Saturday with the Lal family

Today was my first real "hang-out" time with the Lals. Over chai and fruit, I learned that Padam and his wife (I'm still learning names) did meet and marry in the refugee camp. They both came to Nepal when they were about sixteen years old, and stayed there for the next sixteen years. Their main reaction to American so far is, "We like it, but it's cold." I still haven't seen Padam actually take his coat off, and when we stepped outside later, on a pretty mild fall day by Idaho standards, he pulled his hood on and cinched it tight.

They told me a little about their refugee camp, Beldangi. It was pretty much it's own town, perhaps out of necessity, since no one was allowed to leave. Padam had a small business in the camp, selling cigarettes and fruit. Women weren't allowed to work. They lived in a hut made of bamboo, about half the size of the living room they have now--maybe 15 or 20 feet square. I was glad to hear they hadn't lived in the Goldhap camp, which burned down in a matter of hours after one of the huts caught on fire. Bamboo may be cheap, but it isn't very fire-resistant.

They had home DVDs to show me. One chronicled Padam's brother leaving Nepal to work in Dubai, then coming back to celebrate the holidays with his family. I'm not sure if that means he has family that has always lived in Nepal? I don't know, sometimes we have a definite communication gap. Another video was filmed in the refugee camp, and it showed the wedding of his wife's sister, which happened a year and a half ago. A thousand people celebrated for seven full days. I was impressed by how normal life seemed to be even inside a refugee camp. It was obvious that many of the guests were wearing a hodge-podge of whatever clothing the UN provided, but the women of the wedding party were all wearing saris, and the bride had a beautiful scarf with gold accents over her head. One scene showed Padam and his wife blessing the new couple by sticking flower petals in their headbands and anointing their hands with water. Every guest at the wedding does this, and by the end the couple have foreheads full of flower petals. There was a lot of rice involved too, but I'm not sure what exactly they were doing with it.

We then went on our adventure to find a vacuum, which meant a trip to Deseret Industries. Padam headed over to the electronics section first and was looking at old computers. Earlier in my visit, they had shown me the various computer parts they had collected--monitor, mouse, keyboard, and kept talking about a "CPU." In my head I was thinking, "I'm a humanities major. I have no idea what a 'CPU' even is." Apparently, it's the computer part of a computer. I dissuaded Padam from buying one from a thrift store, especially since all the ones there were labeled "parts." We ran into other Bhutanese refugees while we were there. Several Bhutanese families are in Twin Falls right now, and more are coming, including Padam's mother and older brother. The US has made a commitment to taking in 60,000 Bhutanese, and they're being sprinkled like salt all over America. Padam now has family members in New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, and California.

We pressed onward on our mission, and looked through the ranks of dusty vacuums. I steered them toward the bagless ones, since I know from experience the exasperation of not being able to find the right bag for an old as dirt vacuum. We selected one and had a sales guy plug it in to make sure it worked. When we got it back home, Bikash excitedly plugged it in and pushed it all around the living room, making sure to try out all the attachments as well.

I was then introduced to Nepalese music videos, featuring a lead singer with side burns and glasses who looked freakily like Johnny Depp. Padam's wife had disappeared into the kitchen, and soon came out with a bowl of soup, motioning for me to sit and eat. The soup was the most amazing thing I've seen done with Ramen noodles, ever. It had basil and ginger and chilies and tomatoes--served with a bowl of microwave popcorn on the side. Gradually more bowls of soup appeared and Padam and his two kids sat down, but not his wife. I'm not sure if this is a custom, or she'd just already eaten. The soup was followed by pomegranates and more music videos, and then I said I needed to go. They invited me for dinner on Friday, and Bikash said, "After dinner, we go to beautiful place." Not sure what the beautiful place is, but I can't wait to find out.

Marla tells another story.

So I made a quick trip to Seattle, just long enough to celebrate one year of dating a certain person, and to have a good Seattle night out with the girls.

It was the night out with the girls that made me wonder if I have too many acquaintances.

Afton and I were outside R-Place, smoking, and people were doing the "do you have a light?" and chatting thing. We're talking with 'Tavita'--a gay Samoan volleyball player, and calls over his friend, Hal. Hal shakes my hand. "Hey, you look really familiar." It only takes me a second to realize we worked at the same Christian summer camp in Issaquah, the summer after my freshman year. He had been a lifeguard, and his camp name was "Hasselhoff."

