The Flame Tree

Life's Small Pieces

The library in the town where I grew up---where I am presently writing from---is quiet this summer afternoon but for the whir of a fan and the turning of pages. The cool stone walls, the arching windows, the formal reading room with its mahogany walls and leather chairs, and the musty smell of old books... Nothing has changed. It was here, I believe, that I acquired an appreciation for the sweetness of words. Every summer as children, the library kept a chart of the books we read. When we had read ten or so, we got a free ice cream at the pharmacy across the street. Reading was thus rewarded with heaven.

I hired a babysitter for the afternoon. I want my mind back. I'm so tired and worn out by the logistical thoughts I must think, and that ultimately amount to nothing except a new electric bill in a new city. I found the quietest corner in upstairs stacks. I brought a book and a pad of paper and a pen. There were more titles of excellent books within reach than there are on the whole continent of Africa (it seemed). Milosz poems, Joyce's Ulysses, Naipaul's Finding the Center... And ha, look, Isak Dinesen's Letters from Africa 1914-1931. I couldn't resist reaching.

On July 4, 1926, Dinesen wrote to a friend, "...Mother writes in her letter that she is considering whether it would not be better to use the money intended for her journey out here for a trip home to Europe for me.... in no possible way and under no circumstances will I go home before the spring of 1928. It is partly because I can see that things cannot go well and methodically here when I am away, and partly because I will not break up my life in such small pieces. Beside the considerable amount of time that goes in travel preparations and in the journey itself, which I consdier to be utterly without value, it takes one,---or anyway it has taken me this time,---three or four months before one gets used to affairs and conditions out here again..." [italics are hers]

We left Kenya on July 4th. Is that possible? 25 days ago only? The time in Norway---some days were so cold I wore a long coat and boots. The week in New York---some nights were so hot I could only lie next to the fan and drink cold beer. There has been birth and death and marriage since we left; over 10,000 miles of trains, planes, taxis and bicycles. There have been windows looking out on fields, windows looking out at sea, windows looking out on Columbus Ave. The children have grown at least three inches each since we left! Everything we own is scattered, literally, across the world.

And here is the piece that I want to write, about the night we left Nairobi, 25 days ago. We were very tired. I had cried that morning saying goodbye to my two best friends. I had cried later that morning at liv's school watching all the children and teachers dance in a parade around the yard. I had cried that afternoon saying goodbye to Evans and our staff. And I had cried an hour before we were to leave for the airport, when I realised that I had meticulously packed nine bags when were allotted only seven.

That inevitable hour of departure---no matter how insanely organzied you are, the chaos happens. The stress is through the roof. The day is over and the children are tired, yet the long trip is just beginning. The nanny is uncomfortable at our friend's house and doesn't help so well with the children, or is that because in one hour we are saying goodbye, and she is sad too? There are weird piles scattered about we don't know what to do with. I'm agonizing over how many magic markers to take carry-on. We get in a fight and aren't talking when Fredrique returns from her walk holding out a stick. She shows the children a firefly and says there are more.

Oh how beautiful that moment was! We dropped our animosities and walked out the door, it was dark, dark, dark. Carefully down the steps into the valley to the river---Liv and Papa went ahead, Hannah held out her hands to steady me and the babe as we descended. Everywhere----the fireflies flickering against the perfect darkness. Haakon laughed and tried to catch them, Hannah laughed too. We reached the banks and I sat on a stone wall and watched Hannah and Haakon spin and reach out and spin around again. The light was so spare that it was just a fold of clothing, an arm reaching out, a child's hair, the sound of laughter, Hannah's skirt twirling.

Last week, on the last evening of apartment hunting in New York, M. and I took a walk in Central Park and under the seven arches of the Arcade, there was a firefly. Is it a sign? he said.

We can only hope.

Good Night African Moon

Good night house. Good night gate. Good night papa's car. Good night shack. Good night Evans. Good night Hannah. Good night Liv's school. Good night playgroup. Good night dear friends. Good night flowers. Good night trees. Good night African sun, good-bye African moon. Good-bye Kenya. We love you.

let it go

There is a scene in the film Out of Africa (HA! You knew I had to do it before I left! For what is a white- lady-in-Kenya's blog without at least one reference!)... Throughout the story, Karen Blixen is trying to divert or dam some water on her farm----a stream or small river, I can't remember the details. Her houseboy patiently carries out this task, knowing it will never work and sometimes telling her "Dis watah lives in Mombasa, this watah wants to go to Mombasa" or something to that effect. And finally, toward the end of the film, as another little wall of stone crumbles and the water flows on its own accord again, she says, in her methodical Danish accent, something like, "Ok ok... Let it go... let it go. This water wants to live in Mombasa."

