Friday, July 27, 2018

The things I’m carrying

July 13th, 2018
My mind has grown quiet over the last few weeks, each day complicated with tasks has brought me closer to the beginning of my Peace Corps service in China. I've said cheers a hundred times or more to family and the friends of new and old.  It's a sweet sadness I first met when I joined the other corps 11 years ago. I've known it ever since.

I moved out of my apartment in Long Beach after condensing my belongings into two cases and a carry-on, throwing away everything else. What did I decide to take with me? I packed the essentials: clothes, shoes, a safety razor, cologne, a blank journal, favorite pens, 3 camera's of varying bulk, 5 lenses of great bulk, the computer I write to you on now, a bundled stack of paper containing medical and personal information, a giant world map, German & USMC flags, a Cubs hat, a leather satchel, and artic grade weather jacket (you never know). Lastly, I packed a book a friend had given me as a gift in the winter of 2016.

Those of you that have engaged in academic battle, who have scoured the internet for scholarship and the pdf's for the supportive quotes and results may agree, recreational reading loses its appeal.

Now, a year and a half later, I have read the aged present, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Part of me regrets not having read it sooner and another see's it as the perfect time. Much of the book reminded me of the other corps and the peripheral duties I had taken on there. It reminded me of the camaraderie of our uniformed family. It reminded me of the insanity of military life, a seemingly organized chaos. 

Although I never served in a combat zone, O'Brien's words reminded me of the friends I knew that went, who found the war. For a while, I felt like I had missed out. It was their stories just as O'Brien's that have made me realize the things I wanted to know I was lucky not to know.

Besides takeaways related to armed conflict, the very thread weaved through the storytelling fabric caused me pause. What did the things that I decided to carry say about me? How would those things be utilized in the unwritten story to come? What future things will I decide to carry? Will I carry them for utility, remembrance, or for love?


I leave for San Francisco tomorrow to meet the rest of the Peace Corps China 24 cohort. The next day we will make our way to Chengdu.

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