After some confusion (crashing my mysql database and frantically struggling to learn how to deal with said crash) my new website and blog design are up. Structurally, it looks much like the last one, but it is graphically lighter, loads quicker (important to me as I browse through a a 2kbps connection), and has more semantically and aesthetically pleasing coding.

Some new features include:

The ability for me to make threaded replies to comments

An e-mail forwarding option for blog entries

The ability to subscribe to posts, and receive email updates

I had this conversation (which is only slightly embellished) with a person I met by a pool. Her world view was fantastically strange and worth documenting so future generations can marvel at the oddities of our current civilization.

“Can I guess your birthday?”

I don’t know.

“March 45^th?”

I don’t think that’s a date.

“Was I close?”

Again, there are only so many days in each month.

“Fine,” she says, with utter disappointment in her witchcrafting. She pulls out a magic wand, waves it a few times in the air and asks, “What is it then?”

May 13^th. You brought a wand?

“I was close!”

Well. . .no you weren’t.

“My x-boyfriend was born on the 13^th of May,” she tells me. 

Are you sure it wasn’t the 42^nd?

“You two have a lot in common.”

You have never talked to me, I explain to her, how could you possibly know that?

“The numbers tell me.” She sets down her magic wand and from her backpack pulls a witch’s hat and a pair of twenty sided dice. “You both like the color orange!”

I don’t actually. Orange gives me a headache.

“And you both read science fiction novels.”

If I was a believer in numerology, you just ruined it for me.

She rolls her dice a few times, makes some calculations, and with a startled expression looks up at me. “The similarities between you and my X are astounding!”

We can’t be all that similar; bat shit crazy has never been my type.

She rolls her eyes and continues with the dice.

“You are creative but prone to negativity.”

What? Because of my birthday?

“And the dice,” she tells me. “The dice say that we could never be friends.”

Well thank god for that.

She makes an ugly little face at me and gathers her things. As I get up to walk away she pulls a dried newt from her bag and eats it and lets out a shrill witch’s laugh.

‘Numerology?’ I think to myself. What a loon.  

‘All conditioned things are impermanent’, when one sees this in wisdom, then one becomes dispassionate towards the painful. This is the Path to Purity.

The craving of the man addicted to careless living grows like a Maluva creeper. He jumps hither and tither, like a monkey in the forest looking for fruit.

Whoever in this world is overcome by this wretched clinging thirst, his sorrows grow like Birana grass after rain.

But whoesoever in this world overcomes this wretched craving so difficult to overcome, his sorrows fall away from him like water-drops from a lotus leaf.

Free thyself from the past, free thyself from the future, free thyself from the present. Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, no more shalt thou come to birth and decay. 

From The Dhammapada

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

From Donovan

In seven years I have seen all but fifteen States, and lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, Mexico, Washington D.C., and now Jamaica. Impermanence has become a part of my landscape. This applies not only to physical locations but to people I meet along the way. Occasionally I cross paths with those for whom a deep respect grows and the impermanence becomes more difficult to face.  

Bureaucracy is a mean and terrible beast.  The bureaucracy of the Peace Corps sometimes feels like it runs only on adrenaline and for its own self-preservation.  Volunteers get trampled underfoot in an effort to preserve this beast.  It is a shame when those who get caught in the tide are some of the brightest volunteers the program has to offer. I will miss them and feel a great sense of loss for the Jamaica Peace Corps program.

So here’s to you guys. I hope our paths cross again soon. 

Two fine gypsies once set foot in Jamaica to peddle their wares and to help improve the lives of many tens of children. This week will be a low point in my experience.