Seasons and motion: Meditations about things

Wasting your life

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:37:04 GMT

For the past couple of days I'd reach a certain point where I just stop doing things. I'd told myself "I just don't know what to do," but I realize that's not altogether true. Sometimes you wake up from something akin to a dream, like your mind had been in a fog, and you realize you've been wasting your life on things.

Maybe it's not on everything--very likely it isn't--but does that really matter? What are those things that fog our mind to honest choices? It's the weird premonition for me because I used to consider my days as very full, but lately they've been lacking due to ultimately wasted time. You commit yourself to something inconsolable and you find your heart distant, distraught.

I haven't pursued this, but this has probably been what's gnawing at my conscience. It has nothing to do with this very likely being my last year in Viet Nam. Could that have leant itself to it? Possibly, but this is a greater lesson to me than where it came from.

At times like these, I wonder whether I'm like a driver in a car, sitting stationary while blindly staring at the next bend in the road, never taking myself down the path my eyes are blankly regarding . . .

An appraisal of dignity

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:20:45 GMT

What is true dignity? Do we know it when we see it? Is it more than a manner of speech or how one carries him/herself? How do we acquire it? Can we lose it? Have we actually lost it?

I've been thinking about this for awhile now since a friend by the name of Richard described it as a gift one receives from God (if I'm doing what he said any justice). That would seem to make sense: dignity as the expression and workings of His heart for those He loves. Yet this is a word relegated to classical speech, perhaps rightly so, but it has still seemed to lose some of its meaning. A gentleman can be described as "dignified" in how he walks, but he could really just be pompous and vain. A woman can have very "dignified" speech, but she could really just think she's better than the rest. Or vice versa. Still, what has become of this thing that can be understood as a heavenly endowment?

What's caused me to consider this recently has to do with where my own showing of dignity to others is absent. During times when I am around someone who asks for money, what is showing them dignity? What rightly appraises their true worth and meets their need? Then I consider how I treat myself and conduct my own life. Is it a reflection of worth rightly attributed to my life, or is it originating in myself? While trying to avoid worshipping the idea of dignity outright, I find myself somewhat haunted by it. Whether such is as it should be I do not know, but perhaps it's better to have it than to not.

Choice acceptances

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:27:11 GMT

It's probably the choices I've accepted with the greatest of ease that have generated the most problems in my life. When I think about it, I take less time managing those choices than I do other things. Call it a form of appeasement, or even call it someone else's fault for bringing it about. Either way, it's a choice I make regardless of the level of attention I give it.

Here's an example more related to life here that doesn't stem from me. People will describe some of the effects of globalization in terms of the influence of western culture, often along negative terms. Some things mentioned about that has been a growing acceptance of things like cohabitation or other areas of "western" "culture" that run counter to traditional life here. Whether things like that are necessarily western or cultural is another story in itself (I consider them neither, as such things are not universally accepted through any given culture in "the West"), but they exist as a choice for people here. Usually it's "the West" that is assigned the blame for what ultimately resides in the choice of those individuals who might accept and do such things. That's another way of placating responsibility, and not creating an incentive for changing one's own actions.

Life presents many choices, and any number of things could nudge them in front of us. For me, it could be something like the results of accepting a life outside of ready contact with people I know, or how my days and nights blend together--reality is no more elusive than the often-subtle choices I make during it. At that time, maybe I should begin wondering about my own gladness, the source of it, and whether I haven't just traded it for a few paltry, choice acceptances.

Breathing and pause

Thu, 15 May 2008 02:03:11 GMT

It's now a little less than a month until I be back in the US for the Summer (June 14th for those who don't know). This time last year, things were a little unusual, such that they required an earlier return to the US than planned. I'm glad this Summer is different in that sense, but it has its own fair shares of changes are there in place of what was unusual last year (like a gecko chirping in my room just now). I find it's most evident in how I judge myself, and the things I consider most important to me.

With those things, the school year is finally at a place where everything has shifted down several gears and has slowed down a lot. Still, my own life retains that feeling of situations being more of a mixed bag than understandable due to a relaxed pace. While life slows down, my heart doesn't really follow suit. It's still anxious, still wrestling with itself. Looking at what's taking place around me, it shouldn't, but that doesn't alter how persistently I feel it.

These are moments where I need to wonder about where I'm going in my life. Surroundings don't make for lasting peace, as much as I enjoy quiet, restful moments. A restless, discontented heart can easily obscure the slightest semblance of understanding into something of foreign origin. I don't think life was meant to be viewed that way.

Do I need a vacation? YES. More importantly, do I need a deeply-engrossed sense of understanding towards my life? Even more so. The struggle is then to attain such a Peace that looks passed the trappings of a fleeting point-of-view or the attraction of mere knowledge, and accepts life according to providence and inspiration . . .

I need to be there.

Giving

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:40:27 GMT

At various times, I've gotten caught up with the idea of my own giving. That's not an idea discouraged in the world today, as well as some of the circles I find myself around, but it's got the idea all wrong. Kind of like pigging out on low-fat food: the practice negates the point.

When I'm honest, I have nothing to give people, really. In the past, I used to mute that statement with the reality I receive so much help and support from others anyway that I let the literal sense of giving be all there was: I give nothing because all I have is literally what others have given me. The symbolism was reduced to reality. I've not been discouraged from giving--it's just often been couched in the terms of expectation, where you ought to give, even being considered right to do. "Sacrifice" gets tossed about a bit then. Instead of seeing yourself on the receiving end of a gift anymore, it's a form of a gratified expectation. Not quite the same thing. I don't dare speak of that as an absolute, but I feel like it's the over-riding theme during any audible mention of the word.

So, what have I looked for, if I can say that much? The gift. Giving very often doesn't come on terms decided by us. Instead, it takes the form of the one giving. When conditions are made to appropriate giving, what is given retains form but loses status. I don't know how often I've given something out of duty, while foolishly interpreted it as gain for the receiver. Maybe it's out of a sense of control giving is granted its worth nowadays: giving as an expression of the ability, rather than the gift.

This has arisen out of my own need to admit a need for giving without pursuing the gift, either of my receiving or mistaking what I should give. The dilemma there could be "well, what do you give, then? What's the big deal about giving? I don't see it." True, there's a touch of despair there, but that's the point: that attention doesn't grant one the gift they can soon give. Giving is utterly un-iconic. It's not made for the senses. What you have to give is inchoate, not so easily marked. The question then should be "then how do I give it?"

If this is all just high-minded, philosophical, or even overblown, then don't trouble yourself with the answer to that question. However, if it's not . . .

