A Continuation of Transitional Fixation...As Per Usual.

Temperature 54 degrees, light rain.
Begin civil twilight 4:25 a.m.
Sunrise 5:48 a.m.
Sunset 11:57 p.m.
End civil twilight 1:18 a.m. on following day


People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.
--Chuck Palahnuik


I am on the brink of transition- a place where I feel most uncomfortable and seem to find myself often. My usual obsessive preparation for the new is only frustrating, rather that comforting me. With two weeks left of my JV year, I am savoring the both sweet and sour moments handed to me, but also bracing for a new reality. Not only will a few short weeks bring a new job and new house, but also the return of absent friends, the departure of friends, and an influx of new friends. As a Jesuit Volunteer in Bethel, you have a particularly way you engage with the community and which the community engages with you.
Socially, (at least in the beginning) you go everywhere together. 7 people, a unit, arriving and departing events. Even after you establish individual identity, people still discuss you as one, to a certain degree you rise and fall together. You receive calls from strangers asking for favors, and gifts from strangers who thought you might be in need. You chose to be accountable to those whom you live with in an intentional and frankly, very time consuming way.
I am excited about this transition. Excited to experience Bethel from the other side- even if I'm only moving a short way away. But two houses down and across the street seems very far. I'll be stepping into a new Bethel.
Maybe this doesn't make sense, or my explanation falls short of transcending the thousands of miles (like so many of my explanations seem to do). But perhaps the easiest way to explain this is that even though a large part of my decision to stay here longer was a desire for continuity of place, everything else seems to be changing.
Perhaps that is my lesson. But, I infamously like to predict what I am supposed to learn before I have the opportunity to learn it. So maybe my lesson is- chill out.

Finally, Thank you Jon, for always keeping it real with me. I miss you already.

growing. growing. growing.

Temperature 74 degrees- uncomfortably warm
Begin civil twilight 3:40 a.m.
Sunrise 5:27 a.m.
Sunset 12:15 a.m. on following day
End civil twilight 2:00 a.m. on following day

What would the world be once bereft of wet and wildness?
Let them be left! Oh let them be left.
Wildness and wet.
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins


This summer, I have been astounded by growth.
The lightning fast plant growth that comes with so many hours of daylight can, after only a few days absence, alter the scenery entirely, making a frequented spot seem foreign.
The giant cabbage, gifting me with fresh cole slaw that has yet to make it from mind and refrigerator into bowl and mouth.
And reflecting on my own Bethel growth.
I feel I too had periods of darkness. Deeply frozen and unable to move forward, fixated, stuck, lost.
But then there were times of explosive realization, of self awareness that moved me light years, and of genuine embrace.
It occurs to me that I, like all things, cannot grow without light.
However, like the earth revolving around the sun, it is not God who moves, but me.
I do believe that the ebb and flow, the day and night is natural.
The movement, the rotation and revolution, allowing myself never to settle for the static, is what continues growth.
Already, we are losing more than two minutes of daylight each day.
Last fall, I was afraid of the dwindling light, knowing that it would plunge me into the cold darkness.
But now
I know dark will come.
But I also know that after darkness will come light.

Photos

Fran, my current (and future) housemate and me in Seward.


Taken from inside Denali National Park. So beautiful!


A photo of Mt. McKinley (Denali Mt. to Alaskans) taken from Talkeetna.



Most of my community at Resurrection Bay on the Kenai, we took an afternoon of the retreat and went into Seward.

Happy Solstice

Temperature 44 degrees, light rain (wind chill 37 degrees)
Sunrise 5:14 a.m.
Sunset 12:25 a.m. on following day

A fair amount has changed recently, and life has been (as a friend phrased it) heavy of material and short on reflection. Yesterday was the summer solstice. Although, theoretically we are supposed to have about 5 hours of darkness, in actuality "darkness" lasts for less than an hour (and not until about 3am). My definition of darkness is "too dark to read a book outside". I stayed up nearly all night the night before last, and I can verify, that dark is nearly nonexistent these days. How do I cope, you ask? I've simply learned that you cannot tell the time of day by the amount of light in the sky. And that is that.

In other news, I am working alone at BABS this summer. My coworkers are all on a teacher's work year, so I am left alone to do this and that. I am enjoying it so far. It is nice to have some time to breathe and work without a hundred things happening all around me. That being said, I will (I'm sure) happily return to school mode in the fall.

My parents, grandparents, and brother met me in Anchorage a few weeks ago and we went to Seward, Homer, and then up to Denali Park for a few days. It was a lot of fun to hang out with my family. The weather was insanely good. Warm (although KOK would disagree), no rain, light wind to keep the bugs off, and apparently the best viewing of Denali Mt. (Mt. McKinley to the rest of you) in three years. Getting to see the "rest" of Alaska was a real treat. The landscape is so diverse, there is sometimes nothing reminiscent about it to where I live. Bethel is its own place, unlike the Alaska on the road system. In some ways Bethel pales in comparison to the Kenai peninsula and to the alpine tundra of Denali park, but in other ways Bethel's allure far outshines these locales. In most of Alaska, Native culture, like in most of the lower 48, seems like a part of history clutching onto the present. Yup'ik culture in Bethel is so much more vibrant that this. The struggle for its survival is active and a part of daily life. It struck me how white other places in Alaska are.

I am also preparing for another year in Bethel. I will start my new job (coordinating a drug/ alcohol abuse prevention program at the high school) at the beginning of August, kicked off with a conference down-states. Fran and I have been beginning our house search also. The search basically consists of telling everyone we know that if they hear of people moving out of a two bedroom place that they should let us know.

I went fishing with a friend's family this past weekend. It stated raining and our trip was cut short, but I managed to catch a Pike (although, since its not really Pike season we threw it back). But I was quite proud of myself anyway.

That's the latest, pictures coming soon (I hope).