Conversation with Erin, 5/10/06

3:08 AM erin: i love to hear how your border-life evolves.

3:09 AM how have you been?

 me: oh, do i have stories for you: life, death, love, heartbreak, minutemen, migrants...

3:11 AM my soul is taxed lately. the last few months have been nothing short of heavy. i'm drinking beer, though. lots.

3:12 AM erin: i can't wait to come back home...we will just have to plan on a really long, lovely all-night session of global south beauty and horror and heaviness of being.

3:15 AM erin: it's strange. a conversation earlier this week illuminated solutions to the question that I have spent the last year trying to answer. I feel compelled to do something with that information besides just let it change my thinking (which it has) and reorder my understanding of struggle (which it is)...I just don't know what yet, how I want to or can engage.

3:17 AM me: that's what we call "staring into the void". you've got to do something. just what is it?

3:18 AM erin: excellent question. i'm not quite prepared to buy a bike, but I certainly can't return home for long...

3:19 AM me: you can't come home again. you can't.

3:20 AM erin: ah, there's the rub....hey, do you talk to people on the border about the heaviness you feel? you aren't just inhaling all of their pain and leaving it to sit inside you? You have people to express to sit with and unburden, right?

3:25 AM me: yes and no. some of my companeros are in the same mess. they do this work, whatever it is, and let it consume them. i have our friends here. i have friends along the border who understand how important it is to drink a lot of beer at times. i've been really angry lately, and i've been trying to let go for the past few days. it takes work and time.

3:30 AM erin: cheers to Oatmeal Stout!...I imagine beer comes in handy, but I also imagine it doesn't help that much most of the time.

3:34 AM me: it does and it doesn't. riding a bike is good. making love to women is good. talking about dead men and minutemen and migrants is good. the opportunities aren't always available, but when they come, i accept.