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8. Thinking of Central Asia, Fall 2002 9/11’s airplanes did get me to Central Asia though, if not yet knocked up. It’s cliché but true that tragedy and loss are great motivators for those who survive them and/or are not directly touched by them. As I related before, I wrote to the Peace Corps when I was 15 and then I just waited. For what, I don’t know. After Spain and meeting the boy who would be my boyfriend for a long time, he and I moved first to New Brunswick, NJ, and then to Manhattan. Paying over $1,500 monthly for a ragged room that was a hotel back in the olde steam ship days. I had a job, working at a nonfiction publishing company. He rocked back and forth between jobs, fired and unemployed, and I guess I thought I had settled into “life.” That said, during this time, pre-2001, I still thought of Peace Corps at times, my hyper-romanticized version of it, of course. The planes smacked me out of my lethargy and emboldened me to announce to Steve one night while eating Indian f
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