After an unusual glance at Facebook and my friends' lives, I feel suddenly very boring.  Last night I had a glass of wine by myself and watched The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on Lifetime.  It was the Saturday before classes start again, although it would bode poorly for my social life any day of the week.  That little sliver of truth says...more than I'd like it to.  And before I surveyed last night and the general situation of things, I had considered catching a matinee movie today, again by myself.  

I guess the good news is that I'm not afraid to get out and do things solo, since it's gonna be a long solo ride.  The bad news is that I still feel incredibly dull.

In other good news, and it's also quite exciting for me, I got to talk to The Staff Sergeant yesterday.  Bliss.

Upon returning.

"What is to give light must endure burning." - Viktor Frankl

It wasn't until the landing gear, in a mechanical moan, released itself from the plane's belly that I knew I wasn't ready to be home yet. I made it through the drop-off an hour and 20 minutes prior without tears only now to fight them off as I sat sandwiched between two unfriendly, self-engaged passengers. I was four-weeks fine having forgotten the true delicacy of our fingers entwined, of his playful gazes followed by smiles that I always question, of his off-the-cuff obscurities that don't quite convey over the phone. Like a candy from childhood that locks your jaws in immediate recollection, there he was waiting for me when I turned the corner...all of him, all of the whole of him, and as predicted, every ounce of possible anxiety dissolved. I wanted to be nowhere else in the wide world than in a bathroom doorway of an airport, wrapped in his arms.

He eventually was able to pry me from his neck in order to retrieve my circulating suitcase. After leaving the airport, we dined on Italian, we drove back to his temporary dwelling, we forgot about everything beyond our four walls.

Saturday was busy for both of us - he with an unexpected work obligation, and I with some collegiate business. By early afternoon we were finished with worldly distractions and able to get back to a vegetative state of doing what we do best together - nothing. Later we were off to dinner again and a movie that I won't suggest [Vantage Point]. Following the film and an unexpected run-in with a friend of his, we headed "home". Having already exhausted my still recovering body, I curled up next to him, cheek planted against his chest and blissfully fell asleep.

Sunday was as Sunday's should be. Some couples define "their thing" as a hobby or a mutual interest. Ours is pure laziness on the sabbath characterized by unusually large breakfasts and laying in bed for numerous, slothful hours. Even being away, Sunday followed suit...sleeping in, ridiculous laughter, waffles, no make-up. It was perfect, perfect, perfect.

Now I'm home again, void of the key element of the place. He remains [there] and will be for a number of weeks still, and I find myself back at the start of another one I can begin striking off the calendar of time apart. Time is so temporary a thing that it passes with each breath, each blink of an eye, every second mounting into minutes, into hours and days, and soon enough he'll be back, too. I sometimes question whether or not I really am strong enough, and then 48 hours of my life with him resounds with the deafening truth of will. Without fail, I will pick off each day that stands between us with determination because some things are too good to be waywardly discarded [even when they're really hard].

Home is...not Memphis.

I said I'd post the back-logs, but I ended up journaling most of them. I'd recap the 4 days of holiday "bliss," if I wasn't exhausted just thinking about mentally reliving them. I saw some friends and family. I ate some good tasting, but not good for you Southern food. I wore skinny jeans and silver pumps to Christmas Eve's festivities. I received my grandmother's wedding set for the possible event of its [very future] intended use, and a fancy GPS, and some books, and lotion. I saw three movies. Drank one beer and two glasses of bubbly. And received 2 birthday presents a month early because my parents...I don't even know.

And it rained.

I'm glad to be home.

the result of violence and deprivation

I did something I probably shouldn't have last night. I couldn't have foreseen the reaction, in the way that one who doesn't bother reading the warning labels on cleaning products naively mixes the ones that ignite. It's been 5 solid days since I heard his voice, and even then I was alloted a brief bullet-pointed delivery of the day's recap before he had to run. Really, it's been about a week since we've connected in a meaningful, verbal manner. I am apparently a bit needy, and so the apart-ness is hard.

I spent the night curled up on my sofa with Macbeth, gnawing a Nylabone at my feet. We aimed to watch a movie in order to entertain ourselves and enjoy the leisurely evening. I was caught up in the riveting plot. I was on the edge of my seat, rooting for the "good guys" when the bus exploded - blew out the windows, killed off the innocent characters the audience was lured into loving, marked a gain for the fanatical terrorists. I paused the movie. I needed a minute.

