The Plan. (And a few congealing thoughts).

The Plan:

1. Become fluent in Russian

2. Get whatever schooling and training would be useful for 5 and 6

3. Move to Russia or Ukraine (or another Russian-speaking country)

4. Marry the world's best fellow who wants to adopt a bunch of kids, speaks or wants to speak Russian, lives or wants to live in Russia (ok, so this is going to be the hardest part...might need a bit of re-working...maybe instead I could be a nun and start a convent that cares for the kids?well, they really need male role models so I won't give up on my first choice just yet)

5. Open a family-style orphange, legally adopting some and caring for others who may be social orphans

6. Establish a non-profit that supports the development of family care and education for orphans
7. Try to spread a successful model of family care and education for orphans across the globe.



Think it's possible?



Guess I'll get crackin' on 1 and 2 as best I can, pray with diligence, and then jump at the opportunities I am given. This is my desire but I guess I'll just have to wait and see what God has in mind.

It's hard because I've grown weary of words. I wrote in my journal on the train yesterday for the first time since London. I looked down at the pencil in my hands and I suppressed a stong urge to snap it in half. My hands can do better than this. I'd rather hold a child than a pencil.

I've been odd since returning. I haven't wanted to talk about it. I've had nothing to say. I walked with a friend for three hours by the lake on Friday night. Before we set out I told him that I was no good for conversation because I had nothing to say. We walked mostly in silence, catching fireflies, splashing our toes in the water, and watching the lights blink on in a thousand windows.

I turned to him at the end of the evening with my simple explanation. "It's just, I don't want to say any more unless I can finally do something about it."

I'll never change the world. I'm not that awesome. But I can take a corner of it and make it just a little bit brighter. To think it was a tag on a sweater brought me that first time to their corner of the world.

An all-powerful God that would use a tag on a sweater to convey His will to me. Crazy...

People question it all the time, and raise eyebrows when I say I love Eastern Europe and want to move there. Yesterday, I discovered one silly, simple, but very logical reason why I should go to Eastern Europe rather than work with needy kids here in the U.S.

Don't laugh....

I'm too small to help kids here.

Yes. I mean physically too small. Too skinny. I said don't laugh.

I went with a group of inner city kids and some volunteers from my church to the beach yesterday. With only one other guy willing to jump in the water with them, I threw caution to the wind and jumped in too. The wrestling and body-slamming that henceforth occured left bruises on my ribs, shoulders, wrists, bum, ankles...and pretty much everywhere else.

So I can pretty much only handle African American and Latino American kids until they are about 5 years old. Then they can beat me up. It was a fun day, but I'm physically incapable of doing that every day.

So my aforementioned plan...I can't make it happen, but I'm aiming in that general direction. Chesterton comes to mind as I try to narrow down what I want to accomplish in my lifetime: 'All roads lead to Rome; which is why many men never get there.'

I care for many things, but this one, it has my attention. "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul." If so, teach me to pray.

Missing.

I can't sleep. I can't swallow. I can't think. I can't cry.

I can't go back.


My body is several thousand miles from where my heart is, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Every time I am there I know what I want for my life. That's saying something for a girl who notoriously can't settle.

I have renewed determination to love, to learn; to learn to love. The depths of me are tied to those eyes and smiles. I will be there again, I am so sure of it.

2 days now. One more trip. All their beautiful faces. And a still small voice that I'm having trouble concentrating on in the midst of all the shouting.

My life finds meaning in this one thing. I work hard at most everything but nothing was ever so fulfilling as the simplest smile. It's also the deepest heartbreak I've ever known. I guess that's how it works when you love another more than your own life.

I came home last year and unraveled emotionally. Too many questions and not enough answers. I slipped into a bitter, reluctant, lazy, self-serving, apathetic, cynical and depressed. I did plenty of things that I regret. Then I decided to leave it all and start over. It's been an uphill climb back to this time and another packed suitcase.

