I did begin a new mini-project. I still haven’t finished transcribing my journal from 1996 (October through December) to Word format. I typed in the entry for 1 November today — over 2,300 words. It was my first All Saints’ Day and I waxed eloquent about it. I wrote some pretty lame things, truth be told. I think I was writing with a future audience in mind — my great Peace Corps journal, I guess.

It made me want to return, of course. I was thinking that if I went back now, there would be one grave that I would want to visit on All Saints’ Day: Marcela’s. I realized that such a thing would make me more at home than I’d been four years ago. And I further realized that as more and more time passed (if I lived there the rest of my life, in other words), eventually, that day would take on more and more significance. I’d have graves to visit, more candles to light. And who knows — by that time I might know Polish well enough that I could mumble along with the prayers. And I might have lived in a Catholic community (plausibility structures and all) for long enough that I’d want to mutter those prayers.