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.