Absentminded and Absent of Mind.
It's harder to write when you're happy. I got into graduate school - into a program I've been craving - and so I am reluctantly stable and happy. It is far more interesting to be tilted and dangerous.
Today at my internship I find myself remembering Saligumba; one of my first students. It took me a semester to figure out that his name was not Sally Gumba, but Something Forgettable Saligumba. He was short and raw-looking - were he not so scrawny and young, he would probably have been a little bit scary.
All the volunteers at my training site would remember him for one simple reason: Sali was the first student who showed up at school openly drunk. Every day. This school was such a shoddy establishment that it really didn't matter. He offered us alcohol, wandered in and out of classes and regularly hit on the female PCVs. The lack of authority or adult-response in general made us wonder, "Are we ever going to figure this culture out?" - because if that kind of behavior didn't instigate a response beyond a shoulder shrug, what possibly could?
That was such an impossibly long time ago. Sali provided us with months of humor, and even at the end of our service we would fondly reminisce over his antics. Nevermind that his behavior echoed blindingly in the students at our actual sites and in surrounding barangays for the remainder of service: Sali was our first and favorite because, we figured, since we couldn't do anything about him, we may as well enjoy his ridiculousness.
The Philippines was a constant headache, but it always plucked at my thought-strings and made me think, think, think, ponder, think. Think until I thought myself a little bit crazy.
I have a friend here who says I am not quite as serious a person as I like to think.
I forgot how beautiful DC is in the springtime. It is clean, trimmed, immaculate, sunny and colorful. People look so tidy, so well kept and so... matching. I sat down on a crowded bus next to an older, gray-haired woman wearing neon green lipstick. She had her stringy locks braided into pigtails tied with a bow, and her red shoes glittered with Dorothy-envy. She was swinging her feet and humming self-consciously, and I would have been too. On a nearly full-to-capacity bus, every pair of eyes stuck to her outfit. The entire vicinity was absent-mindedly thumbing through her possible mental imbalances. She was just one person, but she was
the one person who didn't fit the bill of health. She stuck out.
Try a caravan full of ragtag warriors pummeling its way through unpaved island roads and knocking meandering canines into their next life without hesitation.
Even the definition of a crowded bus has altered in my mind. Crowded means most seats are taken; not that piles of roosters are skittering in feathery cages across the aisles and a family of five has folded itself into a double knot to fit into a double seat.
Maybe here, in the U.S., there is just a lot less for me to be serious about.