Well, Hasselhoff is drunk, and apparently that's when he likes to spout off all the intimate details of his life. He proceeds to tell me all about how that summer he had sex one night in the woods with a girl who worked in the kitchen, he couldn't remember her name, and then had been terrified that he might have gotten her pregnant. "'Cuz she was like, you know, against abortion. Man, if she'd really been pregnant, I would have been totally fucked. You know?" My response was along the lines of "You had sex in the woods? Did you have a blanket?" Negative.

We weren't really pals when we were on staff together, and at this point I'm pretty okay with that. Afton and I head back inside to dance with the rest of our group. But after a little while, I realize that Hasselhoff and gang have found us and are dancing by us. Thus far, Tavita is the one person we have liked at all, so other than him, we do our best to ignore them.

Eventually, we go outside again and apparently Hal and his other bud, Eric, follow us. We're chatting, being polite, Hal passes around cloves and I take one. He starts asking all these questions, along the lines of So you're at R-place, are you gay or straight? Yeah, I'm straight too--Do you hang out on the hill very often? and Where do you live? At some point I think to myself, "Is he...flirting? Did he really tell me about his protection-free sexcapades and now thinks I'm sufficiently impressed to follow his drunk ass home?" I test my hypothesis. "Actually, I live in Idaho. I'm here for a few days to see my boyfriend." "Boyfriend? Oh, well, that's too bad." "Bad? I don't think it's bad. He's great. We've been together a year." "Yeah, well, I've been dating my girlfriend for three years. She lives in Bellevue."

Hal disappears, never to be seen again.

Oh, Capital Hill. The world would be a dull, dull place without you.

I meet my refugee family.

The only background you need is that I've become an official volunteer with the Twin Falls Idaho refugee program. I find it surprising and unexpected that this most sheltered of places has opened its doors to people from all over the world. And also, I sometimes feel a misfit here, too, so why not seek out the company of other aliens?

The volunteer organizer, Michelle, set up a meeting with a refugee family, and all she really told me was that they were Bhutanese. All I really knew about Bhutan was that it is near Nepal and Tibet, and it measures its "Gross National Happiness." I was expecting an Asian-looking family, Buddhist, maybe with prayer flags hanging over the door.

When I knocked on the door of the small brick apartment, a smiling man with coriander skin and large black eyes answered it. His two children, thin and glossy-haired, showed obvious excitement to meet me. His wife came out of the kitchen with a cup of chai for me, wearing jeans, a string of beads around her neck, and a bindi on her forehead. Hmm? They didn't match my conception of "Bhutanese." How do I even have a conception of Bhutanese? I asked, actually, if they were Nepalese, meaning if that was their ethnicity. Michelle explained calmly, but clearly, that they were Bhutanese but had been in a refugee camp in Nepal. On the drive home, I thought about how excited I was to meet them, but it was tinged with just a little of, "I wanted them to be Buddhist."

Which got me to thinking, and Googling. The truth, I learned, is that there are basically two Bhutans. One is Buddhist, and Asian, and wears the woven robes of the Asian steppes. And the other is Hindu, and Indian/Nepalese, and, incidentally, was kicked out of Bhutan almost twenty years ago by the government. Basically, it was an ethnic cleanse without the killing part--they just made life miserable until all the "Lahtshampas" (it means "southern-dwellers"--most of the Hindu/ethnically Indian population lived in the south) left. They ended up in refugee camps in Nepal, and then followed meeting after meeting after meeting between the Nepalese and Bhutanese governments, with Bhutan sticking to the line that they had simply deported illegal immigrants, and that anyone else who left the country did so of their own accord. Nepal refused to patriate the refugees. Bhutan refused to let them come back. Meanwhile, for seventeen years, they've been living in huts and cooking UN rice and waiting. 107,000 of them. The children of my refugee family were born in the refugee camp. Their parents may have met and married there.

Meanwhile, Bhutan is treated pretty well by the world media. On my first Internet search, I kept finding photos of Bhutan's young king, who was educated at Oxford and Wheaton college, of all places, and who has gained the media nickname "prince charming." The country has its own website, with glowing descriptions of its rich culture, traditional dress, and high quality of life. But that idyllic and, frankly, homogeneous picture has been created by kicking out an ethnic minority that made up about a sixth of the population.

