Notice on Hiatus

Evidently I have been missing for about a year, and for very good reason. The very good reason is that I can't access my blog where I am. Therefore I haven't had anything interesting or new posted.

I may make one more post and then I expect total silence for another year or so, depending on where I end up living.

Here's something of note, I've been really happy to be in the nation of my birth and I don't regret being here, even if there are things I don't like about being home. It does a lot to remind me about the truths that are easy to forget when I'm away, namely my poverty and obscurity. (After all, I spend most of the year as a middle-class celebrity)

It also reminds me of the people I haven't seen and the value of long term relationship. It's easy for me to be in short-term communities of extreme closeness and near daily interaction, but those relationships are hard to maintain afterwards, when I move into a different, intense community with quick and close relationships. There are very few people that I have had regular contact with over a long period of time, and for me, five years is a long period of time.

I imagine it like a think array of shallow roots. It's a weird analogy that I could just as well reverse. I then think of taproots, conical straight down. It's one thing to see people every day and be close to them for a year or two. It's another thing to stay in reasonable contact for years, and to have a long-term closeness and shared memory.

Every year seems to be about going through some huge change, like a meat grinder. This year it hinting at working hard and making a really unnatural effort to reach out and seriously care about a lot of people I haven't been close to in a long time.

It's in a very positive light, though. For a long time it was a struggle to do the right thing without being genuinely motivated to do it, now, by a lot of grace and a lot of help, it is better.