Dear Penelope,

Day 34 since I've left the island.

I happen to be completely irritable.

I'm in a guesthouse on the edge of the center of town, covered in foliage, (flowering vines, plumerias whose whole flowers drop with a spin and a quiet thwat against the pavement, with picturesque statues and as LP said, replete with charm. I would disavow them completely for the shoddily slow internet but it's been cutting out all over town, as I duck in to escape the heat and have another smoothie or another iced coffee or another something, and besides as I said- charm, the quiet, the feeling of living on the edge of something and not just being yet another cog in a hole. I'm blowing my budget in frivolous hydration, however, and collecting internet passwords, maybe more so then my entire time on jeju. And I haven't seen a whole hell of a lot but walking by some wats, a pillar and their version of the arc' d triumph. Apparently the US sent the cement for a highway and the laotions decided to build a hulking mass of a temple slash gateway. Well why not? Oh and I'm drooling over silk. There's nothing to be done about that though. Also lots of cars for a city of 700,000. Small but not overcrowded. Relatively clean and unassuming as a town. Not particularly inspiring, but a good change of pace from the relentless frenetic energy of Saigon. So that a mere 6 blocks doesn't exhaust me-- And walking in the street not nearly as perilous, though here i'm not sure the motorbikes are as adept at weaving around pedestrians- and they never imploy the horn really.

The moon is waning but bright, the night warm. The fan rotates sending my diy mosquito net billowing up around me in fits. The ceilings are high and the walls white with cobwebs, some decay, and a few telltale footprints of peoples impassioned thwacks against the antagonist mosquitos. I woke up feeling positive, and then I had an email that sort of obliterated my head a bit and reminded me of sex-trafficking in these particular countries and just the predatory nature of the dark, the power of desire, which had me pondering all day- and the missionaries aren't getting back to me. It made for a hell of day of feeling like I had to get out of here. But as it is, tomorrow i'm sure i'll find clarity in the email, and just now I see the missionary will met me tomorrow and i'll get to go prayer walking. It's the problem with not having my course set. I'm gasping a bit and floundering. oh and there was another thing- our church is officially homeless come July. And I got another email this morning saying that due to another citation on the lot all the plants need to be removed and what does it matter, the saving of them since the whole place is up for grabs- so I got a fwd, and a tag about saving and dispersing the plants. So there it is- all my work- obliterated. Transient? transcendental? Fleeting, as a summer breeze, a dying bloom. I suppose I was right in the end not to really put my blood into the earth but still. Who wants to be right about things like that.

And as she says "Is that a tear?" Poirot: "No, It is the breeze."

hey babe,

it was an odd day. i dont know. i'm not feeling spiral oriented exactly but eh. just eh. maybe just a long come down from the enthusiasm of volleyball and the busyness of last weekend. and after all today is wednesday. not even a weekend. so maybe that was throwing things a bit too. i didn't want to go to a beach on the otherside of the island and so didn't have an orbit to get sucked into and apparently i was left floating into space. and then doing bad math about when our next random break was which is exactly 7wks away when i'll have a week to be bored? i dont know. i'm really going to have to come up with a plan. i thought about going to japan but i've been spending a bit too much this month and a week there would do some damage to the downward trend not to mention the won not doing well anyway... like my eating habits in the last 2 wks. along with a lack of water. i mean i'm here but now i have "goals".

so today, i went hiking and that was good. (messy warmth and growth and vertical challenge and time with God) and then my enthusiasm for independent travel sort of tanked into an inefficient mess of wandering and being completely noncommital with myself. nothing really appealed. i thought i would go see a movie- when it came down to it: wrong times, too many people, not quite the right movie, but i did go to at least 2 movie theatres just to stare into space trying to convince myself it was something i should do. i went to see where the foreigner clinic was in shin: i walked right by it because i just didn't want to go inside, i kept walking, to the next unsuccessful event, though eventually on my way home, got off the bus, to see the hospital mostly quiet bcs of the holiday and reluctantly peeked in just to see the layout and then left just as fast to catch the next bus home. the two sure things after the hike were my enjoyment and eventual regret of the frap (cool tasty relief/too much sugar) and that the ipod battery hung on long enough to let me listen to the book both coming and going from shin where i did nothing at all for hours, but walk and reject things i thought about doing so suredly hours before. i did have a good lunch in btw. i suppose the day took a turn around 130. i was back by 6. it was amazing how much i failed to do in that amount of time. i probably should've turned around after lunch and went to sleep on the beach. but they're bulldozing it for summer? or uh? somesuch?