Being foreign

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 08:36:09 GMT

Later yesterday afternoon I was sitting to the left of one of the many trees that surrounds Ho Guom (alternately known as Hoan Kiem Lake or "Sword Lake"), taking a quiet moment to overlook the non-foul smelling western side of the lake (the northern side of the lake by the bus area was positively rank yesterday). I had just taken out my English translation of Shusako Endo's Silence when, out of the corner of my right eye, I saw what looked like a young, Vietnamese male figure sit to the right of the tree. Sort of like the foggy recollection of a dream in the morning, my thought at that moment was something like, "We're about to talk, and I can already guess the content of 95% of our conversation." Sure enough, I was right.

As is common at Ho Guom (and Xuan Huong Lake in Da Lat), if you're a foreigner and stationary, someone will either try to sell you something or practice their English with you. This fellow was the latter. Knowing what English students' practice needs are like, I played the sport and talked to the young man for about an hour, even though I knew what he was going to ask me before the words left his mouth. The only unanticipated 5% of our conversation registered in the area of a stereotype towards Americans: did I own a gun? Given Charlton Heston just passed away, it seems somewhat of a fitting tribute in retrospect. I was half-expecting him to follow the question with "have you ever shot anyone?"

Foreignness. It definitely ain't a new experience for me, but you re-greet it with people who aren't used to foreigners. Even though the conversations don't always explore new territory, it's a fact of life when I'm "the white guy." That sort of foreignness I can anticipate, but it's the hyper-sensitive experience that can greet you among those more like yourself that can be a little more challenging.

At times, it seems like the expectations of the "foreign life" from other foreigners can be just as stereotyped as how we're perceived first as foreigners. Rules of conduct, what you're supposed to like, the perceived necessity/place of culture shock--all can seem somehow dictated to you if you're ill-used to living in a different culture. If more sensitive/vulnerable, you can fall right into that way of thinking and living, to where the topics of your own conversations become 95% predictable, falling somewhere under the headings of culture shock, language study, teaching, "name that sickness," or nostalgia. The last one probably supercedes and informs them all. In a way, you then start to become foreign to each other, even though most of what you say sounds informative.

Granted, that way consists of a lot of small talk, but it's a little rote after awhile if you interpret overseas life as something separate than how an ordinary life can feel. With that, I begin to desire less towards attributing life here as "something special," barring the reality it's uncommon for the majority of people to live in a country they aren't a citizen. There are times when designating a particular set of experiences as common to a life does more to confine and limit life than broaden it, like setting up personal walls to prevent one from feeling too much. It's behind those walls you start hedging in definitions for what you experience, and life and people start to look plain, a little less distinct in their own created worth and image.

I can't say my life has been 100% free from that, but it's gotten better. Still, you look around, you are the foreigner, but it doesn't have to feel foreign. My knowledge of the Vietnamese language will never be anywhere near what I would like (though it does suffice for the time being) and my height will never edge closer to 1.6 meters like the majority of people I meet unless someone saws my shins in half, but I'm consciously here and living life. Being foreign doesn't require you to feel foreign.

That's my two cents on that.

Watering a dying plant

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:07:19 GMT

Outside the backdoor of my room on what I can only describe as my "balcony" (I'm at ground level, so it's not really overlooking anything) I have a dying plant. Now, it hasn't always been that way, as I first acquired it come mid-November for Teachers' Day from one of my students. At the time, it was lively and had flowers that bordered somewhere on salmon and magenta in color.

Over time, specifically before I left for graduate school classes in Thailand, the flowers started to wilt, and one-by-one some of the green leaves began to fold-inward, making a color transition from yellow to brown to dropping off entirely, dead. There are no flowers on the plant anymore, and there are three leaves, two of which have started turning inward.

I guess it's been over the past month or so since I've been aware of the eventual "fate" of my plant that I've wondered why I've continued watering it. For all intensive purposes, the plant is "on its way out." It would seem little better to grab a random stick, shoving it in some dirt, and watering that than to water this plant of mine. Yet, I continue to water it, and it seems to strive on as when I first acquired it.

At the same time, I've wondered at different times how often I carry on in the same manner with myself as I do this plant (you knew that parallel was coming, didn't you?). Seriously, though: do I try to rescue dying ways in my life, once-healthy ways that ultimately result in parts of me turning inward and wilting away? People and plants are definitely different (though both are respectably made in their own ways), but, while a plant cannot help but be a plant, people have an uncanny way of betraying any dignity stamped on them since before birth.

Would it be better if I was just a plant, rather than capable of doing things that result in honoring less the worth inherent in my life?

Finitude

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:36:01 GMT

Time feels like a companion who changes personality at every new meeting. That makes time and I unusual guests, given I favor continuity with flavoring added along the way. Actually, maybe that makes us a little too fitting. I guess I'm not talking so much about time as I am the One who knows the end from the beginning.

Still, time is a different companion for me so far this term. I find myself wanting to try new things in class as a desire to help students, but haven't totally reconciled the cost that has on me as a teacher. There are angles with such preparation that I need to assume at what feels like a raised standard for me, at least with my make-up classes with my second-year students. The costs of growth, and not letting the desire for brief feedback be taken as a sign of approval.

Life is not all school and learning, and there are still those quiet moments present in a day. Perhaps the stillness of an unexplored morning, or a spell of wonder amid a pause in class. Outside of class . . . that part of life this semester is still unformed.

That, and it's mentally wearying to have most of my classes at the start of the week. At that . . .

Going fallow

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 06:19:54 GMT

On my ride back from the airport Thursday night, I was having a simple conversation with the taxi driver. I'd been asking about having to work on what was a national holiday with Tet festival and the lunar new year. He'd described how he still got to spend time with family, but knew that he had to work later in the day because he lived in the countryside region of Noi Bai to the North of Ha Noi.

Then, the car pulled off to the side of road on the highway, and, for some reason, I got the paranoid thought, "Wait a minute, he's going to rob me on the side of the road!" I don't really know why, except maybe because I was tired, so a little delirious, or that I was entertaining a passing comment made one night in a tuk tuk in Chiang Mai of the same nature. Low and behold, the driver, who smelled faintly of liquor, simply was responded to the call of nature, and stood facing rice paddies as he relieved himself in the cover of night.

There's more than just a basic function of nature that goes alongside returning to the familiar. While I was ready to return to Ha Noi, there was a part of me with a lingering uncertainty that almost resembled dread. It didn't have anything to do with people or work, but the you that returns when you do. I can't say I believe I leave something when I travel, but I hope I bring what I learn back from my time away.

