in/decisive

the time for the 22:30 bus (last night) came and went, and still we stayed in Sarajevo, through a whimpering night and a hushed morning. to be fair, we did decide not to head back to Beograd last night or very early (6:15) this morning. i mention the inane specifics of this only because so much rests upon the distinction between that which is possible and that which is preferable—the chosen and the (merely) occurring.

[that said, this is going to be a nearly intolerable subjective/meta post. i would want to be warned.]

alone with only my devices, i would take the bus which accorded the least amount of sleep, counting valiantly upon exertion (in any direction, provided it was the most) as something Good and, thus, relinquishing real choice. a difficulty scooted into realms of practical morality is one whose true outcome needs not to be considered: as long as hardship is sought and found, in abundance, it no longer matters whether said hardship is meaningless. and herein lies both the seduction and the futility of the entire strategy. to take, at every (in)junction, the path of most resistance frees up the mind (except when it, well, doesn't because, well, the mind is, well, being affected by the stringencies, by the time spent hacking through the jungled overgrowth) for other concerns; it also allows for a level of lazy thinking (in that relative—and alternately expressed, as are all truly good things—better-ness becomes solely a function of effort) that is completely unacceptable and, moreover, unsustainable—both in the way of all philosophically invalid (either because of outright inconsistency or overconsistency to the point of absurdity) systems.

the result of years of habitual evaluation in this fashion has created one dauntless days-and-nights-without-sleeper, and a fairly decent distance biker. it has not, however, done wonders for the aspects of life that require subtle assessment instead of than hammered-out force.

the other, related, aspect is: when i am alone, the boundaries are, well, without bound. traveling, thinking, and being [altogether too much] individual has not served to institute many.

thus, in the bus example above: the (at least momentary) solution (or, at least, possibility for a truer drawled "this stuff's been cut"): make decisions with another person. it's easier to realise that you, yourself, either want or (in the absence of this determinability) ought to sleep when there's someone else serving as a living, somnolently breathing example. it doesn't have to be anyone special—but, then again, it helps to have a loving discussant who doesn't storm off at the first being-yelled-at. because habits erode only with great friction, unsettledness and rage, the byproducts.

so, shall we say, the Great Contextual Bus Issue was resolved: the world did not explode when we did not leave Sarajevo until noon. we might have even, still, been good people....

with 8 hours on the Real and Winding Bus stretching out like the road and while Best Favourite engaged in his own (true REM) version thereof, i did the best (only?) thing possible for one facing both an existential dilemma and a deadline: feigning sleep in the cramped seat, i figured it all out.

the ongoing problems at Nojeva Barka have pertained to things i have done, choices i have made, but more than these—to certain aspects of myself (as background/training, as foreground/personality, and as stretchground/aspirations). the single most important factor in improving the situation has been my last-ditch decision to pull on the most extroverted, friendly, and inanely chattering front that i could manage overtop the layers of clothing that have increased as the days have followed each other. the response to my change in representation was nearly immediate and, really, very amazing—if somewhat disheartening (perhaps i wanted these problems to have their root in some less superficial elsewhere) and completely exhausting.

meanwhile, as i read my child-development material, i began to suspect that, indeed, it was not (strictly) a matter of my being untrained in the pre-K education field, but the fact that there was a reason that i had not set myself on this course of study and profession from well-nigh the beginning. there's a difference between being able to work with children, and being good at it; multiply this effect severalfold when language differences are involved, when i am expected to function as a teacher and authority figure—and yet cannot say everything that i wish (much less with conviction necessary to persuade the screaming ones to reform of their violent ways).

my taking language classes was a best attempt to bridge the gap between what i wanted to say—to the kids, to anyone—and what i was capable of saying. early on, i had wondered why no one was particularly thrilled by my going to class. the fact that doing so required me to leave NB posed some severe dilemmas, of course. but, even further, no one thought it really necessary for me to have formal classes, the assumption being: that i would just "pick up" the language by spending every waking hour at the kindergarten. when i tried to explain that this was ludicrous for anyone, but especially me (Grammar We Be), i got nowhere but frustrated. i tread the fine line between everyone at NB thinking that i could simply intuit everything (regarding what i was to be doing, how i was to re/interact)—and their belief in my absolute incompetence. in either case, however, it went without saying that, well, everything went without saying—particularly instructions and constructive (or even destructive, provided it was given to me and not channeled through 3 other people beforehand, which is the way in which i had received the original/eventual complaints) feedback.

