you start, bob. i'll sing the harmony.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse." That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

that's such a lovely quote. and so true and so real. poetry, beauty, romance, love. these aren't what we live for. they are what we stay alive for.

staying alive. it's nearly an entity of its own. p.s. i hate the bee gees. and i hate even more what they have to say about staying alive. trying to get high. trying to get low. trying to understand the new york times' effect on man. why? why try so hard to make things more than what they are? life is complicated enough. a mongoose is not a goose. it's not even a bird. lynyrd skynyrd is not a man's name. ring around the rosy is about the plague. progeria syndrome makes children grow old and kills them too young. people get fat and their neighbors starve to death. things don't make sense as it is. why rage against it all?

we've all been in situations and heard stories that have sucked the wonder right out of our bones. i've visited orphan villages. i've watched men dying of AIDS. i've heard testimonies that have made my palms sweat. and it's in these moments that my faith is that of a cynical old chain smoker suffering from insomnia and not a wide eyed child who dreams of sugar plum fairies. and i feel weighed down. yes, weighed down. but not always hopeless. it takes poets like dylan thomas and painters like william bouguereau to bring me back to life. it takes mountains like the rwenzori and theologians like g.k. chesterton to remind me that loveliness is essential to life and sugar plum fairies will set you free.

it's a relief to learn that my periodic childishness is part of living. it's ok to be creative. it's ok to think in iambic pentameter and remember faces in 3x5. it's all part of staying alive. yes people get sick. yes parents get divorced. yes buildings burn down. but sometimes even doctors learn to sketch. moms and dads make funny jokes. neighbors come together and build a new barn. life is good. even when it's not. and this goodness, these surprises, the poetry and beauty and love, this is why we stay alive. and wherever this all ends, wherever it goes and wherever it stops or starts over, i will be happy to have lived through it.

thank you for sticking with me, those of you who keep reading this. i wish you were here. and hey aunt beth, how can i get ahold of you?? i keep visiting your phantom blogspot and still have no way of saying hi!

all my love
peace on earth
hope in hearts
food on tables,
annie

on you i just can't rely

i'm sick these days. a chesty, feverish, sneezing, coughing, nose-blowing kind of sick. it's pretty much par for the course at this point. stress, sleeplessness and an unwillingness to take a day off will usually knock you off your feet at some point.

other than that, i don't have too much to say today. maybe it's because the sloshing in my head has me thinking slower. i will say this: i love my job and i love this place. but i can say with utter certainty that this would be a nearly impossible position to hold for longer than a year and it makes me admire my boss and this office staff all the more. how on earth would you survive taking 30 or so lovely and dynamic people in your arms for 4 months only to let them go into the great unknown and have a whole new group come in to love and invest in before, yet again, having them taken from you? or maybe i just know myself well enough to know that i couldn't survive like that. it's only been about 3 and a half weeks since the students got here and i'm already madly in love with all of them. and i don't think it's natural to fall in and out of love so often.

on a car ride at 1 in the morning, someone once said, 

i do believe that the community of humanity has the singular purpose of existing for each other. for other people and their joy and survival. and if you're not existing for someone else, then you're just... existing. 

in the clarity of daylight, i can see the potential melodrama of a statement like that. however, i don't think the concept is false. man was not meant to be left alone. and for those of us who have gotten accustom to running away from home, i think we each have a moment when we look up into the sky over yet another temporary world wide travel destination and say, 

when do i get to claim a community of my own? when do i get an apartment whose walls i can paint and a neighbor who shouts at his dog? when do i get a diner down the street and a church with a steeple? 

and although i don't regret for a moment where i am now, i have started to wonder, when will i finally be content sitting still?

and do you know what makes that question so difficult to answer? it's that everywhere i go, i see a glimpse contentment there. i find a hill with a shady tree where i can watch the sun set. i find a coffee shop with free wireless internet and delicious monkey bread. i find a friend who can make me laugh or even let me cry. i find Grace. and Joy. and i learn a few more chords on the guitar. for me it has never come down to choosing between devils and angels. it's always come down to plane tickets and restlessness. and while the beginnings are exciting, the endings are just a bunch of goodbyes. i don't know when i'll be content sitting still. but i do know that i'm tired of saying goodbye. 

the thief he kindly spoke

i've just got back from rwanda. i love it enough to never leave. but that place is almost too much to take. the hills too beautiful. the people too generous. the death too rancid. all of it just so much. 

driving back to uganda, i recalled a memory i had not thought of for nearly 15 years. it was a sunday and i was wearing a dress. i was very young. or at least i remember being very short. i could only see the first two pie shelves in the glass display case. my family and i were waiting at a tippin's restaurant for sunday lunch. on our way to the lobby doors, there was a man alone outside. he looked tired and dirty. his hair was unwashed and his beard untrimmed. he was not wearing sunday clothes. i watched him with round childhood eyes as he staggered to and from the families outside, asking for money. before i could have much of a reaction, the restaurateur came out and made him leave. in the lobby, i sat down on a bench by the window. i had the strangest feeling. i wasn't sure what i was thinking or why i had to sit down. i was very young. but in a few minutes, my mom came over and sat by me.

what's wrong annie? why so quiet?

in the next instant, surprising both my mother and myself, i burst into tears. and through choking little girl sobs, i asked,

why couldn't we give him something? even 50 cents?

i don't remember what my mother said. it must have been comforting because i soon stopped crying and ate some pie. but i do remember that she held me. i remember her rubbing my back. i remember my face on her neck. and i remember for the first time being miserable because the world was unjust. did this man have a mother to hold him? why didn't he have any money? what was going to happen to him when he left? and why couldn't i help him?

murambi is a schoolhouse on a hill in butare, rwanda. 50,000 people were massacred there in 1994. since then, they've exhumed the bodies from the pile of mass graves that the killers left. they have reburied most of them in coffins and the rest they have preserved with lime. these bodies are laid out on picnic tables in the school rooms. you can't imagine the smell.

leaving murambi, i sat on the bus watching rwanda out my window wondering how many of the people i passed on the street didn't have families any more. no aunts, no fathers, no mothers. do they have enough money to eat these days? what's going to happen here in the next few years? and why, o God, couldn't we have helped them? i wished my mother were there. i wanted her to hold me so i could bury my face in her neck. instead, i put my head against the window and slept. i was just so tired.