My times away usually involve realizing something about myself, more particularly either affirmation or rebuke. This time away affirmed where I'm going for the future, but it's a test to return to what you know. Maybe it's playful naivete, or atrophied muscles of various kinds. Still, my returning here finds me at that in-between of habit and potential. If the language learning process can be described as an "interlanguage" along various stages of growth, maybe this is my "interpotential." Okay, that doesn't work quite so well.

The campus remains empty, with fallen leaves swept only by the breeze. Small birds (perhaps chickadees) reign throughout the school, and with an occasional rat seen scurrying along, greeting its year. The time in-between two points can appear fallow if it's approaching something New.

Just press "Play"

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:42:07 GMT

It's been nice to be back. Ha Noi has a bit of a chill to it, which first greeted me as I stepped off the plane last night. I'm wondering how much of this is a part of the wintry weather system that is hitting China. Either way, my insulationless home has a chill too it, though it's warming up some.

Having the time away was good, even with all the work involved. The two weeks of graduate school classes were definitely a marathon, but the conference afterwards was not too much like work. I found it to be enough like a vacation to be worthwhile. The kinds of times I've found to be the most meaningful are those when I'm allowed to simply be at rest and abide. There'd been a number of things sorted through the past week or so related to the future, and I've come out of it affirmed in the direction I'll be heading into.

So, I've come back from the time away looking forward to the next semester, and, beyond that, even the next school year. It's been awhile since I've been able to really say "this is how I will claim this life of mine," but I believe I've finally rounded a turn towards a more genuine expression, and a more sincere walk.

There's a little more details than that, but I feel this is a good starting point. Perhaps I'll let the details unfold themselves over time!

Balancing my 50/50

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:32:58 GMT

On the Myers-Briggs, I'm kind of split down the middle between extroversion-introversion, and my inner-introvert (?) has been appeased more as of late. It's a Friday evening and I could be "out on the town" or some such thing, but I realize my heart isn't really drawn to doing that. I'm not altogether against going out and doing stuff, but it feels like I've entered a spell of inaction. In some ways, my semester has reflected then when I just lacked the energy to head out. Having no classes for awhile has helped that along, as well, but it hasn't been what's maintained it. A part of me is seriously considering whether this isn't the final drawing towards ridding myself of so much dross, which usually occurs in private.

At the same time, I find myself a little more out-of-place with more social times. Maybe it's just things needing to be counter-balanced by all that introverted time, but I'm slower to talk to people as I used to, which wasn't a whole lot then! A lot of the more memorable times I have are with people, yet the end of the semester isn't necessarily marked by such things. Lately, I've found myself beginning towards that place of acceptance of the place I'm at in the present, and anticipating those steps towards the Goal. People are all along that path, but not during times of stillness.

Then, in over a week will be two weeks of graduate school classes in Chiang Mai, Thailand, an odd number of days to pause afterwards, and onto a week or so conference. With that people-fest, I suppose it's alright to have this time, even though it feels peculiarly similar to what my energyless times throughout the semester.

Curious revisitings.

Accepting days

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:12:10 GMT

Seeing time come and go over the past few weeks or so has been a bit of an education in themselves. With the term and its classes winding down, you get that experience of small conclusions and hopeful expectations of eventual happenings, be they in getting to know people here better, or seeing students do well in what I tried to teach them for the past few months.

Have I wanted the challenges along the way? Not if I could have predicted them. At least, so says the fearful coward in me. I'm beginning to think a little more openly towards these days we're given, and maybe am seeing a little better the Grace pervasive in the small things. Instead of getting self-absorbed and dependent on the responses or acceptance of others, maybe this heart has come to feel things tenderly without flippancy.

So, acceptance of days looks like tenderness and fair contemplation, appreciating life in the moments possessed in them, personal failures or even successes of others aside. Maybe this is serving in Love for this soul here . . .

Holding on, moving forward, and living with abandon.

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:28:06 GMT

It's a strange feeling of being at the semester's end. On one end, it's the common feeling of time "going by so fast," but also realizing a lot took place. Before this year I've gone through one transitional year after another, and have entered into my second semester with some sense of finiteness. That has all been due to physically moving from year to year, but I'm wanting to say this isn't going to be that situation this time around (hopefully and thankfully). Such a change is always possible, but I don't have any foreseeable reason to consider that as the case here.

With that, my question then becomes "what does one do when embracing the next semester without a fear of what'll happen afterwards?" Living with abandon. Maintained relationships, unboxed belongings, and a sense of being settled. Sure, it's not even next semester, but I'm willing to allow that bit of continuity to splash into the next year for once, trusting that's what He has for me. We'll see what is revealed between now and then.

I don't think it's too silly to want to envision that . . .

Stolen

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:57:21 GMT

I got my mobile phone stolen on the bus last night. I'd heard of people stealing things and what have you, but I usually just made sure to keep my hand in the same pocket as my wallet. Low and behold, it was from one of my other pockets that this happened.

Fault can be placed in different places. One could be how I'm a foreigner, so I'm a target for presuming I'll have nice things. It could have been I should have known better with choosing to go on the bus with its hazards, so I was kind of begging for trouble. There's a view of the pressure of the holidays coming up (by that I mean the Lunar New Year), and how that drives people to do wrong. At the end of the day, though, people are sinful.

There's no consolation in saying "just like me," but it's a quiet wonder that drives a person to do what they should not do. In that sense, maybe it's not consolation, but almost remorse. There's remorse knowing I sin still, and remorse knowing how sin separates people from Love. It's a mark of infidelity of the soul, showing itself through hungry desires for what we're not meant to have.

By the end of the day, I will probably have a newly-purchased version of the same phone I bought with the same money my Mom gave me for my birthday just two weeks ago. I may even be able to get the exact same phone number I used to have, and probably a few new habits while riding the bus. However, something will be lacking, and it's not the phone numbers on the SIM card. Honestly, it's my pride. Not all of it, but a fair portion.

We all hunger for forbidden fruits . . .

Curious righteousness

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 05:41:42 GMT

This Sabbath weekend (which is how I've come to view the weekend in general, given both have Sabbath connections, though Saturday more than Sunday) I had a curious image of righteousness after I left the Vietnamese service I went to this Sunday morning. While I was looking for some xoi (which I eventually found for the expensive price of 15,000 dong! I should have asked first), I saw a Buddhist monk squatting on a street-corner stool. He was the first monk I'd seen smoking a cigarette and talking on a mobile phone at the same time. All he needed then was a plate of dog meat and a beer and he'd have become the antithesis of his appearance.

