Your Mother Has Been Caught (3)

 [Update]  I really freaking love this memory. It still teaches me everyday, though it happened years ago.  Unfortunately, my computer recently crashed (hence my absence) taking away many of my posts and, most tragically, the pictures I have to post for the grand finale of this story.  So, even with prayer and Divine Intervention, it may be awhile for part 4. But for now you can click here for part 1 and here for part 2 if you want to get caught up on a simple tale of Magic. A Village Babies Fairytale. 


Once Upon a Time....(time, time, time)


          I have seen people light fires since I was a little girl, "How hard can it be?" I thought, "I'm pretty sure I caught all the pertinent details from the lighting of yesterdays fire out of the corner of my eye; I got this."  This is all despite the fact that I've seen "Cast Away" several times and should know better.  It isn't as easy as you'd think, I believe, was the motto of the moment. However, all I could recall from the movie, was Hanks' final triumph. 

theboxset.com

           This was my guiding image as I squatted down towards the logs, lighting match after match and failing miserably to do what I had assumed would happen naturally (Tom didn't even have matches!). I had began with some prep work.  The logs were actually still smouldering underneath from this mornings breakfast fire, but I did recall the need for dry grass, to......well, I wasn't sure for what, but I remembered it being a vital ingredient. Dry grass, check; matches, check.  

bunchesofjoy.com

Little woodland animals who will come and do all the work for me while I tralala for their benefit.....not so much. But evening was fast approaching, the troop would be home any minute, I would have to proceed without the animal minions.







            After several attempts at lighting the grass bundle, I realized it was best to hold the brush (ahem) on a downwards tilt so the flames reach upwards (yeah, I was thoroughly breastfed as a child).  Despite this significant discovery I could get no more than a minuscule brush flame going no matter how much I tried to tuck it into the logs and sticks.  Clearly there was a piece of this formula that I was overlooking.  The last light had seeped out of the twilight evening; I could barely make out the shape of the hut in the near distance.


            Suddenly the scampering of little feet filled the air behind me, and the children appeared out of nowhere to swarm around me.  The messenger service had sent me a rescue team.  At first they sat around me shy and giggling, simply watching, but the moment the surmised my objective as I continued to try and get the fire going, they jumped into action.  Their tiny little faces, the youngest must have been four at the most, bowed down, deep into the logs and began blowing, in unison: "Wheewwwww, wheeewwww".  Before I could finish my arrogantly naive thought, "silly little chil-" the flames responded in earnest and caught on, growing quickly and fiercely.  My initial exclamations and huzzahs turned into concerned scolding because they refused to abate their huffing and puffing and were now dangerously hovering over a growing, barely contained camp fire.  I tried to pull them away, only to have them giggle, shrug me off and continue their exhausting stunt.  There was nothing for me to do, but sit back and watch the process with apprehension and marvel in equal weight.


            One by one they finally bowed off the flames and sat triumphantly down on the logs by some unspoken signal.  I looked at the fire and saw that a few of the bigger branches had now caught that deep, hot coal look, whereas before, when I was giving it my best effort all I had ever seen were those light yellow, superficial flames.  And then I understood what I had been missing and why my fire would never have been successful.  These children had used team work and persistence to achieve this long lasting blaze; I had neither the common sense to ask for help nor the were withal to understand a flame does not equal a fire; I had rewarded myself too quickly, sought the end result too impatiently; my huffing and puffing was but a fraction of what was needed for the flames to take root in the logs.  I'd needed the children; they knew it; I didn't. And this realization filled me with awe.  I was nothing but a Visitor, age and privilege had no influence on that fact.


            So, I did what any Visitor would do in this situation: the ritual of thanks-giving.  I dashed off to the hut and returned with a large sized bar of Cadburys chocolate.  This is a bar of chocolate I can, and do, easily consume in a casual 20 minute sitting between classes, waiting for a subway, walking home from the gym...you get? Consuming this treat, for me, is a non-event.

treehugger.com

        I looked around at the sincere, little faces with firelight dancing on their dark skin, and their large eyes warmed from within. I opened the package and slowly broke the chocolate down into small pieces, thinking this would be a pathetic gift indeed, as there was barely a mouthful for each. The Leader watched me with a quiet fierceness; the others murmured amongst each other, chatting about the fire flames and making a distinct effort to ignore the site and smell of chocolate, as if not to embarrass me into sharing what they assumed was just for me.


