New Abode

Now accepting (well, soon accepting) callers at Candler Cottage. Pictures to follow.

(This post is for Beth S., who has feelings about places. P.S., Beth: I mapped it. It's half a mile from your front door. The summer of love continues into the autumn of affection.)

Tootin' Ye Olde Horn.

I am, by nature, a rewriter of history. Most storytellers are, I think. That's fitting. We want to be able to reimagine life differently than what it is. We need to birth new worlds, see deeper into moments, find a poet no further away than our own writing table. But it's a problem for me when I find that, in the act of recreating, I can no longer remember things as they really happened. I want the truth AND the lie on hand at all times.

Case in point: my new moniker, "J.C., J.D."

When I remember law school, I feel lonely instantly. I put on a sweater and notice that it's suddenly too tight. I make a pot of coffee. My stomach knots. I breathe in, not the warm invitation of old books and oversized wooden tables of childhood libraries, but the antiseptic smell of a new facility housing nothing but legal reporters and always kept five degrees colder than was comfortable. In mid-August, I feel as though I haven't seen the sun for days.

This is a false memory.

True, these are accurate memories. For parts of my law school career, I was uncertain, unhealthy, and alone in a new culture -- one I wasn't sure I liked -- for large amounts of time. But I don't want these memories to overtake the rest of what happened here, because the entire truth is this: in these three years, I became. I stepped foot on the very ground that prompted me to law school in the first place. I helped people who were too afraid of violence to go home at night. Friends found me. One of them encouraged me to put back on my running shoes. Church became a sanctuary. I forgave and was forgiven. The world opened: I got my first passport and unexpectedly lived in London. I fell in love and was loved right back. My kitchen became a new zone of creativity. I showed my written work to someone other than my mother or boyfriend. I gained the confidence to take classes that couldn't help my GPA. I learned that, if anything, I need to dream more deeply than I have. Somewhere along the way, the adventurer within awakened from a long, quiet sleep.

...and on that note, I do hereby solemnly swear and promise to cease and desist from writing only about myself. This city is too darned crazy and wonderful to appear so infrequently here!

"If love is stronger than hate, then war is not all there is."*

Sometimes, it's a close call.

*Madeleine L'Engle

Two of These Years

8-13-05, Kigali, Rwanda

For hours, I'd been awake writing. My hands have always proved themselves to be more reliable messengers than my mouth -- my mouth, which I swear is directly connected to that side of me that can be more hyperbolic than measured, more quixotic than true. For a week now, you'd been around every corner I turned. I'd leave where you were, afraid of how quickly we were falling into old patterns of laughter and thought. I wondered what you were after, wondered whether you knew that I was preparing to say goodbye. I had to. You would have known why the instant I said it: I couldn't shake an abiding faith that we belonged, in some way, to each other's worlds. From experience, I knew this was a solitary vision. But now -- now, you followed me, a course of action so unlike everything I knew of you that I began allowing myself to think I was being pursued.

It terrified me. This is what I still do not understand about love: how, when it comes home to one who longs for it, it takes courage to let it in.

In the end, I conceded that my skill was too limited to distill the picture in my head: you and I and a mountaintop, descending. You and I, always you and I. Elemental. Who can say that without sounding trite or overblown? Not I then (nor I now, except you've taught me that you value me for trying). I struck out several lines, buried my papers in a duffel bag, and prayed instead. If I'd learned one thing from this land and these people, it was that prayer was more than a last resort. It was a direct line to peace.

8-14-05, Kigali, Rwanda, to London

The sun was still struggling steadily up the city's terraces when we drove in silence to the airport, taking in the last of a country we both inexplicably loved.

We boarded plane after plane; again, you followed me. Here you were, rescuing me from being pinned by a behemoth of a diamond trader. There you went, asking the newlyweds next to you whether they minded moving over one seat to make room for me.

Somewhere over the Sahara, we changed. You recounted our friendship and told me that you'd come to Africa without any expectations as to who we were. You told me you were leaving with something different. It seemed to me that you spoke for hours, quiet and confident, abandoning too the words you'd written me the night before. You invoked the word intention, and when I asked you what you meant, it was clear you saw it, too...everything I saw, the rest of life ahead of us, an adventure, a companionship, a simultaneous coming home and a striking out. Everything, all at once, together.

I won't ask you whether you remember what happened next; I know you remember. I didn't speak; I couldn't. I didn't want to. I took your hand, though, because THAT I had wanted for a long, impossible time. We landed in London, and you left me almost immediately for Brussels. It would be three months before I'd see you again, three months before I'd know what it felt like to kiss you, how you liked your coffee, whether you were a good tipper, how prone you were to throwing me into piles of wet autumn leaves, how you looked when you were absolutely content. I knew all of that lay ahead of us, and so I said goodbye without concern for any of it. It would come (and it has). I, who could never wait for anything, could wait for you.

Why I Don't Rely on Babelfish:

As I double-checked a thank you note written in Spanish to my roommate's family, Babelfish offered this lovely little gem as the alleged -- but very incorrect -- English translation of what I wrote:

"Thanks for its generosity and its amiability towards me during this last anus, first with the materials for my maquina of seam and secondly with the abundant gift of the graduation."

At least I know enough Spanish to keep my digestive system out of the picture. As for my "maquina of seam," well...that's another story.

"I continue to use your name for my blessing."

In broken English, a man I met two years ago this week in Rwanda writes to inform me that he appreciates the (very) small favors I can do for him, the latest being so simple to our American eyes: searching the Internet to find potential scholarship money for his wife, who wants to study law in a Rwandan school.

I wonder if he knows how great an honor I count it that he calls me friend.