I'm thinking ahead this time. I'm ready, I think. Ready to make something of this. Ready to dedicate more than my emotions (because they never had a choice anyway). Can I make this feeling an action, my action a movement, and my movement a change? I'll start with the first step.

The reason - while I could barely face it - that I felt so empty after coming home last year, was because I felt small, useless, inconsequential, unable - and I chose to act as if my actions had no impact on the world, even my small one.

Then someone brought me a cup of tea one morning and through our talks began to open my eyes to how I came to give up on myself. He doesn't know it, but he restored the value of me in my own eyes.

I come a little more humbled, a little more realistic, a little more mature, a little more faithful, and with a renewed and revised determination. This love deserves my best.

Love and everything incomplete

I'm watching him sleep and seeing the face of a little boy. He sighes and curls up and looks peaceful and innocent and for a brief moment I want to go grab a corner of the blanket and curl up next to him. But then I look at my hands and remember who I am and who he is and why that wouldn't be all right, (even though we do that sometimes and don't make a big deal of it).

We're all children who wake up and grow up and get our dreams smashed and hearts broken and have find ourselves and our own way. In our innocence and in our agony we scratch at skin and hurt ourselves and each other.

Please believe me, I never meant to hurt you. Every moment that I travel away from the moment before, that moment feels heavier and more horrible to me until I throw it off with a cry and vow to get it right this time.

I walked across the stage one year ago today. It took my whole life to get to those few short steps, and then they were over in an instant and I had a whole new eternity to begin. How far have I come and how much farther can I go today?

I feel the world on my face every morning, taunting and questioning and anxiously waiting for me. Some days I pull my hair into my eyes and whisper to it: "I'm doing the best that I can..."

He opened his eyes suddenly and looked at me. I smiled. His eyes grinned and then closed again. When he rolled over and pulled the blanket up, his toes got uncovered. I reached over and pulled the blanket back down a little, so he won't wake up cold.

If I can't love you completely, maybe I can at least make sure you don't wake up cold.

I wish there was a garden

"I wish there was a Garden
Where the love of God would never harden..."

Me too, love. Me too.

I don't know what to say. I always finish reading the update emails feeling breathless and emotionally hauled over the coals. I'm simultanously inspired, joyful, angry, sad and confused. And I don't have to live with it every moment. I just read the emails. And a little girl's poem about her garden.

ALS is quite possibly the ugiliest thing that has ever existed. If I were God I'd never let this happen.

I am helpless to their struggle to find words for that which is unspeakably awful.
I'm the one raising my fist at God, even while they are faithful in spite of this terrible adversity.

Dear Lord, if not a garden, by your grace help me at least plant a flower...

My computer blew up.

The blue screen of death kind...ugh. Most everything was backed up, but I'm still temporarily back in the stone age...or the 80's, I guess. Hey...those weren't so bad (cue "Born in the USA" here)...but I still want my computer back.

And the lovely Comp"USA" forgot a state. MINE. I'm not driving to Dayton people, geez.

I'm using Eric's computer because he's super fabulous like that. And he's busy watching TV.

I'll be in Seattle all weekend for Ryan and Michelle's wedding, hanging with lots of my wonderful people...



But don't get any ideas about me. My quote of the day? Oh, this:

"I'm not very successful at ending relationships. I mean, I broke it off, but it doesn't work so well when afterwards I leave my clothes in his apartment!"

(my jacket, mind you...and nothing else) :)
But he did twist my arm, as well as hold my jacket hostage in exchange for a lunch date. Ah, boys....they make me smile...and then bolt for the nearest exit.

The Secret Wishes I Told To The Devil On My Shoulder

I wish the universe were smaller so I could put in on my bed and fall asleep all tangled up with it the way we always did when you meant everything to me.

I wish I could ride a bike and overcome my fear of everything (and ride away from you).

I wish I could bake all the suffering in the world into a pie and make you smile again.

I wish the sun would come up in the west for just one day so I could wake up backwards and undo all the mistakes I made while I was sleeping.


But then you would win, and sacrifice would mean nothing.