the lengthened (with neither consultation or reason) hours at NB means that, even more than during the past few months, i am required to stay at the kindergarten for as long as 12 hours—and yet, in the end, accomplish nothing thereby. my presence is at once "necessary," in that every time i make noises about leaving, some "emergency" emergencies itself into existence (i have often thought of making and displaying prominently a bilingual sign whose English half reminds us all of that pithy: "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine," but i have refrained)—and completely superfluous, given that everything i do is somehow "incorrect" and must be re-done (i'm talking about snipping stars from coloured paper, i'm thinking about ironing—not about mistaking the words for "to check" and " to confide" or even "fruit" and "vomit") or that the activity of four adults is, at times, mere bustling. nonetheless, even just being at NB for more of the day either than while i was doing language class three afternoons a week (all the while keeping with one or two lessons on my own time, after work) or than i'd agreed to and, in addition, having at least a 2 hour/day commute left me quite exhausted (primarily because of the forced manner/communicative style changes and some growing resentment regarding their surface tension in which i was called to do all of these activities, public transportation not excepted).

i came to the realisation that, as far as my colleagues at NB were concerned, it would be far preferable for me undergo a procedure which left me with a different personality altogether than it would to be (or become) proficient in any number of specific bodies of knowledge, including (but not limited to): srpski as language, as culture, pre-elementary ed, and teaching English as a second language (with a focus on children). while i still maintain that i would have fared better with either a more-than-partial grasp of each—or a complete mastery of one of these areas, this is as much speculation as the above conclusion (regarding lobotomy), but without some of the derived certainty. that the things i could learn (through language study, through reading developmental psychology textbooks) were, ultimately, poor compensation for that which i could not emphasised the relative futility of the entire engagement.

as is always the case in new situations, one must present a picture of oneself to others—instead of relying on the knowledge these cognizant ones have gleaned, the conclusions they have come to, through years of observatory, communicative, and proximate (loosely defined, particularly through the other two) living. that i had, unwittingly, cast myself in such a horrible light at NB meant that i would be facing several months (if not the duration of my proposed time in Beograd) of not only reconciling myself to the nameless, supremely substitutable "ditch-digging" side of volunteer work, but also that the activity would, simultaneously, constitute a digging-myself-out (the sort of activity which had constituted my existence for the previous month and a half, with dirt falling back down on every side). in the end, though, i was still faced with the disheartening reality: that nothing i am good at was/is being asked of me at NB, that no one even knows that i am, in some small ways, not the miserable failure of a creature which i seemed, had seemed, or was on my way to as-yet-unequaled ways and levels of seeming.

it was at this low point (whose whose first derivative of zero, in any case, was not an absolute minimum and, moreover, seemed to have transformed into an inching-right constant function) that a representative from MCC arrived in Beograd as part of a planned visit. i picked her up from the aerodrom at 1am; i think i even made polite conversation in the taxi on the way to the guest-house where she would be staying. these details notwithstanding, the following day, said woman came to NB for an (also scheduled) meeting with people there, including me. except that, somehow, i got stuck in the sports room while the meeting happened, just outside the door and without anyone noticing that i was conspicuously absent. to this day, i don't know exactly what occurred during the course of those several hours, although i have pieced some of it together. also to this day, i have wished that i had, on that morning, substituted the bouncy rubber and foam balls zooming around my head for, well, some qualitative enough to request a sitting in said meeting. when it was, apparently, finished, the woman left NB—having seen exactly two minutes of actual jerky footage of me lovingly occupied with and surrounded by little hellions.

based, most likely, on several factors (official correspondence during the Time of Hardship with antje/NB, conversation in the meeting and brief glimpse of workings on the previous day, discovering that i was planning a trip to Japan in February, and, possibly, more of the same "personality" issues), over dinner, the woman proceeded to inform me that travel during a SALT assignment was strictly forbidden, according to MCC policy. that i was fairly certain that nothing of the sort existed any-readable-where prompted me to voice some piping complaints about this matter—but, yet, i was (and shall always be) plagued with the sort of doubts akin to the "well, maybe it's possible that i, the mousing 6th grade girl that i am, could have set off the smoke bomb in the boys' bathroom whose occurrence (while i worked busily at my desk, observed by many impartial others who would testify to this unequivocal fact) has prompted the investigation now underway..."; the consequent hesitation was, perhaps, my single greatest liability (and, now, regret) in the ensuing matter. i paused long enough to make absolutely certain (in rushing home and reading every single bit of policy guideline i had not used for toilet paper, by which i mean: all of it) that my initial conception was, in fact, supported (and, thus, externally supportable) and, in doing so, i surrendered something vital and which, until recently, i believed contained my voice.

