Ni dyar'izuba, rizagaruka, hejuru yacu? Ni nduzaricyeza ricyeza?

"Violence against women and girls constituted a well-documented and tragically widespread component of the [Rwandan] genocide and war strategy in 1994. In the 1998 Akayesu judgment at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), prosecutors were successfully able to demonstrate that genocidal intent spurred extensive sexual violence during the genocide, as determined from individual testimonies regarding the stated intent of the perpetrators and the investigation of sexual violence occurring in a widespread fashion across the country. During the genocide, women and girls--predominantly but not exclusively Tutsi--survived or succumbed to extraordinary acts of violence. Many were raped at barriers erected by the interahamwe youth militia and/or held as sexual captives in exchange for temporary protection from interahamwe militia and the military. Their bodies and spirits were mutilated, humiliated and scarred. "

-excerpted from Amnesty International's 2004 report on the status of HIV/AIDS in Rwanda.

"Survived or succumbed." When those are a woman's options -- or a young girl's -- I wonder which is more attractive.

I read a book awhile back that I've never actually recommended to any of my male friends, not because I doubt their integrity or ability to empathize, but because it relies so heavily on the reader's knowledge of what it is to walk with your eyes constantly looking over your shoulder, to keep your ears attuned to the way the night sounds change as someone approaches -- to know a way out of every situation, to never walk alone at night without realizing you're taking a risk. You are female, after all. You are always somebody's target.

If you were Rwandan in 1994, you might have been a target many times over -- once for being Tutsi, twice for being female, three times by the rest of the world for being African -- and you may have survived only to fall to a more fearsome predator, one that fails to discriminate against race, age, or gender: HIV. AIDS.

The night's getting on, and this topic deserves more time than I have to give it right now. Given my itinerary this weekend, I should be sleeping, not blogging. But I felt it was important that I share what's on my heart more frequently as August approaches. Many of you know that I'm traveling to Rwanda in little more than a month with a team from Sanctuary. Many of you will be receiving letters requesting the same thing that I'm about to ask for here: that you pray for me and for my team as we go. Pray for grace and strength as we prepare for this trip, for humility and understanding once we arrive, for unity as we work, for healing where it's needed most. Pray, also, that the inadequacy of what we are attempting to do in the face of such great need will be forgiven.

but then again, heaven.

Sometimes other people's words make me homesick --
for what, I don't know.

All of the good things are present and accounted for,
the laundry neatly folded in another room,
a girl I love on her way to meet me in the city.

But then again, other people find it strange that I
write my name like a schoolgirl
all over Your page.

Meme me.

I just had my first online conversation with my cousin Bridget, who's 10. From her profile:

take my quiz
P.S. tell me when im on or away message k!

what singers do i like?
a. usher
b. meria carrie [back on top! ]
c. 50cent
d.m&m
e.alesha keys
f. all of them
g.boling for soup
h. the killers
i. green day

wats my favorite color?
a. blue
b yellow
c. both [smart money here]

I love that "all of them" isn't the last possible answer in the first question. Also, I love that it's a two-question quiz. Clearly she's a laconic spirit not born of the Curtis clan. And, you know, Meria Carrie will always be a part of me.

Vitamin C Overdose

Free Katie now.

RIP Ralph, 6/1/05-6/26/05

Ralph is dead. He was a good fish, if somewhat given to epileptic seizures and narcoleptic fits. He's played Lazarus before, but I'm pretty sure his scales shouldn't be covered in a milky white film, nor should his head be stuck in the rocks in the bottom of his tank. Ralph, we barely knew ye, but you were a good fish. I wasn't always good to you, and I wasn't always kind; but you were always willing to restart your internal batteries before this. It was just your time, Ralph, and so...this one's for you:

Get out the map,
get out the map and lay your finger anywhere down
We'll leave the figuring to those we pass on our way out of town
Don't drink the water; there seems to be something ailing everyone
I'm gonna clear my head
I'm gonna drink that sun
I'm gonna love you good and strong
While our love is good and young.

Au revoir, Ralph. Rest in watery peace.

Overkill?

Boston College Campus Police
Parking and Traffic Safety
ATTN: Appeals Board
Chestnut Hill, MA
02467-3828

June 23, 2005

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a rising second-year law student at Boston College writing to appeal two parking tickets and would appreciate your assistance in this matter.

On April 20, 2005, I wrote a check to Boston College (Check No. 216) in the amount of $50.00 for Citation No. 322952, a parking ticket I acquired when I stopped in at the International House for a brief meeting with Dr. St. Onge prior to Easter break and, unfamiliar with the parking rules for that facility, parked illegally and was ticketed accordingly. According to my bank’s records, that check cleared; so I was surprised to find I owed $75.00 in parking tickets according to my May account statement. Since I only received one parking ticket over the course of the year, I assumed that somehow my payment had not been recorded and that the $25.00 was a late fee and determined to check into the matter after finals.

