Alienation is a Friend of Mine

Not sure where to begin... The hackneyed starving artist quotation "A writer writes!" will do as well as anything. Before, I was broke in another country, but hopeful of a job starting at the end of Ramadan... But my shredded nerves had other plans. (Props to the Foreign Service, and all their bustlingly professional sorts in consulates around the world, specifically one Pamela Hack.) When I arrived in the consulate in Casablanca, I was either embarrassingly drunk or else in need of medical attention. But I don't drink. I was perilously dizzy, perpetually falling, and sometimes hitting the ground. My speech was affected, as one might find in a person recovering from a stroke, slurred and mumbled. Three of my five senses were disrupted. But my family (by which I mean my blood, no one else since I'm not yet married, I'm old-school like that) got the message quickly and helped me out. Surely it was a poorly planned trip, and surely the lack of necessary measures was informed by my urgently felt need to escape from where I'd been. Ironic, then, to end up where I began, but in worse circumstances! Often I have felt ignored, overlooked, neglected, swaddled in a silence ostensibly justified by placing me in a safe location. Safe enough, but psychically draining-- easily bored, the only real entertainment I found was in substances. Given their inherent evanescence, obviously a waste. Only what is created matters, and of that, only NOW.

oh for heaven's sake

Out of sheer desperation, I accepted a job in Korea... but as we all know that is not really where I want to be. But I suck it up and get the gig. THEN I hear back from a school in Algeria. I follow up with them, and hope this doesn't take another 2 weeks. Apparently a visa to Algeria only requires $100, which is forthcoming from the brother. Aaarrrgh. So if I get the Algerian gig, I will cancel the Korean gig (sorry, folks) and fork over the cash. Alright. Let me make something happen somewhere interesting. Surely a North African gig will be more labor-intensive, and probably less lucrative, than a Korean gig, but......we are not really here for the $. I don't want another cruddy winter. So wheels are turning, more to come... Stay tuned.