voices to voices, lip to lip
i swear (to noone everyone) constitutes
undying; or whatever this and that petal confutes…
to exist being a peculiar form of sleep
what’s beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May
--bring forth your flowers and machinery: sculpture and prose
flowers guess and miss
machinery is the more accurate, yes
it delivers the goods, Heaven knows
(yet are we mindful, though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling, being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)
i mean that the blond absence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe;
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn…
bring on your fireworks, which are a mixed
splendor of piston and pistil; very well
provided an instant may be fixed
so that it will not rub, like any other pastel.
(While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?
each dream nascitur, is not made…)
why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid.
-e.e. cummings
On Thursday July 3rd, two weeks from tomorrow, I depart for my big adventure of teaching English for the Peace Corps in the Kyrgyz Republic (a.k.a. Kyrgyzstan). As the time seems to be rapidly approaching, I thought I should make an inaugural “Peace Corps Post” to designate this page as my official Peace Corps blog.
Here are the details: I will leave July 3rd from Minneapolis to Philadelphia and spend the 3rd, 4th and 5th there during staging – the Peace Corps name for our pre-service orientation. On the 5th I and the other 30-50 volunteers leaving for Kyrgyzstan will fly out of New York City, change planes in Istanbul, Turkey and arrive in Bishkek, the capital city in the north of Kyrgyzstan. We will then begin our pre-service training (PST) in and around the capital city (near a neighboring city called Kant), and we’ll be there until mid-September when we will be assigned our permanent post for our two years of service.
I know that I will be living with a host family during PST, and then with a different family for at least my first three months at post. After my first 6 months in Kyrgyzstan I will get to decide whether I want to continue living with my host family or if I want to rent my own apartment. My life until mid-September is fairly well planned out: I will spend 6-8 hours Monday through Saturday in intensive culture, job and language training. I’m fairly certain that I will be learning Kyrgyz, the native Turkic language of the Kyrgyz people, during PST. Since I took two years of Russian at Gustavus, I doubt that the Peace Corps office will have me learning Russian during this time. Learning Kyrgyz will be my number one task since it is much more conducive for building strong connections in Kyrgyz communities if you speak their language. Knowing Russian, however, will be my initial way of buffering the huge adaptations that will be required of me during the first few months (most everyone knows Russian in Kyrgyzstan, but not everyone who knows Russian knows Kyrgyz). I hope I will be able to use and study both languages equally wherever I am placed for the duration of my service, but time will tell if this will be the case.
The last two and a half weeks since graduating from Gustavus have been wonderful. I’ve spent them unpacking, repacking, relaxing, reflecting and spending time with friends and family. The highlights so far have been getting to go on big bike rides with my dad, road tripping to Chicago with Oaks and Law to see Iron Maiden live, seeing Mark Kozelek play at the Varsity Theatre with Michelle, and going up to Grandpa and Gay’s cabin with my family and Michelle for a weekend. Other than this, I’ve had to do a lot of shopping in preparation for being in Kyrgyzstan and for having a job that requires a more professional dress than my casual college student wardrobe.
I don’t know if I’ll be posting much on here before my departure, so let me end by saying how important each and every one of you who are reading this blog are to me. Sharing my experiences, photos and (possibly) videos while abroad will really help me feel connected with everyone back home whom I care about. Depending on how available internet is where I will be living, I may not be able to check email more than once a week (possibly less, possibly more). If I may make a request, please don’t hesitate to send me emails or leave messages/comments on my blog. Even if I can’t respond quickly, please know that your words will mean so much to me while I’m over there, probably even more than I anticipate right now.
I’d also like to thank the people who have helped me immensely in getting to this point. Thanks to Phil Bryant, Will Freiert and Oaks for writing letters of recommendation during my application process. Thanks to Prof. Crnkovic and Prof. Rosenflanz for sharing their wealth of knowledge about Central Asia and of the Russian language with me. Thanks to all of my best friends (you know who you are) for our conversations and your support regarding this decision. And a huge thanks to my family for their wise advice and supportive conversations throughout the last few months. This opportunity would not be viable for me without any single one of you. Thank you.
Am I nervous about this, or excited? You tell me. I am so excited to go to Kyrgyzstan, to learn Kyrgyz and to speak Russian, to become a teacher. I am nervous for all the reasons that leaving home can strain the heart strings. I have little fear of the departure itself – it’s the return that intimidates me, since it’s then when I’ll realize how much life has happened since my departure, both for myself and for those who surround me right now. It seems to me that volunteering for the Peace Corps merely intensifies all of the normal feelings that come to everyone, anywhere: the excitement for the future coupled with a fear of losing the people and places that are apart of us now.
But for now I’ll let sleeping dogs lie, since “the thing perhaps is / to eat flowers and not to be afraid.”