Society owes an apology to St. Patrick

I think it's safe to presume that Saint Patrick didn't intend for a day in his honor to be spent getting wasted. He's probably is turning in his grave.

Even the city itself looked hung over yesterday. I'd hadn't seen anything that even slighly resembled smog in this city until yesterday, because the wind blows so much. But yesterday it seemed that Nature itself called in sick.

I woke up bright-eyed (though somewhere around noon) and thankful. I felt lucky to be alive, if for no other reason than that fact that I'd survived the drive home 10 hours earlier.

"Call 911!" I saw Nick go for the phone, so I manuevered my car safely through the smoke and debri, hit the flashers and raced back towards the crash. I hadn't seen the little blue Corolla actually spin out and smash through the guardrail, but it couldn't have happened more than a few seconds before we arrived. The two people in the car seemed ok -though shaken and probably a little scratched up since they had to climb out the window. I was thankful to see them get out of the car alive, but my heart sank when I saw how drunk they were. They refused any help, and wouldn't listen when we told them to stay away from the car, because with all the fluids leaking from it we couldn't be sure that it wouldn't blow. I refused to leave them until the cops and the ambulance arrived. They will be sore, hung-over, and very sorry in the morning, but I hope they learned something from this.

I don't know if it is luck 'o the Irish, but they should be dead.

Driving 45 minutes back to Lincoln Park was like picking my way through a minefield. I watched 8 people get busted and saw two more accidents. I was scared, sickened, and sad for all these people - but mostly just angry. It was so needlessly dangerous. I'm not known for responsibility - with alcohol or with much else, but I do know when I can't drive. Do they not know better? I can't really believe that.

Maybe it was only one lapse of judgement, one drink too many. And I know from my own experiences in making mistakes that it only takes one. But I have this suspicion that this wasn't the case with all of them.

Needless to say I was depressed because I got a faceful of this ugly nature of man to stupidly do what he has no reason to believe is right, under any circumstance. I don't have a ton of faith in people to do what is right. I know myself too well to believe that. But where does this end and where can we as a society start to change behaviors that are killing us? Freedom was turned terrible by depravity. Can we do nothing but spiral downward?

A question for the ages...ironically, it makes me feel like I need a drink.

Why I will never drink a slushie again

I didn't know what a "winter mix" was until I left Edwardo's last night around 8 o'clock. When I walked into the restaurant at 5 it was a bit dreary out, but a calm, fairly warm day.

When I came out to my car at 8 it looked like someone bleached the apocalypse and sent judgement day upon the suburbs.

A "winter mix" is basically a giant slushie sent from hell to punch you in the face. Snow, sleet, hail, ice, rain...and wind to stir it all up.

Point taken. Chicago is not a city to go out in unprepared.

Memories, Chances, Love...and Circumstances.

Hopefully I will have a new job soon. I am trying to quit my current one today, so I'm blogging as I wait for my boss to get here. Even if there was something productive that I could do, the motivation is very low when you know you are leaving. Maybe I will explain this whole crazy mess later. In the meantime, I have two very interested new potential employers that are finishing first interviews this week. So I wait, write polite and charming thank you letters, and pray furiously.

The past 5 weeks I've had to re-evaluate almost everything. It's been incredibly challenging, but generally not regrettable (other than missing friends like crazy...phone calls saved my life). I don't think I know yet how much I've grown through this experience, and it continues on...

I've had surprising contact with old friends. One short email surprised me. It was simple and short, a "thanks for the good times and the talks...you were needed" type of email. At this stage of my life, where I haven't felt very needed lately, it was a huge boost to a depressing week.

He was one of those "almosts" in the love department, but more importantly a good friend. We shared a week of fun and hectic memories working at a camp in Washington state. My favorite day was on the yacht, when we traded shirts (uh, yea...that doesn't sound right...but it was fairly innocent, thanks to modest swimwear) and sat on the bow talking and laughing. Windblown and sunburnt but caring for none of it save our time together. The scenery was breathtaking as we circled Puget Sound, and it went down in history as one of the most refreshing days of my life.
We also shared a strange bond over the love of Panda black licorice...it became a sweet little way that we expressed concern for each other. All in all, it was a friendship that meant a lot to me, but that I know will never be the same again, because life is life and we all move on.
So this email was a special reminder to me that he treasures those same moments that I treasure, and even if things will never be the same again, we both share a part in each other's history. And just knowing that is special enough.