Or something like that.

I don't remember the dialogue or the Kenyan names or even the scene too well, but I know it. I think of it sometimes and it makes me laugh. When I have been fighting for 8 million things to work here, to work under my conditions... when I try to shape this immalleable place and I enter a tizzy of impatience and frustration; when I try to force it and then finally, one morning after many days, I realize this is the way it is. I relent. I say, Dis watah wants to go to Mombasa....

                                                                  *

Last Sunday the new tenants here delivered their furniture and possessions to the garage (they had to leave their current residence early). The next morning, as we were getting the children dressed, Agnes said of the day guard, "Evans was veeery sad yesterday. He said to me, 'I didn't know they were leaving.'"
    "But of course he knows!" I said. "We've talked about it, he has a new job, he's met the new family. He knows the date he's moving and the severance and everything!"
    "No," she said. "He said he didn't know... right here," she put her hand on her heart..."until yesterday when the new people came."

                                                                   *

"In The Flame Trees of Thika," my hairdresser told me the other day, "the little girl kisses every wall in the house before they move out. It means they will move back someday."
    "To the house?"
    "Yes, to the same house." I tried to imagine the day we will leave next week, walking through the rooms and kissing each wall. I couldn't imagine it. The walls---even just thinking about it---felt cold and dirty against my lips. And I knew then---I really felt it at that moment----that it is time to move on. This house is too small for us now. The new construction next door is too imposing. The watah is finished here. It wants to go to Mombasa. Let it go.

out of the comfort zone

Last night I watched Ric Burns' documentary on the World Trade Centers and during it I encountered Philippe Petit for the first time. You know I'm going to quit my life and follow him around forever.

(From the film's 2003 interview): My love for the towers was in my relation with them -- not as an overall appreciation almost in an architectural sense: my love was for their life they were alive. Not many people know that... They were vibrating with the passage of a cloud over the sun, difference of temperature, the wind. And the skeleton was actually making noise. I discovered that. And at times the towers were asleep, hibernating. And at times they wake up and they cry...

On the morning of August 7, 1974, a little past seven o'clock, after six years of meticulous planning and problem solving, Philippe Petit crossed the space between the two World trade Center towers on a tight rope. He walked---danced, laughed, bowed, saluted the horizon, kneeled in front of the tower to say hello to the tower, bounced, and lay down on the wire----making eight crossings over 45 minutes.

Whenever other worlds invite us, whenever we are balancing on the boundaries of our limited human condition... that's where life starts. That's where you start feeling yourself living. So when I found myself: one foot on the wire, one foot on the building----I decided to shift my weight to become a bird, it was not something new. And after a few steps, I knew I was in my element. I didn't even take the full length of the crossing to get to know the rigging, the vibration off the building, and the wire. And then very slowly as I walked I was overwhelmed by a sense of easiness, a sense of simplicity. And actually I can be seen on the first pictures smiling, smiling probably out of disbelief. It's so easy, after all those years and months of ups and down and detours, victories and disasters. Finally I was carrying my life on a path that was the simplest, the most beautiful, and the easiest...

I had a sense of having stepped in other-worldy matters, that at some point in my crossings I lay down on the wire and looked at the sky and I say a bird above me. And again because of my sense were decouplated, I could see that bird pretty high up, and I could see that the eyes were red and I thought of the myth of Prometheus there. But the bird was circling and looking at me as if I were invading his territory, as if I was trespassing, which... which I was.

So at some point I thought the Gods---the God of the Wind, the God of the Towers, the God of the Wire----all those invisible forces that we persist in thinking don't exist but actually that rule our life---might become impatient, might become annoyed---by my persistent vagabondage there. So my intuition told me it was time for me to close the curtain of this very intimate performance---a walk between me and the towers and I landed on the same tower from which I started, the south tower, and then I had the octopus of the authority, you know, grab me by their hundreds of arms.

