Return to Egypt

I started this blog with a small quote from "The Happy Prince." It is essentially the swallow happily singing "tonight I fly to Egypt." As I wrote then, one reason for beginning the blog with that quote was the memory it conjures up of watching the "The Happy Prince" as a film reel in elementary school. The memory of the film, and the film itself are painfully nostalgic. There is a second reason. I lived for nine months in Cairo, Egypt, celebrating my 22nd birthday there. That time in Egypt has had a profound impact on my life. Among other things, if I had not lived in Cairo, I don't believe I would have opened up enough to fall in love with my wife, Shin. For at least a year after moving back to the States from Egypt, my memory and imagination daily lingered on my life on the Nile River.


link to the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIwupcYwimY


And now I can turn my thoughts towards other events and episodes that have had an obvious impact on my life. There was the summer anthropology field school with UGA that took us from Athens, Georgia, to the Georgia coast, to the California coast, and back again, all the while camping out under the stars ad taking copious notes in our field journals about such and such rocks. The day we departed Athens, our professors told us point blank that the experience would carry a profound influence into our lives. For me, it influenced my first year of college and introduced me to the game of toli.

Toli, called stick ball, or otherwise known as the Little Brother of War. It was a native American ball game I played during my UGA years. Along with the company of Tom Deitz, stick ball introduced me to another side of the South that had much greater interest and meaning for me. I also met a lot of very interesting friends who were just as far gone from mainstream society as I was. It was one of the few areas in my life where I felt comfortably at home in my own skin. The last game I played outside of Athens was one of our Moundville, Alabama games, a year after I had graduated from UGA. I flew in from Arizona, took a shuttle van from Burmingham to Tuscalusa, and then walked, jogged and sprinted the 15 miles from Tuscalusa to Moundville. The game wasn't much because the Choctaw did not show up, but the night spent walking around the ancient mounds in the cool, silvery mist is enshrined in my memory.

The summers from 1989 to 1993 spent with my family in the mountains of the American (including Canada) West. There were a lot of  miles spent in cars or the old VW van watching landscapes empty of people pass by, listening to cool old music like Pink Floyd. There were lots of small backpacking trips  and a good many mountains climbed. It was one of the few times I seriously dreamed about a future job - smoke jumper. These are also the best memories I have of my Dad.

Of course falling in love with and marrying Shin has had the most present impact on my life. Next I should write "enough said", however I must add that I fell in love with Shin at age 24. Prior to that I had never had a girl friend, never kissed a girl (or boy), and had promised myself that I never would. So, falling in love with Shin was a big thing for me.

Quite a few painful events must be included here as major life influences. These include the year I spent teaching English in Singapore, my five months of student teaching horror two years later in the United States, multiple moves as a youngster the worst of which was the move to Georgia, and finally the death of my Mom and her mom, Grandma Diss.

What I find strange is that despite the prominence of these events and experiences in my life, they have had virtually no presence in my memories since Solveig was born. The past two and a half years have all been random memories, mostly from my life prior to Georgia.