Sizmari : სიზმარი

Here’s an excerpt from a correspondence I had recently about the Peace Corps

Hey L,

I met you for MAYBE two hours once, at an Ethiopian restaurant in Evanston, Illinois with your brother. We talked about your time on the Peace Corps in Georgia, and if I remember correctly, you weren’t super high on it. I just got into Morocco, and was just wondering if you could retell me a very quick opinion of your experience to better my decision that I have to make in, yikes, a week.

All the best,
N

Hi N,
Let’s see, Peace Corps was great for my language skills and cultural immersion (I am in a social-cultural phD program, so pc has been great for my career). I also have a great network of PC volunteer friends and host country nationals. I felt like what I learned in PC has been invaluable to my life. It was a great period for self-inquiry and personal growth. If I had it to do over again, I would join pc again. However, that being said I don’t recommend it to other people.

Negatives partly revolve around the PC bureaucracy and rules. I felt like I was treated as an inept 6th grader by PC staff. The rules are also ridiculous (although this depends on the region, rumor has it that pc africa is more lenient than pc eastern europe). But what got to me most of all was that I didn’t feel like pc made any positive difference to the people of georgia. Serving in the PC was a real blow to my idealism. I felt like pc was more concerned with “making america look good” or as a tool of the state department (one of my friends calls pc, grass roots imperialism) than with making any positive “difference”. Also, I didn’t like operating under the rubric that I was here to “help the poor Georgians” - because what does a 23 year old American know about life in general or the lives of rural georgians (and what are the exactly supposed to do about any of it?). PC has a tendency to foster this martyr complex where the great rich ameicans are bestowing help on the poor georgians as a way to assuage their existential guilt.

Below is a link to a discussion I had with my roommate about the problem with “service”… if you are interested.

Let me know if you have any other specific questions
L

http://sizmari.tumblr.com/post/38014899/sevice-vs-compassion

oh and here’s a nytimes article on the same issue

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09strauss.html?ref=opinion

L,
Thank you very much for the quick and thorough response, it is much appreciated. Just a couple of days ago, I started to think of the Peace Corps in an Orientalist, “civilizing” light for the first time. I believe that cultural understanding and awareness would at least help in easing many of our world’s issues right now, but, as the New York Times article mentioned, it’s fairly arrogant to assume that as a recent college graduate with little experience in the field of my assignment, I should have anything to offer for the betterment of their lives.

Thanks again, you have added weight to some of my feelings and given me other great insight that I hadn’t thought of before.

All the best,
N

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, I would do the same to you.

I will recruit for myself and you as I go;
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear, it would not amaze me;
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d, it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.

This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said, what I should or shouldn’t have done, how I should have played it…if I’m ever able to set this down, in any form, even in the form of one voice to another, it will be a reconstruction then too, at yet another remove. It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavours, in the air or on the tongue, half-colours, too many.

Don't Hug Me: A Minnesota Love Story with Singin' and Stuff

Featuring the musical stylings of world famous Sven Yorgensen, including:
-I’m a Walleye Woman in a Crappie Town
-My Smorgasbord of Love
-I wanna go to the Mall of America
-The Bunyan Yodel
-Upside Down in my Pickup Truck

It’s Fargo meets The Music Man
(without the blood or the trombones)

David Whyte

astroinquiry:

The House of Belonging

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.