anyway- i think overall i just kept expecting something- to run into someone, for something to catch my eye, for something outoftheordinary to happen? maybe? so hard to say.

oh and i have a veracose vein, and my cat's in heat again... shocking. oh also- woh to your snake story?! i'll uh, pretend it made it out alive. i remember as a kid at my school people flipping out and killing snakes- it always made me a bit sad- they were always harmless gopher snakes... now the one time the guy killed the rattlesnake with a shovel and then cooked it at camp...i mean ok... and no words for fake recycling. it's like you've discovered the other reality neo. just know that i'm having to ocd trash it for you- white bags we buy for combustible "trash trash", the compost bag which is foul and dumped into an equally foul bin, and then the paper bin, and then the plastics/metal/glass bin... so yah.

also also, trying not to fear the humidity and yet i do. you know i do. dread. non-evaporative non-coolingness. it comes. it comes. the weekend promises to be warm. and though the battery on my new/used phone is acting up i did finally acclimate to wi-fi access. small victories.

ok enough- my love,
xoxo, m.

I'm sorry,

where are we?! Have I lost you? Have we lost ourselves? It's something we have to get around to asking everyoncenawhile. Are the words gone? When we only have our intermittent vocal/visuals/touchingbase-

It's not that October has been that bad to us right? Maybe it's just fall out from the preceding months of grim penniless existences- though my mom is God's provision for me, i still can't help but think I'm cheating? Maybe that's it. I haven't been too busy selling gold and trimming hedges. My butterfly LIVES. Why didn't I jump right on and tell the story of that, I helped to save it. I pinned its silken tail to an ivy wall and it lived, or wandering by a creek just yesterday. Glorious, in the heat of the blue and the invasive reeds rising out over the rushing water- talking about gold flecks and floating down stream. Or last Thursday breaking up with Prayer Council- i tried. The blog was called 'Cutting Ties'. 90% good 10%bullshit. The subject. The feeling of it. The truth of it. My life taking a deviation after 8 years of 1/2 living, of skyrocketing spiritual insightness and church stuff. Snip. Snip. Griiiind. Slowly beginning to turn the ship- but i can't pack for it. I don't have money to shop for it. I could start to study korean if i believed i was going. I'm reading a blog. I need to start getting into the korean soaps. But the list stops there in the 'waiting for paperwork' column. Has it been such a long preperation with so little physically to show for it. And the things, just breaking off and into the goodwill bag one agonizing minute at a time since? I've been doing this for months and months.

I'm cutting the roof of my mouth on the nuts in my appleflaxseed muffins. And i still can't articulate anything between the mint gum now and the lifetime movie starring FaithfromBuffy. And nordrack rejecting me, and the CAcreditunion accepting me. What else is there? I was just telling somebody the other day it's the little things in life that are fascinating. Just because it's no longer new to you doesn't mean it's no longer interesting and i'm sure the obsessive running of diagnostic reports, defragmenting, disk cleaning must look like something from the outside. If only i could tell a story about it. Or express the feeling of being stuck. Or on a steep and brutal descent. And how that must draw you inward and deep to a quiet breathing hard and trying not to go shallow kind of place after you've just fallen or slipped and went near to dangling. We're struck in the chest intermittently by a wave of panic or a feeling of wrongness as we walk. We think, what was that. What am i feeling bad about. It strikes fast and we have to chase it down and it takes a while and we think, oh that's right. Right. Ok. And we go back to what we're doing. Shake it off. We breathe a little better.

We relook at the lists, and the calendar, and the balances, the weather, the news, the FB, and we think ok. Check. Reoriented. I haven't forgotten something. It hasn't slipped off like the other pieces of gear in the fall. I still have those things. I'm watching. I'm x-ing off the days feeling half alive with a sinus cough, chronic aches, that the rest must be dreaming. That the rest must not be for the looking. I have only so many things I can take in where I'm at. Not more. Not that. Not those jobs. Or that list. Or that project. Or the words. Not those. It's too much.

m.

Dear Penpace,

I have the restlessness of the recovering. Pacing the cage with no where definite to go or direction to set off in. A vague apprehension I've missed the planting season and won't have anything to yield come harvest. Thus assuring me doom. My interior castle took on water. There was a violent storm and the girl in gold has collapsed, luckily face up in the water. The other girl on the steep mountain had to come down to assure the one in gold she was going to be ok. But it's not clear on how much was understood since she was unconscious.