Well, anyway, it's just another story of majority versus minority, right? They're pretty common. Meanwhile, here is this family, kicked out of one place because of their ethnicity and culture, because they were different, now placed in a country where their differences stick out even more. And I can't help but wonder if they will feel freer here to keep their own culture and traditions, their own identity, or if they will "Americanize" to the point that Bhutan will seem like a dream they had a long time ago. And if they do stick to their identity, will they always be lonely here? They have been in America exactly two months. They look healthy and happy, their children especially are bristling with the excitement of this new adventure. The full reality of their past is unknown to me, and their future is unknown to anyone.

Well, here goes.

Crap.

I don't know what I want.
When I was a junior, everything seemed so clear. I was on a path.
I'm trying to change direction, but I can't pick one and stick to it.
I'm afraid I'll pick the wrong one.
Part of me feels like I don't really know anymore what I am truly passionate about.
Because...shouldn't it stick out?

The dream I dreamed.

There was a snake hanging from a tree. It was the largest snake I have ever seen, incredibly long and looped over the branches. It was white, glistening white, almost iridescent. I was watching from a window and could see a girl next to the tree, gazing at the snake. She wanted to bring it inside the house and charm it.

I was inside, with my friends, and we were all afraid. We ran to shut and lock the door of the room, but there was still a gap near the floor. I started grabbing some of my largest, heaviest books--including my theology reference books--and handing them to my friends to stack against the bottom of the door.

But they didn't stack them well. There were still gaps under the door, and the snake was already in the house. I furiously tried to rearrange the books, but I wasn't fast enough. The snake came under the door and reared up before me with its white hood flared. In one fast motion, it struck forward and bit my hand.

I woke up--into another dream. I looked at my hand, at the side of my right pinky finger, and there were two small punctures, like a tiny snake bite. I felt afraid.

I ran into my parents room. I woke up my mother. I recognized her as my mother, but she was different. She was young, and thin, with long brown hair. On the front of her shoulder was a very colorful tattoo. I showed her the bite, which was starting to blister, and told her about my snake dream. She reassured me.

-------------------------------------------

What does it mean?

The snake was beautiful, almost mesmerizing, but I was afraid of it. It was too large, uncontrollable, unpredictable. I saw it as dangerous. It had a will of its own, it was free, and it was powerful. I wanted to keep my distance.

And I tried to defend myself with BOOKS. Tried literally to hide behind books. I tried to stay safe, in a single room, with my friends. But I could not avoid the snake. Books did not make a very good wall, and it came through the gaps. As soon as it was before me, it bit quickly, before I could even think or react. At that point in my dream, I seemed to be dying. But instead of dying, I woke up. With a bite on my hand.

And my mother? Young, and with a tattoo? Was she my mother or myself? A part of myself that is more mature, less afraid, braver and bolder. Able to be herself and express herself, even in a way as bold as a tattoo. Young, but grown up, and able to stay calm. Able to reassure my panicked self. In her presence, the bite was smaller and not fatal.

Curiouser and curiouser....

"He who plants the first tree is he who will look for the Messiah."
-Buber

la di dah

I'm sitting in the library "working on my thesis." As I have been for the last two hours. This is, approximately, how I have spent that time:
10:20 - 11:20: focused and much-needed editing on what's written thus far
11:20 - 11:30: thinking about my categories and how to organize them, since nothing I've written is actually IN any kind of order
11:30-11:45: wandering around the library, looking at books with pictures (I found the section on Idaho history)
11:45-12: surfed the internet
12:00-12:15 - wrote a couple paragraphs from my most recent research and notes. Slightly distracted by listening to Clap Your Hands, which indicidentally is not very good study music
12:15-12:30 - checking email
12:30-present - writing on my blog

Woot.

I think I might have a fast-developing case of ADD. Or maybe I just need a break.

the question

is my course now going in circles?

I was in the middle of my shift at Wild Ginger, a slow Saturday lunch, when a server stood before me with an intense and surprised gaze.
"Do you ever hang out on the hill?"
I look at him. He does not look familiar. I tell him I do, but not often.
"Why?"

And then I remember.

Don Quixote. Standing before me, in the daylight, as sober now as I had been that night. The stranger who now suddenly isn't.

When I get home, I dig out my myriad journals and search for the entry I know I have written. It is small and inconspicuous, starting at the very bottom of a page, with the words, "Tonight I kissed a stranger, and it was a very very bad kiss." I remember the moment, I remember the distant feeling that it was a one-time occurrence, that we were two ships passing in the night. Because when he told me about myself, he said things that were true, and I needed to take them to heart.