          They oohed and ahhed as I began handing each their share. I just assumed they would swallow down the quickly melting bits as fast as I handed them out, but as the last piece was parceled off, I was nonplussed to see each had waited until the others had.  The pieces had turned to liquid in their palms, but they still took patient, small licks with many murmurs of appreciation in between. This was a life-event, for me most of all.  Then it took another turn; my previous awe was nothing compared to the deep feeling of wonderment that hit me next.


         The Leader had not sampled her chocolate yet. Instead she had noted that I had not broken off a piece for myself.  That sweet, stern, powerful little girl scooped up half of the gooey mess in her palms and dutifully handed it to me.


          I, the Visitor, was so thoroughly naive, bumbling about with a contrived comprehension of local custom. I had finally realized that my privilege had only born ignorance and the absence of want, born from the surety of nothingness had given these village babies a wisdom I have only read of in scared texts.  Above all, I knew, I was in safe hands...


         
          It was after this moment, with our mouths filled with sweetness, our bodies warm, our hearts a bit of both, that the children began to tell me the reason behind their visit. It had never occurred to me that there might have been a purpose, besides Divine Angelic intervention.  They chittered and chattered in native tongue, like birds returning home at sunset.  I am terrible with languages; my mind seems only capable of retaining English, French, and Other, but for some reason my mother's tongue (ironically not my mother tongue which would be my father's language-ha!) has always hit a soft spot of familiarity in me.  I think I understand it through my heart, not my mind.  And of course, it is always, always the babies I understand and converse with best.


         But the speed with which they spoke and the content of their tale, only gave me a few phrases to catch upon that left me more confused than if I hadn't understood at all.  Translated, it went something like this:


      children:   .......Your mother's is not coming back......so sorry for you.....poor you........
      me: No, she is coming. She will come.
      children: ..........?
      me: I don't know. I don't understand. I don't....I don't know.
      children: your mother is caught!.....She will not come back. (they point to the Leader).........?
      me: I don't understand. My mother is coming.
      children (to each other): She says she is not understanding.
      me: Yes!
      children: You are not understanding??
      me: Yes! I do not understand.
      children (to each other): But poor her, she is alone, her mother has gone.
      me: No, my mother is coming.
      children: You understood?! Oh! You understand some but you do not understand everything?
      me: Yes!
      children (to each other): Ohhh, she understands some but she doesn't understand everything.


             At this point the conversation came to a standstill, as there was no way either they or I could miraculously cross this chasm in communication.  To their credit, I have had many an awkward silence far more uncomfortable than this one with adults who had a perfect grasp of English.  They understood the issue, but it did not offend them (nor should it).  That, perhaps, is the very key to why communicating with children in a foreign land is ALWAYS more satisfying than communicating with adults: those cultural differences are never offensive to children; they rightly see them as superficial and therefore amusing, but innately insignificant.


             However, the babies soon grew weary by simple fact that it was getting late, and they had surely not had dinner yet.  They gathered the young ones up and without affectation slipped off into the night.  I stood and looked around.  "I, myself, could use some dinner", I thought.  It was, after all, getting rather late. They had after all only gone to the market.


             "Where were they?" I wondered, as the children's words echoed in my head, "Where IS my mother?".......


         

Your Mother Has Been Caught (2)

        The thing about playing Visitor in a world such as this, is that it is very easy to forget this is not a game for the people who inhabit it; they are not playing; for them, this is real.


        It didn't take long for reality of living in a mud hut with one mother, one younger brother, one best friend, a handyman/driver, and several village rats, to grate on my apparently fragile nerves.  I thought 48 hours was heroic, but the troop was nonplussed by my decision to beg off the trip to the market and instead bask in some much needed alone time.


        Even alone (save for the rats), being cooped up in a mud hut was not appealing; instead I chose to sit beneath the big tree, drinking leftover tea from the large saucepan.  I am not sure what advanced form of technology was used to divine that I had stayed behind, alone, but as soon as the message was received an executive guard was sent to awkwardly stand on centurion duty in my best interest.  The guard came in the form of an 13 year old boy named Ham.  Ham, ironically, was made up of not much more than bone-thin, malnourished arms, and a great wide smile; he looked to be about 9, such as it goes.  But I have mispoken; among those superficial qualties, he also possesed a valuable gift: the unyielding sense of duty to protect and look after me.  I was willful, desperate, and in my defense, thoroughly Americanized; I could not understand this gift or why I should need protection and set about making myself wholy unagreeable and put off until I chased him away.