Sentimental sigh.

the inconcievably brilliant logic of our childhood

~ My 5-yr old brother, on why he stuffed small pungent berries up his nose, resulting in massive sneezing and snorting and eventually a trip to the doctor for a thorough purging of the nasal cavity:


"I was trying to hide them from you, Mommy."





Or, why Remy has no desire or need of her own children at this moment.

What's the word for...?

I decided that my life this year could be summed up quite well(though not perfectly) in a series of words and one-line anecdotes. Here goes.


Bliss: New Year's Eve in Rome, eating gnocci in Pisa, and finally meeting my family in Montalenghe.

Vision: Working on Skid Row and realizing that I can make a difference.

Pursuit: Sitting in the squadroom with Tim and Craig, diligently preparing for our IR final (well, and rocking out to the Doobie Brothers and Lucky Boys Confusion...)

Abandon: While I wasn't pursuing academic excellence or something like it, I was playing pretty darn hard with some awesome international kids. Finals week was beautiful.

Relief: Dancing barefoot across the stage and shaking hands with Jon Wallace.

Faith: Trusting God with life after graduation. And life after the summer after graduation.

Teamwork: Swimming the giant log across the Volga with the "men". No one will ever understand how great a moment that was...

Humbleness: Anya, Sasha, and Cola showed me every note I'd written for them last year, and every picture I'd sent, clearly loved and treasured. Anya remembered the very moment we met (I desprately needed to pee but was having a great deal of trouble saying "gdyeh tualyet?" She was one of the dozen wide-eyed faces who eagerly helped me.)

Togetherness: Wandering through Talinn, Estonia till 2 am with my fellow "men", watching the World Cup from the pub, and making memories of which the photos only give glimpes.

Heartache: Kissing my girls goodbye (behind the porta-potty at 4 am...we don't do normal folks), and watching them wave from the fence knowing that I was probably leaving for the last time. And biting back the tears but finding it impossible.

Devotion: The rest of my trip through Germany and Belgium with Bekah, making memories and sharing our lives.

Frustration: 3 days of hell in Seattle, and not having the clarity of mind to make sense of it or the energy to even to make it end. God forgive me for this...

Release: Best described in our all-out, caution-to-the-wind wild night in Vegas with the Kenyans. Power to the girls who party. God forgive me for this too...

Solitude: Sitting on the roof of my parents house till 6:30 am, trying to find peace with all my memories of the summer.

Defiance: Taking naughty pictures in mine (and other's) underwear, always over my clothes but notheless revealing of certain sides of me. No, you may not see them.

Comfort: Living with my favorite females (Allison and Mary) for a month and all the cuddle time and talks, and alcholic beverages we shared... they are amazing women and I will miss them dearly.

Responsibility: Learning to take it, make my own decisions, and have the kind of maturity not to lose my head. We'll see how this goes after I complete the process and move to Chicago.

Gratefulness: Christmas Eve, spending the morning with my thoughts and the day with my family.

Surrender: Understanding that I can't change anyone, but it doesn't have to stop me from loving them, if I can muster the courage and strength.

Dedication: What I hope to have as I begin this new year and new adverture, and always have towards my friends and family near and far on matter what the circumstance may be.

Running to stand still?

I feel like a ran a marathon yesterday. A social marathon. It's been a whole week of that actually. Maybe even a whole month.

It was the best day.

Of course I tried to add just a pinch of "fuck-up" to it the minute I got home, but that's typical and I've decided to stop counting the things I do while I'm half-asleep.