I miss him, and I wish the world wasn't such a scary place both in fiction and in reality.

A Diamond is Forever

I was talking on the phone last night when the topic of diamonds filtered into the conversation. They've been a subject on my mind since seeing Blood Diamond a few months back, also following my quick read of A Long Way Gone, the chronicle of a child soldier in Sierra Leone (a major hot spot for diamond conflict until 2002, and also the setting of the mentioned movie).

As for many things in the vast world in which we live, my depth of knowledge is rather shallow regarding this topic of concern, but my hesitance to endorse the diamond has certainly been heightened after seeing the reenactment on screen of ruthless village attacks, violent amputations, and the enslavement of innocent people...not to mention the kidnapping and brainwashing of children later to be made into rebel soldiers.

So laying in bed on this lazy Sunday, performing my usual a.m. routine of checking email/surfing the net, I looked over news headlines until this caught my eye: Liberia Lifts Diamond Mining Ban. I figured that now was as good a time as any to check into the issue of diamonds.

It's a sad truth that the Western World's hype to jump on the anti-conflict diamond bandwagon is perhaps too late to be significant in making change. The countries suffering the most violent of wars have settled into more peaceful times as the encouragement to boycott diamonds has risen. It seems to be our style: turn a blind eye until a major producer in Hollywood funds a movie. I'm not above admitting that this is how my heart was turned. It was Rwanda's genocide that changed me through the impressive role of Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina. It's borderline disgusting that Hollywood has more "umph" than the news, and myself included, that Americans are so naively informed.

From what I can tell, the issue of conflict diamonds is now being controlled by the Kimberly Act, which aims to track each diamond to ensure it's origin. Within some sites this seems to be a positive movement, at others, there is skepticism that it is enough. In one article, only 1% of the world's diamonds are claimed to be mined under rebel conflict in Africa, yet the same article links 20% of diamonds on the market to a larger group of "controversial diamonds" made up of "smuggled diamonds and diamonds mined in abusive labor situations all over the world" (Washington Post). It is also repeatedly noted (in this Post article and others) that the sale of diamonds is an economic benefit to the African nations and that the boycott of the stones will prove detrimental to the already poverty ravaged nations where legitimate and prosperous diamond mines are run.

Another very interesting element of my research into conflict diamonds revealed a link between middle eastern terrorist groups Al Qaeda and Hezbollah and the corrupted governments of Sierra Leone, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The article I was reading, sponsored by Amnesty International, goes on for numerous paragraphs explaining the money movement between Africa and the Middle East. Quoting author Greg Campbell, "Osama bin Laden's terrorist network began buying diamonds from the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) of Sierra Leone according to FBI sources quoted in the Washington Post." - and that was in 1998. He also writes that when assets were frozen to these groups they were still able to operate through the currency of diamonds. Campbell, throughout his article, lays a lot of blame on the unethical mining and trading of "blood diamonds" in the funding of the actions carried out on September 11, 2001.

If nothing else, it gets you thinking (or it should)...

Moving to a less controversial argument, and in a more bohemian, "damn the man" direction is the fact that De Beers is said to have created the value of diamonds through intense marketing campaigns, and an especially large increase in movie presence in the 1930's (and again, we're taking cues from Hollywood). This article highlights the arbitrary sentiment placed on the rock in the Victorian era, when apparently people felt the need to assign meaning to inanimate objects (e.g., flowers, gem stones). The guys at De Beers set out to put wide-eyed starlets in movies being offered these "tokens" of love, and we all followed suit.

I think that I need to digest all of this information before announcing to the next guy I date never to think about buying me diamonds. It's intense, as are most things in the world. It makes me sick to think about the stories illustrated in Blood Diamond (chopping off limbs and whatnot), and mentioned over and over again as a result of African rebel armies moving illegally into the diamond industry. It's also something to consider that not purchasing them might have negative repercussions in the developing nations in need of economic increase. It's something to ponder how corrupt organizations of terror work together in the name of greed and evil, and yet another to think that we might all just be duped by De Beers.