       Shortly thereafter, a man came down the path that seperated our compound with that of our host.  He was carrying a jerrycan for fetching water and not far behind him followed 3 young girls doing the same.  It was then that I realized, this path was the main access to the well at the bottom of the hill in the lower fields.  In chasing away my centurion I had left myself utterly exposed to be gawked at by pretty much ninety percent of the village, who would all need to fetch water at some point for their household duties.

And gawk they did.  They were not going to waste this jewel of an opportunity to have a real live Black Mzungu sitting on display before them whilst they carried out one of the more gruesome tasks of village life.  The tableaux I painted, with skin bursting at the seems with extra flesh, legs long and heavy, feet soft, fingers carelessly adorned with rusted jewels, would have been aptly labeled "La Negresse En Chomage". It would have been considered a provokingly ironic piece of art, should the gawkers have had the time, language, or inclination to articulate what they saw.


     Needless to say, I soon scrambled to the safety of the hut, to commiserate my humilation with the sympathetic rats and peer through the small wooden windows, my hubris tucked between my legs. I could hear Aesop's ghost laughing in the treetops. At one point, I watched a man come down the path on his bicycle, pause, and look directly, or so it felt, at my hidden form. He watched and waited; I watched and waited. In a sudden show of bravado, he threw his bicycle to the ground and walked with swagger to the hut that resembled a dog's house. It was not a dog's house; it was, in fact, our outhouse; and this man was now defecating in what I could only assume was a luxury: the privacy of a privy.  He came out and took one more cocky glance my way before resuming his journey. I squealed at this affront, and ducked down into my mattress, having lost all interest in the scenic view. 


     In time, I feel asleep, only to wake to the troop of children surrounding my mud castle with chants for me to come and play. Perhaps the messenger service, realizing my aversion to Ham, had decided to appeal to my maternal nature while still securing adequate watch over me.  It didn't work. At first I sat up in fear, feeling as if the Wolf himself was at my doorstep, daring to blow my house in; my three little hairs were at an end. But soon enough, as I realized the rusty nail that was my bolt was doing much to keep the children in check, I sat back and listened with amusement to their lilting, sing-song chants heroically made in broken English, while the leader of the pack futilely scolded them: "move off, she's asleep, move off!" By the proximity of her voice, I knew she, herself, was too enchanted with my possible emergence to mean what she said. 


       I must have drifted off again. I awoke, the second time, with a Snow White resolve to cheerfully adapt to my novel, rural life. With virtuous humming, I looked out at the setting sun and proclaimed:


       "I will go and light the fire."......

Your Mother Has Been Caught (1)

Once Upon a Time....(time, time, time)


          It was near about Christmas time and the family had decided to spend it deep in the village. Not our ancestral home, but a village in Uganda near to a town called Hoima.  This place had become a kind of home for us as we had decided to commit our love and support to enriching the ancient land and empowering the people.


          The exact place in this village that we called home was a plot adjacent to a man with five wives,  two brothers, and a gaggle of babies between them. He was a prominent member of the village council.


           When we first visited his home to show our respect to his hosting us, we went to the back of his compound behind the main house where there was the typical hard dirt area and a hut for the kitchen.  The babies were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, with large dark eyes indicating the distinct relation to their father (underneath the dirt you could believe they were the children of a king).  By the kitchen hut lay a sleeping pig with engorged pink nipples, a dusty dog with puppies tucked beneath her, and a young woman beached on a mat and heavy with pregnancy, staring listlessly at the visitors; the flies intermittently landed on each one and all seemed too bored and bloated to do a thing about them.  Every year I've gone since-though it has been awhile-there is always a fresh baby to hold whose eyes still have that blank, blind look about them, but they are large and dark, just like their fathers.


        On this particular occasion, we had come more by self-indulgent capriciousness, rather than dogmatic dedication.  We had come to play.  My mother had charge of three naughty twenty-something year olds, young enough to need her protection, old enough to demand freedom for mischief.  We were carelessly innocent.  It was a perfect holiday brood.


       The abode we called home, in that adjacent plot, was made entirely of sticks and mud and we would giggle when we forgot and tried to lean against the wall, only to have pieces of the house come crumbling down.  Lucky for us no wolves came knocking. Our kitchen was the open fire under the big tree, and it was often here that visitors and family alike would gather and commune.  


