wall climbing

I heard it again tonight:  peace will come to Afghanistan when the Pakistanis return land, guarantee access to the sea and all the Taliban are gone.  It’s sounds too simple and I don’t know.  But what if it were really just this?  Everything I’ve read and heard it sounds more complex than simply asking the Pakistanis for peace.  These people need a strong central government, the kind only a King has provided around here. 

Why can’t these two Islamic countries make peace together?  Evil is the man who plays war.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  Honestly fellas, wouldn’t you be richer if there was peace?  Wouldn’t everyone love Allah more if there was peace, wouldn’t Islam look better if you stopped your childish tribal games?  Fighting in the name of Islam or in the name of your tribe is so not cool right now, and if you read your history you’d know change is inevitable and you can’t escape scrutiny anymore.  We see you and we’ll smoke you out.   

I would really love to come up with two conversation plans tonight.  Such stress there is when I am not ready and I do not like waiting until the last hour to come up with something.  Let’s be good tonight. 

10:07—the big solar is done and so am I.  I have pieces of a lesson for tomorrow, Lord, the frustration was palpable today, the depression was gnawing at me, and thank God for talking to the students today.  Gee why in God’s name would I ever be more bummed out than them I don’t know but it was a miserable day and I am going to bed to think of nothing.

12.6.15

Cabin Fever is what I come up with.  Thank God for sleep.  A new day the same circumstances but I am not climbing the walls yet, or am I climbing the walls and I don't know it, but I would know it if I look a second and looked around me...well, what do you see?  I see I am climbing the walls, I gotta get out. 

Why do you need an ATM card?  So I can get money when I need it.  No, no, why are you keeping money in this bank?  Why the fuck am I?  Why am I nervous that I might need access to my money and I might not have access to my money?  Am I anticipating, speculating or lamenting over nothing?  I burn so much energy with worry.  Please.  Relax. 

5:11pm—a nice sunset.  I had my camera and was ready to go but changed my mind.  It is now only a moment. 

90% of the population suffers from depression.  Perhaps the little children don’t as much. 

For the last movie of this conversation class I am going to show Paddington, or that's what I've decided right now, I am always subject to change.  It might depress people because their chances of ever leaving this place are slim to none.  It might also give them hope that in the next life they can return as bears.

Ya, I’m flying into the states during the busiest travel times in the year, arriving at one of the busiest airports in the world.  Ya, I’d like to try some heroin for the trip there.  Can I get it in capsule form?

The former teacher from Indiana suffered from cabin fever as well I’m told.  When I was told in my interview this place, this job, would be hard, and that came from former military, I didn’t know it would be this kind of hard.  Mental fucking fighting the demons of doubt, fear and distress.  Take heed to the quotations you give your students in a few minutes.  They ought to help somehow.

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.  It is what you think about.”
Dale Carnegie

9:12pm—I’m thinking it’s time to sleep, let's push to finish here.  I’m bummed in hindsight to see how my temperature and my voice rose when I was being told by someone in Kabul I had to submit a letter to the bank in Kandahar who would then contact the bank in Kabul who will allegedly then send the stupid atm card before I leave.  He deserved to be shouted at for assuming such incompetence would be taken in stride, oh, we’re just a war torn country having suffered for 35 years, we can tell you we are taking the security of your card so seriously we’re actually not going to do anything and they haven’t for four stupid months.  Come on people, snap out of it.

Shanti shanti, not being ready for the conversation class, of which there were only four who came tonight, set a stage for what has been an awful  morning and early afternoon with no way of knowing how to escape foreboding gloom which left no light of hope in my thinking. How miserable it was. 

Will it be better tomorrow?  I don’t know.  Said Wali and I are going to the bank tomorrow, the two hour escapade to sign a post it for all I care right now with my stupid ass signature.  Look at that, I can’t write without anger.  Ok, let’s stop here and go to bed.  It’s time.  Lord have mercy.