Petty Little Unsexy Blog Update

Sometimes I glide down the steps of my Soviet style apartment, past the graffiti - fuck rap - past the cows and the squatting Georgian men who eye me squarely, and I stand at Didi Dighomi's circle of grass where I wait for Marshrutka 192, and I think, most days, "You know, this aint so bad." It aint so bad, but what's more is that it's ordinary. Adventure desires renewal and dies with repetition. So what once seemed near exotic has become anything but: it's a case of the strange, blonde foreign girl waiting at the circle of grass, not realizing she's either strange or foreign because she's just freakin' waiting for work you guys, so why are you staring?

But I also like to think that we can choose what we pay attention to - that our appreciation for the small and the ordinary doesn't have to subside even with life's seemingly purposeful attempt to numb and harden us.

It's like this quote from David Foster Wallace - "The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom." - which I believe. And I have to admit that I often love the myriad petty little unsexy parts of life - and, on certain good days, of people, of countries.

We travel, in part, to seek new experiences, but it's often the ordinary which remains, reminding us that no matter where we go there are things we can't escape: everywhere people waking up in the morning and going to work, grumpy or satisfied; everywhere people making mistakes, wanting love and doing extraordinarily stupid things for it.

There's a big story here, but I'm not really interested in telling it right now. Georgia has a big story, a long history. And of course I have many stories to tell. We all have a history and stories are tremendously important. But I want to talk about the ordinary. Because the long stories are too complex and because I'm too lazy for them. But also because the ordinary may be overlooked, especially by me.

So here's to the ordinary:

to the marshrutka driver who insists on paying my way; to the 3rd grade student who doesn't speak in class but pretends his pen is a rocket, that his hand is a spider, that the entire classroom is a jungle - to that tremendous, and often misunderstood creativity; to the consumption of too much bread & cheese & oil; to the men carrying loaves of bread in one hand; to saying "Let's just meet on Rustaveli"; to the mispronunciation of my name: Betany, Basy, Betsy; to my mispronunciation of nearly every Georgian word I know; to the sudden hatred I feel for people on marshruktras; to the Georgian man with his daughter in the park, who, despite himself, couldn't help but break into an enormous smile when she giggled; to the surprise supra, to street drinking; to all the petty little unsexy moments I've shared with the people I've met here and to the ordinary way these people will come and go from our lives, which is sad but necessary and worthwhile; to stray dogs and Nescafe and chacha and kinkhali. To kinkhali especially. Because I really do like kinkhali. I really do.