        The babies were allowed to escape from the eternal tedium of their lives to join in the adventure of watching and interacting with us-visitors from another world.  When they weren't playing "throw rocks and dirt" or stealing fruit we would have given them anyway (a habit of the perpetually hungry), they were waiting on hand for any instance that they could find to run an errand for us: fetch sticks for the fire, bring us some fresh cut sugar cane, or dig up some greens for supper.  Only one of the wives was actively in charge-it was not the young woman I had seen earlier.


        They willingly allowed us to play with them like dolls, piling them up for pictures, adjusting their torn, insignificant clothes to hide their genitals from the peering eye of the camera. It didn't take long to observe there was a distinct character designation among this troop of 9-12 children. There were leaders, fighters, and a caretaker who managed the disturbing act of maintaining an infant of no more than 12 weeks on his small bony back while playing a game of futbol.  At times I would dare to intervene, lifitng the wailing baby to me, gently clearing the dirt from her eyes, asking that she be sent back to her mother "where she belonged".  But, even at such a fresh age, she new whom to depend on; she would only wail harder until she was back in the arms of the boy. And should she be sent to her mother, within 15 minutes he would come trumping through the dirt path, shoulders hunched and strong, the wailing baby tucked between them in her rightful place.  I never stopped marveling at how gentle he could be with her, a mere four or five years old himself. No, that is not an underestimation or a miscalculation due to his malnutrition: by two you can help your mother with small tasks, by four you are the primary babysitter, by six you will have had your first beer-this is Village life, and we are only visitors.
         


         Or so I thought.....


        
        
     

Enchantment is a state of Mind and Love is a feeling....

But when Pesky thoughts prove Troublesome, both lose all meaning [RIP Mama Bear]

        The Editor has confirmed he is (of course) in love (with an idea of me), though it doesn't seem he will make it out here after all.  At most this is a lovely distraction and I will take it just as that.  Though he does have the habit of writing the most intimately reassuring things to me-honestly he knows me not one bit, yet is somehow finding the things to say that I would most want to hear.  I can't imagine how or where he is getting these lovely thoughts about me.


       I came across an old email thread from a past lover.  The love affair was nonsense-really immature and pathetic (on his part, of course). But the email and phone exchanges kept me sane during a really traumatizing 30 days in an immigration nightmare that would very likely have killed me if it weren't for him-in the end said nightmare ended up affirming my need to move to Africa, so it did kill a version of me after all.  Reading the messages again, I was not reminded of his immature, pathetic behavior, but instead was struck by all the lovely things he thought about me, and said to me.


     There have been many lovely things thought about me, and written, and said to me.  Many lovely thoughts.


     Right now there is an overwhelming thought I have been avoiding, but feel it is time to look at it head on.  This thought, a concept really, may do much to explain so many of my thoughts of late-some lovely, and some, not so much.


     I am still struck by all the wonderful people out there in the blogosphere-I'm still so new at exploring this world. I cannot believe some of the exposing things people write about their lives, in such excruciating detail.  I just read one blog of a girl who is in the very active throes of a very dangerous depression. How can one write about such things? Reveal such scary, crazy, crazy-scary things? I thought you were supposed to run and hide and bury yourself until you were presentable again.  She is in the black, in the deep, deep black, but her honest reflection makes me feel I can be more honest about my grey.  I found that blog by stalking trolling perusing another blog by a woman whose life makes my life look like the duller than dull doldrums of existence.  And again she tells her story with such raw, authenticity, but by the Grace of God has found enough light within the ups and downs to not fall into that scary, crazy, crazy-scary way of looking at things.   Her daughter, who also blogs about her struggles and triumphs, wrote my favorite thought for the day: "I'm feeling better".


       I sent the Editor some very badly written abstracts of three lovely little story ideas that could become a few wonderful and unique children's book novels.....in the right hands, with the right thoughts, strung together just so.


      The play I will audition for at the end of the week is "An Ideal Husband". I am panicked by my overwhelming thought and by how all this....exposure, when I've been quiet for so long, will sit with me. But then I check my email and the Editor has sent something sweet and gentle and simple, a side note that makes not feel so worried about what he will say when he reads the abstracts.  I am taking shallow breaths* (I think I might suffocate if I breathed too deeply) and cautious steps, because I think that's what Mama Bear would say is the best way to keep Pesky Thoughts at bay.


