Tag Archives: poem

The Heat of Summer

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This week-long gap between two camps has been rather weird.  There is so little that I can accomplish in the period of a week.  This week felt like a bit of a waste.  I spent a lot of time thinking–which is why many Peace Corps members fear the Summer.  Too much thinking can make you remember what you are doing here AND what you left back home.  It’s a time where you can figure out what you want to do with your service or pine over the life you left back in The States.  I feel like I’ve gone through both of these at the same time.  I am starting to develop a realistic plan of what I want my service to look like.  At the same time, I see too much of my life back in The States.

On the plus side, I developed a lot of plans during this week.  I worked on my big project–which I hope to start in full force this Fall.  I figured out what kind of books I want to spend my time reading.  I started writing more than I have been.  During the heat of the day, I feel like there is little I can do other than watch a TV show or take a nap.  The think is, the rest of my city does that too.  I guess what I thought was laziness is just cultural integration.  This really is the strangest job I’ve ever had.

Here’s a poem from yesterday.

The Quarry

Getting in the Grove

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The more time that passes living alone, the more I figure it out.  In the first week, I didn’t have a good place to read or write.  Yesterday, I made space.  I ended up reading quite a bit of a fantastic book–The Good Earth–and actually wrote for the first time in a while.  I’m slightly confused about what came out, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.  I always return to poetry when I have pent up emotions I need to ventilate.

The next forty days or so promise to be crazy.  I sat down and wrote out a schedule of events.  I don’t have much free time starting this Wednesday.  There are trainings, festivals, events, and much more.  I like being busy.  At the same time, I am starting to get somewhat of a schedule for work.  What more can I really ask for?  I needed a way to stay busy and I am starting to figure it out.  Now if I could just find a place to buy a desk…

Pacify

 

Losing My Pug

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Young PugIt seems so unfair.  Our family had two dogs as I grew up.  Cassidy was the old, larger mutt.  Tocina was the younger, smaller pug.  When Cassidy passed in November, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.  She had survived the cancer far longer than we could have expected.  The hardest part was her quick deterioration.  I was 1,300 miles away when I got the news.  I never got to say goodbye.  That was the hardest part.  I never remembered to cry.  I didn’t cry for her until yesterday–when everything was unleashed.

Tocina was never exactly healthy.  She was allergic to so much that we had to make her food out of a strange mixture of oatmeal and turkey.  It did her well, but we still had to keep her on steroids her entire life.  Considering I will only be gone for 27 months and Tocina is 8 years old, I expected she might still be alive when I get back.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  A few months ago, Tocina desperately needed her nails clipped.  It was impossible to hold her down.  The vet put her under anesthesia to clip them.  When she came out of it, she suffered a stroke.  She suffered a second stroke a few months later.

My little Tocina has not been the same since then.  Then, last week, something started happening.  It was a small shake, like she was suffering from Parkinson’s   It would only last for a few seconds.  But, as the days carried on, it only got worse.  Yesterday, it was quite violent and lasted for 10-20 minutes at a time.  She was losing control of her bowels and we were finding blood.  Despite her youth, we knew it was time.  At the vet, my mom held her as they gave her the relaxing shot.  A few minutes later, she was a dead weight.  My mom couldn’t hold her up, so we put her on my lap.  I put one hand on her head and the other under her–so I could feel her heart.  It was relaxed.  Then they gave her the shot.  Her heart gave a single beat….then stopped.

Tocina