prayer

watching my boyfriend pray, prostrate – standing – prostrate – standing, lips moving hands heaveward, and i can’t help but wonder why his is any less reverential to america then my mother on bended knees eyes closed, hands clasped praying for me.

it is comforting for me to be around either…something peaceful about people refocusing daily energy to say thank you or to ask for help or forgiveness.

and while i know the world is full of people who do horrible things in the name of God, those people bastardize a whole lot of beliefs, besmirch a multitude of faithfuls.

reading about the latest terrorist bust in the us and i find myself uneasy for any number of reasons. distrust tops the list…but so does alienation. one of the stories i read had a sister of one of the suspect saying and then reiterating – over and over again – “he’s catholic”. trying to remove her brother from any such affiliation.

and it may be true. he may be catholic and that may be a valid defense…but something about the urgency i read into it (i’ll admit i read that i didn’t hear her) makes me cringe a little. like i did when racial profiling was taking place in the states with a new target…people who were a little lighter brown and who had different sounding names. and instead of indignation at the continuation of an unfair and biased practice i found many black folks instead distancing themselves from the newly targeted.

it seems we are all quick to forget what victimization feels like once the spotlight is lifted and we are allowed offstage for a respite.

and so it goes again…the raised threat will once again be young black men, already suspected of so much what is the addition of terrorist to the list? and accompanying that will be muslims, already the focus of so much misinformation and fear who will notice this new slight.

but i feel it. i grieve for it. not just because it represents my boyfriend and another close friend, but becuase persecution has a wandering eye and i am not fool enough to believe this is some random mistake that will rectify itself…it won’t…it just keeps wandering.

a continuation:

my boyfriend said that he saw this as a defense of indefensible acts, if they are indeed guilty. i want to be clear, my disgust and concern are less with them – i’ll reserve that for actual evidence and a trial – when i refer to victimization i am referring to the masses of folks that suffer from the media attention on the details that become gernalizations about race or religion. i’m thinking of my girlfriend getting stopped EVERY SINGLE TIME she flies in a “random” search that is farcical at this point.

and i speak from my own hysteria that i found myself drawn into so easily during katrina – one a friend tried to bring me back from but that took distance and recovering from my own devestation and depression to see…how easily we all believed the horror stories we heard, how quick we were to let marshall law be declared.

i only hope that this case doesn’t encourage similar hysteria. verdict before court, sentences for all who look or pray like these seven may look or pray.

I haven’t done it in ages, probably since I left my apartment in new orleans (pre-katrina)…but I’m doing it now…jumping around with a remote control, swinging my wild hair (ready for washing) and dancing on chairs…I’m singing out loud. My roommate left the other day. Sad for me because she was a great roommate, but in her absence I have something I have something I haven’t had in almost a year…my own place.

I know it sounds silly, especially for my friends who live in new york city and have probably spent most of their adult life in shared apartments…but I’d been living on my own for 5 years before the hurricane. And just like that, blessed as I was, it was gone.

So it is an oddly freeing feeling right now to be playing rent, ani, linkin park and whoever else and singing along at the top of my off key lungs.

And before you scoff too hard, before you snicker at such a silly past time…try it out for yourself the next time you snatch a few moments to yourself…put in your favourite song, something silly or provoacative and way out of your voice range…think prince in his falsetto or meshell ndg’eocello when she is all throaty…and wail along with them. And if you don’t smile I’ll give you a refund.

that word conjures up any number of visuals…free in the sense that i had my last exam today and so i am unencumbered by school-related stress…or in the sense of the hot chocolate one of my bosses bought for me today…or in the sense that i am working for free because my visa won’t allow me to be employed.

so far it isn’t that big a deal…it is fulfilling my capstone requirement back at tulane and allowing me to learn in a real sense, while doing, instead of the controlled sense of a classroom.

and it is…

my first few days i sat at my desk feeling useless and self-conscious. and although i’m still self-conscious my desk is now scattered with papers and research and drafts for four projects. i now have e-mails and meetings and planning. and it feels good. scarey…but good.

the office asked me to join their work not for my public health skills but for my history as a journalist. there is so much writing involved in everything we do that my professor and the program manager were almost giddy with the prospect of having someone write…just write (athough i will be doing more than that).

and that is the cool part…taking a skill that i have and honing it to this new field while simultaneously crafting new skills. i’m going to organize and facilitate focus groups, and conduct interviews (in the research/acadmia way as opposed to the journalism way) and put together literature reviews and reports.