     


       Just a thought....

Is it A Cycle or A Spiral?

I know something about myself that I haven't always known.  I have a rough time with transitions. Any transition, no matter how small, throws me for a loop, or into a loop as it were.  I knew this week would be tough. The Little One and I are on or own for the second time ever, and this time for much longer than two days.  Added to this, she has begun her lessons this week.  One would think this was cause for a celebration, but instead her increasingly familiar mood shifts, coupled with my own withdrawal into quiet has left us both in a funk that seems to feed off each other. I know what's going on with me, but am at loss to see why it should result in such exacting expression from someone else.

         For me, what I've come to call it is Cycling.  I have this theory I'm working on about my biorhythms-my physical, emotional, and mental states of being. I wrote about it last month, in a post I never posted, because then the cycle continued and it didn't seem so relevant anymore-life went on; things were fun, crazy, but mostly manageable.  And now when I know I'm just coming out of yet another of my...introversions, I still don't have much to say, I'm just remembering I have words. But I do want to write about it at some point-maybe a lot-until I get it right.  I think it's an amazing thing to witness about myself, though harassing to go through.  The threat to slip into psychobabble and very really psych-fears is... restraining, but who gives a shit.

          For the past few years I've witnessed an increasingly palpable wave my moods shift through, a cycle that begins say at the end of the month. I love the start of the month; I am always so ON IT, so AWARE, so high with connection and comprehension.  No matter what is going on in my life, these first two or three weeks (if you count from the last week of the previous month) find me in my most creative and initiating mood.  Even if I'm not doing anything new, I am usually remembering what I'd thought to do before but just never got around to it.

          Then it all goes to pot around the middle of the month-I say around because if I am being very careful and aware I can note a few days of.....frantic feeling where I'm still doing, still being thoroughly extroverted and functional, but it's like I'm Wile E. Coyote just after he dashes over the ledge, just after he realizes he is over a ledge, just before that realization leads to his downfall...literally.  Those are those few days-say the 13th to the 15th; it's where I'm already over the ledge, but now it's dawned on me, and peeeewww, splat, there it is.  

http://www.louisville.com/tags/wile-e-coyote 

              I stay in an introverted funk, having nothing to say, no thoughts come to mind that I can lucidly follow let alone share.  [This is where we bring up interesting little words like depression and seek help. Yeah, you would say that, I would too unless I was me-which I am.]

           The thing about these cycles is they are not pathological though they are organic and natural; I don't feel bad at these times, I just go still and quiet, which only feels bad when I feel like I'm supposed to be the extroverted doer-maker-organizer I am at the other side of the cycle (like when it's the Little One's first week alone with me, and she's got lessons and tutors, and outings Oh My!)

            Without fail, no matter what is going on around the 23 of the month, I snap out of it-well NO-I slip back into the other side of the cycle.  Suddenly words, thoughts, and connections are alive in my brain again-like WOW (ha! can you tell I'm not quite there yet?) And that's it; the cycle starts all over again.

            There's another thing I've noted about this cycle thing but with less definition, it is that I think it happens throughout the year as well, but that may just be residual effects of living in a cold climate.  I am high as hell in February, my life just feels tremendously filled with activity even when it's just in my mind; in March things are okay, but in April and May I get that funky over the ledge feeling again-I'm usually working out like crazy, working, seeing someone new, but it's all starting to slip away for some reason. New guy disappears or turns into a sociopath in human clothing; working out hits a standstill, usually related to some such illness; and so on, and so forth.

         There, I've written it all out for once, not that it makes me sound at all normal or healthy, and worse, not that I have even begun to explain the nuances of this revolution-like those time-lapse photography videos of a carcass being devoured by insects in the forest-this is a messy, but beautiful thing. I just don't really know what it is yet.

          I began this post discussing transitions-this is a whole new layer of dealing with my tiresome self. You would never know it to look at me, unless you really knew me, and even then only if you were especially brave and curious.  Life continues as before-food is made, jobs are done, people are called. There may be only like 3 days of the 10 day downturn where I seem off or tired, but I know when it is there with some inexplicably exact timing.

