I'm home again, back to my comfortable bed, my burgeoning garden, my friends and family. In fact, I've been back for a week, but various other commitments have kept me from writing. More than that; I find myself having a very hard time putting these words down on the page. I am almost too heartsick to write.

Writing, for me, is what I do in the worst moments of my life. When I've really, really badly screwed up, or when I've been trapped in some situation of utter helplessness, caught in the Indymedia Center in Genoa watching in anguish as stretchers are being carried out from the building across the street, when I'm asking myself, "Oh Goddess, what can I do? What can I do?" the answer is always, "I could write something." Writing is my way of screaming -- better than beating on pillows as my therapist used to advise me to do. It makes me feel better, and there's always the hope that what I write might do some small good.

But for me to personally feel better, now, almost seems like a betrayal of the awfulness of the situation. To enjoy my garden, to sleep in my own bed, feels like I'm abandoning my friends whose own gardens are about to be destroyed or sequestered behind the wall, who can't escape the situation, or who have chosen to stay, getting up every morning and going out to demonstrations where they know there is a chance of being killed. Moreover, writing inevitably puts me into the center of the story, if only because it is being seen and described through my eyes -- and this is not about me.

I know that it is just this kind of thinking that leads to burnout and post traumatic stress or maybe is a form of post traumatic stress -- except nothing happened to me on this past trip that would seem to justify a good case of PTSD. Hell, I was there for nearly a month and didn't see a single tank! I was only rarely and briefly in physical danger, and most often in beautiful places, surrounded by warm and welcoming people, albeit with the underlying knowledge that those places were doomed to destruction and those people at risk of the same. If I were counseling someone else I'd tell them, relax, renew yourself, don't stop enjoying what there is to enjoy, treat yourself as a precious resource so that you have the energy to carry on. And the roses are beautiful, the fruit trees laden with marble-sized apples and apricots and plums, the birds are making their own territorial claims with song instead of bullets, proclaiming the glory of the spring morning and their ardent desire to mate. But my heart is heavy.