The morning of his crossing, after his crossing, a reporter asked the 24 year old Petit: Weren't you afraid up there at all? Petit: I was not afraid. But I was just looking what I had in front of me. I have really something which was huge and incredible, you know. So afraid, not, but living more than a thousand percent. So perhaps that's close to afraid, I don't know. But at the same time I was happy, happy, happy, happy.

                                                           *

You need dreams to live. It's as essential as a road to walk on and as bread to eat. I would have feel myself dying if this dream would have been taken away from me by reason.

moziac of this moment

I.
I hope you're not tired of Mary Oliver, but she is so perfect I can't stop. From her poem Sometimes:

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

II.
The roof of the second house they're (still) building next door is silver steel on which tiles will be laid. The silver merges perfectly against the white grey sky of today, the Nairobi winter sky. We are in the 10th month of incessant, incessant, incessant hammering, drilling, poking sheering cutting slashing burning coiling scraping and screeching of the construction next door. Why are humans so un-subtle? Why are we so rough and course? Imagine a bird building a nest.

III.
I tried to carve out the perfect time. Three months left of East Africa, I wanted it sweet and lovely and relaxed and radiant. I've tried so hard that I've made myself mental with the effort. Life is what it wants to be, you can try, you can work for happiness, but that's all. And Africa---man, this place---it senses your intentions and does all it can to prove you have no control. In seven years I have learned this: the harder you fight, the more useless it is. When you stop trying so hard, it comes to you. The Africans know this, they have the patience of saints. They would never make it in New York.

IV.
Imagine a bird building a nest.

(photo: the babe paying attention to mountains)

the whiteness of silence

I was just flipping through The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren. It's over 600 pages of many dense, long, thorough poems. This poet must have thought of nothing else all day long for his entire life but poetry and words and images and how to put it all together. I have a postcard of him somewhere, O! Here it is in the book of poetry! Yes, I remember this. He's 66 years old in the photo, sitting before a window in a room in Vermont with his spaniel, Frodo. His eyes are so distant and gazing-through that he looks like a blind man. But his mouth is fine and amused.

Here come the water people, entering back to the compound. We have not had water for ten days and finally----this is really a miracle---I got the water department to come to the house. They're futzing around knocking on neighbor's gates asking questions and doing investigations. Two plumbers have come in the past week doing the same. There are no answers. The water people will come to me with no answers as well. That's just the way it is sometimes; seven years living in East Africa and I've begun to accept that.

Ninety percent of the thoughts you have today are the same thoughts (worries, concerns, dreams, desires) you had yesterday. Tomorrow you will have 90 percent of the same thoughts that you had today. Lately, I have 99.8 percent of the same thoughts every day: thoughts of leaving----how sad it is, how scary, how I will ever pack, how I will ever sell the humidifier, how will I ever leave this garden and these friends and this life... And all these thoughts are so boring---the ruts of my brain are absolutely smooth and lifeless and un-energized and I'm bored even of myself with these thoughts---that I have nothing to write for a blog piece.

Maybe I will become a poet and write 600 pages of poetry and stop thinking these moving thoughts (and the other .2 percent of my thoughts which are about water, and when it will return, and why it went away, and what the world will be like in 30 years when there's no more water and we'll all live this way?). I will stop thinking these boring, worn out, un-answerable thoughts and think of something brand new, with texture, that's startling----something not thought-about yesterday.

Like the slug's white belly; wind-tortured stone white in darkness; sheep huddling, their eyes staring into nothingness...

I watched the sheep huddling. Their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.

Their jaws did not move. Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.

You would think that nothing would ever again happen.

That is a way to love God.

(Last lines from the poem A Way to Love God by Robert Penn Warren. The painting is Jamie Wyeth, Winter Pig.)

motion that forces change

It seems obvious and simple, and it is: I am embarking on a sea of change, and the prospect is daunting. When you are in the midst of this sea---or even on its shore looking out to its limitlessness, choppiness, & unpredictability-----it's hard to pare down one's feelings to the obvious and simple. Everything is overwhelming. Everything is so much. Everything is spinning and jittery and fraught with emotion. It seems like the end of the world. It seems like the end of time, the end of joy and nature and birds singing. But it is only a family move to New York City. I hear it's even been done before.

