By Laura

No dream is ever just a dream.
Are you sure of that?
Am I sure?
Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a
whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.
And no dream is ever just a dream.
- Eyes Wide Shut

7.2.05
The whole Brenda being sent home really shook me up....Then to have to listen to the gender roles panel and other Peace Corps crappy lecturers and then to come home and have Aza and LIka not be sympathetic and then to see Bacho on TV and Giga Bokeria---every time I seem them on TV, I think I've talked with them. We used to go drunk driving around ku's tba! The cultural differences scare me, Peace corps scares me. I mean their rules are so strict and overwhelming. I have never felt so threatened by authority before. At least seeing Bacho makes me feel like I need to be here. My karma is calling.

7.3.05
I feel like I am back in high school again, being in the peace corps-like I always have to prove myself. I hate that. I am not used to gender dynamics. I was spoiled by Wellesley, my worth and brilliance are no longer assumed. That comfort has been taken away.

8.2.05

So last weekend was unbearable. I mean I'm glad I made it through and it went ok but yet I don't think I've ever felt so upset, sad and out of sorts ever before. The transportation debacle, us being treated not like adults but like 12 year olds on a field trip. I felt judged, scared, impotent, trapped and just generally upset. I worry a bit about being mothered to death here and having no control over anything. Things that come to mind are personal time and food.

Some text messages
Do you understand our evaluation forms for PC? I said that I have great listening skills when reading Georgian letters and signs.
At dinner I told Dato that he needed a shower. Nothing creative from me today. Narrowly avoided getting smashed again
Pair work sucks
Hey Laura, Hope all is well. My septup is pretty nice except the bee infested pit toilet.
My counterpart (Georgian teacher) passed me a note. Here's the last sentence. "If you agree with me please write only some words. I believe you and I suggest to you something." Hmmm, I am contemplating my response now. A little scared. She told me I had pretty teeth earlier today.
Getting wasted. If you don't see me tomorrow, it's because I drank like a sailor, told my bro to fuck off, spewed all over my ezo (lawn) and then made my devil mom eat cow shit. Bolomde
The mini bus that im on...they just tied a bike to the top with something that looked like masking tape. Someone will die on the road today

10.05.05
But certainly I see myself in Gramie the Pisces or Jefferson- both who spin reality and re create it to their liking and then believe their new myth. I'm a master of spinning reality, weaving it and twisting it and living in the new form. I sit amidst a mass of emotions, twists, strings pulling me everywhere while I get tugged along and manipulate in my turn. Sometimes being painfully hurt by these strings and sometimes relishing in their intricacies, because I'm drawn to the disturbing torrid of a soap opera tangle of motivations that consumes me. That tangle originates outside of me, with my concern for others and pleasing them as well as from within. My own search for excitement, intrigue, happiness, a lack of boredom drives it perhaps, maybe merely an innate curiosity with people, interactions, motivations and my role within it.

10.26.05
I wish Eleanor were here to talk to me. I wish Lisa were here to have meals with. I hate this country's obsession with food, the pressure is making me neurotic. I want to be back at Wellesley. I miss Wellesley. I hate that I miss it so much, but I do. I really do. I miss my control over my life (or my seeming control). I miss cream in my coffee and the dining hall. I miss my computer (or should I say Mairead's dad's computer) we were learning the possessive form in class today. I fucking hat teaching. It seems pointless,m ineffective and a waste of my time. Like I could be making some positive difference if I were more dedicated or a better person or more forceful with my opinions on teaching methodology, but I am not. Who am I to say the way things should be done? Why must everything change to some idealized version of American quasi democratic pig materialist hegemony? How's that for a bunch of words in a row?! Is that better? Who the fuck knows and why am I attempting to create change towards something I'm not sure I believe in. Life is just so much more complicated. There aren't "Right" answers like people so desperately want and want to believe in- there are no right answers in school, in governmental hierarchy, in ideologies, in life...it's all shades of gray (to use a kitchy colloquialism). Whatever.

10.31.05
Everyone at the college said I was so happy today and they were right. I was. The supra was super fun and I felt super loved and enjoyed the atmosphere. Tamila (host mom) was so funny. She was drunk and telling everyone all about how she knew what I liked to eat and then she bought be socks. I couldn't believe it. Talk about channeling my mom. Unreal

10.28.05
Today was not good like yesterday, when I got a watch batter and the umbrella fixed for 1 lari each and gave my boots to the shoemaker to get fixed all while trashed from a supra at the college. Then I got to go home and chill with Kelly, Elise and the girls. We made carmel apples and chatted.

