Ups, Downs, and Veggies.

April 9, 2008

10:20 AM


There’s no hiding it. I’ve had some major ups and downs lately. My latest episode was a pretty heavy attack (anxiety, over-thinking, loss of control, etc.). In short I have come to this conclusion: My heart is being torn in two directions. Kind of obvious, and even bordering cliché (being a Peace Corps volunteer on the other side of the world), but it has never been more evident than in the past few weeks.

The major dilemma is that I am ready to come home, but I am not ready to leave Kyrgyzstan. I stated this in my previous posting, but it deserves an adjustment of perspective.

I returned yesterday from a short trip to Bishkek. The doctor was worried about my mental status, and figured it would be a good idea for me to come in and have a talk with her. In the end it was concluded that I am not depressed, I don’t hear voices in my head (seriously), and that I need to try and stop over-thinking life. In other words, I need to take a deep breath. It all sounds kind of silly that I had a minor mental breakdown over this. It is this mentality, though, (the “macho” mentality of PC volunteers) that brought me to this point.

On a very deep level, I believe I am a very strong person; someone who doesn’t have mental breakdowns or suffers from anxiety attacks. Yesterday and today so far I have begun to accept my humanity. Yeah, I’m emotionally weak on some levels, and I need to accept that. Accepting that I can and do struggle sometimes with the world I live in seems to be the most difficult part of all of this.

For now, I will just start with being human.

When I returned to school yesterday, never was it more obvious as to why I am going to hate leaving here. Like news about me tends to do, most of the people knew that I went to Bishkek a few days ago to see the doctor (I told my host mother and the director of my school that I was going, so naturally most of the village found out). From the time I left my house for school until the time I reached my classroom, I had to have been asked by a dozen people (students, teachers, neighbors) how I was doing.

They were not asking the usual, “how’s your health?” They were genuinely concerned about my health. They heard that went to the doctor were surprised since most people think I’m super human (I run and play soccer, making me a super-sportsman; I don’t correct their misconceptions, I like being super). When I informed them that I was fine, then resumed their usual questioning (“How’s work? Do you miss America? How’s Amy? Where are you going?”).

I have become a relative, a member of the giant family that lives in my village. It will not be easy to leave my family here.



April 14, 2008

8:45 PM


‘Fiddler on the Roof’:

Villager: “Let the authorities grow like onions with their heads in the ground. AMEN!”


Tevye: “The wit she gets from me…the tongue she gets from her mother.”


Perchik: “Money’s the world’s curse.”
Tevye: “May the Lord smite me with it. And may I never recover!”


Tevye: “He loves her. Love, it’s the new style.”



April 15, 2008

7:30 AM

I dreamed in Kyrgyz last night. Crazy.

A quote from Ellis Cose (from Newsweek):

‘”But it was not just such benign, generally unstated assumptions that forced Obama to play the role of racial teacher. It was also an unending stream of racial-baiting silliness emanating from people with strong opinions about his candidacy. There was Bill Clinton, who seemed inclined to make Obama out as a latter-day Jesse Jackson. There was Gloria Steinem, who, in an op-ed, stopped just short of saying it would be unfair for a black man – instead of a white woman – to be offered keys to the White House. Then there was Geraldine Ferraro, famous largely because she was once selected to run for vice president. She believes Obama “would not be in this position” if he had been born a white man. Never mind that most of us would probably not be in our current positions if we were fundamentally something other than we are. Never mind that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy would not exist were she not a woman – since no man could run largely on the basis of credentials garnered by being the spouse of a former president (at least not until same-sex marriage is more acceptable than it is now).”


April 22, 2008

9:45 AM

In a very sad display of my love for cheese, I just endured a brief moment of choking in order to save a bite of cheese. I discovered, and purchased, some wonderful parmesan cheese in Karakol this past weekend. As my midmorning snack I was having some cheese, crackers, and cucumbers. With a few pieces of cheese left on my plate (and in my possession) I took an unsuspecting dangerous bite. Caught midway between a cough and swallowing my bite, I began to choke. Instead of spitting out the rest of the food in my mouth to clear my airway and stop from choking (like most humans who like to live would have done), I chose to fight the gag reflex and reposition the food in my mouth so as to find an opening for air. Eventually I stopped choking, and, more importantly, was able to save the cheese, cracker, and cucumber in my mouth (which I proceeded to finish chewing after I stopped choking); all for the sake of good cheese.

Sad, Jason. Seriously. Sad.



April 22, 2008

10:40 AM

Me: Fiona?

Fiona: Yeah?

Me: You still around?

Fiona: I never leave.

Me: I haven’t heard from you in a while.

Fiona: I tend to back away when you’re having emotional struggles.

Me: You fade away when I’m unstable?

Fiona: Sure, if you want to look at it that way.

Me: What do you when you “back away?” Do you still observe me?

Fiona: Well, I do live in your head, so as much distance as your imagination affords me I take.

Me: What do you do when we are not talking?