           This last time it happened on...Friday, the day I went to the gym at 6am, the day I came back and did 3 loads of wash (by HAND-ahem-Africa), the day I took the Little One to the eye doctor, and sat there waiting to be called on a lovely, sunny afternoon, scratching at the crease in my arm, even though it didn't itch.  And my Logic mind thought-ah shit-what IS that itch?

            And Saturday we made a morning trip to the market and continued on to a lovely day at the beach-except that I was exhausted from too much gym time and I was expecting some-ka-guy (that's Ugandan for bloke, or mic, or homie) to maybe show up, though I didn't really want him too, and night came and all had gone well-it had been lovely, lovely, lovely...and I thought-fuck me, what IS that itch?

            Sunday I let myself read in bed thinking, let me just breathe and take my vitamins.

            And Monday she began her lessons but missed one because the driver forgot to show up and I thought-fuck me-I can't FIX this (nor do I even want to care)!

             And suddenly it just seemed all so tiresome. Meals were cooked, lessons were had, laundry was folded-but all the while, I was just so tired, each thought seemed to way down on me with its emptiness; like I just had nothing to say, nothing to give; like I just wanted to crawl into a simple grey space (not black, not dark, but the white was a bit too bright for me) and sit and lose myself.  This time around it was in SAG Award clips on youtube which led to any and all interviews of Ricky Gervais (who is beyond brilliant-I didn't know); followed by Adele songs on repeat (who is soooo talented-I didn't know) all things I never do and were utterly unimportant.

          Normally this is all okay for my life, not doing, not thinking, not being so damn...out there for a few days, can make me feel reborn (and yes, even in the biblical sense). But now I have this child who is perplexing to us-my mother and I-in her refusal to initiate anything with her imagination.  No matter how much attention I give her, she starves for more; like she can only participate in her life when I am right there next to her participating in the exact same thing-and It. Is. Never. Enough.  Her startling slip into apathy just because I have nothing to say to her in the 20 times a morning she comes and sits with me on my few days of introversion (I mean, feel free to watch the SAG Awards with me dear, but I am SORRY, I have no comments-especially not based on what an 8 year old, who has no idea what an awards show is, would notice or think about.) disturbs me as it strikes a very different cord than my own reclusion: I am not apathetic when I am quiet; I am biding my time, like a butterfly in a cocoon; I am doing what I gotsta to do, before I can fly free again. 

              

           Now she has storybooks, but won't so much as read them without me there; we've done calendars and paintings and shell decorations-even fucking papier-mâché- but when I leave my computer (where I admit I've thoroughly lost myself this week) to check on her in the 3 hours since she woke up to a prepared breakfast as usual, I find her lying on her bed sucking a finger and looking like some traumatized individual. I wake up at 6am to give her eye drops (she is not a morning person and this latest ritual may be contributing to her listlessness) then lie back in bed in an anxious panic trying to think of what in the world I'm going to say to her when she wakes up; literally willing the morning not to come. Not because I don't want to talk to her but because, just now, I can't think of a word to say to anybody; I just want to absorb and let my mind rest a bit.  

             My continued anemia may only exacerbate this situation, but that's why I mentioned the cycles; this is how my mind does; this is my cycle. I once read that though Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible; Bean Trees) one of my all time favorite authors is happily married with two daughters, when she is ready to write she actually moves out of her home and lives in a one room shack.  The PoisionWood Bible this is NOT, and perhaps will never be, but I've always had an affinity for that ritual of withdrawal.  

           It's times like this I wish we still kept to the ritual of oral tradition; I have a strong feeling that not too far back in my ancestral history, there is a woman who could tell me exactly what this was all about, and she would have a name for it, and a reason about it and it would NOT include the words depression and seek help (it's amazing how much conditioning can be blamed for our individual suffering; believing something is that when all along it is this, and instinctively knowing that difference exists but having no proof is enough to drive a person mad)

            The thing about transitions is they tend to make an already daunting task of inner harmony a bit...ungraceful for me; I get there, I almost always get there; but it's not always so pretty.  Well the Little One and I do share the same blood. Perhaps that's why her behavior frightens me so; I used to watch her mother do the same thing when she would visit us-she would lie under the dining table and mumble to herself-but again, she wasn't actually pathological, she had just shut off somehow because of a lack of stimulus.

