palace of winds

These days the Peace Corps, the idea of the Peace Corps, is my quiet shadow. Waxing and waning. My little whispering ghost.

I sit in my beautiful apartment, on my lovely old hardwood floor surrounded by third-hand but sturdy furniture, all my expensive little gadgets, a closetful of shoes, car out sleeping in the garage, bed of down waiting a wall away. And ER is about Darfur again this week, and here I am weeping in my wealth. There is so much to be done, so much I might do, but I am in love with my life. My comforts, my little world, the way the late-afternoon light comes big and gentle into the bedroom; the freedom to wander up the road for a fresh smoothie, too lazy to make my own; my bookshelves and end tables full of books about anything, books about religion and love and murder and magic, books with titles like The Miracle of Mindfulness and Cunt. I have so much. So much I don’t know what to do with it all. Paralysed by having and wanting and wanting to keep.

And wanting to help. Not knowing how, how much, when, where. And it’s so much easier to just keep on keeping on, making the same motions through this same golden little life. All this bounty salve against the part of me that is sick and sad and guilty and longing, dreaming, wanting. Believing desperately, against everything, in the possibility of a world that is clean and kind and fed and whole.