However, when I called your offices this morning to rectify this situation, I was extremely surprised to learn that this amount actually represented two other parking tickets that I never received, as follows: Citation No. 312209, issued on 12/15/04; and Citation No. 309030, issued on 9/23/04. According to the officer with whom I spoke, one of these tickets was for parking in the faculty lots on the Newton campus, and the other was for parking in an Environmental Law Society “Carpool Only” spot without a permit to do so.

I would greatly appreciate the Board’s careful consideration of my appeal for the following reasons: first, I never received notice of these tickets in any form, on my car or elsewhere. Having received one glaringly orange ticket, I know that BC’s tickets are impossible to miss: I would have spotted them, had they been placed on my car. Had I legitimately received these tickets and been in the wrong, I would gladly have paid the fine. However, my first notice of them was this morning when I called to make sure my check for the parking fine I did legitimately owe had been entered. Second, I do not make a habit of parking where I do not belong. The only times I parked in faculty spots were during non-business hours (weekends or after 6 p.m.), which I was instructed was perfectly fine. Furthermore, regardless of whether I was misinformed, I believe it is inherently unfair to require students, faculty, or visitors to pay fines for tickets they never received, let alone to do so as many as five or eight months after the fact! With regards to parking in the “Carpool Only” spot, I own a carpool permit issued by the Environmental Law Society and used it on a regular basis in the fall when I carpooled with Rebekah Mandell, BCLS 2007. I faithfully displayed the permit, never used it when I was driving alone, and ceased to use it when we stopped carpooling together in the spring because I did not want to abuse the privilege.

I apologize for the length of this appeal but am grateful for your assistance. I recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, parking tickets are among life’s less devastating petty disasters; but it also does not suit me to pay for what I did not do, particularly when I do try to be conscientious of the rules. I also have a suggestion: in the future, I recommend including the citation numbers for parking tickets on student account statements so that students can quickly verify their own records. Had I known the gravity of the situation in May, I would have addressed the matter more promptly and in person. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jessica L. Curtis
BCLS ‘07

You Hem Me in on Both Sides

I've finally linked Sanctuary on my sidebar and noticed the following:

a) Sanctuary self-identifies as a postmodern church. HM.
b) Craig and Becca get top billing on the website.
c) If you check out the new Oasis pictures, you can access Kim's New Year's Eve pictures from Tuscarora and witness the Return of the (gawky but sweet former college ball player) Mack.

What should you do with this information? Download Kevin's talk on "Trust." Why? It explains the last post.

Kevin: "One of the deepest fears we have is to be revealed, to let the mask drop."

Come on, I promise it mentions nudity and Kevin's admission to having a mole shaped like Richard Nixon -- what kind of postmodern church worth its salt wouldn't, really? And we totally watched a Star Wars clip during that one, too. Bueno.

please do not let me go

I survived a cultural bubble.

I need a T-shirt that says that. For those of you who don't know me, which is probably the one person being directed here from George W. Bush's blog, my family attended an ultra-legalistic Baptist church back in the day; for those of you who aren't up to speed on your evangelical jargon, "ultra-legalistic" basically means we wore some pretty serious culottes, heard a lot of sermons on hell, and oh, yeah. DIDN'T LISTEN TO "MUSIC." What do I mean by "music," you ask? According to the ultra-legalistic thinking of the day, true music was never syncopated, did not involve drums, and had all been written either before 1945 or by Patch the Pirate. (Claim to Fame Number 8,367: my mom once finagled her way into having Patch the Pirate over for breakfast with us, and yeah...we were pretty much the coolest kids in Sunday School from Palm Sunday to Christmas that year. I can still sing every song from "The Calliope Caper.") "Music," on the other hand, had a serious beat that conjured up the devil himself, made teenagers want to rub up against each other, and -- I wish I could pretend I didn't hear this in an actual sermon -- made your heart skip a beat in a manner that was unnatural and unhealthy. That's right, folks; you can become seriously ill with just one listen to Mingus's "Ah, Um."