I just realized that I'm preparing to leave like I'm never coming back. I'm trying to steal each and every moment and take from it everything I want, strip it and paste it in my mental photo album. I haven't stopped to say the things to people that I actually need to say -- the difficult things, or the things that require being well thought out in order not to sound contrite.

My life is such a whirlwind. Which is why from the moment I woke up today I decided to stick out my hand and scream "STOP!". And I made the morning wait for me.

But it won't wait forever. This day is waiting to see what I will make of it, and if I will remember to be genuinely grateful.

I feel refreshed.

Heart-stringed symphonies

In love there is too much leaving. In love there are too many contradictions.

I pressed my lips onto one page after another. One more sentence and one more smile until the words find enough air to come alive again. I want the moment to live again because I put a part of me between those pages so now I feel so disconnected from a place I wanted to call home. I loved and I lost and I keep losing. But I keep loving too.

My only complaint is only that love is unfair and time much too cruel a judge of the violations and imperfections of love. As gratefulness that it begun we must graciously accept that it also must end. That we are discontented at its ending is a reminder that we were meant for a life beyond time.

Giving thanks a new meaning....

You're so beautiful. You take my breath away without even opening your eyes. I miss those kisses in the darkness and the way you wrote your name after "I love you". But I hated the way I felt when my hands were empty, and only a thousand accusing eyes met mine as I tried to find an answer, as to why what we had was good enough to break all the rules.

I'm truly thankful for all of it. I'm thankful for the ugliest moments in my life. And I'm thankful for all that you took away. It's a odd thing to say, that one is thankful for shame, emptiness, and agony; and guilt, doubt and suffering. But what would I be without it? Without you? I'd be a girl with eyes on the ground, who never found the courage to stare life down and say what had to be said. For what I am today because of you, that is my reason for not forsaking who I've been. Imperfection needs improvement, undoubtedly...but my imperfection was my motivation. I hope it still is my motivation. Thank you for all I do not have, do not know, and will not ever be.

Let us inspire each other even in our weakness. Finding the edge of everything defines us, and gives us room to grow. I did not treat you the way I should have. I couldn't love the way I wanted too. But hear in my apology a sincere eagerness for a second chance. Maybe we'll even stop pretending and let broken, contrite hearts spin the world.

Paved Paradise

Cowboys want to date me.

"I reckon it's because you're the smartest prettiest thing they've seen around Montrose for quite some time, but don't you worry I got a good shotgun, we'll keep those troublesome boys away."

I love my uncle. And the thought of him chasing my spur-toting prospective suitors down the gravel driveway with a shotgun about doubles me with laughter.

Can I take him home with me to California? Can he bring the shotgun? Ok, I'm not quite that bitter at the male race, really. :)

I need an imaginary boyfriend. My aunt has come up with some pretty great ideas for one.

That's actually not what I wanted to write, but it was the amusing story of the day.


Deep breath. Here goes.


I turned right unto Tessitore Ln. Alpine Bank. Big blue letters. A sparkling new building behind it, with strikingly modern architecture for this little Western town. But as I pulled the truck behind the bank, passing customers pulling out, I saw the big open field left bare with weeds, all the way to the brand new log fence at the edge of the creek.

It's a waste of land, some would say. This only half-used lot bought by some too-big-for-his-britches investment professional from Denver or Dallas who knew he only needed a half-acre, but didn't care because land is dirt cheap out here and he's got plently of money to throw around.

It's a 7-acre lot. I would know. I've walked very inch of it. I can point to a spot - now somewhere about the middle of the parking lot, that used to be the very best garden in the whole state.

To them it's a peice of land and a bank.

To me, it's a garage with butterflies on it, a big green chair, brown-and-orange flowery curtains in the kitchen window, and morning glories that grew up the clothesline.

To me it's a willow tree and a stack of old tin buckets. It's catching snakes in the irrigation ditch and floating leaf boats through it. It's curling up behind that old green chair after coming in from the snow to warm up by the coal furnace, listening to grandpa scraping up more coal down in the basement to make sure we were all warm enough all night long.

