DIPPER FULL

DIPPER FULL

So I don’t quite live in a village and I don’t quite live in a city.  In case you’ve missed it, I won the lottery (yes, that’s both sarcasm and truth) with Zhanatac.  If you’ve ever wondered what the world will look like post-apocalypse you only need to come on down to our southern town.  If you’ve ever wondered what true camaraderie feels like, that’s here too.

One of the great things about living in Zhanatac is that I don’t live in a village, but the villages aren’t far and all of my friends have homes there. That means that daily I can sit to pee, but that whenever I want I can head to the village and sleep in a yurt.

Or better yet, the masa-hana.  In Kazakhstan if you have a house and not an apartment, you undoubtedly have a big wooden platform raised off of the ground about a foot and a half.  On this platform Kazak people serve tea or meals, sit and talk, or most magically, sleep at night.

I’ve always loved camping.  There’s something to being outside, the crickets chirruping, the stars flashing like distant beacons in the inky sea of a sky.  But you’re enclosed in your tent, however thin a wall is between you and the stars.

Not so, if you live in Kazakhstan.

In Kazakhstan, you can sleep with the stars at your cheeks, the wind gently rustling your sheets.  They hang the tiniest, softest mesh you can imagine from corner to corner and you’re safe from anything that might be unpleasant landing too close.  The breeze wafts gently, and the mesh is so fine you can’t see it- all you can see are the stars.

And it leaves me wondering, on beautiful nights like this one, if humanity will ever see a sky without stars. If in humanities existence, one of the stars in the big dipper will ever go out.  And if so, even then, if will be called the big dipper.

And in spite of these thoughts, I am at peace.  I was born now, to do small things that are great in their own ways.

I will take it.  Gladly.

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INVISIBLE SHEEN

INVISIBLE SHEEN

I keep wanting to write about the loneliness, and I keep finding I don’t have the words to explain it without slipping into cliché.   It’s true what they say, the stuff just hits you in waves and sweeps you off your feet.  One minute you’re standing, both feet firmly on the ground.  You’re making headway.  Things are fine, even good, even beautiful.  And then a wave comes and pulls you out to sea.

I think that sort of image fits well, cliché or not.  The way it must feel, treading water, blue stretched in all directions, disorienting, disabling.  The only sound might be the harsh caw of a seabird, set to the sighing noises of the sea and the panic choking at the back of your throat.  The vast fullness, and yet utter emptiness.  Water licking menacingly at your neck.  That’s what it’s like sometimes here, suddenly and without warning.

I picture the loneliness pouring from me, seeking out any crevice or crack it can to escape;  it pushes its way out from beneath my fingernails like tiny slivers of dirt.  It overflows from the small cup of my inner ear, bleeding down my jawline in an invisible red.  It forces its way out of smallest openings: through the tiny perforations in my skin original intended for sweat so I am covered in a sheen of it.  And finally, when it has no place left to go, it forces bright tears up into the bottom of my eyes and sharpens my vision.

And with my sharpened vision I am of course forced to admit that there is no reason I should feel like such a black hole, such an empty existence.

It only ever lasts a day or so but I dread it, the sweeping wave that comes without warning, the way it demands to be seen on the outside of me, splitting my atoms rudely to push to the surface of my skin like a droplet of blood.

Oh, that was so dramatic.  Happens, when you’re caught up in it like I am at the moment.

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TENTITIVE TEETER-TOTTER

May 2010

I’m on the precipice of something new.  Something exciting.

Next month, assuming everything goes according to plan, I will be living in a one-room apartment across town.  It’ll cost me about 6000 tenge a month.  The walls are whitewashed, and the cupboards are empty.  There’s a rug hanging on the wall.

Next month, when I look out my window I’ll see a dirt courtyard with a rusted slide.  The sun will wake me up at 6:30 every morning, barging through the muddy-brown curtain.

Next month I’m going to a puppy.  A wriggly ball of fur topped with a wet nose.  I’m going to teach him Kazakh, so that one day when we’re back in America we’ll have a secret language.

I am so excited.  But I am also so afraid.

If I want vegetables this coming winter, I am going to have to learn to can them.  I’m going to have to cook and store tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.  I’m going to have to be responsible for something else’s life.  I’m going to have to remember to turn off the gas valve when I’m done cooking.  I’m going to have to speak up for myself to a landlord, in Kazakh.

There’s a very long weighing process for me.  I turn ideas around like a thing in my hands.  I consider what it will taste like.  What it feels like.  The weight of the thing.  I think about not just how it feels now wrapped in my fingers, but how it will feel later.  How it will taste, what sounds it will make, what expenses it will bring.

I’ve turned this decision over and over in my hands.  They are the representation of my physical impact on the world I live in.  The decision has been weighed.

I’m going to do it.

I hope my hands are as good at saving my ass as they are at making decisions.

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