40 days of survival

Last night Nora and I spent some time reading and discussing the first few verses of Matthew 4, the story of how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (or, in Nora's Bible, the desert). I once watched the show Survivorman on The Science Channel. The show's host gets dropped in any number of severe circumstances and locations far removed from civilization and he has to find his way to civilization and survive without anyone's help in the span of seven days. He shows the viewers how to survive being stranded in circumstances hopefully far more extreme than any of us will ever encounter. But anyway, this man is absurdly fit for these life-or-death battles. In the episode that I'm now thinking of, he was caught in the desert and did things like steal eggs from a bird (how did he find the bird and manage to steal the eggs before some other desert creature could get it?), eat the first egg raw because he was famished and couldn't wait any longer, then cook the other egg(s) on the hot stones. At one point, he even pissed on his t-shirt and then wrapped it around his head to keep cool--despite its putrid urine smell, and he sipped out water through plant stems from mud to stay hydrated.

This has given me a slightly new perspective on Jesus' whole 40-day fast in the wilderness/desert (whichever one it was) thing. Even if we aren't sure how he kept himself hydrated while in the desert, we are sure it wasn't easy--but he gained his nourishment from God; the word of God sustained him. I mean, I don't think anyone doubted that it was a hard time for Jesus, but now I tend to think it was even harder than it first seemed...

Alas. My computer battery is almost gone. I had quite a bit to write today, but it's coming out slowly... running down the battery and... so it will wait. Hope all of you are well and nourished. Miss you.


Here's some info I copied from the website on Survivorman, if you're curious:

No food, no shelter, no fresh water — one man alone in the wild for seven days with only his wits and stamina to sustain him. Each episode of Survivorman finds survival expert Les Stroud abandoned in a remote location with little more than the clothes on his back — and his cameras.

Les not only needs to survive for a week with no supplies, but he must film everything himself, dragging 50 pounds of camera gear and batteries every inch of the way. Armed with a unique one-person camera rig and an abundance of wry humor, Les documents his struggles to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in climates as diverse as the Costa Rican rainforest, Georgia swampland, high Sonoran desert and Arctic ice floes. He even spends one episode splitting his time between a leaky raft and a tiny island — 80 yards across — in the Gulf of Honduras.

yes.

Teaching today... God, I need help.

I mean, I taught today and God, I need help. Too tired to give a full account; but I do know that...

-- when a Thai speaker answers "pie apple" as his favorite fruit or food, he probably means "pineapple" and not "apple pie." The ABAC pollsters helped me out with that one.

--you can never prepare too much.

--in addition to work shoes to wear on the job, it might be a good idea to bring shoes that can withstand a flood... and also an umbrella (especially for when you get off the bus and have to run without cover).

--bring index cards to class so that you don't have to try to explain the concept of index cards when you ask them if they have any.

--when you ask students to write letters about the first day of class, expect that someone might try the "I have a very beautiful teacher" trick.

--as A. Ian instructed us new teachers, the question "Do you understand?" is one of the most useless questions ever.

--so, too, is "Does anyone not understand?"

--uhhh... yeah. I don't know...

but, yes, I survived.

writing loneliness. processing and lullabies.

Just read a passage from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones about loneliness, about using loneliness in writing. Her last sentence had some resonant phrase about sharing our love for rooms, for light, for lullabies. Lullabies—are these merely the songs that we hear, the melancholy melodies we play over and over on our stereos or in our minds? Is the loneliness and the slip into self-satisfying sadness part of what this music attracts in us? Or do these songs offer some distraction, or some testimony to how sadness birthed creativity, how the artist found a productive way out? I don’t know why this seems so fascinating to me at the moment, it’s just coming as a series of thought. Stream, never the right word—because thought jerks and stops and this fluidity, whatever there may be here, calls itself warm and processed. My brain is rusty at times when it comes to processing. The image of a milk or cheese processor comes to mind. Yogurt cultures may be better. Imagine: the metal gears—whatever they look like (N.H. and S.A.G. will both probably know what they really look like)—in the dairy factory, where the processing takes place. And this is my mind, broken down over the matter. Rusty gears contaminating the processing—taking away the excess fat, meanwhile adding my own foreign dirt and grime.

Don’t ask me where these images come out. I’m in Thailand, for goodness sakes. Maybe it’s the skim milk in my fridge: unusual, though not unheard of, for me to keep a skim milk in my possession.

This is not to say that I’ve found myself in the throngs of loneliness. Sometimes it takes but a morning in one spot, playing that minor-keyed song over and over, to brew the whisper of loneliness. Sometimes it takes but a word, a phone call, a prayer to get out…

Exploding taste-buds, as Nora put it.

Hey, folks. I'm leaving soon. But I haven't been in one place for longer than a week since the beginning of the month, so this statement may not mean all that much to some of the people I've already left. Teaching English in Thailand is next. I've just spent the last hour or so listening to my sister in-law remember some of the adventures she had in Cairo, Egypt. She lived there for a year before marrying my brother and gained a wealth of stories. Smothering, smelly polyester in the metro; buses that are so crowded, the bus driver doesn't hear when you yell your stop; gas stoves that you light with matches and risk getting burned... to name a few. Something/someone (Nora?) tells me that living in Bangkok will be something perhaps easier than living in Egypt was for Lisa...

Getting ready... Get ready...

And I will miss all of those whom I've left and will soon leave. We'll keep writing--keep writing. Thanks for caring for me, for being there and listening and providing support and advice to me when I needed to hear something, someone. When I couldn't quite hear much myself. Thanks for showing me how to follow and know Jesus better. Love better.

"it's easier in retrospect"

dear jane, i'm packing.
finding snails on the window sills
and coins inside.
reading essays on beauty--
aesthetics and the charred chins of baby
chimney sweeps--london, the 1800s. listening to
authors on my radio
reopening their files, cabinets
and murders in a shadow-shocked
family. good bye, jane,
the poet's buried aunt.