This simple, obvious truth (that the upheaval, the insecurity, the fear and sadness, as well as the thrill and hope that accompanies a new beginning all boils down to one word, Change) dawned on me the other day. And I am hoping that if I cling to this word, and what it means, and try to really understand it, I might survive the storm.

"Change" writes the choreographer Twyla Thorp, "...is the unpleasant task of dealing with that which we have been denying." (Her italics) She is writing about a creative project in this context, about the moment that an artist is forced to see that what he has poured his time and energy into is just not working. It's time to re-write, re-paint, re-choreograph, discard or whatever.

But the sentence and sentiment applies to real change to, to making a change in life. By moving out of our lovely, familiar routine, and away from our comfortable familiar community---it's forcing me to deal with what I could previously deny. On one level, that means painting the living room. (The walls are really dirty, that I was totally denying!) On a more significant level, the upheaval and transition will shake out some of those little monsters who I had managed to avoid by sticking to the confines of my life here.

"Change... is the unpleasant task of dealing with that which we have been denying."

Anyway, that's me today.

 

Patterns

Last week, M., who recently turned 33, landed in New York City to begin his new position. He arrived with his two allotted bags and one carry-on. Just as I, seven years ago, landed in Nairobi, leaving New York City (I thought) for good. I had recently turned 33. I had my allotted two bags and one carry on. It was April 19th 2001. I remember it was April 19th because exactly three years later, April 19th 2004, the girl was born.

Things are a bit different, of course. Following M.'s two bags and one carry-on with be a container of furniture and children's toys; and following M. will be his wife and children. He has it a bit more together than I did at his age... But regardless, I can't help seeing the patterns, determining some sort of sorcery in them, tracing signs and interpreting hieroglyphics---whatever it takes to make sense out of what's actually quite arbitrary, whatever it takes to seek a semblance of coherence.

To quote an author quoting an author: "In his autobiography Speak, Memory, Nabokov describes an instance of coherence, the way a book of matches appears as a pivotal image a number of times, in very different contexts, in the writer's life. Delighted, he finds the patterning and coherence of art showing itself in experience, in memory. He writes, "The following of such thematic designs through one's life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography." (From Heaven's Coast, a memoir by Mark Doty.)

The following of thematic designs through one's life... I like that.

And this, which struck me from David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas ----the narrator is thinking about a new suspicious guest who has come to live with his family: "...but I din't sleep none that night, 'cos o' the mozzies an' nightbirds an' toads ringin' an' a myst'rous some'un what was hushly clatt'rin' thru our dwelling pickin' up stuff here an' puttin' it down there an' the name o'this myst'rous some'un was Change."

welcome to my head today

It is 2pm on Sunday and I am working. I can hear the girl singing outside, behind my office shack. She's happy because she is soon about to go with her father to his office, to get some things for his trip to Madagascar. He leaves tonight. Do you remember how wonderful it was to go to your father's office? Or to accompany your father to whatever his working environment? M. grew up in Madagascar (he's going for work this week). I have sensed from his stories that his fondest childhood memories are of accompanying his father to attend to cows, way back when, when his dad was a veterinarian there.

It hasn't rained in weeks here, and everything is dry and brittle. Nairobi has started water rationing, a bit late I'm told because of distractions around the  political emergency in January and February. It was as if someone woke up after the peace deal was signed and said, Whoa! We forgot about the water! We should have started rationing weeks ago! Is anyone dealing with that? Oh shit! And he ran down to the office and called the guy sitting in the shack out by the reservoir and sure enough, the guy said, the reservoir was practically dry. Too late! Now we go days without water. Ah, there are worse fates.

There is peace, after all, in Kenya and for that everyone is optimistic, happy and grateful. The day after the guys finally agreed, the ayahs came to playgroup and greeted each other with Happy New Yeah! Happy New Yeah! (It was Feb. 27th, but on Jan 1 the country was in turmoil) Now we are a new Kenya! There is nothing like overjoyed nannies slapping hands and laughing to make you want to weep with love for the world.

It is Sunday and I should be working but I have such a headache from last night's pink champagne. Why? Why pink champagne, Emilie? How did that seem a good idea at the time? We had a dinner party and I think everyone had a good time, but no one has called to say thank you today and I'm pretty sure it's because they are resenting the pink champagne too.