It was breaking icicles off the drain pipe over back porch. It was running across the field from Cedar creek past the chicken coups and opening the squeeky gate with the wire-pull latch. It was eating grandma's soup out of her brown china bowls. It was that speckled floor that now matter how much you spilled, always hid the dirt. It was wearing that old red aporn and helping grandma need bread dough. It was trying to sneak past grandpa napping in his chair but secretly hoping he'd reach out with his long arms and pull me up into his lap and tell me a story. It was watching "The Price is Right" every saturday morning.

It's my childhood.

And now it's a bank and a parking lot. With eerily familar surroundings. And a street named after my family.

Things change, I can accept that. I'm not a little girl and my grandparents aren't alive anymore. But I guess until I saw it with my own eyes, I always thought we left the whole world on the front step when grandma called us for dinner, and that tiny little orange house with the butterflies on the garage door was paradise. And it was.

But it a sadly cliche sentence, they put up a parking lot.

unfinished thoughts

I'm finding answers before I can, or even care to, formulate the questions. They are jumping to catch me, but if I grab them then I don't know where to put them, so I let them go and stare at my hand. And still I ask the questions that the answers posed made me think of, because the truth is difficult. It lives like I do. Jesus lives. It has a personality, you might say. It hides like I do. It avoids being completely known. It slips out of my grasp. God why can't I know you? The reversal of this question, posed from God to me puts it in a different light. Imagine if God asks why He couldn't know me. What would my answer be?

Maybe in humanity knowing and loving fight over the mind's attention, and dangling between them are learning and living. He knows me and loves me, that is the divine miracle. To be Christ-like then is to let truth beat and torment and crucify you, but to conquer it with love.

Paradoxy thrills and enchants and frustrates and agonizes me. In my deepest moments of righteous depression, I find an ironic peace in believing resolutely that this is how it should be.

Jesus gave sight to the blind, but obscured the truth from those who think they see it. Just enough hope to live on, just enough confusion to stay humble. Give us this day Lord, our daily bread.

So which is it? I want my fortune cookie answer so I can go on living the same way with a cuter phrase on the end of my tongue.


Which are you: wise or foolish?
Wise.
Then you are a fool, for you are proud.
No, then foolish.
Then you are a fool. You said so yourself.


Pride presumes and oversteps... making us inconsistent, dishonest...making all that is visible the ugliness of human nature. When I am most sure, I am most vulnerable and likely to fall. But what price to pay to try and step boldly into the world? Can I presume to bring forth anything or will my efforts prove another courageous but pointless stand to disappear into a flash of insignificance? I don't want to know if the world is worthy of my suffering, but if my suffering is worthy enough to take on the world.

My most enchanting thought was also best phrased by Pascal:

"It is superstition to put one's hope in formalities; but it is pride to be unwilling to submit to them." --Pascal

What needs to be changed first Lord? The cruelity and injustice in the world or the way that I preceive it, measure it, and judge it?

These are unfinished thoughts.

meaningful distraction

He tells me that I am beautiful.

Sometimes I don't like it because who the hell cares if I am beautiful when the world is falling apart. But sometimes I close my eyes and let him touch my face, because he really likes that.

And sometimes I say to hell with it all. And I look at him with big eyes. But that isn't love, either.

He's my distraction.

It's the world's distraction...at least this is my theory. If we could love without needing to love, I bet then we could change the world.

At least, it's a nice thought when I am lonely.

nuclear sunrise (when i won't settle for answers)

My eyes adjust to the light breaking over the valley, but my heart burns without a shield. The world I know tries to tear itself apart at the seams, and all I can do is sigh.

I spent most of the night up here - restless, listless, bored, patient...listening. I brought my laptop onto the roof. What kind of freak takes a laptop to a rooftop. I do, my friends, I do.

It's barely pink now, but I can see it growing ruddier, until it will burst into flame.

A world of scheming and incompetence. A world where those who decieve best make it the farthest, and where no one really expects or fights for the truth. The sorry thing is I don't, either.

