Mistah Kurtz-he dead

 I first read T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" when I was a young teen and for years it was one of my favorite poems (not my very favorite though--that honor goes to "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, (read ozymandias) quite a dashing and tragically glamorous character himself). read eliot's poem if you want to. Hollow Men still is one of my favorites actually. I'm not really sure why. It's rather depressing.Whenever I read it, I imagine reciting it aloud, dramatically, with my voice rising and falling at all the right places. People would be listening, thinking "That's an odd sort of poem for a little girl to be reciting on such a beautiful day." At the word "bang" I would shout it out and startle everyone and while they were still composing themselves, I would quietly say the last words. So calmly and quietly that everyone would have to lean forward to hear. Of course, I'd be standing in a garden, on a small sort of stage, perhaps in a gazebo. The garden would be very well-manicured with roses and the shrubbery trimmed into fantastic shapes, a stately palace in the background. And everyone would be wearing white and drinking tea :) I was introduced to Eliot's poetry in my British Literature class. He was born in America but moved to England and eventually became a British citizen. I can't imagine what it would be like to become a citizen of another country. I've spent my whole life as a citizen of the U.S. Not that I have no desire to go anywhere else. In fact, my plan is to travel to as many places as possible. I've met  people who think it's crazy to leave the country. "You could die," they told me. "I could die here too" I said. "Uh-uh," they replied, "I'd rather die in the U.S.A, thank you!" What difference does that make? People die in a myriad of unexpected ways every day. And if you must die, why not die doing something worthwhile? I mean, I'm not in a particular hurry to fall into the grave or anything and like most girls I pray that God would postpone my death until I've fallen in love, married and had children (we'll see how that goes). En route to the Bahamas on a mission trip, we had to board a tiny plane  that would take us over the ocean between Florida and Nassau. The plane only had about 40 seats and there were quite a few empty. Once we all sat down and buckled in, the pilot announced that some of us needed to move to a different seat to balance out the plane. I was absolutely delighted. My friends were not so happy. Because the plane was so small and we were flying so low, we hit a lot of turbulence and rocked and shook and bounced about. It was brilliant. I imagined the plane plummeting into the ocean. Obviously I would have the presence of mind to quickly secure my life jacket and help those around me, and once we were out in the open water I would keep everyone calm while we waited to be rescued, which could take days. Never mind the fact that I can't swim :) When my sister and I were preparing to teach ESL overseas a couple of years ago, we both agreed that the adventure of it all and the chance to make friends and experience another culture far outweighed the risks.  "But why would you want to leave?"people ask.  Because, people, there's more to life than my neighborhood, my city, my school. There's more to life than driving back and forth between work and home. More than cable and fast food and Wal-Mart and clubbing. I don't want to just see the world on television or read about far-away lands. I want to go and meet the people and talk to them and eat their food and wander through the markets and listen to their music and play with their children and explore. My mother says that I'll end up living in a hut somewhere, which would be fine with me for a while at least.  I don't suppose I will ever want to be an actual citizen anywhere except for the U.S. but I am a restless soul. Perhaps I want to have my cake and eat it too (The saying never made any sense to me until I looked it up :) Nerd alert!  http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/eatcake.html ). A friend of mine once said that I am impossible to impress. I denied it because, in general, I am quite easily impressed. The simplest magic trick leaves me awestruck and anyone who knows how to change a tire is my hero. He explained a bit further. "You," he said "are always looking for the next thing. You do something and think, 'that was good' and you're already wondering what's next." I thought about that for a while and I suppose he's right in a sense. It's not that I'm impossible to impress. It's just that there's always something more to do, places to go, people to see. Too long doing the same old thing drives me crazy. Let me clarify--I'm not fickle or reckless. I just cannot stand mundane. The idea of an ordinary 9-5, apple pie, same ol'--same ol' existence scares me (you know when someone asks how you're doing and you answer "O, same ol'-same ol'" hm, maybe that's a Yankee thing). I mean, it truly frightens me. What I really really want to do is become a nurse--and eventually a nurse practitioner--and with a medical team periodically travel to remote or impoverished areas overseas. There I would work with the people to set up clinics and teach them how to incorporate basic modern medical care into their local health practices so that the clinic will continue to benefit the people long after the team is gone. Last semester, one of my nursing instructors told the class about transcultural nursing. A transcultural nurse learns all about medical practices in a wide variety of cultures and is trained to put that knowledge to use so that diverse patients will receive the best care. How cool is that? That's what I wanted to do long before I found out that there was an official title. I've seen many people live in their carefully constructed safe little worlds and maybe that's okay. But I believe that man was created for much more than okay. Everyone needs some extraordinary mixed in with the ordinary, and just like medicine, there are people who need a larger dose than others. I started off with Eliot's post-WWI poem and somehow end up with the thirst for adventure. Well, then.