by the time i had armed myself with righteous indignation at the way in which MCC could, it seemed, concoct rules and immediately (as opposed to for the next round of applicants, ie. after having actually revised and printed new policy manuals) institute these, i had been resoundingly hugged— as the woman expressed her hope that i could "come to accept" this imposition (because it would not be doing the changing) and then, in a flash, flew from the country in much the same way she had arrived. because i was working extra hours at NB, which i had learned, upon inquiry (although i also discovered, later, that this response, too, was some sort of concealing lie) had been mandated by the very visiting despot, i did not take her back to the aerodrom; it sounded like "travel" to me.

caught between the NB, where nothing of "myself" was either being recognised or being used, and the central bureaucracy of MCC, which believed its own justification about everyone involved in the organisation already, implicitly and sub-verbally, thinking the same way—i found myself in a position where the laws of logic, my highly-specific (but equally thought-through) notion of "compassion," and the principle of individual integrity did not apply (and, in fact, sounded like strikes against me, in their various ways but whose perspectival lines all extended to the same point-in-space: my (perceived) lack of "servant-like" nature). as one outside the insularity (single most defining characteristic) of each organisation, given no leverage as such, i had difficulty finding either concepts or words (because i speak a language and not an idiolect—nor will i, myself, stoop to creating, without consistent and articulable reasons, anything of the sort) that could express the sheer unacceptability of the various events which, when summed, had shucked my agency in pointed, precise ways that were, then, justified according to the language and conception of these institutional worlds-unto-themselves.

it's (always) a question of meaning. and, no i don't use the word in that (academic philosophical) sense. i did not insist that, instead of wiping snot, i be doing investigative work on language (as subject, itself, and variety of expression) at NB; i did not ask that MCC laud me for exploring and, then, knowing this new circumstance (and region) in my own way. i just needed a correlation between things stated and things operative and, especially, for the one implicated to be allowed her moment of stating and operating.

sometimes there's an epiphany, and sometimes a creeping of realisation. when neither the first dramatic explosion at NB nor the deciding upon (somewhat humiliating) details of a concrete plan whereby to ameliorate each of the objections raised against me brought the "leaving" issue to my mind, it was because i had come to this place, knowing that it would be difficult, and accepting (then) whatever it would involve for at least the 11 months of the term. that these difficulties had emerged was one thing. but their unnecessary multiplication in the particular way that made it abundantly clear not only that none of them, individually, would likely disappear but also that key aspects (persons, institutions) were structured in such a way that both allowed for and sanctioned their proliferation, forced me to reconsider.

one by one, all of the means whereby i had tempered the various hardships of the situation had been removed (or severely restricted). there are times for asceticism and, in fact, i can live in a tiny box quite contentedly, quite indefinitely. there comes an instance, however, when that which can be borne is no longer sensible, as such—when its difficulty is driving a hard and fast line for the meaningless and, in commanding any effort (much less the colossal amount it, usually, does), is preventing activity of a life-and-light variety.

i stayed because here i stand on the visible, audible, and implicative zigzag (he might just be describing the neighborhood, but it isn't idle that Kiš uses this term in the same breath as "bomb shelter") of a dividing line between East and West. i stayed because of That Language with which i struggle—and because of the city itself, which enables, bids, and requires me to do so on a daily basis. i stayed because the rough patches in my reaching an agreement with language, history, and place were in the service of understanding, itself. these negotiated arrangements, moreover, were understandable (albeit graspingly) and, most of all, suggested (albeit in etchy traces) that, over time, great benefits would be birthed from, and by, uncertainty and strain.

i stayed, also, under the auspices of MCC and NB (because i could do no other, at the moment). as each of these blockaded the path whereby i pursued anything capable of sustaining itself (through immediate or retroactive justification), i saw—if not the limits of my strength—the ends to which i was willing to employ this finite quantity.

we were over the border by this point and, realising that i had not properly lost my voice, knowing for what i would stay and, in addition, the purpose this would, later, serve—i had reconfigured the scenario such that i could continue in Beograd. that possibilities are not determined, even when they are, also meant, however, that i did not have to.