Hey kids- news update! My blog is moving. The new address is:

http://michelle.sbw.org/blog/

Happy Sunday to everyone. I’m in Half Moon Bay, having just woken up to a roaring fire and birds singing in the garden. Not half bad.

(Okay, the fire wasn’t roaring, in fact, it was largely dead, but I could still smell it.)

And then your dad brings you egg salad and pudding for lunch and makes the whole world better.

Sometimes when I sneeze it smells like Sean.

You know what? Mixing Raisin Bran and Cheerios is a bad idea. At the end, the Raisin Bran settles to the bottom and the Cheerios float and it is really frustrating. You can’t fill your spoon.

It’s been a long time, and perhaps even never, since I’ve had too much time with my good friends and needed some time for myself. I used to avoid spending time with people long before I got sick of them, saying “no” to plans far more often than saying “yes”.

Last night, my party of five went to Meadowood to see an Italian jazz saxophone quartet. I tell you, even the older fuddie-duddies were on their feet, screaming, “NOOOOOO!” when the four of them finally left the stage. It was one of the best things I’ve seen live, ever. All four guys were so musical, so funny, so utterly wonderful and charming, and my face hurt from smiling before it was through.

After the concert, we adjourned to a nearby martini bar and halfway through my first sip of Riesling, I hit a wall. Not just an exhaustion wall, but an overwhelmed wall. Too much information, too many people, too much noise, too much life, and I had to go home. I’ve been carrying my entire life, the weight and the questions and the urgency and the disquiet, as well as the camaraderie and fun and goodness, on my back, just above my shoulder blades, and it threatens to flatten me to the ground. One of my good friends is in the middle of a breakup, and I’ve been carrying her, too. And I’ve been carrying my desires, my lusts for a different life, as well. Molly and I have been talking about my job situation. I have one now, I interviewed for another yesterday, and a third is waiting on the horizon. We were also talking about living arrangements- should I wait for her to decide if she’s staying, and then the two of us get a place together? Do I move out on my own right now? Do I stay and save money and leave town for the summer? And Molly said, “What does your gut tell you?” And I said, “My gut tells me to go to Africa.”

Now that I’m not going, even my friends like to tell me what a bad choice it would have been. “Why would you go if it meant giving up the chance for love, for a great career, for a life here, and giving that up for two and a half years?” Molly asked. Some things aren’t worth defending. I’ve already been single for three years, longer than my Peace Corps service would have been. It’s been two and a half years since 9/11. Two and a half years is simply not that long of time. And I sure as hell don’t believe in sticking around someplace for the rare chance that I might “find love”. What a load of crap that is. But, you know, what the fuck ever. I’m not going and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Anyhoodle. What all of this means is I need some time to myself. It’s a wonderful feeling, to have people you love constantly surrounding you, but I’ve been a hermit for years and I need that time away. Last night, driving home, I thought about the Taoist saying, “If you want to be given everything, give everything up”. I’ve been agonizing, holding on to myself so tightly, and I wish I could do that. I wish I could let go of the wanting and desiring and questioning and fighting. I wish I could fully know that I will find serenity in my own back yard just as quickly as I would find it far away from here. But I feel like my heart is breaking a little, breaking over me and what I feel my life should be. That is the want I want to give up. I just don’t know how.

In days past I could count the really good ones on one hand. Great days were so few and far between that I practically ruined them by constantly reminding myself of the terrific level of fun currently being experienced. Today was not that day. Mollie and I did, indeed, continually comment upon the greatness of each moment, but one moment we had climbed down a cliff only to be surprised by a colony of sea lions, the next we were trotting horseback on a misty beach, next had our entire dinner bought by a possible new chef-friend, and finally smoked a bunch of barflies by sinking the 8-ball on a combo. I’m exhausted and sunburned and I’m spending all of tomorrow with my friends in San Francisco. Did I mention that we are going to a concert at the Bohemian club and that my father will be conducting the orchestra? That one of my brothers will be there? Yeah. That’s my life.

Mollie and I spent a few minutes talking about things of a former life: Peace Corps, relationships, and then we spent ten or eleven hours planning our lives here. Career paths, ideas, options- including possibly working in wineries all over Europe this summer and getting back in time for harvest. Maybe, just maybe, I do want to teach and write about wine. If so, if this is going to be the thing that I do, the day job that doesn’t drive me crazy, then by god I gotta jump in. I have to actually commit. I have to dedicate myself to study and experience within the business, and that means getting over to the Old World. Small comfort considering the other continent that called me, but great comfort in that I can learn and live and then come home and be close to my parents. And beg my brothers to come here and visit. It’s hard to know what you have so close to home when you are always looking for the next big thing. Today, again, yet again, I love my life.

