HAAAAAPPY HALLOWEEEEEN!

Hey guys and gouls! HEL-O-VEEN, (here more popularly known as Jadilar Bayram) is in FULL SWING! Here's everyone carving pumpkins yesterday. I suspect the adults had even more fun than the kids!

check out this photobomb! Ibo makes me laugh so much!

one of the family

for all who may be wondering, my mom arrived in Amman, Jordan yesterday to start her life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. after several (too many) hours of travel, a beer and a sausage in Frankfurt (two things she won't be seeing for a while) she finally arrived around 2:30 am and got to bed around the first call to prayer.
she sounds very pleased with her group and staff. orientation and training are very rigorous but if anyone can do it, it's my moms. adjusting to long sleeves in the heat, starting to learn arabic and acclimate herself to the culture, as well as make new friends will make her a very busy lady, but you can follow all of her adventures here and send your encouragement!

playing red light, green light

the key to fire is air

folks, it's october. i woke up this morning (no. afternoon.) to sunlight, which i hadn't seen in about three days. i'm talking about direct sunlight, cloudless and glorious. it roused me from my sunday sloth and lasted long enough make me feel cheated when it hid back behind some overcast clouds.
-where are you going? i ask him. sunny, sluntse in bulgarian or for the overachievers, gunesh in turkish.
-oh, you know, i'm kindof tired.
-you haven't been out in like a week, hang out for a bit!
-nahh, it's nice behind these clouds. i'll come back soon, when i'm ready. i just need some time away from you all right now.
and so i lit my stove, scraped together enough small branches and bits to coax them into igniting, threw a big log on top and opened the bottom tray, ensuring the airflow was strong enough to feed the fire, get it hot, get the log to catch. it's all about the air, i thought to myself.

this autumn, although severely colder than necessary, is still devastatingly romantic. my ipod can't seem to play anything but leonard cohen, and i just finished the novel prague by arthur phillips. the characters are all expat westerners living in a former communist central european country, a la boheme of recent generations. we are living this too, to whatever extent we allow ourselves.
last night as i found myself on the dance floor of the cafe, i couldn't shake a vision of an ocean liner cutting through the atlantic, headed west. my body was still dancing to foreign sounds, through slitted eyes everything turned sepia and glowed warm as if already a memory; a mental postcard filed into some "old world" folder in my brain, available to take out at will in years to come and wax nostalgic of those days, or these days. i'm not quite sure how to frame the occurrence of missing something while it is still happening.

just riding the waves as they come.