Still, I think there's something to be said for reckoning with the power of music. My sister, riding in the car with me on the way home from Boston a few weekends ago, heard the first few lines of Howie Day's "Collide" and asked me whether I ever felt my mood affected by the music I listened to in such a way that made it more difficult to function. I threw out one of my favorite lines from High Fidelity: "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" Answer: it cuts both ways sometimes, and baby, ya just gotta roll with it. So believe me when I say that it's a total coincidence that I'm currently enjoying Ryan Adams' Love Is Hell, Part 2, lifted from the Greenwich Library (Which. Is. AWESOME. Greenwich, just when I thought you couldn't be any poncier, you go and do something like open a library replete with a cafe, a direct link to Best Buy, and self-checkout stations...and totally redeem yourself), well-known for keeping close to the more maudlin, everyday theme that life is lonely sometimes. And I'm digging it. I'm feeling strangely like I've narrowly escaped something, and I think I like the thought of being lonely right now. I think...well. Here's what I think:

I've had three heart-stopping conversations with as many people in the past two weeks, all dealing with three very different forms of love in three very different contexts, and in the aftermath of each of them I've come to the same conclusion: we are so, so often wrong. But this is only dangerous if we don't acknowledge that fact, if we don't accept another point of view...if every once and again we refuse to let reality break us, to let the reality we've taken such care to create slip from our hands and shatter. Sometimes we need to throw it down ourselves and offer ourselves up anew, recognizing that we've become slaves to our own creations.

In my case, this surfaced most recently in a conversation with my mother in which I realized that my insisting she be the perfect, infallible creature of my childhood makes it impossible for us to grow closer. Saying this to her and acknowledging that she felt its impact made it what it was: farcical, unrealistic, and ridiculous. We conquered it because we named it and said goodbye to something that, while undeniably precious, was what it was and no more.

This is what God is, I believe: the Thing That Breaks, but breaks to mend; that helps reshape the pieces into something that more closely mirrors Truth. TBC.

........................................................................
don't waste your breath, don't waste your heart
don't blister your heels running in the dark
I walked to the river, and I walked to the rim
I walked through the teeth of the reaper's grin
I walked to you rolled up in wire
to the other side of desire

Galileo

Betsy noticed that our neighbors have red binoculars placed in the window directly opposite our living room. If they'd looked in this weekend, here are some of the things they may have seen:

homemade apple pie (by Erin) and French movies with red wine, bacon corn muffins (by Erin) and stories of obsession and good conversation, one good phone call and the skinny mirror, meeting the future Mr. Becca, rearranging furniture by myself all afternoon and the attending forms of frustration, Kenji sans projector but plus sushi and Jen's face when she tried it for the first time, midnight strikes by Marieka, "the Eye-talian butt release" and massage tables, Craig in overalls and the hugest pot of sausage and peppers anyone has ever seen, the "Thirty-Minute Mojito" by yours truly, not enough hip for that hop, etc., Four on a Red Pillow, Trivial Pursuit -- done in by Pearl Jam.

Betsy, upon removing Ralph the Beta Fish from his tank with a spaghetti strainer: "The quality of Ralph is not strain'd."

...

...le sigh. :)

Will she or won't she?

Somewhere in White Plains, Erin Book's new haircut is being born. She's trusted me with scissors (why do people do that?) and, after chopping off six inches in Round One, is in the WC deciding whether she should go still shorter.

UPDATE: Haircut success. Erin fabulous cook. Am leaving law school to become hairdresser-poet from Rhode Island.

Favorite line of the night: "Do you remember that time twenty minutes ago when I said that there was no non-permit parking in the lot by your house? Yeah, I was pretty much right about that [cue downpour]."

I honestly have had the most unexpected week in terms of reconnecting, or connecting for the first time, with people who truly want to know me. Tuesday night was such a spontaneously good conversation, a no-holds-barred, come-at-me dropping of all pretenses with a girl whose past looks a lot like mine; it's amazing how much you can communicate when there is less you have to say. A run in the chilled air with someone else's dog, a cup of tea and a good book later, and I am ready to see what tomorrow's got to say.

You're dangerous because you're honest...

Cuz It's a Pimp Thang

News flash: I now like tomatoes.

Apparently, it is feasible to stay up till all hours talking on the library steps multiple nights in a row after the age of 22 and still adequately represent one's clients in court. I'd get all Derek about the events of the last week (i.e., Derek: "The moon was rising and our spirits joined it. A white flight of seagulls careened noiselessly through the air above us, seemingly celebrating en masse what we both felt stirring -- the dregs of yesteryear's disappointed notions of the nature of being replaced by the sweet concoction we cradled carefully in our hands as we feasted on the goodness of life and sugar"; versus Jessica: "Last night, I ate some cotton candy. A bird pooped on my shoulder."), but I'm having too much fun right now Gizoogling my own website. Yeah, yeah...you all saw this site years ago. But I have a theme party to pimp. (Go Ghetto Fabulous, Saturday evening, Evaristo Avenue, bring your fried chicken and leave your glocks, door prizes for the biggest hoops, details if you want them.) Here in their redacted glory (what's up, Jesus?) are some of my favorite Gizoogled lines from my very own website:

1. "I very much love it here" became "I very much love it here, hittin that booty." Which, true.
2. "Or William Shatner" became "Listen to how a motherBLEEPer flow sh*t. You know how it is ridin' in mah double R."
3. Here Snoop Dogg reaches out to John Cusack: "This year, in particizzles has been a bad one fo` keep'n in touch wit old friends, chill yo."
4. "God said it was vizzle good -- but He's tha only one in mah killa."

