quiet

a robed Wendy, and friend. she's as close to a school mascot as you can get, since she's been cared for by the staff of Kamogelo since she was just a few months old.

my class of characters.
sethunya and atang are dancing up front, bridget, benjamin, and tebogo, are being cheeky behind them. katso, chris, bofelo, emmanuel, etc., round out the crowd in back.

Chris - black cap. We got a bandaid for his finger on Friday, and the nurse cleaned it out with some antiseptic.

And so it goes, another lazy morning. I’ve been alone here for the past three days, and the solitude is morphing into something of a tangible companion. Abby, Julio, Pratik, and Rajiv flew down to Capetown Saturday morning, and Jen, Dave and Hong drove to Joburg. In a rare moment of practicality, I opted out of both trips, deciding to save some money for the future travels that promise both adventure and expense.

I usually have a hard time with empty spaces at home – the hours stretch and the minutes avalanche and I tend to end up with a whole lot of nothing for a whole lot of nothing. Time Crunch is my preferred morning breakfast, and it’s usually the only thing to get me moving for the day. However, this leisurely weekend has somewhat surprised me.

Saturday morning didn’t start off so well – I woke up with the heaviest imp on my chest, and he just kind of sat there for an hour, goading me. The light was peeking through the curtains (covered in what could be the ugliest green and pink pattern I’ve ever seen) but I couldn’t really find a reason to get up. Run in the stadium? and then? read? and then? surf the web? and then? walk to buy eggs? and then? it was a vicious spin cycle and I found myself on the verge of pillow tears. It’s incredible how the wanderlust works. It seems, that no matter where I am, my mind is tugging to travel farther than my body. Even in the middle of southern Africa, with a world of the New surrounding me, I can still feel the weight of the mundane.

Eventually, I tumbled out of my sleeping bag (I like the close feel of zipped up security) and went about the morning routine. A few minutes into teeth brushing, Nina called, to remind me that a letter had arrived for me the day before. I quickly threw on some clothes, and ran to her hostel.

The envelope was square and white, and I waited to open it until I was again cross legged on my bed. As the first few words from my dear friend Christina spilled out, “Safe Travels” by Peter and the Wolf happened to start humming out of my computer. It’s become a bit of a theme song for me (listen, if you haven’t) and the combination had me sobbing, because I have so much and I love so much and am loved so much and it’s not just words or memories or songs or sounds, but the breath of a living emotion. And when you remember that that respiration floats in the air around you, no matter how far you are from its source, well, you cry.

I know this isn’t in any way a new sentiment, but it’s the first time I’ve really truly felt it resonate in all the empty caverns of my person. I guess one of the things I struggle with in thinking and recording is the constant knowledge that nothing and everything is new. I know that whatever I’m feeling has been felt before and will be felt again, in greater and lesser quantities, for bigger and smaller reasons, articulated in ways and words that I can’t hope to touch. I know, I’ve read it, and thus I’m sometimes swept by the self conscious awareness of my own trite words. And yet, when the human experience reproduces inside of me, when ages of articulation modify and rematerialize in my brain, I just can’t hold it back. And if I sound naïve, or young, or sheltered, or repetitive? I guess we all just keep repeating ourselves and each other, until we finally hear things with our own inner ear. Ah yes, you finally think, now it is clear. Translation isn’t limited to language.

So Saturday and Sunday were spent with a renewed bounce in my step, and a bit of added purpose in my stroll to and from the grocery store. I cooked lunch and dinner with a fierce sense of proud independence (loneliness’s older, prettier, wiser sister), and read and skyped and thought with the same determination. Not much was accomplished except connection, but for once I think I’m okay with that.

Sunday night, my friend MK was kind enough to invite me to join the crowd at a braii, and I happily tagged along. The chatter was refreshing, as was another taste of residential life, but unfortunately my stomach started hurting again and I called it an early night with a good book in bed.

One thing I realize is that I haven’t talked much about is the books I’ve been reading. Although I’ve had an abundance of free time, I strangely have read less than expected. Regardless, I am always very conscious of the way absorbed words influence my thoughts, and so in the interest of full disclosure, I think it’s best to reveal my latest biblio-acquisitions. Thus, a run-down:

Dave Egger’s ‘You Shall Know Our Velocity’: I read this on the plane rides over, and it was a perfectly timed event. If you haven’t read it yet, I would recommend with complete enthusiasm. It’s a really incredible meditation on travel, giving, taking, help, harm, time, obstacles, hope…too much to capture in a sentence, and all wrapped in a story that makes you not forget. It is also solitary in a way that keeps reverberating.

Salman Rushdie’s ‘Shalimar the Clown’: Chasing ‘Midnight’s Children’ (an all time favorite), it didn’t quite fill the giant footsteps. However, it did take me to Kashmir, and that was interesting, considering I’m in Botswana. It’s amazing how many places we can
be at once.

Sara Gruen’s ‘Water for Elephants’: entertaining, and fast paced. A good substitute for easy access to dvd rentals.

Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: really fantastic – I only knew it as an abridged children’s story, and the satire had me laughing unexpectedly. I’ve been starting and stopping in the progression of pages, so I have yet to reach the conclusion. Swift’s thoughts on the New, the Unfamiliar, the observation of and interaction with such – these are good for mental dialogue.

Borges: (thanks D,) a constant and incredible companion. The moments he fills are lucky ones. If this won’t make your brain churn, nothing will. I’m grateful for the questions he poses and the worlds he conjures – I don’t always know that I’d ever make it there on my own.

Beryl Markham’s ‘West With the Night’: loaned to me by a friend here, I have been tearing through the pages and mining each for the gems it holds inside. The back cover is coated with Hemmingway’s praise for this particularly unusual author, and although I know reading the full thing is best, I feel that I must quote a few of the things I’ve jotted into notebooks:

“So there are many Africas. There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa – and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no one else’s, but likely to be haughtily disagreed with by all those who believe in some other Africa […] Being thus all things to all authors, it follows, I supposed, that Africa must be all things to all readers.” (8)

“Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic.” (9)
[So true, so good]

“I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired. If it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse.” (46)
[This has been cycling in my head a lot – are my actions impulse or inspiration? The former endows me with a sense of embarrassment, while the latter gift pride and happiness. How long will it take to tell?]

“I had always believed that the important, the exciting changes in one’s life took place at some crossroad of the world where people met and built high building and traded the things they made and laughed and laboured and clung to their whirling civilization like beads on the skirt of a dervish. Everybody was breathless in the world I imagined, everybody moved to hurried music that I never expected to hear. I never yearned for it much. It had a literary and unattainable quality like my childhood remembrance of Scheherazade’s Baghdad.” (150)
[Unlike Beryl, I think I’ve always longed for it, and have for many years suffered the wanderlust for this imaginary blend of the foreign and epic, this perfect “crossroad” of dreams and reality. However, Beryl does go on to reflect that the biggest changes in her life were sparked by the smallest and most unexpected occurrences, in the most common situations. This has given me much to think about here.]

Thus, I conclude with words half my own, and thoughts that mingle in the great ballroom of collective consciousness.

goodnight, gabs