11.12.05
Yesterday I went to help the women get ready for the wedding today. I first washed some sort of lettuce/vegetable thing with Tamila, outside in the pouring rain and not wearing a coat. My hands were pretty fricking freezing but I felt really good to be helping,. Then I shredded carrots for several hours while Tamila gossiped with the neighbors. At one point Tamila ate some meat, forgetting it was Friday. I got kind of upset that she was making such a big deal of it and I tried to point out that God probably cared more if you were a good person than if you ate meat, rather over simplified but I hoped it would get the point across. But, she said that she gossipped and said too many bad things so she needed to not eat meat to make up for it. This got me thinking that my painstaking carrot shredding may be some deep seeded need to pay penance for my "sins" being some horrible sinning worm and all that hardcore Protestant dogma, much like Dad saying he thought I joined Peace Corps because I felt like I needed to suffer. So it really it's the same thing, just in another form. Who am I to judge? It bothers me that I got so upset about her eating the meat and being upset about it. Part of me wonders if I have had just so much more education and am becoming more "elitized" or something, but then other times I think that it's just my ego speaking and who am I to say that I know anything. Much like when people say I'm a good person--that is just their perception and maybe I'm just grating carrots to get people to say I'm a good person. Because sometimes I think, "Yeah,m I'm really great. I've got a good outlook. I'm smart and optimistic, hardworking etc" but isn't that when we're the most egotistical> I mean I need to stop looking for approval from others and just be satisfied with doing things for myself, not because I seek approval. That is the epitome of feeding the dog. Many times I want to stop writing this and just write a scene. A moment. Like walking in the pitch black pouring rain in mid-Nonmember to accompany Tsitsino to the road. The feeling. The foreignness and familiarity. My perceptions and how they're colored by my experiences. Carrying that heavy ass package for Kelly. All the places it went, hands it changed to get to Oz, to Kelly. The love, the hat, the indifference it invoked. That simple package .

11.13.05
The shookie (electricity) just went out and by golly I'm feeling quite warm from the vodka. I totally see why the Russians drink it-having no heat is frickin cold (duh) and vodka really does help, it becomes easier to function. I wonder if sometime someone will read this, I hope they don't notice my poor spelling and I wish them luck figuring out my obscure references. I need another candle very soon, this one is almost finished and it is too bad the shookie went out because we were having such a good run before. How many weeks with no long blackouts? Well it makes me think of that Khrushchev book, communism, Russians and "the other". I am a bit infatuated with this "other," eastern block stuff. I remember reading about the fetishism of the commodity and it's just stuck in my head. Especially compared to my overly capitalist, labor intensive, time obsessed society I call home. Skhvanairi it is here and I'm fascinated and then when I read about how many millions died under Stalin, with collectivisation in Ukraine, people turned to cannibalism and all this in the name of some great ideal. Then I read about how uneducated and blind Khrushchev was, how unprepared, leading such a vast empire. Gosh, power is such an odd thing. When I think of Tsiala and her odd inversion/use of power, talk about taking the indirectness of Georgian culture and even further inverting/subverting it for some unknown means. To what end? For what end? Kelly asked me what Salome's motivation is. I don't know and I wonder if we can assign meaning to any motivation using the cultural lens we are forced to see the world through. There is no unbiased lens and we may strive to describe that/those lenses we do view things through, but that doesn't me we're accurate. I wonder how we may actually go about trying to accomplish that objective. It's some sort of conundrum. How shall I talk about Georgia in any meaningful way without some structure on which to describe it through/with. Well now the electricity came back on and I can hear the TV and see my handwriting.

11.15.05
I am freezing, but my hands are warm. How's that for being pirikit (opposite). I wish I could spell that in Georgian....I'm really cold now. I mean I don't want to turn on the heater cause the electricity bill will be high, but I'm really cold. It's like I'm Ok, but then I sit for a while and become stone. Like in the Chronicles of Narnia (why can't I spell?) nela nela (slowly slowly), colder and colder. I don't want to move from this spot cause I'll realize and acknowledge/ really feel that ice that's settled shignit (in) my bones. Georgians have lots of great words. They're more economical. I should go to bed and stop wasting electricity.

Do you think I was only gaoled? I wished to cry out as she turned to leave & rapped thrice on the door for Pobjoy to come & open -- for I too was the gaoler. Do you think to keep my own hide unflogged I never lied? Never stole off a mate? I have a weakness for blue gin, old women, white rum, young girls, porter, pisco, human company & the Commandant's laudanum. I have a great fear of pain. I am beyond shame. Do you think I never informed on a mate? I was both cobber & dobber, I liked them & wept for them when they took them off to be flogged on my false information. I survived. It was bad & wrong & I may as well be the cat-o'-nine-tails stripping bark off their backs when I traded souls for some scraps of food or paint. I gave away all I needed. I was a vile piece of cell-shit. I smelt the breath of my fellows. I tasted the sour stench of their rotten lives. I was the stinking cockroach. I was the filthy lice that didn't stop itching. I was Australia. I was dying before I was born. I was a rat eating its young. I was Mary Magdalene. I was Jesus. I was sinner. I was saint. I was flesh & flesh's appetite & flesh's union & death & love were all equally rank & all equally beautiful in my eyes. I cradled their broken bodies dying. I kissed their suppurating boils. I washed their skinny shanks filled with ulcers, rotting craters of pus; I was that pus & I was spirit & I was God & I was untranslatable & unknowable even to myself. How I hated myself for it. How I wished to essay the universe I loved which was me also & how I wanted to know why it was that in my dreams I flew through oceans & why when I awoke I was the earth smelling of freshly turned peat. No man could answer me my angry lamentations nor could they hear my jokes why I had to suffer this life. I was God & I was pus & whatever was me was You & You were Holy, Your feet, Your bowels, Your mound, Your armpits, Your smell & Your sound & taste, Your fallen Beauty, I was Divine in Your image & I was You & I was no longer long for this grand earth & why is it no words would tell how I was so much hurting aching bidding farewell?
- Gould's Book of Fish