Coming from the US, righteousness is often split down the middle when it comes to appearances. There are camps which suggest avoiding anything that can be abused, and there are camps that don't, so long as one is responsible and temperate. I count myself a member of the latter camp, though I know there are more than just those two, but this is only one entry. :) However, I'm unaware of that really being the case in Asia, or specifically with Buddhism. Having a mobile phone maybe isn't so surprising in today's world, as I saw a monk with one in Thailand, but cigarettes are something else. I guess since it's technically being of a plant works for vegetarians, right???

As peculiar as the image was, it's sort of been a subtle bit of punctuation with how I've recently been looking at life. How often righteousness has been designated and quartered off to the area of terms and behavior to me that there's been a slight numbing to it as a state. Such a state should cause right actions to just rise up, but it has often felt like actions first, state second. Abiding is a term I could use here if it didn't also get used or brought up heavily, so I'll stick with state.

Is righteousness first an emblem, or a state?

Being understood

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:12:00 GMT

How long does it take to get to know a person? What should we look at first? Only appearance? What questions show genuine interest, not just our opinion of the person, or level of agreeability?

Different things have prompted that with me, but it's the quiet thought of knowing your sense of purpose and identity in life that draws me to those questions about being understood. As often as I've called myself quirky or even strange or not the best communicator, I need to show myself a little more respect there because we're all a little goofy at the end of the day. It's just where we look when we face those differences that matters.

There's a Sara Groves song that settles on my mind with this called "Loving A Person." She uses a lot of words like "time" and "trying" and "reaching out" and "vulnerable" when she writes about what it takes to show love. I wonder how much of that isn't what we should show a person we don't understand.

Do I show that to the stranger or the rude man on the street just as I do to people I would seem to know well?

Wwwwwinnnnnnnnding down . . .

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:35:16 GMT

Things are finally starting to creep to a halt here. Not entirely, but ever closer. The majority of the actual content in my classes has been taught, leaving mostly just assignments and review for final exams. At the same time, students here have their assignments, but those are lessening in amount as they edge toward completing those tasks. Being a student myself at APU, I'm basically finished with all my assignments, too, leaving only the work for December in one course.

In Ha Noi, the weather is hovering a little more around Autumn weather, with the mornings being a little brisker than usual, and there are even occasions where it might not hurt to wear a long-sleeved shirt (though with rolled-up sleeves, of course). With cooler weather comes the importance of times of warmth, either in literal warmer surroundings or good company.

Why go on such a tangent? It's one of those moments of reflection for me in the school year. Compared to previous semesters of teaching, this one has felt the most productive, though not without its consequences. Busyness still has taken away from time that could be spent with others, for teacher and student alike, and the curious juggling act where you don't get the rhythm until things wind down.

Perhaps that's the irony of teaching: by the time you figure out your groove, you're about finished, and you start dancing to another tune right after that.

It's alright. It works for me, and the time spent is not time lost. At least, I hope not!

An acceptable dishonesty?

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:55:59 GMT

Ever since my contact information, specifically my mobile phone number, has become a part of the public domain, I've had to contend with "admirers," if you will. Perhaps the bigger challenge with that hasn't always been in what's been said, but the choice of some such admirers in what they don't say. If a stranger messages me, I'll naturally ask first either "what's your name," and/or "who gave you my phone number?" It's often at those very simple questions that my admirers withhold the truth.

Why do that? I've told those people that they weren't being honest with me, but they will respond believing they were. Some thought it was some playful thought of "having secrets," which is only minorly acceptable if the person isn't a stranger. It's been those times I've told them, by withholding the truth, they became liars. Most respond to that apologetically, and then give an honest answer. It's the few who've acted defensively that have been really out of turn, even rude to me, that I have problems.

One such person did that the other day. No matter how I tried to emphasize the simple need for honesty (this was online, and was concerning who gave her my phone number, in particular), she didn't see herself as being dishonest. She felt that it was necessary to keep the identity of the person who gave her my number a secret. With that, she was also assuming I was going to do something bad to her friend. That makes me feel really good! Not.

These are from strangers, so what they assume of me doesn't hold a lot of water. I guess I don't really see a need for secrets when a person can just say they don't feel a need not to share something, which is something different. Who gave someone a phone number . . . that's no big test for honesty.

The place of contemplation

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:13:47 GMT

[Written last night.]

Though I feel like I'm beating a dead horse a different way with this next entry, I've continued to learn lessons from the cost of busyness. Fortunately, it's something rising out of hopeful redirection.

Awhile ago I'd mentioned about Ronald Rolheiser's book, The Shattered Lantern, and how it's changing my view of the ordinary life. A point Rolheiser makes is of giving prominence to one's contemplation of what's eternal and beyond us. As I've looked at my own life, I've found that peaking through by not easily recognizing the greatness of ordinary things. By that I'm not necessarily referring to the great triumphs of a child learning to use the potty. Rather, it's a little more mystical, a little more in the steps of folks like Brother Lawrence.

In busy times, it grows increasingly difficult to listen; that I've grown acutely aware of lately. What I've missed because I haven't been putting myself in a position to listen is, with that, beholding, while not making What is beheld as something to be isolated to human terms. I think such beholding paints my sense of pleasure and wholeness, and that might be true with other people, as well.

This is not something I share as a "lesson learned," but a hopeful working out of a more true orientation of the heart.

There you go! Another splash from my stream of consciousness.

Greeted by two Autumns

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:36:00 GMT

The reduced temperatures of Autumn in Ha Noi has started, which so sets the beginning of the next two seasons here I refer to as two Autumns. Never truly cold, Winter is more just an extension of Autumn, "Late Autumn," let's say.

However, now has started a cooling of temperatures, with cloudy skies, soft rains, and locals bundling up while I walk around wearing a T-shirt, slacks, and sandals. Indeed, Autumn has begun! In tropical climates as Viet Nam can have, I'll probably always miss truly feeling cold, seeing my breath in the morning, and ice or snow around me. I may need to go somewhere further North in Viet Nam to experience the cold, though no snow, but I can accept two seasons of Autumn. It's probably the the season I like the most where it's evident in its changes.

What is lacking from Autumn here that I remember from Autumn in North Carolina? The sight of leaves changing colors, the quiet rustling of wind through the trees, the sound and smell of dead leaves on the ground, strangers outside burning those leaves and fallen branches, the feel of flannel, the sight of smoking rising out of chimneys . . . Simple things, but they make up some of my memories of this season.

