Tuesday, September 20, 2011

And you thought I was done....

... to be honest, I did too! I did not think there would be much to "blog" about after returning to the United States. But as Bob and Taylor (and others) probably predicted, my "journey" is just beginning. The "trip" to Congo was really just "one small step" in my larger Congolese journey. I now think of EVERYTHING through the lens of my time there and my experiences. I'm writing a lot right now-- creative non-fiction pieces that I will be submitting for publication in literary journals soon (which feels really good, by the way... it's been a really LONG time since I had the "drive" to write creatively, and even longer since I played the submission and publication game... but if you really want to know and ask nicely, I'll share some of my previously published work with you....), and writing for the newsletter, and speaking my mind about my trip and my experiences.

To wit, I wanted to share two things on here that really "touched" me lately, and will probably seem totally unrelated to Congo, but for me were quite salient. The first is an article about "Terror Management Theory" which I am really into... I think it says a lot about how people respond to horror in the world, and the ways and reasons we react as we do, and the value of treating lightly and using hope as a motivator instead of scare tactics. That article is here:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/doomsday-scenarios-climate-change2.htm

The second is last week's "This American Life" poscast, their own 10-year retrospective on 9-11. Though I really loathed all the media coverage of it, and in a lot of ways feel that it is insensitive to those we should actually be honoring, this podcast was AMAZING. you should listen to it for that reason alone. But, beyond that, the first "act" is about a young man who has been living in Afganistan since being a teenager, and how he viewed his "transformation" as a result of living in such a politically tumultuous climate. It may seem tangential, but it reminded me A LOT of the Congo. It is here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/445/ten-years-in?act=1

Signing off for now...

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