Better
Topic: Events
Yesterday was better and today feels okay so far. Grieving feels so fickle - that one or two days can be absolutely awful, but then I wake up one morning and I'm okay. Mrs Dr says that the more she watches children the more she is convinced that humanity is built for joy - perhaps this is part of that, that I just can't feel bad for too long. Like now, as I'm sitting writing, I'm also watching the leaves of the tree outside fluttering in the breeze, constantly shifting shades of green as they flick in and out of shadow. There is one leaf that is glowing rusty gold in the sunlight - none of the others have changed yet - and it's right at the edge of the vivid patch of blue sky just visible through the leaves. It's utterly mundane, but it's so beautiful.

Being busy helps, which is one of the reasons yesterday was better. I had to give half the lecture in the subject that I'm tutoring for, so I spent most of the day fiddling with PowerPoint and figuring out what I was going to say. For forty-five minutes, I had a captive audience of undergrads on whom to inflict all my knowledge of microfinance. I think it went well. It felt good - I didn't have a script, so I wasn't nervous (writing down everything makes me anxious about losing my place), although I know that I didn't say everything I would've liked to have said. Then again, I probably couldn't have said everything I would've liked to have said in 45 minutes anyway. I was surprised at how quickly the time went, especially considering how it sometimes seems to drag on when I'm running hour-long tutorials. I really admire tutors who are good at getting group conversations started in tutorials, because there are days when it's really hard to get one going, even though I know I'm lucky in having two groups of smart, attentive, thoughtful students. But some days, a conversation just doesn't gel.

I've spent the last five minutes trying to write something else and deleting it, over and over again. I'm not sure if I don't know what to say, or I just don't want to get on to doing my reading for my social theory seminar this evening. Guess I'd better get on with doing something academic before lunch time ...

I will be fine
Topic: Events
It might not feel like it now, but I will be fine.

I could wake up tomorrow feeling okay.

Then again, I might not.

Not knowing how I'm going to be feeling from one moment to the next exhausts me. My moods may swing, but under normal circumstances I can usually tell when that swing is coming and in what direction it's going.

Circumstances, however, are definitely not normal.

But I will be fine. One day. I wish I could say when. But I know that I'll get there. And in the meantime, I muddle through as best I can.

There is always a place in my life for poetry
Topic: Events

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

~Mary Oliver, from 'In Blackwater Woods'

(Thanks, Mom)

Other news
Topic: Events
Alternate perspectives on events in Belgrade around Milosevic's funeral, from Belgrade Blog. I'd heard nothing about the 'Early Spring' gathering in the international media, which is unfortunate and unbalanced - I sure saw enough about the goings-on on the other side. Peaceful anti-Milosevic demonstrations featuring balloons don't fit the mainstream media's script about Serbia, I suppose.

Topic: Events
I am told it was a beautiful day there, a day that truly felt like the beginning of spring. 'Like a shot of comfort', as a friend described it.

I hope it was a day like yesterday was here, when even I, who have noticed so little outside of myself this week, took notice of the warmth of the sunshine and the blueness of the sky. I hope it helped to soothe the feelings of those who are missing him, and wanting to be with me.

I miss him, although I think I will miss him more on that day, sometime sooner or later, when I see something I want to e-mail to him, or think of something I want to tell him, and realize that I can't.

I miss knowing that I will see him again.

He was kind to animals, and he loved his family. The most banal and hoariest of eulogy clichés, and yet in his case, so very true. He was especially kind to animals that others had been cruel to, and would be glad that his parents' memorial to him will be at an animal shelter. Everything that his parents have done has been what I think he would've wanted. That closeness with his family, the way they knew each other, was something that I loved in him.

His family included me in his obituary, and the generosity of that gesture touched me deeply. They said he was my 'devoted friend', which is lovely and accurate, and as complete as any two-word description of our relationship could be. The obituary format does not lend itself to backstory, after all.

And that backstory? I think I will just say here that he loved me with incredible generosity and acceptance. Our relationship was not always easy, but we found much happiness with each other. He was an important person in my life, one whose impact on me was positive and lasting. And now I can only hope that I was able to show him that while he was alive.