We only have so many remaining weekends here together, and I will cherish them. This weekend  on Friday evening, returning home from a neighbor's new baby visit, I passed a friend who was coming out of our gate (you missed a walk! he said) (I was visiting Z's new babe! I said). Then J. called worried about her new babe and so I got our fancy ear thermometer and drove down to her, and tried to reassure her that everything would be fine (though really I had no idea). I begged her to call if anything felt wrong because her husband is away and I know how the imagination works at 3am with a new baby who might be sick and no husband to balance perspective. When I returned home, it was bath/books/bed---sleep.

Saturday was a day of marketing and preparing for the party----the meat shop, fine olives from France, aged cheese too, baguettes and berries and tea lights and white lilies. Every time I crossed something off the list, three more things were added. The party grew because to everyone M. ran into he said, Come! And so all the friends and family came, and we had a fire and torches lit around the back yard, and candles and flowers and all the dried trees with hardly any leaves looked ancient and breathy against the Africa sky, which was clear and starry.

All the friends came and we sat by the fire with the stupid pink champagne and Jonnie Cash on the stereo, and then we went to the table and sat there for hours with everyone we adore, and I made a toast to M. for his birthday and we talked about being here for seven years and maybe coming back seven years from now, and everyone made New York sound light and exciting for me, knowing that my heart is heavy to leave.

Sometimes the best part of a dinner party is when everyone has left and the fires are still burning and the glasses are all over the place and the candles have left piles of wax on the table cloth and it's just M. and I picking up the essential things to save (the half finished bottle of wine, the salsa, the chocolate cake), saying let's just leave the rest for tomorrow it's ok. And wondering Did people have a good time? Was it ok? Well I hope but we did have a good time, and I even had a fine time setting up all day, and that is an act of love in a way----to do it right, to attend to a million details with attention to each, to appreciate M. whose birthday it was as I attended to those details---and we turned off the lights and locked the gates as we've done so many times the years here, and we tucked in the babes, and felt so happy together.

hello goodbye

Years ago, my friend's mother was part of a local theater group. I think they were a group of friends or maybe they became friends through the troupe; maybe they met once a week to entertain themselves or maybe they put on shows for others, I don't know. One day, years ago, this friend called to tell me that her parents (her mother of the theater group) were getting divorced. This came as very shocking and sad and disorienting news, as any divorce is, but in this case particularly so because we all loved the couple and the family and had thought the family would go on together for ever and ever.

This theater group did something around that time that I think of often. I wasn't witness to it, my friend told me about it later. One evening during the time of the divorce, my friend's mother came to her theater group and they sat her down and said they were going to do a show just for her.

They silently came together and held hands in a circle and then they let go and together began to build a structure. They worked in silence, with care and attention to their gestures and movement. They piled chairs on top of a table, and maybe a shelf on top of the chairs, and perhaps a rug or a plant or some pots or keys on top of that. Actually, I'm not sure the objects that were used, but I remember my friend mentioning chairs certainly.

When it was finished they paused and appreciated what they had built. Maybe they stood there for a while, I don't know. And then slowly, they began to dismantle the structure. I'm going to assume that they dismantled it with sadness and a heavy heart, but working together meticulously and with care and attention. It's more dangerous, after all, dismantling a structure like that. It could all come crashing down and really hurt someone, and everyone is distracted by sadness and maybe not working together as well. it takes great concentration and certainly depletes one's emotions.

So yes, this small theater production that my friend described to me almost 20 years ago has remained with me and often explained life to me. Is life not always a process of building structures with the materials you have at hand, with the people around you? And then---like the moment an ocean's tide changes from full to retreating---it is time to shift, and begin to dismantle. It happens in a big way (building a new family together, and then, over tine, breaking apart); it's happening in little ways (a project at work starting, overwhelming, then coming to a close).

Last week, a great tide shifted in our life. Seven years of building a life here---first in Uganda, then in Nairobi---the constant moving forward, the constant moving in, the career building, the baby making, the wall painting and bill paying and the community we love---all the daily work and decisions we constantly make to contribute to all of this, suddenly peaked. The moment came when it was time to begin dismantling. In a few months, we're off to New York City to start a new contract, and to begin to build a new structure.

It's a pretty tricky time. I'll be writing about it I'm sure.

David Hockney, Garrowby Hill (1998)