Time

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:05:04 GMT

Most lessons I learn about myself tend to be in the context of something quiet, and yesterday was an example of this. Since I began teaching the higher-level second-year students on Fridays, an on-going problem I've experienced was time management. In the beginning, it was just "what is the typical schedule for class?" As classes moved along, I continued to get a better idea of the schedule, yet still had problems in time management. The class being very open-ended and discussion-based leant a lot to timing waywardness ("Why should I stop it when they're having such good discussions???").

As has become something of a routine in itself, yesterday's class was no exception. Even reducing the number of additional activities led to a lopsided class, and it almost didn't end on time. Something I'd taken to doing after confusing class times (there were other things like the whole class dealing with talking about controversial topics; whew!) is taking time to lie down, no lights, and just be vertically conversant. I kept returning to the thought of time management at different times, but didn't feel completely settled about it. It wasn't till the end I realized why: I wasn't managing my time very well in general.

There'd been tension in the past week or two concerning a feeling of constant work. Living on-campus contributes to that, but it can be controlled. I hadn't done that. Times of replenishing have been fleeting, and anything involving discipline became more laborious. I shouldn't have been surprised with the realization I'm not managing my time well, but I was. Seeing that slosh over to my lessons is just a clearer sign than I anticipated.

So, here I am on this Sabbath, wondering about Rest, and hoping to see that slosh into and replenish my work here.

The Shattered Lantern

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:53:32 GMT

For a couple years now, I've had in my possession the book by Ronald Rolheiser called The Shattered Lantern. Honestly, I hadn't looked at the nature of the book since I adopted it (it was left over from prior teacher(s)) and remained a resident of my shelves and boxes up till now. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I began to consider it again, then a few weeks after taking stuff out of my boxes and putting that book in a more noticeable spot than the rest in my portable mini-library.

Why share this? Because I'm at the place that is the focus of the book, and, with what's revealed page by page since I began reading it Saturday, realizing I'm right there in the thick of it. For those who haven't heard of the book or looked it up yet, it examines the crisis of belief in the world today, a facet being it a kind of "practical atheism."

Let me explain so some of you don't suddenly worry and think of me "Jesse! What's going on???" Rolheiser speaks of the state of belief nowadays as moving towards "practical atheism" as an accumulated result of centuries of thought influencing us to live more inwardly-centered than vertically-minded. He presents this as "practical atheism" because we move from inward motivations of faith to a moral, right-sounding end that doesn't demand any faith of us. Essentially, outwardly we're believers, but inwardly our judgments of things aren't faith-based, so like believers who never did. "Practical atheism." (I've paraphrased and condensed a lot there; he says seriously more than just that.)

As it should, that ought to sound like a reflection of many well-known tenants of faith, but that's the whole thing: it's something great synthesized into something impotent. By that I don't mean "strong when weak." This is a recurrence of the realization I reached last year of how much of my outlook on life never really felt rightly settled in my life, what I realize now was because my outlook on life--and myself--never really changed since believing. Rather, it got distilled into my view of the world as it always had been. The faith was/is still there, but the attitude and personal-compass remained centered and directed by me. It just had holy vocabulary peppering it, with some honest changes of heart and mind, to be true.

The dangerous side of this is we absorb it, an inheritance of western thought working its way through every facet of life, common or sacred. It's not some new "way" or philosophy, but a look beyond the veil of what has affected western beliefs and living for centuries now. Though challenging, this realization has been a good thing.

Work and leisure, patience and self-discipline

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:32:17 GMT

There's been some quiet reflection on my part about how I spend my time. For the most part, it's busy. Busier than I've had in the past. Teaching-wise, I write and teach lessons for very different subject areas that lend to an entirely different classroom environment. So, as I sit down on this familiar wooden desk and hash away at ideas, it's using different brains for each one.

All of that isn't even factoring in where my heart is at personally, and how that affects my days. That's also such a totally different world that it's curious to reconcile things. For example, three mornings a week I have free talks with students. Tuesday and Thursday are for my first-year students, but Wednesday I've allowed for my higher-level second-year students. I welcome whoever arrives at my home, and there it becomes a personally-awkward blend of public and personal. There I am as the teacher, yet still doing teacherly stuff, but there we are in what best resembles a casual time not in class.

So, where am I in all of this? It might be that question that has caused an occasional feeling of limbo, trying to sort out the publicness of my life with the constant openness, trying to carve personal time amid so many other things. Sometimes it feels like trying to find footing on slick surfaces. On a personal level, I realize that's where I've made errors in my life's choices, and that spills into my work.

This is not my trying to produce excuses as to why I haven't communicated as often as I have in the past, but it incidentally does clue into that. At any event, I hope you find this as a window into a normal day of mine.

Sonnet 91

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:33:02 GMT

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,

Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,

Some in their garments, though newfangled ill,

Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;

And every humor hath this adjunct pleasure,

Wherein it finds a joy above the rest.

But these particulars are not my measure;

All these I better in one general best.

Thy love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,

Of more delight than hawks or horses be;

And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.

Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.

[Speaks to a sentiment I need to project more vertically.]

Personal and professional life

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:41:02 GMT

Although this was a sick week for me (that's about over with now, aside from a weak voice), it has been an almost exclusively work-related week. Not a winning combination with sickness, but also with health.

What has crept in has been work, and no lingering free time. A legitimate part of that has been my lacking a lot of energy this week, yet having a job to do. With that, it's also been a scary window into a schedule I hate: CONSTANT work.

There are textbooks on my desk, but they can get ignored. It's when I keep grabbing at them that I have problems. The times that happen is when I feel like I'm scrambling, like this week and functioning at 50% capacity. Then, all I have time and strength for is work, and nothing else.

What have I missed the most? Personal quiet times to read and think. Time to write e-mails to people. Time to enjoy a cup of real coffee. Time to go out and do something light that I enjoy doing. Time to be more available to others here. The simple stuff that fills up life and makes it yours.

I don't hate what I do, but I can see where it can be a consuming thing. Teaching-wise, this week was fine . . . but not personally.

Teachers in public schools, I don't know how you do it.

First weeks . . .

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:40:26 GMT

I'm finished with what is technically the first week for many of my students, yet am now on the coattails of a group of higher-level second-year students who just finished with their third week.

I know at different times I'd shared about the dilemmas of how my teaching year could possibly look as far as having many other different offers because of teaching less than the normal number of hours. The curious thing at the end of that was there wasn't really going to be a solution that truly didn't involve some compromising with what I felt like doing. With that, I'm realizing my work load for this semester may be a little more than I'd prefer, but there isn't a lot of room for change.

