Regretssss

1. As of yet, I haven't eaten the weird worms that come out of the ocean in October. I really want to eat the worms.

2. I still don't know how to weave a mat. I know kids who can't identify every letter in the alphabet yet who can weave mats.

3. I suspect I spend too much time complaining at any given moment about where I am. There's this really great poem I read at site:

where we are by gerald locklin:

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawai'i and switzerland.
there is always the anticipation 
of change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have 
always loved both the freshness of 
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope. 

I wrote that on my front door on Tongariki. In a way, I always felt I lived in two places--Tongariki and Efate. I felt that way because while Tongariki was my life, Efate was where I got to see all my volunteer friends and have fun. Now I live on Malekula, but I'm in America, too. For me, this poem represents my ambivalence about moving and of having my life spread out across different places. It's especially odd with physical things -- I have clothes here in Alexandria, Virginia, and in Tautu village on Malekula, and in the resource room in Port Vila, and Mami Esther is now the proud owner of everything else, back on Atong.