from an email i wrote to darling

no time to write a real entry, so i am copy-pasting from an email i wrote to my dear friend kristen darling.

sarajevo is too touristy and mostar is full of dead people. i am in the shit right now. i am in mostar, and this is the middle of the world and the middle of conflict and peace and death and life and i'm all caught up in it and i'm feeling so much all at once that i'm dizzy and might fall over any minute. we are renting a room from man who can't be any younger than 250 years old. we befriended a dog who was inhabited by the spirit of a bosnian croat who died in 1992 or 1993, but no earlier or later because this dog was trying to show us things, show us what happened here. this place is full of death. and also life. because people who live in birmingham alabama and want to become business men and make money so that their children can drive jeep grand cherokees instead of bicycles and eat steak for breakfast don't feel life the same way as someone who walks past mine-infested ruins on their way to work or has seen their neighbors' head roll of their bodies in a real honest to goodness i
hate you so much i could kill you war. the dead people here
are really really dead and everyone else is really really alive.

i am a war tourist and i feel bad about it, but at least i'm feeling
it. you know? at least i'm seeing the buildings now from my safe
distance in time and i can take these images with me to alabama, where i will be less alive, maybe, but also safe and happy.