I was just in the bathroom, listening to the murmur of conversation and the running of dishwater. At some instant moment, the conversation ended, but the water kept running. I washed my hands, stepped out, and found three sleeping bodies and one awake and washing. One of the three is going through some particularly familiar and difficult heartache, and she was being consoled by the other two who happen to be madly in love. They were on the floor, talking, and when I came out of the loo, he was between the two, one arm around the woman he Loves, and another around the woman he loves, and they are fast asleep still. The best man I know is still busy washing tonight’s dishes, and I pushed “repeat” on the Police album that is currently filling the three’s dreams about walking on the moon.

I looked for my computer and found it nestled on top of another. Mine is smaller, less flashy, and white, but it was cozy on top of a sleek, silver big brother and both computers were sleeping in time. The little sleep lights, which are perfect heart beats, were pulsing just barely one before the other. My cell phone turned up next to another of its like, waiting for me on the chest of drawers next to the warm yellow light.

I know what it is in me that pulled me away. It was simply many things at once. But more than ever, more than I’ve ever known, I am the lucky girl. I have this, and this, I have these friends, I have this dad, these brothers, this mom, these people whose love is nothing short of miraculous. There is nothing else.

I am going to do my best to see what I have. I don’t know how good I’ll be at it. I’m very good at promising my time and effort to people I don’t know, but not as practiced at giving to the people I already love. Including myself. But I am going to try. That’s the best I can do right now. What I can do is be thankful, every day, for you, and for you, and for you. And you.

My friend just came in and said that he was going to wake the twosome in the three and send them to bed. I asked him not to, to let them be, to let someone good hold the third, even if just for a few minutes in sleep.

For those of you who thought I was being proud or full of bravado, there are a few things I’d like you to know.

First and foremost, I’m not out to save the world. My good friend Damon and I mention saving the world whenever we sit down to figure out what we can do about this place where we live but then we smile and get down to brass tacks. But that’s about it. I clearly can’t save the world, and I probably can’t “save” one person. What I can do is be informed. What I can do is live within another culture and learn about that culture and then share that information with the people I love, thus opening their minds as well as my own. It is the unknown that we fear, and one of the missions of Peace Corps to foster understanding and knowing between cultures. If my dad knew anyone who lived in Mauritania, he might not be so opposed to me going. If my mom could even talk to someone who had ever been there, she too might be sleeping more easily.

And here’s more: 919 Americans have successfully completed tours in Mauritania. Right now, there are 104 Americans living side by side with other Mauritanians. I’ve never heard of a Peace Corps volunteer getting AIDS or dying during service. Have you? And then there are the 2,800,000 people who were born, laugh, cry, eat, fall in love, and die in Mauritania. Mauritanians are renowned for their hospitality and their dedication to Islam. Rather than being an extremist violent state, it is a peaceful, worshipful one where alcohol (and all of its ills) is rare and prayer is conducted five times daily. The capital, Nouakchott, would have been accessible and has both the internet and phone lines.

I would have lived with a family who would have become my family during those two years. The village where I would have gone has asked for me, wants me there, wants be to be happy enough to stay, wants to protect me, wants my knowledge and willingness and expertise.

And here’s the thing: I want to go, too. I want to know that family and that village. I want to wake up every morning and work with them. I want to live in Africa. I’ve been told that I’m selfish in this want. Perhaps I am. But I am the one who has to live my life. I am the one who has to wake up with myself every morning, knowing I’ve yet again ignored this call. There will be other calls, certainly, and I will spend time looking for them. But this call, to Africa, was loud and utterly clear and my family has told me they are against it and will not support it. I absolutely understand why they have these feelings. I also know that they will never fully understand why I want to do it. I have to let them think I’m being cavalier and irrational and selfish. But the 170,00 volunteers who felt this call, responded to it, and then successfully completed a tour in the Peace Corps understand.

I cannot do anything that my family opposes so vehemently. If you knew my family, you’d understand why. Clearly I’m lucky to have this family, to have so much love in my life. But I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m frustrated, and sometimes I feel like I have to punch my way out of all that love so I can remember that I’m not just a little sister, not just a daughter, but a person separate and of my own right. Every thing I do is looked over by 10 different loved ones and sometimes that is wonderful. Other times it feels like the weight of the world.

It has been an absolutely tumultuous week. It’s bothersome that I can’t write about all of it because eventually I will be discovered. It is bound to happen. But what I can divulge is my thoughts about joining Peace Corps. I’ve all but decided to do it. Every conversation I have makes me incrementally more sure that it is what I want to do. I had dinner last night with Carole and another couple who went to Peace Corps ten years ago- when they were in their very early 40’s. They sold their house, business, and cars, and packed up to go to South America. Their story is certainly unique, as is every story from folks who make this ridiculous choice. They also had electricity and running water and privacy- things I will certainly not have. But then they came home and utterly reinvented themselves. They decided where they wanted to live and what they wanted to do and then they made it happen. Pretty incredible.