and it is all terrifying because this is the real thing. but it so inspiring because these are the skills i want, the skills i need, to go out into the world and work – not just theorize.

folks keep asking me about my “what next”. queen of the two year plan, this stretch of time i’m in is a part of my slightly extended (thanks katrina) two year plan. next up? application for a fellowship that would take me back to africa or off to latin america (i haven’t been there yet). if this gig keeps up like it is…i think i’ll be good competition for that program and set on a course for my next two years.

hmmm…free…armed with possibilities…choices…options…free to choose…

i’ve never been especially talented with  my hands. when i was younger i was the crafty type more in theory and attempt than in product. i once made my parents’ an anniversary “statue” of themselves out of a styrafoam base and toilet paper roll people. my mom had the magnetic stripping from tapes (you remember those, pre-CD) and a dryer sheet for a veil and my dad had a top hat of paper.

the thought process behind it was interesting and my ingenuity with using available belied a talent i didn’t know had real use until i joined the peace corps (where i saved and subsequently re-used any and everything!), but it wasn’t going to win my family a spot on orpah to marvel at my genius.

over the years i still try my hand, i did painting for a while, i scrapbook – kinda. photography turned out best but it’s expensive and i’m lazy.

but today i leanred to use my hands in a different way. i learned to knit.

who knew that knit one pearl two had real meaning…(who knew you could knit one over and over again and make a scarf)? but i am…and i’ll try to get photos up soon so you can see my handiwork. as usual it won’t fetch a pretty penny at any art sales, but it is something i’ve created, and it doesn’t look half bad. and i’m proud so i thought i’d share.

trust is an intersting thing, it tells as much about you as it does about anyone else. i guess if i really think about it, it only tells about you.

who do you let into the interiors of your life? how you treat them once they are there? what issues from past wrongs rear their heads to taunt you in your present? how you deal with vulnerablity?

it isn’t just trust in the clearest form…the skulking about or assuming that someone else is being untruthful…but that quiet gnawing that makes you wonder if you are getting the whole story… if the way someone speaks to you is sincere…if the compliments you recieve are genuine…if the uneasiness you feel around friends is their doing or your own.

my father is the ultimate in taking responsiblity. i’ve tried to adopt his mentality…you can only control what you do, your perspective, so no use getting all worked up about someone else’s…

if someone compliments you he doesn’t believe in trying to figure out their motives…he believes you should take it in the best spirit it can have an move on. wise words, better actions, but easier thought about than done.

before you get all worked up, i am not trying to tell you something you don’t already know…when i refer to planning for two i’m simply admitting that planning a trip for two people, despite the similarities of planning for one, is very different.

plans have changed recently…with visa issues and rising costs my boyfriend and i decided to go south instead of north. now that classes and assignments are done and i’m left with only one more exam, i have time to get myself all excited about the south island.

immediately i started doing something i rarely do, beyond an abstraction, for myself when i travel… i strated planning. i’m not talking the general things like – “hey, tikal is close to flores,” like i did when i was in guatemala, or trusting that my friend lizzie would pull it all together like she did so amazingly in southern africa…i mean i pulled out a book, maps, bus/train schedules, and websites to see what there was to do and how we could do it.

funny thing about planning…it can get away from you. all of a sudden what you want to do multiplies and the time you have seems to shrink. funny thing about planning for two, all of a sudden it isn’t just about what gets you all worked up and excited, but what gets the other person excited to.

in a lot of ways i want this trip to go well. i’m a somewhat seasoned traveller and i love it…i love the unknowns i know i’ll encounter, the food, the people, the things that i’ll probably never see again, and the random things that become my favorite stories later on…but my boyfriend hasn’t travelled much. this is kind of his virgin tour.

i want him to love it.

and in a way that is too much pressure for both of us. i want to know what he’d like to see and he’s not sure. i know what i like but i’m trying not to impose what i want to do at the expense of how he’d like to see the south island.

combine that with a budget and distinct time window and this scheduling thing has gotten iteresting. do we fly part way to save time? do we try to cut days at the expense of not really relaxing? do we see less things even though we’ll be there?

and it is making for some interesting conversations. and currently it is still a little bit of theory becuase we haven’t bought tickets yet (tuesday that should change) but it is coming together slowing.

i can see the uncertainty in his furrowed eyebrows and he can see my restrained excitment in the way i talk about franz josef glacier. but it is all coming together i think. stay tuned and i’ll let you know how this latest adventure advances.

