Sylvia's Journal

It is getting a bit nippy. Fall is in the air. I had to bring out sweaters and warm shawls. We passed the dividing line between summer and fall. Still, it was a beautiful day. Today was less work and more social: a brunch with friends from DC – the same friends, in a Salem restaurant across the street from where we brunched two years ago on the eve of my departure to Kabul. It was the closing bookend brunch of that two year period.

We had left Joe to his own devices which he likes as he is (a) overcoming a cold and needs quiet rest and (b) is trying to come up with an integrated model combining permaculture, the timeless way of building and some other important thought frames about a better future world.

After a walk in the woods, amidst thousands of mushrooms past their prime, we sat on the beach to burn those frames that were no longer of use to us. Each of us would take an old frame, declare it no longer valid or useless and then ceremoniously tossed it into the fire. We also burned baskets, and with them, expectations contained in them about how and what we should be. After that it was freedom for a while.

Just when I was relishing my new freedoms a little boy, 10 years or so, ran onto the beach with a plastic AK-47 replica. I was so astonished, seeing this kid with the so familiar weapon, that I was speechless for a while. He ran up and down the beach looking for bad people or good people, we weren’t sure on which side he was – armed opposition groups (AOGs) or Taliban or the national army, blissfully pulling the trigger which made a real tat-tat-tat sound. If only he knew.

After our outdoor fire Axel started an indoor fire in our fireplace that was just installed when I left 2 years ago. It got me warm and sleepy. Bedtime it was.