Besides strange dreams and landscapes, I've slept through the night the last few. The trajectory of the downslope- gross things about slightly pitted skin, scabs and copious amounts of ointment...not whincing and saying breath prayers for unconsciousness. And besides photographing the journey, I'm reading a historical romance- a monk forbidden love a girl named celia- centuries later the two come together again... to contrast i'm also reading a book on chaos theory. I've just got through the section on fractals and now we're talking fluid dynamics and the problem of turbulence. Reminds me of when i was in school and the constant exchange of ideas were swirling around me. Ah, nevermind. Let's not romanticize learning and school. Pshaw.

As a sidenote have you tried ear protection for when you vacuum? Or mow the lawn. Or even noise canceling headsets... I have a pair and it does make it all better. They really should make those things more stealth like. It's enough that my computer has a loud hum to it and when i leave my dvd player plugged in it cycles on and whirrs. Most annoying.

Well nevermind. I'm full from pineapple and am vaguely sympathetic about the fish situation and obviously at this moment sort of glad to be single. The whole thing sounds terrifying. And also speaking of animals Mortimer hasn't quite got the hang of the hunting thing. I mean he caught a mourning dove and it looked like it was bearing up under its death well but sort of humiliated by the presence of Marley who clearly thought Mortimer was bungling the job. Which he was-- trying to bite at it, while it was still quite alive and not finishing the bird off fast and efficiently. Feathers everywhere. All of it unsightly. And i feeling as if i'd come to late to be of any use but to shake my head at the whole state nature and the fall. I apologized to the bird all day.

m.

Pen,

In a couple hours I can call in to see if I have to serve jury duty. Since the last 2 debacles I’ve wizened up and put a recurring alarm feature on my phone just in case, lets say that its not until Wednesday I get called in. Oh and of course I’ve decided to keep the shoes. I mean when I slipped that shoe on and it formed to my foot perfectly- it was like Cinderella and the slipper. Lights went off in my head. It was a complete Cheshire grin moment as I stroked the leather and smelled its awesome shoeness. Oh and speaking of Marley came in with a mouse, one that mom has been complaining about eating her birdseed. But these field mice are so frickin cute. Whatever, it was too late for this one, and I suppose diet variance for cats is good but I stopped short of him eating it on my couchchair and mom picked him up like he was covered in blood and carried him outside- it was a picture worthy moment- Marley unstruggling, arms and paws extended and body hanging down, mouse clamped in jaws with tail trailing, but I had THE shoes on so I was paralyzed and could only laugh.

Anyway, LL paid me the rest of my commission on the necklaces so that should cover it and besides paying my bills and buying supplies this is the one splurge out of that money- and budgetwise that seems fair? Reasonable maybe? I’ll save up for the wii. Because I should have one. Though my wrist is already sore from some especially vigorous wii tennis at lunch. I timed my departure to the game table after the two AP’s had left for their lunch so that they couldn’t watch to see when I left/returned. I already went beyond and above my own sense of condescending to my one AP’s freakoutfactor by arriving at work at exactly 930. It does however provoke my stealth mode. I’m a bit lazy about it but I will make it a game for the next 3 wks to be as little detected in my comings and goings as possible. I fall short of complete commitment though because pretending to research the sl/nk/t takes actual work verses just watching vmars and having a window open that makes it look like I’m researching something.

Also I know that technically my already skint PA work has run dry as the EP had wanted to kick me over to the other show but having confirmed the fact that my AP hates me when she didn’t go to bat for me for returning to the show post seattle, they hired another PA to do my job in the meantime... Which is fine. (The commute issss treacherous. Though the books on cd have been enjoyable.) So theres not much to research anyway and am just waiting for tape deliveries that only occur every other day. But otherwise it’s looking in the tv reflection to see if anyone is spying on me. Making sure no one can surprise me to the left, since the right is covered. Having the pretend work screen and x,ing off the days with the black sharpie. It’s like I’m a deadmanwalking. I mean that’s it really. That’s what it comes down to. That’s the feeling I’ve been having all day. Dead in the water and just waiting for the inevitable. And the EP keeping me on because? … she must have a soul… or feel bad or something. But my only tasks given by the new AP were more on superskrs and that blanket thing… and otherwise. Uh…. She did point out yesterday I wasn’t even on the contact sheet. So I feel the love there.

