Silence

Things have gotten busy here recently, and I find myself searching for ways to maintain sanity to keep pushing ahead. As the school year has started, I finally solidified a schedule. It involves starting a recycling and gardening program at the school with weekly activities, sports with the kiddies on Fridays, Thursday arts and crafts at the school an hour away, women's groups on Tuesday and Saturday, my three English students on Wednesdays and Sundays, and various meetings and some running when I can motivate myself to do it. I also kinda got recruited for the soccer team and played in a tournament last weekend. We lost, but what can you expect with a sore hamstring and only two weeks of practice? I don't know how it happened, but my ADESCO got its act together and had two meetings in the space of a week with two NGOs and Peace Corps, and actually sat down with me for hours to work on writing a grant proposal. We're moving ahead with legalizing the women's group and our final meeting before buying all of our sewing machines and materials is on Saturday. We also have three camps coming up in quick succession, and we're exploring the possibility of starting Saturday school to give the youth in my community a chance to finish through ninth grade (my primary goal) and high school (we hope) which involves getting lists of names and writing requests to the Ministry of Education and possibly a visit there as well. It's good to be busy and I know my community is doing well, but being an introvert in a job that requires constant pushing and conversation and proposals and everyone asking what I'll do next is mentally draining. Also, why the hell can't they come up with ideas and tell me? This, by the way, is one of the reasons that I really like the three NGOs that came in recently - they have ideas and technical expertise and a formula for working with the community, so all I have to do is make an occasional phone call and show up. 

I'm dealing with the physical tiredness by trying to get back into shape, sleep at a decent hour (or at least get up late), and getting a bike (efficient yet terrifying). Dealing with the mental is more challenging. Washing clothes and the endless walking are good solitary activities, but they both have a definite sense of purpose. Sometimes I need days like yesterday, when I wrote this:

So many beautiful moments today. I love the stars and the silence. I love the river and the silence. I love being awake when everyone is asleep, accountable to no one, peering into myself and pouring my soul into the night sky. I don’t want to risk ants and scorpions by laying on the dusty ground, but I so want to lay out for hours watching the stars wheel through the sky, picking out Gemini, Orion’s Belt and the big dipper. Follow the drinking gourd. Left foot, peg foot, travelin’ on, follow the drinking gourd. The song from my elementary school music classes floats through my mind as I turn in slow circles. Jazz came out of songs of slavery. I adore jazz in all its complexity, even the overly long drum solos and the saxes and trumpets who show their skill with excruciatingly high notes. It’s music to free the soul. Sometimes, though, silence is the best music. 

Too early for a meeting this morning, perched somewhat uncomfortably on a rock almost in the riverbed, I am content. As I shift down to sit, Rambo dashes headlong into the shallow water and immediately plops down, soaking his small black body. Paprika more cautiously picks a path between rocks, never setting a paw into the water. The river is down to a slow trickle, only up to Paprika’s chest as she slowly edges her way in with her tongue out and mouth agape. Chickens squabble, but far enough away that it’s background noise rather than an immediate annoyance. A “Salud” is met by a “Salud, que le vaya bien” as a mother and her daughter pass the nearest house on their way...somewhere. 

Hidden as I am by the dip in the road, they don’t see me and I feel no obligation to make my presence known. I love that I can do that. I don’t need to constantly visit houses and explain myself and exchange meaningless pleasantries today. Today I will work, so right now I bask in the glorious silence of sunlight exposing the green shallows of the river, interrupted by swarms of mosquitoes (or flies?) touching lightly down on the water to create millions of tiny ripples that disappear as they merge with the slow-moving current. As always, silence here is not silent, but my measure of silence has become more and more internal. Silence is when I can hear myself think and when I can let myself be, without facing the world and the people in it.

I measure my silence against a beautiful day in Punto de Lobos in Chile when the boys were tiny specks catching ever-bigger waves. I wandered over rocks and around cacti hunched against the whistling wind bursting over the bluff, armed with a notebook and pen and my big glorious silence. That day I did a lot of thinking - about my future and relationships and joy - and came to understand myself much better. I crave those moments that open a complete understanding of myself. That same feeling accompanies my other favorite silence: a shared silence. A full moon after midnight brought with it a crazy restless energy that pulled me out to the neighborhood playground way at the top of Cerro Baron, my soulmate bleary-eyed but following. We didn't need to say anything, just laugh and marvel at the empty streets, the creaking swing set, the miles and miles of crisp cold air losing all oxygen as it wrapped itself in a winking veil of stars. That night my soul was full of moon and sky and lost keys and open hearts. 

Today brought no grand revelations or great joy, but it was fulfilling in a way that much of my time here is not. I worked hard and got things done, but the part I choose to remember is the beginning and the end of the day - the personal silence. I am not a social person although I am perfectly capable of engaging in conversation as long as it doesn’t involve small talk. Most of my life is interaction at some level - even watching movies and reading are a mental conversation, a give and take and “I’m calling your bullshit,” with the authors and directors and the messages they are trying to deliver. The river and the sunlight and the sky full of stars, though, they demand something else. They demand a wholeness of mind and a release of intention. They are, so I can just be. To someone who has started feeling like even the books are trying to converse, it is beautifully calming and at once rejuvenating. 

New books read: 80
Total books read: 117
Recommendations: I just finished The Audacity of Hope to get back into the mindset of studying government and foreign policy in preparation for the Foreign Service exam, and I very much enjoyed it. I don't always agree with Obama, but he presents his arguments with thoughtfulness and conviction and it's really cool to look at what he said in the book and the policies he is implementing now. If you want fiction, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is one of those books you should have in your repertoire. Through the lives of two women, two men and a dog during the Prague Spring, it's one that will make you wonder whether we bear the weight of the world or whether the real challenge is the unbearable lightness of being.