I feel like I'm in that scene from V for Vendetta where he orchestrates a fantastic array of explosions to bring down the tower of a corrupted government. Except there is no tower on my horizon. And I'm too tired right now to wake up the world. It's sleeping here right now, though far away, beyond the horizon my eyes can see, schemes unfold with busy hands. It's beyond what I can do right now.

As a girl who always thought that God moves actively in the world, I have a lot to question these days. The best family I've ever known struggles with a ugly, horrific disease and their beautiful example of marriage cannot save it from taking him away from her. What merits redemption Lord? Forgive me if I do not clearly understand why punishment and consequence and chance look so much alike.

For the Highest Authority, this world looks so dismal and bleak. Why did you create it only to let it destroy itself? Why when Moses pled with you did you redeem them? You turned your back on Sodom and Gommorrah, and that I can understand...but what is different today? It's a puzzle to me Lord, so if you are working today, I cannot have any idea what you will do next.

You remind me that I do know one way you work...through eagerly, loving hands that reach out to your people in need, through active minds that though they struggle, delve into your word and run with the messages of service and perseverance that you make very clear.

What's wrong, couldn't you stay awake for one hour? I hear you Lord, but my focus is poor. I am in a place now where I can do good things for the world, but I still feel incapable. What good am I? I fight the self-doubt, struggle to find direction. This struggle may be good for me but I am impatient and feel worthless until I am able to do something good for someone else.

When is it enough? Not enough to make me feel better, not enough to quit...but enough to please you, enough to fulfill the purpose you set for me? Ok, and enough to not be a failure in your eyes, the way I feel in mine.

finding reality in scattered bits

i think i'll write, and write, and write. Write until the jet-lag surrenders to the exhaustion. Write until it's nonsense, write until it can all escape like a sigh from smoke-filled lungs. It won't take long to reach nonsense, for most of it will always be nonsense to the one not holding my hand by the Volga, or the one who didn't watch the midnight sunset from the Tallinn port beside me. Even then, this trip has taught me a comforting loneliness of fully understanding that no one will ever completely understand.

Love is all. A simple line written by my teammate. It keeps coming back into my head as I think about this trip. The whole trip, not just Russia. Patience. Peace. Wisdom. Intelligence. Courage. Simplicity. Charm. Perspective. Horror. Guilt. Oppression. Laziness. So many themes I thought about in the last month. So many things I want to bring home besides the 2 kilos of chocolate and a few hundred digital photos. But nothing without love. Love is all.

It's even harder here in stagnacy. In a world that didn't change much since the day I left it last. The ever changing landscape of my trip is the most foreign thing to them, still plodding along with the best-laid plans or at least a sense of normalicy in chaos, or purposeless existence. I can't expect more out of them, as surely as I will be disappointed in myself some days.

"All thing are working for good." Said the Lebanese woman to me in the airport.
"Peace go with you." My answer was the tears behind my eyes.

They all scream for freedom and something better. I did, too. Isn't that what I set out to find? Instead I found misery, but strangely not my own, but one I wanted to feel - for misery was far better than loneliness, and feeling their pain gives me purpose. Love is never separated from pain. Bliss is never known without first the wish to die (Count of Monte Cristo).

Maybe it's too much to say that I feel their pain, because I cannot. I am, as always, an unfeeling mass of crumbled thoughts that occassionally slips out a tear for those who have touched me. But to reach out and touch, that is what I haven't learned. She touched me. The woman in the airport. The girl by the Volga. They touched me. Their 8-yr-olds waving flags and shouting "Peace for Lebanon!"

I swam in the river. I ran though the forest. I climbed the castle and waded in the sea. It was all beautiful, and it will always welcome me for rest. But my life is here, in the eyes of color, in the sweat and the dirt. In the city, in humanity, and in suffering. I want nothing else. I want what is unwanted, because I've seen everything else, and all it cannot offer, and beauty will not suffice.

If nothing else, I hope I learned to love with my mind, not just with feeble emotions.

There is a time for everything, and now is a time for sleep.