sitting in a meeting yesterday we got into a discussion about vacation time. the university provides 4 weeks of vacation. only, some of those days must be taken at certain times. so instead of just providing a day off for christmas eve and boxing day and the monday after easter, instead that get’s chiseled away from your annual leave.

and it seems like this small thing, only there is, what i persume, a muslim woman in our office. and i coudln’t help but wonder how she felt knowing that her “vacation” was mandated around not just dates, but religious dates that do not apply to her.

my boyfriend said that in nigeria, because of the mix of religions divided more or less equally throughout the country, both muslim and christian holidays are national holidays. and i thought how nice that must be for religous relations to be able to invite someone to your celabration (at no cost to them regarding vacation days or choices) to learn more about what you believe and how you celabrate…to share instead of demand of someone else.

i know that ever every religion can’t be represented in a country’s holidays, but i do wonder about the fairness of mandating that someone else wrap their family vacations around days that are not meaningful for them, i wonder how people would feel here if they were forced to take vacation time for eid.

i’m choosing pink for a reason. i hate the color pink and so it is the perfect color to use as i lead you on the journey of my own sublime idiocy.

i didn’t look at the dates. i had them comitted to memory. my my papers were due the 6th the 10th and the 12th…which got changed to the 10th, the 12th and the 12th. or so it was in my head when i turned in one on teh 7th (early) and prepared to turn the other two in today.

only one of them was actually due on the 9th…ummm yeah. late doesn’t go well…even less so when the assignment is worth 50 percent of your grade. but waht could i do…i hurried to put the final touches on them both…or rather i planned to do that this morning on my way to my last important final.

and despite only getting 3 hours of sleep last night (sleep evaded me like a coy lover and then descended upon me like an enraged stalker once it was time for me to rise) everything seemed on schedule.

that is until clambered off the tamaki shuttle and was met with gale force winds and rain ushering me along. the campus looked gray but i was preparing for a final…of course it looked gray.

only, it was gray for a reason, all the doors were jammed open for a reason…the power was out. not just on campus, not just on that side of town, but all over auckland. and so there was no quick scurry to the computer lab to adjust my changes. there was no use of endnote to correct my bililography section. instead i sat in a deserted lab with a friend (which, by the way, is how i discovered assignment #2 was tardy) and resigned myself to whatever fate befalls me.

and then i began looking for the classroom number for my exam. only it isn’t listed. anywhere. so i scurry upstairs to the department feeling stupid and panicked and ask around and discover that it was scheduled for 12 but most likely won’t happen because ALL OF AUCKLAND IS IN DARKNESS.

so i sign up to take in on wednesday and scuttle home praying that electricity will return. and it does…eventually…at half past 12 electricity surges through our walls again and i rise to make the finishing touches on my assingments.

i figure out how to upload my programme logic (a hurdle that has been mocking me for days) and things are cruising by…all i need now is a computer with endnote (becuase my computer refuses to upload it). my honey’s lights are still out and so i trudge down to campus light hearted that i am so close to the bright light at the end of the tunnel.

funny thing about bright lights in tunnels…quite often they are trains. in this instance it was the train of CLOSURE due to power outage. nothing is open. nothing. never mind this is smack dab in the middle of finals but the library the labs, everything is sporting signs of closure and directions for tomorrow.

i hike it home…again…(did i mention earlier i had to trudge the 11 flights up my stairs cuz the elevators were obviously not working?) and muddle through the changes and now here i sit…amazed at my own idiocy to mix up dates and times and any number of things.

if you have a prayer to spare please send one up so that might professor might be lenient with me…

it was a rough night…if i can even classify it as that. today is my big day…my last major exam and the day that two major assignments are due. yesterday i put in a big push and added a lot to one of my projects and i came home to work some more but was restless and tired. so by 12 i found something on tv to lull me to sleep. only sleep didn’t come. so i popped an antihistimine. no sleep.

come 3ish…i refused to confirm the time with a look at my clock…i finally drifted off only to wake up at 5:45 (unscheduled) and more awake then i wanted to be.

i managed sleep again and my alarm clock began summoning shortly thereafter…at 6:15 as scheduled. of course i didn’t heed her call and get out of bed until 7:30 and i have to trudge to the bus shortly…today was not the happy day i imagined…when all my school burdens float away. maybe tomorrow…maybe tomorrow…