Some remarks on being in Haiti
I knew the world would never be the same when I saw the adjectives drop to the ground like insects and the adverbs go up in flames like moths in a bonfire. Suddenly I was a tiny piece of my own world view and my notions of reality expanded as if I had been peering at a globe and had suddenly backed up. Vocabulary seemed an exercise in a futility, and I felt my whole being fill with the generic and supposedly empty word I've known since I could speak: "big."
As a human, what do I know of size? I know only myself. I am no adjective at all; I am my one and only reference point, the point by which everything in my universe is measured. And the world is big; and what I mean by that (and the reason that word contains everything) is that it is bigger than I am. Physically, that's obvious. But internally, it was a unique admission in my life.
That the world is bigger than I am. It all has to start there, doesn't it?
Dan