And have I?

I can't shake the feeling that we weren't supposed to run into each other again. And he is not the one who is in the wrong place.

Here are the truths that I never speak. Because what Don Quixote told me was that I felt estranged from my family, from the people closest to me, that I felt they did not understand me. That I hungered for a place I hadn't found.

My parents are facing the first move of their married life, as my father gives up the only profession he has ever known and they leave the farm and the farmhouse that holds my entire childhood. Not by choice, really, but with no other options, as the weird and chronic disease that has been part of his life for over a decade has gradually taken away his ability to work.

My grandmother on my mother's side is in the later stages of Parkinson's disease. She is slipping away from us. The last time I saw her, I don't think she recognized me. But what if, for one last moment, she did?

The question arises, as I walk the cement streets between cement buildings, and work at jobs I don't really like, and watch the city with a growing hunger for sunshine and open space---

Why am I here and not there?


"

how to live, according to Buber

"...firstly, everyone should preserve and hallow hims own soul in its own particularity and in its own place, and not envy the particularity and place of others; secondly, everyone should respect the secret in the soul of his fellow man, and not, with brazen curiosity, intrude upon it and take advantage of it; and thirdly, everyone, in his relationship to the world, should be careful not to set himself as his aim."

I turned around and he was there
Like a tree I hadn't noticed growing before
or maybe had mistaken for a weed
And suddenly there it was
With roots and leaves,
a trunk sturdy enough to lean on
a shade big enough to sit in
a tree
a thing to wait for spring with
in a reasonable hope that the summer will bring fruit
knowing that the frost could still bite
but knowing that all that is needed now is a little sun
that success is a simple thing,
is mostly just a matter of avoiding
a big mistake.

the spareness of my time

I've decided to chill out a little.
Because, honestly, what is the point?
I'm trying to think a little more about what I want, and after watching Mona Lisa Smile yesterday afternoon, I currently feel I want to be a hot, bohemian professor, and have trysts with Italian professors at romantic cabins somewhere in New England.
In the meantime, how much should I really care about any job I might have to pay the bills?

Let's say my philosophy has changed a little. A job may not merit attachment at all, because a job doesn't actually promise to be there for the long haul. My friends and family are stable and important, and in many ways my passions and ultimate goals are stable and important, but employment? Employment deserves exactly no more of my attention than the hours I am paid for, and any job deserves to be dropped the second you find something better, or the second it stops being what you need it to be.
This is something I wished I had realized a few months ago, when I first asked myself if I might find a better place than Tutta Bella to work at, a place with more customers and more tips.
I could have had a head start. But they had convinced me to be loyal, and silly me, and thought that loyalty went both ways.
Loyalty or not, the basic realities of money can sometimes trump all. I could have made the decision first, and I wish I had.

I wish I would have had a little more foresight; or actually, I wish I would have trusted my intuition in thinking that the over-staffing and under-tipping of this new restaurant could not go on forever. Lesson learned. And really, it was fun while it lasted.

As far as looking for a new job, I've decided January is a harsh month to try to do it, so I'm not going to obsess over it. If I find the right thing, awesome. If it takes a while, well, I guess I will enjoy my extra free time. The modern economy is not designed to be stable, but should that be my problem?

the current confusion.

Today was when it hit me:
I have no job and no direction, and I don't know what the hell I am supposed to do with my life.

Partly, I feel intensely frustrated with how the modern world works, how nothing ever feels secure in the world of employment and money. Partly, I know that if I only work for money, I will always be dissatisfied.

And partly I wish I could move away from the city and learn how to throw pottery, and sell it from a tent at craft shows, and live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a lot of books and a dog. Because that just sounds like peace.

Sometimes, I feel I have no idea what my 'gifts' are, and how I am supposed to use them, and how that could actually be beneficial to the world.

Sometimes, I miss the structure of school, the assignments turned in and the comments received back. I hate the feeling, out here in the real world, that you are doing something wrong, but you don't know what it is and no one will tell you. I feel like the heroine of the Moviegoer. Just tell me what to do, exactly, and reassure me I can do it, and afterwards tell me I did well. I am a product of public education and that's the only way I function.

But the truth is, this is the point at which I am the one who decides what I should do, and I am the one who judges whether I've done it well. Currently, I feel rather inept at both.