Cashmere jacket: Massimo Rebecchi (Loehmann’s)
Blouse: home-sewn (Restyle, Boise)
Jeans: Nfy (Charlottesville)
Oxfords: ZARA (Bangkok Paragon)
Carpetbag: vintage Japanese (Restyle, Boise)
Photo credit: A. Webb

Winter, spring, Baghdad, fall,

–Frederick Seidel, from “Kill Poem”

Last night I met an old friend for kebabs and falafel at Ishtar Market & Restaurant in Boise. Ishtar is possibly the only joint in town where you can catch up on your Al Jazeera while sipping mint tea, and watching the day’s headlines bat between Libyan rebels and the Occupy Wall Street movement was a vivid reminder that so many of us—regardless of the tongue we speak—are struggling to find our voice.

I’m glad I scavenged this carpetbag for $2.99 because, frankly, I’m living out of it right now. I’m looking for a job, a home, a partner, and a new way of being in the world. This morning I prayed, May I be a blessing to someone else today, and within fifteen minutes I crossed paths with a stranger I could help. It all felt like a cosmic hat tip to what C.S. Lewis once wrote: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

The body needs clothes and calories and calcium and yet the soul requires so little: a voice; a friend; a small café in which to hear and be heard.