lately it seems i’m in the middle of a giant tug-of-war. i push two steps ahead and get knocked back a few more. and again and again, sometimes in the span of a few hours. right now i really feel deflated. i feel like i’ve just been dumped, that same feeling of powerless, dejected silence. what really gets me is that for everything that makes me feel this way, something sneaks up to turn it all around. i find out today sarah’s isp plan may not work, then i find out the website is up and running. then i find out i may not be headed to Thailand in the spring like i was hoping. this is the real gut-wrencher. the thought of going back to bkk has been propelling me forward much of the time, the thought of walking through the city again, taking afternoon tea with friends and staying out all night listening to live music, trips up to chiang mai to see a friend’s new flat, seeing work on the school. i’m not too horrified at all of this, it just means that i’ll have to find another way to get there.

Nashville, to take a moment of praise for the present, is beautiful. today it’s warm and grey. all of the leaves have turned long ago, but not all of them have fallen, and tonight it spit a few drops of rain, but not enough to be discouraging. i browsed the vintage store on Elliston, lamented that i won’t be here for rehab’s show at exit/in on the 6^th, picked up a cd for a friend at the great escape music store, and browsed a few more boutiques. i love everything this city has to offer.

busy day. classes all day, came back to the hotel and bgap’ed all afternoon, followed by a parent meeting and dinner at bricktop’s. another step in the right direction for bgap, though. we are now registered on goodsearch.com, a site that donates one cent per search to a charity chosen by the searcher. if a hundred of our supporters make just two searches a day, we can land $730/year, which is a school.

my plea for the day is for you to begin using goodsearch.com, designate the Burmese goodwill assistance project as your charity of choice, and that’s it! just search away..

i love Nashville. we’re two blocks down from Vanderbilt, the weather is really mild, there’s a bikram studio across the street, just above a vintage store, and there are great college radio stations. the food’s good, too. i’d love to move here one day.

i feel good today, it’s ending on a high note. and a belly full of salad and fish and brown rice, which can’t be bad, either. in closing, please remember to switch your search engine to goodsearch.com. thanks!

i find myself in Nashville tonight, contemplating strength and prayer.

throughout the day, my thoughts always come back to, people are dying all over the world. people are ignoring that people are dying. i threw away more leftover scraps from our thanksgiving plates than half the world eats in a day. i’m currently reading machete season, by jean hatzfeld, interviews with a group of men who participated in the Rwandan genocide. i go to sleep afraid of what we are capable of, and praying for strength and guidance to help.

friends in Taiwan welcomed their first daughter over the weekend.

it’s really difficult for me to write right now. i don’t feel as though i have anything to say yet.

the monday before thanksgiving. it’s grey and cold outside this morning, leaving it dim and cool inside my house. wrapped in my favorite fleece jacket, black coffee and yogurt for breakfast, in front of the ubiquitous laptop, checking emails and reading the online papers. forgetting to turn it off, the alarm went off on my phone this morning around 6, screaming and buzzing and blinking all the way across the house, still shrieking violently in my hand while i myopically stumbled around, trying to silence it so i could go back to the warm bed.

i didn’t sleep well last night; a combination of too much caffeine and the last hundred pages of first they killed my father made my sleep light and uneasy.

some friends are near three pagodas pass in Thailand, and i googled it this morning, hoping for a glimpse of what they see. i stumbled across a falang woman’s photographic account of her Thailand adventures, and my heart grew heavy with missing it. every day i feel heavy with the weight of missing Thailand, every day the hole in my chest rattles with grief. i have not cried over it, but i don’t talk about it much anymore, either. i have things to do on this side, people to love and work to tend to. but always, always it’s there.

dubbya denounced burma in front of the asean country’s leaders yesterday, in what needs to be a pull of the situation to the forefront of the world’s mind. here is a copy of the text:

Bush says Burma situation 'unacceptable', unlike Thai's: ASEAN chair

HANOI - US President George W. Bush told key Southeast Asian leaders Saturday that the situation in military-ruled Burma was "totally unacceptable," a Philippine presidential spokesman said.

Ignacio Bunye, a spokesman for President Gloria Arroyo, said Bush and seven Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) leaders discussed Burma on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific summit in Vietnam.

"That was touched" in the context of neighbouring Thailand's moves to return to normalcy after the September 19 military coup, Bunye told journalists.

"The US president said that they in effect agree with what's happening... that there is a road to normalcy as far as the Thailand situation is concerned," Bunye said.

"But as far as the Myanmar [Burma] situation, this is something that is totally unacceptable," he quoted the US president as saying.

Bush met with the leaders of seven ASEAN members -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam -- on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum here.

ASEAN's other members Cambodia, Laos and Burma are not APEC members.

Washington has imposed investment and trade bans on Burma, where the ruling junta is accused of massive human rights violations, suppression of political dissent and refusal to bring democratic reforms.

Thai Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram also said Burma was discussed in the meeting with Bush.

"He (Bush) said it was a matter of concern for him. But he says he looks to ASEAN also for further engagement with Myanmar [Burma]," the minister said.

Agence France-Presse

bgap

on most days i see my life ebbing and flowing, not unlike big water. lately, these are days where every last tidal pool feels full, and still i fight the feeling that i’m just not doing enough. it’s difficult to sit at the computer to check a simple email without resulting in a dozen international messages shipped out and received, some tax law researched, and somewhere squeeze in the latest Lindsay Lohan upskirt posted on thesuperficial.com. or wishing for a moment where i can sit and read, anything, from pr manuals to the fucking pynchon novel i’ve wanted to pick up for years, and not feel the pull to get up and do something, dammit.
i believe if i had a desk it would all be better. and, to be really optimistic, an office would be nice. then tim could have the dining room table back, and i would’t get so add in the house.
i don’t really know what to write here. i have very few words to waste on thoughts, lately, that don’t include the history of Myanmar, the atrocities of the khmer rouge, the difference between crimes of war and crimes against humanity, or my delta frequent flyer number.

if you’re interested, try reading crimes of war and at the point of a gun, both by david reiss; first, they killed my father, by loung ung, and freedom from fear by Aung San Suu Kyi. i’m a big public library advocate, but amazon.com carries them, too.

and check out www.myspace.com/burmesegoodwill