hazy

It’s 11:30 am on a Sunday morning, and the view from my ground floor window affords me a glimpse of dripping laundry and sun-sparkling beer bottles. There is a constant baseline of standard American main stream hip-hop rustling the brown and patchy grass, and I can’t quite tell whether the music ever stopped last night.

And last night? What can I tell you about that? I know that I’ve waxed philosophical more than once about the writing of writing, but once again I have to pause and think a bit. How much do you let in and out? A public place for private space is inherently paradoxical, so how to ignore the contra and focus on the diction?

And what if I told you a story? Perhaps you can learn more about my reality, from that which isn’t. Knowledge via comparison can be awfully useful sometimes - it’s not often that something can explain itself outright, it’s usually necessary to build an approximation of familiar associations and mold that shape into the thing you’re trying to describe. Babies are interesting to me because of this. The rate at which necessity dictates they accumulate references just boggles me. How can they begin to understand the world otherwise? And not that I consider traveling to be any sort of a regression, but I do think that it takes you back a little bit in that way. Traveling is not just about seeing and experiencing new things, it’s about the process of sorting and storing and remembering and calling them forth again when another new thing comes up. And quickly quickly quickly it must be done because the fate of your future accumulations depends solely on your ability to hold onto the ones that came before them. Reading’s like this too. This new word recalls that last word and you don’t even know it and can’t even stop it and that is why you are incredible. In part.

Are these new thoughts? No, but I’m thinking them now and so in some ways they’re a little refreshed.


Pause. Restart. It’s now 17:25 and I’ve just spent the past hours munching green beans and start to finishing Murakami’s ‘After Dark.’ Back to the question: Last Evening. I can tell you that it required a Sunday spent in bed, just enough sunshine to clear the head, and a postponed return trip up Kgale hill. It was a relatively short evening, with Seb, Anna (another American exchange student here – way way lovely and oddly connected through a mutual friend at Penn) and I cabbing it to Gianni’s house. A London local, with roots in Gabs, Gianna was introduced to me by MK and he has proven himself to be an overly hospitable host on two occasions now. However, a few hours can be more than tiring when they involve rowdy, internationally eclectic 20-somethings (or just 20-somethings in general) and I shut eye early.

Some things I have been thinking about:

Facial Recognition. This is a subject that I have been hesitant about laying flat for examination because I’m wary of misinterpretation. My thoughts certainly don’t self-censor for political correctness, nor am I ever really sure what is correct about being political (or vice versa) so please read on the with firm assurance that what I write is nothing other than a transcribed close inspection of what’s going on between my ears and behind my eyes.

To begin, some background:
I am “white.” [already, I worry about going on, but regardless, continue:] I spent the entirety of my youth in a Philadelphia suburb, which was composed almost solely of other Caucasian families. The diversity in my everyday life was mostly limited to height and hair color, and I can honestly say that aside from Mrs. Brown, my third grade Humanities teacher, I really didn’t have any close personal contact with a black person or anyone of another race or ethnicity until my junior year in high school. This fact has always made me extremely uncomfortable – I feel as though I need to apologize for the isolation of my youth or my inability to reach out farther into the world at an earlier stage. However, it is what it is and subsequent years have proven that it really was just physical distance that impeded my contact with people much different than myself.

Yet, I find myself now once again reflecting on my youth and that distance and wondering what hidden impacts it had on me, and this is where facial recognition pops up. I haven’t read enough or taken enough developmental psychology courses to really know the theories and thoughts behind this, but I am hyper aware of the fact that after two months in Botswana, I SEE things differently. Literally. And specifically, faces. I could feel it happening and I don’t quite know how to explain it except to say that it’s as though someone has changed the prescription on my non-existent glasses and suddenly things are in focus.

I really started to notice this with my kids. When I first arrived at the day care, they all looked “the same” to me – I know this sounds like a gross and stereotypical generalization, but I don’t know how else to put it. They almost all had shaved heads, regardless of sex, and wore green uniforms. They’re almost all tiny, with thin legs, and round stomachs and regardless of appearance, they were overwhelming enough in number to lend the allusion of countless replicas. After a few days, I began to start making distinctions, based on the color of a t-shirt, the sound of a voice, etc. However, I struggled for a long time, calling Sethunya, Bofelo, and passing out the wrong workbooks. I was a little bit puzzled, since I’m usually better with that sort of teacher-thing, but wrote the confusion off to a new language and numbers.

Now, reflecting, I don’t think it was just that. I believe that over the past few months, my eyes have learned to recognize new features. I don’t think this is specific to race, as one might jump to conclude, but rather to difference in general. I have never in my life felt my own features to be so completely alien as they are here, and surrounded by normal, with the difference internalized, I find that I have come to adjust my lens to the standard. When I look at people here (regardless of nationality or race), I find that their faces are being more firmly etched into my brain. The arch of an eyebrow, the texture of someone’s hair, the height of their cheekbones and the hue of their skin just somehow make more sense to me – this minutia sinks deeper into my eye rather than reflecting back off.

Is this an adequate explanation? Perhaps not. Maybe it isn’t even really an explanation at all, just some musings on the possible cause of a phenomenon that might just be imagination. But it’s there and here and perhaps you know what I mean. It is strange when your eyes stay the same but your sight changes.

Plants. Jen left her little potted plant in my care when she flew to Korea, and god is it good company. It just sits serenely on my desk and sunbathes and sips cool water, but a constant living presence is wonder enough.

Heat. It is getting hotter. I fear for September.

Pause. Restart.

It is now 19:48 and Seb, Daniel and I are just back from the refectory. None of us have ever left that brightly lit cafeteria feeling better than entering, so I’m thinking that the future will hold a whole lot more home cooked meals (something I’ve grown fond of). The night promises another jam session with Pat (resident demi-god of love, hugs, and sweet talking guitar arrangements) and a movie. Class officially begin in the morning and I find myself jitterbugging without music because I really can’t begin to imagine what it’s all going to feel like or how many times we’ll get lost or if we can even attend classes at all (yup, registration woes.) Luckily, Seb and I have registered for all the same courses, so at least we can pool our mental resources and face the day together. It still feels like a bizarre and wonderful dream to me that suddenly he and Daniel are here, but it’s one I’m happy to keep my eyes closed on.


And finally, I leave you with the words that have infected our conversation as of late: where are we?