Sylvia's Journal

On Fridays I would have visited Lisa for my massage. Lisa’s place was right in the crossfire between ISAF and the US embassy. I wrote her to find out if she was OK. There is no basement in her salon; no place to hide. I always felt it was a safe place because it being right in the middle of endless fortifications. But it is also right in the middle of lots of people with guns. Safety amidst so many guns is, of course, an illusion.

Joe, her husband replied to my email. She is OK but her access to modern communication technology appears to have been disrupted.

Now that I am out of the Kabul dustbowl I decided to try wearing my unilens again, one (lensed) eye for reading and the other for distance. But my eyes got all watery and irritated. The optometrist checked my cornea and told me it has bulged a little more since he last measured it, which may explain the irritation and the difficulty of putting the lens in and getting it out. Nothing serious and something that appears to be age-related he assured me – just part of the general falling apart of older people’s bodies. Hmmm, I am not even 60.

Our shipment appears to be in transit. Whether that means out of Afghanistan is not clear. We hoped it had not gotten caught in the cross fire – and the email from the moving company confirmed it had not. We are still far from creating the necessary space in our house – an enormous task that left Axel irritable as it seems without end.

Our friends Anne and Chuck came over for a fall dinner – applesauce from our neighbor’s appletrees, home fries from Down East, pork roasts and green beans – the only missing ingredient was a fire in the fireplace. Although the temperatures are tumbling, it is not quite fireplace weather, not yet.

Over dinner Joe recited once more how he and his wife brought a community of staunch individualists together to create a shared vision, after a forest fire ravaged a good part of the town, and killed some people. The vision allowed them to take advantage of opportunities that came knocking, disguised as calamities. It made me think how we, as a nation, could have done so much better after 9/11 if we had followed a similar path.

Z. sent me a sad poem, inspired no doubt about the latest round of violence, about her home country. I have promised her to review her other pieces she sent me. They are wonderful and full of spelling and grammar mistakes. Giving good feedback requires some serious thinking and so I have postponed giving it to her.

I am procrastinating on many fronts. I wonder if this is part of my adjustment of being out of a stress zone. I feel a bit paralyzed at time – keeping busy with cleaning out closets keeps me from focusing on the things I said I wanted to do but can’t.