So, it's edging into Friday afternoon for me, and I'm about to begin on a lesson for my Speaking class, and know I have to wait for material related to this other class I'm now responsible for. I believe I'll be alright, but it's just a quirky way of looking at resolutions.

Separate thyself

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:21:52 GMT

*** I'm really unaware of how many people actually read these things nowadays, if at all, but I'll give it a go anyways.

With this Summer drawing nearer to a close and a part of my feeling a need to try and "encapsulate" a lesson in this Summer (as my writings on this here page are pretty random), I think I'll draw upon something that has pricked my heart a few weeks back and have lingered since then.

First, a semi-introduction: it can be a temptation when one either goes overseas, or when one returns from being overseas, to not be able to reconcile differences experienced. Terms like "culture shock" or "reverse culture shock" often get thrown around. I may have said in the past I'm not wholly a subscriber of those concepts, but that there are elements of them that have some relevance, so won't go down that road again. In bringing those up, it's often difficult to try and step back and separate yourself from your experience. One doesn't even need to have a passport to do that, as experience has a way of alloying itself to our view of life or the world. It's for that very reason I think it's vital to get in the honest habit of separating yourself.

When I say "separating yourself," I don't imply disconnecting the meaning or worth of an experience or callous objectivity, but looking at is as a whole person in a larger world of understanding. Not that I have the corner market on that, but there's a lot to the world/life that can either enrich, or mess up, a person. That can be a challenge when going overseas, the tale of people "going native." Then, we return to our home culture, and we don't know why people don't understand us. Adjustments we've made don't get translated to the people we've cared about for years. It's at that time stepping back is vital--if you don't, you risk alienation. Feeling alienated since before traveling may hyperextend the experience, but the premise of risk is the same.

I bring that up as an expression of compassion in a world--and country, in particular, with the US and its divisions--that needs reconciliation. It's easy to approach something that has had an impact on our lives, yet not grasp it well enough beyond the visceral experience of it. Then, we lose out because we can't fully see how we've been affected, and others lose out because there's a nameless void separating them. Separating yourself is a delicate balance and feels like losing or invalidating what we felt from the experience; maybe "stepping outside yourself" or "taking a step back" sound gentler then. Whichever expression is used, there's a wealth of lessons had in a life.

It'd be a shame to provide stock footage without the broader lesson, the wide-ranging gains. Then, lives truly are changed and built up.

A heart-to-heart from the grey dog

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:49:35 GMT

***This is slightly longer than usual. I trust you'll see why in reading it.***

I arrived back in Asheville at about 9:20 last night. It was about as good of a time as any, given I was edging towards exhaustion from off-schedule sleeping habits for the past 2.5 days. Although a bit out of it (noted when my weirder-than-normal grammar that I used when talking to my Mom, conscious that "I'm about to say something that doesn't make sense"), some unsettling things had bubbled to the surface after my time on Greyhound that didn't have to do with how out-of-whack their system is. These things left me a bit humbled, echoing things I've written about already, and have tried to understand with myself lately.

First, people who ride on Greyhounds come from many different areas, but you won't find very many materially-wealthy people there. You won't find many iPods or fancy cell phones or laptop computers being brought out or Samsonite luggage. No. You'll have CD players (at max, if anything; it is strange when we've reached a place where owning a CD player is a lesser-thing), gas station-sold paperback books, obviously-used clothes, wearied expressions (even before the long travels), beyond-needy children, garbage or rice bag luggage. To be truthful, I felt like a snob (maybe "a yuppie" is more precise, given I can't really afford the nice gifts I've received), as I was the only one I saw with something remotely looking like an iPod with my SanDisk Sansa, and, though about four years old, my laptop.

Despite the fact I've worked overseas for the past three years, and will return to that in a month, you'd think my view of people would be more open. I was embarrassed to find out how socially-arrogant I still have with my fellow members of humanity. I'd watch people with weary-uncertainty, trying to gauge where they're at. The "every man for himself" approach of how Greyhound does business made other people into competition. While I go overseas with a desire to help the poor, why do I virtually spit on and shrug off those in my own country?

It was during the final day of traveling I got hit with my arrogance. The bus was arriving in Dallas just at the time when the bus to Knoxville, Tennessee, was loading. We pulled in to the sight of a long line of people alongside a bus that many of us groaned as we realized "that's our bus." "Every man for himself." Indeed, I was quick to get off the bus and get my luggage, but they had wanted us to go inside and line up at Door #1. This didn't make a whole lot of sense to be given we should have just gone through the same line with everyone else (my patience with Greyhound had reached zero by then), even though I'd have been one of the first in line, so I got in line with those beside the bus.

Then came the confusion I felt. People were lining up inside next to Door #1, and I knew I was choosing contrary to the norm. My resolve began to weaken at that time, though the line drew me closer to the bus door. Eventually, it came my time, the bus driver unfolded the series of tickets in my hands, hole-punched it, then let me on, my luggage put in the under-belly of the bus. So I crept on, feeling dirty, and sat next a young man caught up in his GameBoy Advance (random bit of technology seen there). Looking around, I saw about 5-7 free seats, and began to realize "I could have made it anyway." Then Greyhound went true-to-form, let the very first guy in line on, but left the rest at the terminal. They were to be picked up by a bus they got for them shortly thereafter, fortunately, but I didn't know that then.

My heart went a-tumbling then. I'd seen the faces of those people left next to Door #1, and had grown irritated with some of them, enough to move on without them. English-speaking or Spanish-speaking, black or white, they all sort of blended together at that point. During that time He continued dealing with me with my heart, with its attitudes as He had been quietly-but-pointedly drawing my attention to for awhile now. It came to a point where, having gotten to see so many different sides of humanity and myself, I simply asked "Is humanity worth saving?"

I've begun realizing that outright looking the ugliness present in the human heart can do so much to blind one of any Hope, of anything Sacred to come out of it. Yet, and perhaps a curious twist on Friedrich Nietzsche's well-known quote, the reason the abyss stares back at you is there is a reflection of it in yourself. Sometimes there are many things and ways we grow accustomed to that would veil that in us--perhaps we could call them customs or ways of life or social class. The frightening reality is to see, at the core of our very hearts, there's that same ugliness is in us we find so plainly in others. Somewhere, I got myself lost in all the ugliness I'd seen in the past few years, and I began to get pretty close to serious apathy, a scary thing when I know Hope.

