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Entries Having filled the furnace for two weeks, I feel like I am starting to get a feel for certain smoky smells. There is the metallic, unpleasant smoke that comes when it's burned to the coals. And there's the satisfying, deep woody smoky smell when the wood is burning well. And occasionally there's the more fragrant perfume-like smell that's almost delicate. I think it comes from the birch bark. Of course, I can't forget that burning plastic smell. I didn't figure that one out until a few days later when I noticed a melted burn mark on my jacket. One of the nice things about filling a furnace in Vermont when it's cold, is that when scrounging around in the wood pile, you never have to worry about scorpions or other bugs.
It's really odd thinking back on the first few weeks of Mountain School. Everyone was just getting to know each other, and everything seemed so fun. It is still fun, but in a much more normal way. Take the dorm for instance. At the beginning it was impossible to work. All anyone wanted to do was laugh and talk and traipse up to Garden Hill and back. Now quiet hours are actually quiet. Weird. I'm not saying we are complete recluses. Every now and then there are night we procrastinate too much, and on the weekends we stay up after Friday and Saturday activities, talking until one or one-thirty in the morning. And of course there's always dorm meeting. I really cherish that time of the day. It is like having dinner with your family. Everyone gathers in the common room. Candy, cookies, and bags of chips and sunflower seeds are opened and spread upon the coffee table or rug. Often, conversations between one or two people will expand and contract, but everyone and then the whole dorm will be discussing one topic. We all have our opinions-some voice them more loudly than others. Sometimes we agree or disagree; everyone makes their own unique contribution. Occasionally we will spend the entire half hour giggling or cracking stupid jokes. I love my dorm. It will break my heart to leave. Every day when I go out to feed the cows, I walk in to change their water. Every day, the calf looks at me excitedly, as if she expects something from me. She'll mosey up to me while I'm refilling the water and look up at me with her big cow eyes. I'll hold out my hand to offer her exactly what I've brought her: nothing. She'll look at my empty, gloved hand and, more often than not, she'll stretch out her long, scratchy cow's tongue and just stand there and lick me for about thirty seconds. It actually makes me laugh out loud, alone to myself, it is so funny. I'm going to miss it when my chore changes. Last night was really great-I love stories, celebration, and food, and Passover is like a combination of all of these. I remember when I was little and I went to my first Seder. It was a family friend of ours who invited us. We aren't Jewish, but they wanted us to celebrate with them-I liked that. I hadn't eaten all day and I was expecting there would be a lot of food, because it was a holiday. When we sat down at the table there were only a few small dishes of things, which frankly did not seem like food to me. Horseradish, parsley, and salt water. And some crackers. We didn't end up eating for about an hour and a half. We read prayers and passed around glasses of wine. When we finally got to eat it felt like the first bite of food after forty years of wandering through the desert. I just got back from outdoor hike, and it was incredible. My group was so much fun; we just wandered through the woods and talked and laughed. The way the light was shining on the tan field's grasses was gorgeous; there was a subtle beauty to it that is hard to capture. Also, there was something so nice about what we were doing: just walking, matching the clearings and forests to our maps, stopping for a drink of water here and there or observing twisted, ancient-looking trees. There was a very surreal feeling when we reached the top of the hill and then stepped down into a clearing by a small house. There was a deer carcass hanging from a tree, and a dog that looked like a stuffed wolf was staring dead at us. It was eerie, but not in a scary way. I still can't put my finger on what was so satisfying about just walking around. Maybe the simplicity of it was what made it so nice. Being tired here is not the same as being tired back home. At home, going to bed past midnight and getting up at 6:30 was the norm for me. It wasn't always easy to get out of bed in the morning, but after years of stress and sleep-deprivation, I'd become like an automaton-going through the motions but never feeling fully awake whenever big papers or projects would roll around, it always seemed to turn into a competition to see who stayed up the latest. "I stayed up until 1:30!" "You amateur-I went to bed at 4!" Only now, when I have a safe distance between myself and my school, can I truly see how twisted and unhealthy my mindset was. Here, though, everything is different. I get about eight and a half hours of sleep every day, yet I'm constantly tired. I think that it's the deep sleep and bone-weary tired that comes from spending a lot of time in the outdoors, from doing work that actually matters. My hands had always been something that I had been proud of. I think that it’s because my mother told me that when I first came out, the first thing she had noticed was how the same our hands were. They used to be manicured and clean and soft and elegant. Since coming here, my hands have gotten calloused, my nails are always bitten short for convenience and my slender fingers are now a little swollen, a little earnest for work. Surprisingly, more than ever, I am proud of my hands. The elegance they portray now is that of a life lived and worked. My nails are filled with dirt and accomplishment. The sheer satisfaction I get from felling and chopping a large tree down is, well, undeniable. With every "whack!" of the ax and every "zzzz!" of the saw I picture the moment when the tree is falling. There is that time, you know, when you are almost there and the tree is buckling, balanced finely on that equilibrium between toppling over and staying put, that point when the tree becomes flexible, almost. It starts to bend and snap; you can hear the crackle as the tree snags and then finally gives up with a crashing sigh to the ground. The creaking, moaning, gives the whole thing a surreal property as if I'm stepping outside of time to watch that short interval between up and down, when I know that it has all led up to this. The theme of "rural immigrants" resonates loudly with me. As a city kid who lives part of the time in rural Thailand (and live currently in rural Vermont), I possess both the "intellectual snobbery" of Frost's speaker and the annoying curiosity of the Moon-Azures. As an Asian encountering overwhelming Western interest in Eastern medicines and philosophies, I identify strongly also with Mason's jealous guarding of her/his heritage. I've only become interested in Eastern traditions-the likes of yoga, alternative medicines and Buddhism-ironically enough, once I started going to school in the US. I could argue that the distance, the much needed removal from an overly familiar surrounding, helped me to see my heritage more clearly and appreciatively. I could argue that it is just a part of growing up; indeed, the same thing happened to my relationship with my parents-I began to appreciate them more over time (and distance). But then again, I could say that the interest of "outsiders" had generated a sense of jealous pride and ownership that had not been there before. Or maybe (and most painfully), I can admit the extent to which I have been westernized and conditioned in Western superiority that only western interest could lend my heritage legitimacy in my mind. This page perhaps contains the most personal entry I've made so far in this journal, and one of a handful of pages I consider personal I've ever written anywhere. Turning the dissecting knife on myself almost always seems too painful to bear. I find it so much easier and more satisfying to turn the blade outwards. Perhaps one reason I prefer to express myself in English rather than Thai is that it is less personal and therefore less excruciating for me.
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