I still have doubts, certainly, and I feel no pressure for this to be arbitrary. If I get on that plane to Mauritania, it will be because it is exactly what I want to do, not because I’ve simply decided to do it. But the thought of waking up every morning there and working every day there and meeting people I never would have met and putting my hands in the African dirt… and no, I am not romanticizing it. I am well aware of: AIDS, malaria, a hole in the ground for a toilet, no electricity, pulling water from a well to wash, no friends or family, no choices but to do what it is I’m supposed to do that day. I am pretty sure I’ll get pretty sick. Almost everyone does. Pretty sure I’ll be lonely and scared and sad and exhausted. Pretty sure I’ll have days when I think of that Saturday in the sunshine with my friends by my dad’s pool overlooking the Napa Valley and I’ll wonder what the hell I’m doing in Mauritania. But the call to go is so multi-faceted, so strong, so exciting, so deep down right and good that I have to follow it. I have to go to Africa, even.

So in the meantime? Before I have to make that decision to step on that plane? I live here and make the best of it. And, I mean, clearly there is a lot of “best” to make. And I’d like to take a week and not think or talk about Peace Corps. I need to get away from it in my head or I’ll never see clearly to make the right choice.

My brother Sean wrote a great blog today. I don’t have time to link it; if you are one of the two or three people who read this and don’t know my brothers before you know me, just look to the left and click “Sean”. Sometimes when Sean goes on a diatribe, it gets really loud and I get confused. But all of the time when he goes on a diatribe, the heavens open and the truth rains down. Awwww, yeah.

Okay, so maybe that was a little much. Anyhoodle…

When there is too much to say, I can’t write.

My best friend Anastasia called me out the other day on one of my blogs. I was writing about my last day in the hospital with my mom, and how there was a grumpy, mean nurse taking care of her. There was nothing good that I witnessed in the exchange between said nurse and my mom, and I wrote about it saying exactly that. But I also called this nurse a “queen”. Now there is nothing, in my book, wrong, about calling anyone a “queen”. Many of my friends have called themselves by that very term, and batted their eyelashes at me when I did the same. But here’s the problem: there are those in this word who use that term and use it as an insult. Or negative. Or ugly. Even more importantly, I used that term while describing someone in entirely negative terms. Now here’s the thing. What if the nurse had been African-American? Would I have described him as a “bitter, mean, bitchy black man”? Or, even more heinously, a “bitter, mean, bitchy nigger”? Hard as it is to write, there are people who think that the “N” word is entirely acceptable. There are also those who think that “queen” is a good descriptor for people they hate. Now I would NEVER, EVER, EVER have used the “N” word and NOR would I have described the ethnicity of this nurse if he had been black or asian or… or really anything. Because his ethnicity, which is as nature-given as sexuality, would have had nothing to do with the fact that he was an asshole. So why was it okay for me to describe his sexual orientation?

The fact is, it’s not. It’s not okay to throw that in there surrounded by derogatory, ugly terms. It’s not okay, and I did it. That says something to me. Language is important. If I support gay rights, if I am willing to fight for them, if it means anything to me outside of hanging out with my largely straight, white friends and talking about it, then it is not okay to use these words in a way that smacks of ugliness. It means gay jokes aren’t funny. It means real, deep, meaningful relationships and words. Words are important. I need to live by this.

That’s it for now. Oh, but one message to my friend Anastasia who is currently relocating to Vanuatu: Hey, Stace: remember that conversation we had at that restaurant in Kansas City in the summer of ’97? A conversation that has continued for years, in a way? Well. It’s about to come full circle. You are the best friend a woman could want.

It’s been a crazy day. I challenged the bosses of my bosses on my job, I debated activism vs. actually being full of shit with friends both near and far, and, uh, got a new Peace Corps nomination. Honestly, I was pretty sure they forgot about me. But guess where they want me to go: that’s right, if you were originally supposed to go Niger, the 2nd “worst off” country in Africa, just guess where they’d send you next: that’s right, you got it: Mauritania. The country that impresses other Peace Corps folks already in Africa. I keep thinking to myself, “at least it’s not land-locked (weak smile)”. The question: am I ready to leave my community here, and all that is in it? Well. It would be hard to say yes.

I must got to bed, as it is the ripe hour of 10:17, but I would like to give a little shout-out to my bestest friend in the whole wide world- we will call her Stacey. She deserves more than the two sentences I’ll give her here, but I’m just sayin’, you would be a lucky person to have half a best friend as great as I do. She’s currently in Indonesia, leaving in two weeks for Vanuatu. So send her some good juju tonight for being one of the good ones.

When exactly did 10 PM become late? Ahh, but you should see my world at 7 AM. It’s not ugly.

The last two days have been some of the best of my life. For once I’m going to shut up and let pictures do the talking…

Me making lasagna for a wine dinner…

The best group of friends a girl could have, including the one taking the picture…

a typical day in St Helena…

Easy like Saturday afternoon after a 1PM breakfast…

Yoga in the sunshine…

with friends.

I have a great life.