So! See you Saturday?! Faaantastic. And Derek, you know I love you...but I do have my moments, jizzy like tha rizzy of us whities (Krishnan, represent).

Greenwich Mean Time

Ah, Greenwich. "What bliss," says Juli, reading over my shoulder in her green peasant top. And rightly so. So far in Greenwich, we've got:

1. Eight luxury car dealerships.
2. Five traffic cops standing in an island of movable white picket fences and, when they are off summering on Hilton Head, stop signs...also behind movable white picket fences.
3. Two movie theaters--independently owned by locals who patrol for feet on the seat during the movie.
4. One French hair salon owner who believeth not in the power of the screen but will, instead, hire an exterminator for basement, three floors of house, and the entire yard.
5. Two town clocks, one shamelessly emblazoned with the Rolex logo.
6. Nineteen million dollars, the cost of the Tiffany's building on the Avenue.
7. Three sisters who call me Peanut and go on and on and on about their trivial spats
8. One standard poodle who loves me passionately and trots upstairs to see me whenever his mother isn't looking.
9. Fourteen police offices patrolling the streets at all hours of the day and night.
10. Thousands of ticks eager to spread Lyme disease.

...marauding roommates who took control of this post against my will whilst I lay pleasurably ensconced in my virginal, mosquito-netted princess air mattress before leaving for a hot date with an entity known in other parts of the world as Josh King (Josh: "Just call me the best thing that's ever happened to you. Here, eat a Twinkie.").

Ah, Greenwich: where the entire city is kept at a comfortable 68 degrees.

Love Song.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy -- to walk humbly with your God?

Of a childlike faith, and of
my honest praise;
of my unashamed love...

of a holy life, of my sacrifice,
of my unashamed love --
you are worthy.

Captain's Log, Stardate Fourth Day of Work

I have so, so much to learn.

School's Out For Summer

Dear Friends,

I very much, oh! so very much, love it here. There are items to discuss and confessions forthcoming, but for tonight there is something sweet and wild about the place with which I will not trifle, so I must internet-SHOUT congratulations to sweet Becca Jane and loyal, faithful Kenji-la, who are both now engaged (albeit not to each other) and as in love today as I wish them to be years from now on the other side of life. I can't say more; my heart's full of that sniveling sentimentalism I often reserve for, well, weddings. And "Cotton: The Fabric of Our Lives" commercials. Or William Shatner. You know how it is.

Love,

Me.

P.S. Thoughts about leaving can be all-consuming, and I would like you to know (you = whoever you are reading this, whether it's you running after me, hard on my heels as I pull away; or whether it's you I can no longer find when I turn the corner into the pasta aisle singing Meatloaf) that life is long, God is good, and we are all too human to go messing much with bitterness. I sort of maybe wrote y'all a little something on the matter because I've realized how small my heart can be, how niggardly I can be with words of appreciation and encouragement, and how jealously I can guard my time. This year, in particular, has been a bad one for keeping in touch with old friends. You know who you are because you've called and harassed me and yes, gosh darn it, we can get a croissant. Anyway. This one's for you. It's untitled and it's rough and it may even be ugly, but...

These are the things that you take on a journey:
a change of clothing, piano wire, and eyes that can be kind to children;
a July night spent wondering whether the rain will end,
your crazy cow-tow smile and old soul, a heart bigger than you know;
and -- if I am very, very good and you are feeling generous --
a picture in your mind's eye of me in this old news city,
hands on my hips or head in a book, following the path
the moon sets for me across the sea.

Some moment will come soon for those who love you
in a coffee shop, at your high school track, around a campfire
or down a stretch of backroads shared -- at a meal you would
have shared, had you been here. The house will be warm,
coats and scarves piled high on the bed, and we will all be
on our best behavior. The night lies close and expectant,
and yet --

I will start a story that you've always finished.
I will notice that you're not where you should have been
to catch the same look, to draw the same laughter,
to be quietly bemused by the befuddlement of our
general company not privy to the joke we share.

I will get up from my seat and leave the crowded kitchen
for my back door, slipping outside and shutting it fast behind me.
What can I give you, so far from me? What can I offer but the past,
kept in margins of books and in pictures hanging on my wall,
a quick hello you will not hear, a jab in the ribs you will not feel,
a prayer for your good life, and hope incorrigible -- a dress rehearsal
of all my best intentions.