I loved him, and I miss him.

Endings and beginnings
Topic: Events
I made the phone call. It wasn't easy. My grandfather doesn't talk about his feelings, but it was still pretty clear what he was feeling when I talked to him. It's hard to be away from my family at times like this. Even when I don't know what I would or could do, the urge to be there with them is strong. That urge has been lurking in the back of my head since my great-uncle first fell ill in August and it was clear that it was a severe illness. It has had me thinking about a lot about the sacrifices involved in living overseas, and whether I'm willing to continue to make them. On the one hand, I love living in other countries - it feels right for me. On the other, being able to support my family is important to me. It's a tension I'm far from finding resolution for at the moment.

I miss the chance to share in good things that happen in my family, too. My aunt got married at the beginning of the month, and I got pictures of the wedding from my mom recently. I really would have loved to have been there to celebrate with my family. Mom says my aunt was almost unbelievably happy, and I do wish I could've seen that happiness in person.

I also recently got pictures from another wedding that took place on the same day. My friend Pep married his boyfriend in Canada. Picture, if you will, a handsome and happy couple under a canopy (neither is Jewish, but the friends who hosted the wedding are, and the grooms appreciated the imagery of the welcoming home associated with the canopy). Both men are dressed in barongs (traditional Filipino formal wear, since Pep is Filipino), and they're exchanging their vows in front of Pep's sister-in-law, who is a minister in the Uniting Church. How beautiful is that? It makes me very happy to know that a wedding like that can happen, even if I do wish possible in more than just a few places.

Putting off the phone call
Topic: Events
I can't put off the phone call for too long. There are many things to do today, and its already nearly 10 o'clock. Many things to do, yet here I sit, writing, avoiding picking up the phone that sits waiting at my right hand, phone card beside it, grandfather's phone number open on my palm pilot. All the technology is there, everything I need, everything, suddenly, except the strength to go through with picking up the phone and acknowledging the reality of my great-uncle's death. I got the e-mail from my mom last night, and was saddened, but I know that the reality won't hit until I call home and hear the loss in the voices of my family. Its so hard to anticipate hearing that loss, and knowing that there's so little I can do to ease it. But I need to get on with what I can do, and I need to pick up that phone.

An opportunity about to be missed
Topic: Events
Wouldn't you know, just as I'm heading into the essay-writing crunch, which not only leaves me no time for anything else but generally sucks all the will to write right out of me, somebody decides that next week is going to be National Write a Short Story Week (aka WriAShorStorWe). Even granted that my approach would be to write something at the last minute, decide that it's crap and should never see the light of day and therefore not submit it anyway, in theory the idea of participating is still appealing, or would be if I didn't already have to churn out at least 5,000 words over the course of the next week (and a grand total of 14,500 before the end of November).

Although, the 'National' presumably applies to the US, where I'm not, and the week was declared by fiat on a blogger's whim, so what's to stop me from declaring, say, the first week of December 'International Write a Short Story Week?' (which it seems I should call something like InNaWriShoStoWe because that's what everyone else is doing). Watch this space . . .*

(discovered at 50 Books)


*Not really. I'll have forgotten everything up to and including my name by the end of November, and I definitely won't recall any of my more absurd declarations. Except perhaps those that are along the lines of 'I give up! I'm dropping out now, before I have to write any more essays!' Because I make a lot of those.

Testing the power of denial
Topic: Events
I don't care what the Observer says or the US Navy admits to, I cannot believe that this is real: Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina. I just refuse to believe this. Because this? Is insane.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

First reaction: when did life become a B movie? Second reaction: the Observer is overselling this story with all the "may be"-ing. Third reaction: wait, the training is for real. I'm willing to believe in hell, so long as it has a special place for the person who came up with idea of training dolphins to kill people.

(Thanks to Ro for forwarding the article to me)

A picture is worth a thousand rants
Topic: Events
Got this from Ro today - did a quick check to see whether it was real or not. Snopes says its true, so I give a big around the world and back snap to the (half-asleep? quietly subversive?) Sky News caption writer responsible.