Now . . . their need, however veiled or presently differently by life, is my own. There are no borders for culture. Such is where we all stand. Such is why the ground is level, and fair Judgment. Their and my Hope meet us at the same place, everywhere in the world.

It's taken me a long time to see that, perhaps because I wasn't aware I should, but I see it now.

Thinking about the US

Sun, 06 May 2007 13:54:03 GMT

I've actually been thinking about the US a bit. I originally wanted to type "my time in the US," but that sounds a little too much like I'm going to jail! I don't think it'll be like a jail, though I realize we all may have our opinions about it. My thoughts haven't really landed in some jail cell attitude, which I'm glad.

I don't think it's my attitude from my studies that makes me interested in this Summer (I've decided to let my studies this month be more of a review and "closure" time to be able to say "I accomplished this"), but just a gladness to be back. I've usually had some sort of hesitation about it, which is sort of there, but is largely replaced by just knowing "it's the Summer." It's a break with some traveling and business in it.

With that, a part of me almost wonders what it's like for everyone who remains in the US, or wherever their home country is, and don't have the experience of being away. Kind of a dangerous question to ask because it rests a lot in just plain speculation, but it's a curiosity of mine, no less. "The norm" in the US--not meaning "the 9-5 grind," but just living and working there--is sort of a novel thought.

Weird, given my "norm" is living overseas, and I'm novel to those who find "the norm" in what is overseas to me.

I think that made sense . . . sort of telling about human perception of haves and have not's. Anyway, I'll enjoy time in the States for the Summer.

"This is what clean smells like."

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:45:55 GMT

Many of you know I have a green Nalgene water bottle, known if for no other reason than it seems to make a cameo appearance in many photos I'm in. Well, when I planned on returning to Viet Nam about eight months ago, I thought I'd buy a special scrubber brush to stick inside the bottle when it needed cleaning. So, I arrived in Viet Nam late August of last year . . . and the scrubber brush had stayed in the grocery bag up to today.

I know: "Eewwwwwww!!!" I hadn't cleaned in it awhile, but it didn't look unclean. For all I could tell, everything was the same as on the day I last cleaned it (a day which shall go unnamed). That is, until today. I thought, "Hey, I might as well actually clean this thing," so poured the remainder of some recently boiled water into it and scrubbed it with the eight-month-new brush (which I did rinse before using). It looks about the same, but it smells different. I didn't add anything scented to it, but it just smells different.

For all I can tell, everything else is the same about it. The bottle is no different, except for how it smells. In my looking at my own life, I realize my own changes occur so subtly, and I probably handled my bottle that way because of how I respond to changes with myself: if you or I can't tell, there's nothing to worry about.

My life ought to be marked by changes. Some of them probably should be seamless, but there also needs to be evident ones. Perhaps an aroma, nothing that comes from anything I've "added" to myself, but something that just becomes me through being made clean. A bar of Irish Spring or sweet pea scented body lotion aren't necessary for that (not that some of you would listen to me if I told you!). A state rather than anything I can do or add to my life.

Can I be clean in knowing that I am?

Being away from tragedies . . .

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:59:22 GMT

It's tough to do when things happen in your home country as took place in Virginia Tech. I believe it was last year or so with Katrina that I was away for that. There are some things I don't miss (like the mudslinging of elections, or the spin doctors in the media business), but national tragedies . . . I don't know. I feel like I'm a little less of a participant in the grievous reality of things.

With trials, there can be a few things that baffle the mind. Of the news I've had available, seeing on CNN.com the repeated linkings to videos of parents crying. Having lost my Dad many years ago, I can attest that a spectacle doesn't need to be made of death. Yet, to note the grief of others, and then turn the camera on them . . . I don't know. It feels a little contradictory.

No one wants these things to happen. No one wants to deny the working through of one's mourning (almost typed "process," but mourning is rarely so friendly). The sadness I see here is confusing the search for answers/understanding with finger-pointing.

Let these things get worked through . . .

Ordinary days

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:51:35 GMT

I'll try a slightly different font. "Lucida Handwriting." Sounds like fun.

A little weird, but life has felt a little more normal as of late. Not as though I didn't know what normal was, but I'd sort of been going through a few ups and downs. From that, the weirdest thing has been how important a perspective is with the things we do. I think I'd been choosing to just respond to the things in life that ought to just come along naturally, rather than why I do what I do. Like with studying Vietnamese: I really just wanted to study to feel more at home while here. Yet, once I started, in came the flood of grammar and pronunciation and fluency and accuracy and sentence variety and . . . the list goes on. Those all become more real, and I overlooked the quiet, simple point that I enjoy being here.

So, here I am. Seems He's helped me appreciate what I have a little better. Not that they ever anywhere else, but I understand them now. With that, some experiences of this week.

I am now no longer alone on the third floor. Sometime the end of last week there was a "guest," at least so I thought at first. A young Vietnamese woman came up the stairs and immediately ducked into the room across the way, closing the door and the curtain over it. "Okay, no problem," I thought. Then, a view days ago, she opens the gate one evening when I return home, and I later overhear her and the landlady talking in the room across from me, and I realize they're talking about me (unless there's another 26-year-old--by the lunar calendar--studying Vietnamese and teaching English). The landlady goes downstairs, and I go over to the young woman's room, apologizing for not being more talkative because she always ducks into her room. She says she considered me a ma xoc, a house ghost, given I also didn't talk. Talked for awhile after that, and we talk now when she isn't dead-tired.

Then Monday evening I had dinner with a student from Ha Noi with her older brother and his wife. When we weren't swapping Vietnamese idioms and proverbs (don't let that be confused as deep conversation; some idioms are . . . odd), we just talked casually until I needed to return back home. An off and on time of using Vietnamese. My attitude towards studying has changed, too, but before this week took place. Remembering that I wanted to study Vietnamese just to feel at home here . . . so simple, but why forget it?

There was also some folks at a nearby park last night listening to the funk song, "Funky Town" ("Won't you take me to Funky Town?"), while doing what looked like trees blowing in the wind while trying to dance "The Robot."

I think all those chances and experiences were always there--and may not always--but I see them now.

My mental second-stomach

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:55:48 GMT

Windows Live Spaces is undergoing some upgrading in their network, apparently (found out by my going on there and everything disappeared rather than showing up as, well . . . actually, it eventually just ceased to show up). At any event, I still have stuff to share coming from my mental second-stomach.