Alright, so besides that and my 2/1 jamba juice coupons, and the shoes… I mean who knows what else is going on- waiting for my nails to grow out. A meeting tonight… and timing how fast I can clear off my desk.

m.

Penforgov,

hello foot walker. i'm sitting here waiting for the to edd call. technically it did just roll over to 3:01 and they have another 2hours and 59 minutes to call but whatever. the important part of today minus the annoying part was that i printed out my biola essays and shipped them off. and i bought a knee brace. hopefully i bought the right size.

i just dazed away and its now 3:06. chewing some gum, drinking some tea. ho hum.

did i mention i finished my essays?
3:07.

i've also developed a lis--
3:09
hummm.

3:12! THEY CALLED!

3:14... uh, i mischecked a box on the mutha'fuckin'form.

*sigh.
let the govt. cheese continue!
with the full knowledge that if school- this mythical thing that danica believes in- i applied for is to happen- that eventually i will have to cut myself off? God is going to have to cut me off? Some sort of cutting off and onto something else? Is in order? Maybe?

ok, now i can focus on hiking and ironontransfer paper. totally expensive by the way!
m.

2 Month Mark

It doesn't seem i've been at the National Bookstore chain that long. But alas. So it goes.

Lately I've found myself muttering as I organize my perfect kingdom. Which by the way i've totally gotten compliments about- like: I've never seen it so organized. It's so beautiful. You're wonderful... so it's not that I don't feel validated. I mean even though the NB/C is only raising our wages bcs then they can say they pay "more" than minimum wage. Though they spin it in the grandest most benevolent of ways... like for instance I will find out on friday what sort of raise i got. Like I get the "max now" of $8.00 and starting was $7.50. So technically they can sort of underhandly undercut my base rate by saying, well you make that now, so we don't have to give you anymore... or maybe they might give me a quarter. I stir at the injustice of the employees all across the country getting undercut like this and internally a little synapse is well all snappy and twitchy about it.

Anyway back to the muttering: I finally dialed into my internal monologue and it seems that I am obsessively making a check list about "what to tell the newbie"... such as where i hide the extra books, how to organize things, what gets messy first, how to maintain order bcs that's what people respect, and why do people bring/leave the sex books in my section and that one klepto must have stolen all the southpark seasons by now, and am i being watched? assume yes, which book should i read next.... I find it incomprably hard to change the channel: tell them, do that, change that, it's time. And in this litany of mental word-waste I halt occassionally with the realization that the end is not in sight, that I do not have a replacement and that 2wks worth of pay is only $450. And how am i going to nicaragua or oxford on that? And when am I going to make time to paint and write... and and... so then when this whole week I'm sick and can't convince myself to just go home and i have too much cough syrup before i go to bed and it's late and my heart is beatinng too fast i think this is the real expression of how i feel- like it's boiled to the surface. For one moment I can see a true reflection beyond the calm exterior I've somehow developed... this unflapable, unshakable, calm mendacity- utterly mistaken about how patient she seems or calm she's been about waiting. It's hard to shake until I find something else to fill my mind with. Today I read JunieB.Jones, which left me with a craving for cookies, hoagies and a fond reminesce about my own lunch lady in 1st grade, read MagicTreeHouse#19, found myself completely envious that they got to go to India on an adventure, then spiraled into the psychological ramifications of going on continual journeys for a mystery woman and facing near death circumstances at 10, constantly... and then i finished the Handmaid's Tale- which for as much as people think it's great I think it totally sucks to read a book about a stupid woman who frets her way thru slavery and half heartedly contemplates suicide but not revolution.

Having survived the week, I know 2 days will not nearly be enough. I think Monday I'll start Sisterhood#2 and possibly another JunieB.Jones or maybe read about RocketShips... but anyway at the end of the day at 1:56pm an author came in to sign her books. The book is called Erec Rex: The Dragon's Eye. But we only had one copy and it seemed sad to have only one. She's from Cincinnati, and though we disparaged her a bit before we met her I understood why she came to leave her mark here in the section bcs she happened by, and I thought: here is a book she wrote, out in the world, and I'm going to respect that... and she brought a book for the kids section lead to read (which is me) and she signed it "Enjoy this Book from Me! Never Stop Dreaming! I never did~" and so whether good or bad I'm going to carry it with me.