Fiona: Observe, listen, live, absorb; the usual things a conscious does.

Me: Any interesting observations lately?

Fiona: Well, among many of my observations of you, I have been most interested with your ongoing struggle with humanity’s imperfections.

Me: What interests you about it?

Fiona: You seem to have an understanding and concurrent mistrust in your own beliefs. Your actions and words are more often than not empathetic and confident. Subconsciously, though, you have a hard time with the flaws of our imperfect world and spend a lot of energy questioning your own intellect.

Me: I feel I need to question myself. If I don’t question my beliefs and understandings, then I fear I will become complacent and ignorant.

Fiona: Questioning your beliefs and understandings is not the problem. The problem is that if all you ever do is question yourself, you will never have any beliefs or convictions. You have a deep rooted talent of empathy and a thick skinned belief in the power of love. These are powerful things, but you weaken them with your mistrust in them.

Me: So how do you suggest I go about coming to terms with the flaws of humanity? It seems that so many of my inspirations, leaders in the fight for a better world, champion for one cause but fail at another.

Fiona: Examples?

Me: MLK cheated on his wife. Gandhi neglected his kids. My parents, well, in the past years I’ve seen so much humanity in my once superhero parents.

Fiona: Being human is not a flaw. MLK and Gandhi chose to sacrifice their lives and their relationships for the call of a greater cause. Your parents may be human, but their humanity is no different than of MLK and Gandhi.

Me: Are you saying that my parents and Gandhi and MLK are equals?

Fiona: Yes. MLK and Gandhi and your parents all sacrificed their personal lives to fight for something far beyond humanity’s grasp.

Me: What is that?

Fiona: Trying to create a perfect world for you.

Me: Well if it is beyond humanity’s grasp to achieve this, then why do we even fight? Why do we sacrifice and struggle if we know that all we fight for will forever be flawed and imperfect?

Fiona: Because to this date, one of humanity’s greatest calls for purpose is rooted in our desire to improve the lives of the people we know will follow us.

Me: If we are endless fighting to make the world better for the next generation, doesn’t that lead to an inherent lack of attention towards the life we are currently leading?

Fiona: Time doesn’t stop. Every action you take, battle you fight, and thought you think is going to affect the people that follow you. May as well accept that now and begin your life.

Me: What if all I ever do is love? Love my lover, my parents, my brothers, my friends.

Fiona: Then I count them lucky that you have chosen to spend your life giving them all you have to give.

Me: Some how, though, I don’t believe love alone will be fulfilling.

Fiona: Trust your convictions. You have a long way to go. If you want love, then you need to believe it; even its imperfections.

Me: Give me sometime to think about all of this.




April 22, 2008

8:25 PM

‘Reds’:

“I think a guy who’s always interested in the condition of the world and changing it either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them…we all have problems, you can’t escape having problems, don’t ya know. But to take on the problem of all humanity, to save all humanity, my god that was too big for even Jesus Christ; don’t ya know, he got himself crucified. How the hell do we expect to do those things?”



May 3, 2008

1:00 PM


I’ve spent the greatest period of self-discovery in my life in country not my own, a culture I had to learn, and amongst a language I am only now coming to terms with it. Who I am and the impact I choose to make on the world has only begun to become clear in my mind. The crazy part is that most (if not all) of what I’ve “discovered” about myself in the past few years is in the context of my life in Kyrgyzstan. Oh, America, here I come! I hope you are ready to have some fun!




May 7, 2008

7:10 AM

Yann Martel (‘Life of Pi’):

“I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful.”

“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”

“I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.”

“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”

“…when he splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey.”

“How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.”

“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life…One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.”

“I thought I would run out of paper. It was the pens that ran out.”

“Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?”

“Isn’t telling about something – using words, English or Japanese – already something of an invention? Isn’t looking upon this world already something of an invention? The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?”

“I know what you want. You want a story that won’t surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won’t make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality.”



May 8, 2008

7:30 AM

Kurt Vonnegut (‘A Man Without a Country’):

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as your possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

“Total catastrophes are terribly amusing…you know, the Lisbon earthquake is funny.”

“Speaking of plunging into war, do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra. Also the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which Europeans had never had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.”



May 10, 2008

7:15 AM


My meals yesterday were as follows:

Breakfast: Peanuts and a Banana
Snack: 2 Beef and Onion Samsas (a Kyrgyz ‘Hot Pocket’)
Lunch: ½ Kilo of Cherries, an Apple, and a Banana
Snack: An ice cream cone
Dinner: Carrot, Cucumber, Green Onion, Garlic, and Tomato salad.
Snack: Popcorn

Suffice it say, yesterday my stomach was dancing with joy all day! Summer has arrived; the weather and the bazaar are now in full display of this. Yesterday I sweat. Not while working out, simply by walking around my village. It was hot yesterday. It was beautiful.
Besides great food and the ability to walk around in sandals, the nice weather has also allowed me to get back into a running routine. My current running play-list (which also seems to cover a lot of the music I am addicted to right now):

