"Though we have sparred, wrestled, and raged, I can tell you I love him each day."

(Sufjan Stevens - Palisades)

I've really been enjoying what I've heard from My Brightest Diamond. Check her out (there's a song on that site for your listening pleasure).

There's an interview with Thom Yorke on NPR's Fresh Air. My dad referred it to me (yeah, he's hip).

Somebody ate my entire unopened jar of applesauce. It even had my name on it. It was even next to my soy milk. Who does that? Why applesauce?

I'm really getting tired of living with a bunch of people I don't know in a dorm. It's not even that I don't know them - it's that there is a de facto segregation between the jocks and the non-jocks (insert Simpsons reference here) that prevents people from really getting to know each other. I'm also getting tired of having to go down three floors just to get my milk in the morning.

I know it's nothing to complain about compared to the living situations of people around the world, but I think what makes it so difficult is the lack of community, the lack of friendship. I could live in pretty much any condition if I had a friend or a family member.

A small example of that was on the trip to Mississippi. The eight or so of us guys all crammed into that hot and humid room. Everyone had to wait in line at 6:30 am for mediocre food served under a tent (or "in tents" as Tyler so aptly joked) with multi-colored plastic forks in the shape of various animals. We had to wait in line to bathe in tiny, muddy showers (girls waited for hours sometimes). But you know, we had each other. And we had all the people we were trying to help on our minds. And that made all the difference.

I've been thinking a lot about that trip recently. I still think it's humorous that I finally decided to go the day before. It certainly was a good experience, but I think it has become a much more life-changing experience in the months after it was over. I didn't have any mission-trip epiphanies, so highly sought after by American Christians these days. I remember wanting to have one. I remember sitting at the edge of the Gulf, morbidly depressed and lonely and heartbroken, wondering what kind of person I was to not be excited about being there. I didn't feel like I could make any sort of difference. And that feeling stuck with me to the end of the trip, right down to the trip home. I wandered off for a while when we stopped for lunch. I remember Gerald coming outside and saying something to me. I only remember fragments, but it doesn't matter - I have a still shot of the look on his face frozen in my memory. What I gathered was that he cared about me, which was something I couldn't receive at the moment. I left him and walked around, feeling like I didn't belong, that there was something going on inside of my head and my heart that just didn't line up with anyone else. But I couldn't put my finger on it, and that's what really made it painful. I hid behind a tree for a while, contemplating its leaves in intricate detail to distract myself from the hot mixture of hopelessness, shame, and weakness that was drowning my heart.

In the end, I didn't really come back with a lot of heartwrenching stories, other than those of what I saw around the city. I didn't save somebody's life. But I came back with a lot of experience, and a lot of deepened friendships. At the time I didn't realize what things would mean to me after I reentered American culture (Bay-St. Louis felt like a foreign country). Sure, I thought that I would always remember the steeple on the ground or the rubble piled in the air. I thought I would remember the harrowing stories I heard. But I didn't think about the fact that every time I would look at my shoes, I would see stains of the tar from Tommy's roof. I didn't think I would care about that day that Charlie, Tyler, and I sawed branches from trees. I didn't think I would remember walking endlessly down the road with Chris. Rolling a trampoline to the side of the road with Casey. Picking up trash on the side of the road. Steven singing Amazing Grace on the beach, that seemingly God-forsaken beach that surrounded my seemingly God-forsaken heart. Somehow these random bits of memory still surface.

I don't know what it all means.


Today I watched a documentary about the Vietnam War called Hearts and Minds. It is excellent; very thought-provoking. The main reason it's so good is that it was made in 1974. Most of the views it expresses are really nothing new until you remember this fact. It was way ahead of its time. It does a great job of portraying the atrocities committed by the U.S. during Vietnam. There are a few devastatingly powerful scenes.

Still plugging away on CSN, Cyprian, Chomsky, and all the other stuff. Emily returns tomorrow. Don't try to fight your jealousy.

Peace,
Sam