A few months ago, perhaps, I realized there wasn't really much joy in what I'd been doing. I was able to say "I've lost the joy," but hadn't understood why. So, nursing that realization sort of brought me along the path eventually leading to today. The past couple of weeks I've been deliberately undeliberate over studying. It just lost its flavor (originally typed "flabor"; tee hee hee, my English is turning poopy). Investing that much of me into something tasteless is like the thought of eating mass-market vegetarian food: I know why it's good for me, but it's downright bland. It wasn't until some of the past couple of days I turned a few corners. "A few" because they are different, yet connected.

Working backwards, I let myself forget/lose sight of the fact I really only am studying Vietnamese this year because I want Viet Nam to be more like home. However, I allowed my time to be filled with several abstract, intangible things that are oft-quoted yet worthless, like "attaining fluency" or "talking to your neighbor" or what have you. Those come in time, but, as I've been reminded while studying for my Master's degree, are not the point of language. As a colleague reminded me a week ago, language is ultimately communication, but it gets spoken of in the terms of fluency, accuracy, etc. Measurable, but meaningless.

Why get caught up in intangibles? They emphasize the mind, and my mind struts with the world's view of the primacy of the mind. At times, I seem to lock steps there, but it hasn't led me anywhere in marching. Correction, it has led me somewhere, but nowhere. Information (as opposed to knowledge) doesn't really lead to understanding. Truly, puffing up instead of building up. I've dealt the majority of my maturing life with that view of what "knowledge" is, but it hasn't drawn me closer to understanding. The work of mental gymnastics deceives in the feeling from tying the mind in knots while it resolves nothing.

At the end, my beliefs and fuel began to lose their flavor. Those that ultimately have were weak already, like mantras and quotable material and "clever" logic. Depending on your view of the word, it led to a shade of personal despair. Not utter hopelessness, but hopelessness in the face of emptiness. With this, my emptiness was in my getting absorbed by the shallow. What made such so very difficult to see/understand is how they hold the appearance of good, but find their meaning only in themselves. Post-modern treatment to life.

I word it vaguely for reasons you know given location, but also realizing this applies to all of us living people with whatever we value. We often put people or words or books above suspicion or accountability, and that's foolhardy. Downright stupid.

Truly, "know thyself."

Crises

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:11:02 GMT

There's a lot I don't really "understand" or "get" right now. For the most part, it's personal. I can't really help the conditions of people or circumstances, as touched on in a previous entry or two, but it's my own response that troubles me.

More often than not, I find myself in the game of misapplying my understanding about myself. I don't even feel like whether I should label it as "faulty logic" or misunderstandings or lack of sleep. Honestly, there's just these lackings, these short-comings I'm finding with myself in the area of what I know. One would think--oh, who said it?--"to know others is to know yourself," "know thyself," or some other such version of the thought of you only know others in the light of who you are. Part of that maybe is prompted in ways from beginning a book for a Master's class I'm taking, called The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. Yet, such is really marginal because (so far) I've found Palmer to be quite excellent at synthesizing statements of deeper meaning into personalized conjectures. In other words, I won't ask his advice.

The bulk of where I'm at now could be best described as a "crises," but by that I mean a converging of different unresolved issues on one life at one area and time. Some are in the area of my personal walk, some in the area of my response to life with trust, some towards life with joy, some in frustration and tiredness, others uncertainty over the future. Over all those areas is a shortage of words about them. Honestly, I'm tired of them. Speaking around things is only good if you know where you're headed, and I'm not talking about a lack of faith in where I am going. It has more to do with myself as the person getting there.

Such is my life.

On communication (though not on TOP of it)

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 05:44:59 GMT

Well well well . . . relationships and circumstances placed in. Just kind of in one of those delightful and quirky places at looking at the things that change with those that seem to never change. With that, there's the eerie continuity of life at the home, so much so that it's even starting to head in reverse, becoming more of the same. By that I mean even less interaction from unchanged behavior. I try to keep with a cordiality that I normally have with them since there are scant doorways for otherwise from them, but there's seemingly less from them now. There was already little to begin with, and now there's even less. How to go from very little to less . . . I haven't a clue.

The other thing is study changes in the form of an unannounced new teacher for me. Well, correction, it was announced, but after it already was decided for me. In six months, and for various occasions and reasons, I've had close to ten different teachers. Sought for? Only on one occasion. So, my study habit has been broken up on ten occasions by the initial meeting and making acquaintance time that takes place with teacher-student relationships. Heaps of discontinuity there. Finally, I got irritated by it, and began vocalizing my feelings, first with my new teacher--who went to the language school director about it on her own volition--and then I talked with him about it this morning. Funny . . . he'd said my former teacher was busy, but, when I saw that teacher this morning, she said he just made a choice without her involvement. Seeing as I know the teacher better, I trust her word over his.

Changes, and then not so. Communication . . . I miss it . . . at least, effective, considerate, honest communication.

Processing

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 04:59:19 GMT

Amid feelings of "walls" and what have you, I feel like I'm making progress in different areas of my life lately. One has been my burden to serve the people in the poorer areas of Viet Nam. There are some facets to that which make things a little curious. One such area is realizing their needs would likely be of the more tangible sort, rather than what would come from teaching English. From an article I read in the newspaper here, there are already concerns of ethnic groups in those areas losing their native dialects for Vietnamese, not English. If anything, English isn't even on the radar. I'm trying to be honest about skills or abilities I bring, and, unless I "ask" for them, I realize I'm unaware of ways I would be in such contact with folks in those areas. Alongside that is the concern of their losing their cultural identity. By that I don't mean customs or "what you believe/do," but the expression of one's cultural. I really feel those to be different, and losing one's language is really to lose one's culture. So, it's a hard place to be up against, but I know I need to be there. What is best for these people? What may be tough for me is having to possibly say "what I bring may not necessarily be best, though my concern for them is an expression of that."

I'm also finding with myself how I believe I've finally realized how so many of my own walls are placed there by myself. There are things I do without asking, "blindly," really. It's not a matter of my right hand not knowing what my left is doing. I just fall into habits, ways of answering, ways of living, ways of relating that are either just a reaction to the world around me or not honestly looked at in the first place. With my saying this, I'm not saying my perceived-solution is "hand me the magnifying glass!" It is seeing how my habits affect my life, starving my resolve and confusing my will. Yes, I know we all have habits, but it's something else to see a habit for what it is when it's wrong. Realizing ways I deceive others and myself by giving incomplete answers, either not wanting them to know or distrust in the person . . . things like that. I know this can be all helped by a greater connectedness, a greater sense of community, so I am sharing this with all who would listen.

I hope you help me out here by keeping a tab on these areas in my life I'm looking at and assessing honestly.