tossed it aside. A piece of paper.

The only thing that it signified to me was this: Shit. You've got to start figuring out a plan of action.

First off, what do I really, truly, want to accomplish at my site for my final year?

Can I make achievable goals, and be satisfied with the notion that I may not see my plans come to fruition, or, at least, that any tangible result might only be visible long after my departure?

And what of my departure? What are my plans?

These are variations of the same questions asked of me my senior year of high school.

And I know it’s absurd that high school and peace corps should equate.. But there is a bit of the same virtuous, idealist nature resonant in both domains.

Anyway… I’m at this place again.

What to choose next?

Jacarandas in bloom.. | Kavango, Namibia

off the map.

Something I’d left off from a list made so recently.

A long distance relationship.

Considering the languages of love… touch, words, gifts, service, time.

My tendencies run toward the former and latter.

Introducing a distance of any kind unravels my ideas and presumptions of what a relationship comprises.

I’ve had poor judgment in the past.

Really, I just shoot myself in the foot.

My temperament is the flaw. I don’t stay angry long enough.

The tempest passes. I tend to move on, without requiring an apology or definite resolution.

Which has been imprudent on my part.

If people aren’t allowed (and on occasion forced) to confront themselves, and their actions, and their words, they never learn how to communicate. To adapt within a friendship. The same issues will continue to arise.

I also forget that while I’m candid, others tend to be more reticent, or duplicitous.  

It doesn’t occur to me someone might lie, until I’m standing there, watching their face shutter as a manufactured version of an experience is produced.

We humans are aware when we've been lied to.

The trouble is acknowledging it in real time.

There is an alarm, an electrical short, a clicking noise, something that makes our brains slam on the brakes—making that terrible screech you hear right before the car crashes; so often we let that millisecond pass by only to feel the delayed whiplash later on.

That little bit of doubt is towed away. Off to where it stacks up almost out of sight…

Riiight on the periphery.. A fuzziness out of the corner of the eye.

You didn’t see it coming? Scout’s honour? Pardon this healthy dose of skepticism, then.

Friendship is a journey best embarked upon without a map.  

Yes, of course, you should know how to read a compass, discern which cardinal direction moss grows toward in your neck of the globe, by all means, know how to find the Southern Cross. Employ all relevant survival skills; a babe in the woods is of little use to anyone.

The trouble arises when one person produces the map early on. Oh, you've mapped out each petrol station, every toilet and coffee break for the entire trip? That was so… ... Thoughtful?

And they sit there looking at you as if they’re not a complete ass. Expecting the other to agree heartily with the terms, conditions, and limitations of their attachment. 

Such maps are symptoms of the following: a) emotional unavailability, b) control issues, and, c) residence in an entirely different sphere of reality.

Efforts such as these made to manage the evolution of relationships are baffling.

Relationships are nebulous entities. Thoroughly disobedient mechanisms; they exist of persons who share linked realities, but wholly different perspectives.

Some considerations as I ponder this new journey..

I'm in uncharted territory, folks.

Now Playing:

11 songs | 43 minutes, 49 seconds

láventure fantastique | Fantastic Plastic Machine |Bran Van 300 / Towa Tei

Red Alert | Basement Jaxx | The Singles

Hush Boy | Basement Jaxx | Crazy Itch Radio

Oh La La | Goldfrapp | Supernature

Jus 1 Kiss | Basement Jaxx | The Singles

Archangel | Burial | Untrue

Romeo | Basement Jaxx | The Singles

2 Times / F&A Factor Electro Mix | Anne Lee | 2 Times

Lights (Bassnectar Remix) | Ellie Goulding

Little Better | Gnarls Barkley | The Odd Couple

Heavenly Sweetness (Remix) | Better Daze | Thievery Corporation


The above image 'You Are Here' has been borrowed, and altered, from the original on www.jimkudrick.com. Sadly, neon signs are few and far between this side of Namibia.

dig deep..

So the week before I met up with the Nomad for my Zambia trip, I participated in a leadership camp for kids. Camp GLOW (Girls and Guys Leading our World.)

Some of you lovely people who’d heard about it beforehand, were kind enough to give donations. Thank you all for your generosity!

I was tech person #2. This meant my job was to run about taking a thousand or so photos and make a slideshow video to show at the start of each day. I also facilitated on the side, and helped decorate all of the things.

Day of set-up, I was looking to avoid heavy lifting.

I’m strong, mind you, but they were hefting 4 meter solid wood dining tables up a winding flight of stairs. I’m not coordinated enough for that stuff. Either I or the table or both would be broken. I helped with the navigation and maneuvering of the first and quickly looked around for a project that would give the illusion of my being occupied.

Luckily for me, K— is sprawled on the floor making signs… ‘Whatcha doin?’ I ask. ‘We need dinosaurs,’ she says, as she thrusts butcher paper and markers toward me. ‘You can draw dinosaurs, right?’ (Our theme for camp was dinosaurs, and the 'Race Against Extinction'... Our motto? "Dig deep. Discover yourself.")

I eye the door where they’re grunting and shoving in a second table. ‘Yeah, sure. Dinosaurs. Which ones you need?’

For the next two hours K— ordered me about telling me what to sketch and we colored in dinosaurs. It was like second grade art class bliss. We took over other people’s projects too. It was a little rude. But we fancied ourselves art directors.

And then the children started to arrive.

Combi after combi.

It was a bit of madness. The whole week.

Each day was fully booked.

It was amazing and exhausting.

I got to work with some of the brightest kids from all over the country…

And I took thousands of photos.

Here are some of my favorite shots of Camp GLOW 2014: