in haiti

i'm in haiti this week with some friends of mine. wanna read a page from my journal?

4/16/09
les cayes, haiti

Usually when I write I'm at my computer. The words come and go and when I don't care for the shape or flow it's easy to change it. I backspace or delete. I cut and paste. All of these adjustments leave no trace of themselves, and I'm left with a thought that is clean and satisfying.

In Haiti, I go back to pen and paper and this is fitting. Corrections require something more radical, and a kind of scar is left behind. Once the ink touches the fibers of the paper I can only change my mind by scratching out what's already there. It's a violent act in a way, at least for a writer. And sometimes what I'm left with is a confused and rambling tangle of thoughts.

Everything is like this in Haiti. The simplest act can demand extraordinary energy and effort. Here, we say, "de gaje" on a regular basis. It means essentially that you just make do with what you have. Most of the time you don't have much so you leave behind a tangle of your good intentions, scars of what you wanted to say or do, scribbling hopes. The landscape is covered with the ink of things scratched out and rewritten over and over.

So I'm writing these words here in a journal and giving it to God. He knows what I wanted to say.