          But how much can I stimulate another person, when I myself am watching award show clips just to give my head something to think about?  If I take her to the pool, she looks longingly at me waiting for me to come and play, ignoring all the other children around her. If I take her to the beach and after playing around for awhile, I try and just drift off in watching the light fall on the waves, she loses interest in her singing and dancing and sits next to me, not enjoying the view, just depressed that I don't want to sing and dance all the time.  I can barely find the words to articulate my own journey, how can I be expected to change all of who I am in order to keep this person happy? Is that an expectation-did I just make that up?  Is it okay for me to cycle down and just read quietly, is it ALLOWED? Is a mother really expected to lose herself in her child's needs just because that mother’s needs don't seem so especially critical? (meals are made, floors are swept, medicine and home remedies are given with sincere care and love)  I just don't know what to do with this little girl who has some of my weaknesses but very different strengths; how do I get her to snap out it, so I can be left in peace to snap in?

     

Once Upon a Time...Time, Time, Time.

          This is where I have to introduce myself- I think that’s been the hardest part of starting this whole thing.  As evidenced by my blog name passions which define me are diverse and inexplicably linked- in me.  And anyhow I don’t even know yet which version of me will emerge on this platform.  I suppose I just want to tell a story a two, no explicit catagorization, just some stories that I know-truth or fiction in this case, would be best left as a question of semantics.  Is what I believe the same as what I’ve experienced? And how exactly do I recognize what I know?  Ahhh yes, the truth of this quest is emerging; it is a quest for Truth itself, as is such for all the best people I know…

            8 year old Vanessa says, in Uganda you don’t simply begin a tale with “Once upon a time”, but it is a call and response. The storyteller begins “Once upon a time…” and the listeners respond in chorus “time, time, time”, only then can the story proceed.  It’s quite lyrical actually, especially in the angelic sound of an eight year olds disciplined and earnest chant. It also does wonders for evoking that archetypical image of indigenous ritual, where our ancestors would gather by the fire at night and sing songs to tell stories, and use those stories to pass on messages, messages of Truth.

            Everything about Vanessa is lyrical, not just her voice; her life in the 6 months I’ve known her is the stuff country songstresses dream of.  I am only learning of the 7 ½ years before, in small stories that always begin…but wait! I’m supposed to be introducing myself, hers can wait. And so:

                                    “Once upon a Time…time, time, time…”

            There was a young girl who believed herself a writer, but having comprehended little if anything of the context of her existence, her stories were borrowed fantasies that were high in drama, but went nowhere, and told nothing.  So she fell in line with the chorus and headed to academia. Choosing to embedded herself in the social sciences, she believed , “this is what I need; with this training I am bound to write something important”. She became inevitably disillusioned most assuredly by her own single minded and fantastical ambition.  She threw aside her pen and went back to her motherland- a country she’d never even been born in, but one she aspired to call home. With joy and rapture she proceeded to get her hands dirty, believing it was simply a misallocating of duty, and misuse of weapons, that had early thwarted her still fantastical ambition.  She decided to develop a product using all the rich agriculture bounty that was often neglected, wasted, and overlooked by her contrived countrymen.  This product was not just supposed to be an inspiration for the infinite ways the agribusiness could improve in Uganda, but was also supposed to demonstrate the potential success of a Synergistic, and thus Sustainable, business model: “I will do something important” she proclaimed.  And thus her juice beverage was born…then shelved.  This young girl, turned entrepreneurial woman, found herself to be nothing but a Little Red Hen: “who will make this juice with me?” she naively quipped again and again, and the story never went so far beyond the response “not I, not I, not I…” (though time and again this response was always coupled with the sincere declaration that the Little Red Hen would be very, very rich one day, feasting on such delicious bread).

            I find myself a woman with nothing much beyond the potential I had to begin with, my juice formulas, like all ideas left idle, will surely return to the Matrix from where they came.  But it is true I also have a few more stories than I did before, and this time they are very much embedded in the context of my existence.  And so I raise my pen both the weapon and shield of the Philosopher.  I write now, to remind myself that it was I who came with this Light I eagerly sought to share; the light has dimmed now, but I can find it again; I have a secret compass.

            The trick is to get it all out in words-to get the stories written plainly-poetically or not-and thoroughly.  Because all of that, all of those stories are simply what happened, but in between- if I write it right- in between I may find the meaning-the message still reverberating from the ancestral fire circle and I will know something important.

            So I begin “Once upon a time…”, and hope that there is an answer back, “time, time, time” so that I may proceed with this song of Truth.