‘Around the World’ – Daft Punk
‘Fame’ – David Bowie
‘Could You Be Loved’ – Bob Marley
‘Listen to the Music’ – Doobie Brothers
‘Keep on Truckin’ – Eddie Kendricks
‘No One’ – Alicia Keys
‘Great Expectations’ – Jurassic 5
‘Get By’ – Talib Kweli
‘Brainwashers’ – Blackalicious and Ben Harper
‘Black History Month’ – Saul Williams
‘Benzi Box’ – Dangerdoom and Cee-Lo
‘Disenchanted’ – My Chemical Romance
‘In This Scene You’re Just an Extra’ – Search the City
‘Beat It’ – Fall Out Boy and John Mayer
‘MTV is Over if You Want It’ – We are the Union
‘Stranger than Fiction’ – Bad Religion
‘Dateline (I’m Gone)’ – Yellowcard
‘This is My Life (And it’s Ending One Minute at a Time)’ – We are the Union
‘You Know How I Do’ – Taking Back Sunday
‘War Pigs’ – Cake
‘Twin Cinema’ – The New Pornographers
‘Program Director’ – OAR
Yun Hi Chala Chalahi – Swades Soundtrack




May 10, 2008

7:30 AM

From the April 21, 2008 New Yorker (‘Up and Then Down; The lives of elevators’ by Nick Paumgarten):

“Smart elevators are strange elevators, because there is no control panel in the car; the elevator knows where you are going. People tend to find it unnerving to ride in an elevator with no buttons; they feel as if they had been kidnapped by a Bond villain. Helplessness may exacerbate claustrophobia. In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”


I copied and pasted the above paragraph from the middle of a twelve page (in MS Word) article about elevators. It was a good article. No, it was great article. It was fun to read because the author of this article obviously put a lot of time and effort in describing a very overlooked necessity to life (in cities at least): elevators. Two things struck me from this article that I want to comment on:

The authors dedication to such an obscure topic
“…the door-close button doesn’t work.”


I have a deep respect for anyone who dedicates themselves to something. I don’t think this is a respect that I developed while in Kyrgyzstan, but it surely has been enhanced here. After spending the last two years staring and the US from the other side of the planet, I’ve come to the conclusion that having more does not necessarily mean knowing more. There is so much information, so much stuff in the US. While we have a ton of people that specialize in the most detailed aspects of life, I feel that we also have a ton of people who live topically. “A mile wide and an inch deep,” as a mentor of my mine from college was fond of saying. (I know I love to use that phrase, but there is something I love about the image of a mile wide body of water that is only an inch deep.)

Sometimes it feels that in order to grasp everything we are forced to live and love the surfaces. Inevitably the people that dive below the surface to explore the depths will have to return to the surface. Once they do they will be faced with a surface drastically different from the one they left. The currents never stop; we don’t want them to. The currents produce things like vaccines, computers, and washing machines. Problem is that the stronger the currents, the less people seem to have a will to fight against them. If the winds are blowing west, it seems foolish to then want to head east. Sometimes it seems just as foolish to just stop and not move. Why pause when the currents will carry you?
But there are people that stop, and there are people that fight to head against the current. I love these people: People that find an interest in the life we are living rather than the one we are going to live; the people who return to the waters that so many people just skim over. I love the people that are ok with living a life a “mile deep and an inch wide.” I want to be one of these people. I don’t want a life that is so narrow is lacks reality. I do want a life that explores the depths.

My good buddy Pi Patel shared with me some of his insight into life the other day. “You are as likely to see sea life from a ship as you are to see wildlife in a forest from a car on a highway…If you want to see wildlife, it is on foot, and quietly, that you must explore a forest. It is same with the sea. You must stroll through the Pacific at a walking pace, so to speak, to see the wealth and abundance that it holds.” You could very easily replace “wildlife” with the word “life” and his statement would hold the same meaning.
The fact that Mr. Nick Paumgarten put twelve pages of work into a report about elevators may mean very little to some people. To me it glowed of dedication. It introduced me to someone, no matter his motives, that put in the time to slow down and look at the life inside the framework. His article is a very well written article, but more important to me is that it is a beautiful combination of poetics and a vested interest in life.
As for the ‘door-close’ button not working, I guess that’s kind of like the scrolling bar on our computers that shows the progress downloads and other things of that nature. How many times do we sit there impatiently looking at the percentage downloaded or the time remaining? We all know that is will inevitably take a few minutes after the download is completed for it to actually be completed. Yet we still use that scrolling bar as a gauge for time; a gauge that helps us feel comfort in knowing that something is happening. We all watch the bar and we all press the button, they both seem to be embedded into our psychology.


May 16, 2008

1:00 PM

T-Shirts I saw in Bishkek today:

1. Dare - To Keep Kids Away From Drugs
2. Olive Garden - A Family Italian Restaurant
3. G - Star - Original Rap

I love T-Shirts.

I miss my home.