Rereading my 23-year-old Journals



See the JOURNALS tab for more excerpts



About my Peace Corps journals:

I was not yet 23 years old when I began using my journals as a place to record every thought without censorship. A lofty and youthful goal, however, does not make very stimulating reading later. A frequent topic here is “Will I stay one more week or two years?” This trope is used in a self-soothing  ritual to repeat the illusion of choice. Each time, it does not get more revealing and so the journals were true to their ethos: the contents of a 23-year-old’s head without censorship or embarrassment.  While fascinating in it’s naiveté, it’s not always compelling reading for long stretches (though I admit I was up until 2:00 a.m. on the edge of my seat waiting for a more mature thought, a reflection with perspective.)

In the bazaar shopping

Of course this is what I will be asking you, the reader, to not do as you read on: to NOT judge too harshly, not laugh at the prose or prosaicness of the 23-year-old’s inner dialogue.

Themes to watch for:

·         Crack up: Intimate living  quarters with ants, mice, and rats that over time seem to put younger James on the verge of a nervous breakdown, developing muscle tics, plotting each week to go back to America. This latter appears to be a coping device in order to stay the whole time the Peace Corps requests: two years. Reading these parts now it seems a thinly veiled strategy to cope with no serious intention to quit. Thus, it reads to me as not genuine but as a sign of a middle class suburban Caucasian far outside his comfort zone focusing on ants rather than the larger crisis of cultural awakening.

·         Isolation: Feeling connected, feeling alone. Travel with a friend to share your experiences; to travel alone is to meet the world. Sometimes I felt I had hundreds of new friends, other times I felt completely isolated by language, culture, distance from home, and a lack of people like me. But that’s the point! I found subsistence farmers (almost no money passed through their hands yet, by some standards, they led richer lives than those commuting on freeways to offices).
                                                     --> click the JOURNALS tab above to read more