The Flame Tree

Blog Action Day: Water

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year's topic is water.

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Several years ago, my husband and I lived in a little cottage in Kampala, Uganda. It was very lush there. Behind the cottage, a small yard descended steeply to a dirt road. It was filled with wild garden----frangipani, jasmine, birds of paradise, bottle brush, agapantha and magnolia trees competed with the bougainvillea vines that seemed to grow inches a day, winding their way up anything that didn't move swiftly. The basil I planted grew so gargantuan that one day it just slumped over and died, like a drunkard whose liver finally gives in. The rains, when they came, were Biblical. I lay awake at night with a racing heart, thinking for sure the cottage would soon detach from its foundation and float down the hill. I lay awake thinking of the Ugandans who lived across the valley in shacks that perched precariously on hills stripped of all trees. 

I worked for an aid organization at the time and sometimes I would travel to Gulu, in northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) had been creating havoc for 15 years (and continue to). Leaving behind the tropical shores of Lake Victoria, the landscape turned brown and dry and flat. But it was still Africa, with wild weeds and shrubby trees taking advantage of every crack in the hard-packed soil.

One day we drove out to Pabbo, a refugee camp an hour from Gulu, where about 26,000 Ugandans had fled the LRA's violence. We toured the dusty camp, asked questions, looked at wells, took notes, met officials, waited, looked at clinics, met more people, waited some more. There were long lines at the wells, but at least there were wells. Outside the refugee camp, most people sent their daughters to the water source, often a long and arduous trip that made girls very prone to attack and assault.

As always, a group of children followed us around the camp. As always, they were quiet, giggling, half-dressed in rags, curious and bored. One had a kite made from a shredded plastic bag tied on a stick which made him a scholar and a prince among the others. It was a grey day, and though no one was crying or dragging or having mental breakdowns, there was a sort of fatigue that hung over our group, and the camp, and the day, and the war. 

Toward the end of the day, colleagues were finishing business while M. and I waited, leaning against the Land Rover. The children stood around us and stared. If we raised our eyebrows or waved a little, they giggled in unison for three seconds, then immediately returned to their flat, inquisitive stares. Soon M. and I stopped thinking about them. 

I reached into the Land Rover to get a bottle of water. Still chatting, or maybe not, I opened the bottle and---reflexively----I started to tip the bottle. M.'s hand out shot out and his voice almost coughed No! I smiled back to suggest What do you mean? while the bottle tipped and I splashed a thimble full of water into the palm of my hand, to splash my hands and face a little. 

But before he could reply, the children exploded. Before the water hit my palm, they broke their stillness, their quiet, and flashed into action. Water! Precious water just falling, like that! Free and easy water! They scurried beneath me, they reached up for the drops, they fell to the ground to become nothing, no higher than rodents, no higher than that. 

Helen Frankenthaler, Aerie (2009)

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)

Flaming 40

Thoughts on 40
The following excerpts are all quotes; not a word is mine. The quotes are thoughts and meanderings and ruminations gathered from my friends and family on the subject of turning 40. The friends and family are artists, thinkers, poets and mystics, soul archaeologists and wind recipients, healers and harmony restorers, and entirely essential to me. Thank you all for contributing.

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I love the age, because I can finally finally discard any lingering feelings of apologetic girlishness. I am no longer cute, and I have some gravitas.

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I say no more often to the dull things, and this has given me more confidence to embrace the real, bright, shiny things that I love. At 40, it felt right to approach the chatter, the nonsense and the noise in my life with a great, big Fuck You!

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Ahhh, but just wait until you get to your 60s! Then everyone thinks you're wise, but you are really more childlike than ever! You get up early in the morning content to love God's sunrise. People at work can't manipulate you with fitness reports, reviews, cash bonuses or promises of promotions because... you are already there! You take a walk in the woods on a cold day, until it gets so quiet you feel tears welling up, not because you're lonely but because your heart loves the quiet. You realize that back when you were 40, you almost missed life while you were chasing life. But 'almost' is the key word. 'Almost' means you 'dodged an anchor', and at 60 plus, you now know who you are, and whose you are, and how to live life to the full.

And, you learn to respect the wind.

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The bad side of 40: you AGE.

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It is a huge relief. You can finally stop trying to always look and feel young. You feel as if you can sort of let it go.

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When I turned 40, I received black balloons from my 13-year-old daughter. She thought it was great fun, so I did too! I love the memory even more.

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Think of all those years you've struggled to just begin to get your voice.

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I feel more connected all around, like a spider in the center of the web that is my life.

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40 seems like the real permission (as opposed to 30, which is self-indulgent permission) to take full control of your life.

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Since turning 40, but I'm not sure this has to do with turning 40, I miss the days of under-employment, when money was short but time was plentiful. I miss the days of driving around, camping, making jewelry, drinking coffee, walking the dog and reading. Yes, I miss having the time and mental space to read. I almost feel like a victim of my success.

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"Are you going to start coloring your hair again?" a friend asked me last night. "Because the grey is really making you look older than you are."
    "No, I'm not," I said. "I'm turning 40 in a couple of months and my new M.O. is to radiate beauty from the inside."
    She rolled her eyes.

But there are my thoughts on 40. I think it will be liberating to not care so much about hair color, and figure out how I can fulfill myself and my family, friends and the world in more meaningful ways.

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I remember when your father turned 40, and I naively said to my mother-in-law, "I can't believe I'm married to such an old guy."
    Her response?
    "Wait until you're the mother of a 40 year old."

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You know, those ancient wrinkled folks doing acupuncture are the really smart wise ones.
   

Herding Sheep

A book of poems arrived yesterday evening from a dear friend. M. brought it to the restaurant, he came straight from work. Tonight, if you can, bring someone a new book of poems. They might look at you funny, but it makes all the difference. When you are out buying a new book of poems you are not thinking about taxes bankruptcy arguments on-ramps to highways or diapers. You're just buying a book as a gift---a gesture---for someone, and thus, in several ways, contributing to Peace on Earth.

If it's too overwhelming, start with  A Book of Luminous Things. It's a simple and lovely anthology and may open doors to who knows where.

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I believe in signs and omens and the Patriots losing the Super Bowl on the day I turned 40 I am choosing to interpret not as an omen to my new decade, but as ... my home team losing the Super Bowl.

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February. Morning. Kenya: overcast and cool.

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The babe, who learned to say No a while ago, entered the Yes phase this week. He says, EE-yah-ss. He loves saying Yes! He pronounces it with a certain weight, with care and respect. Not solemn, not mumbled or quickly or taken-for-granted, not insincere. When he says Yes, it's like someone has finally broken through the ice floe after weeks of freezing hunger, opening a perfect circular hole revealing aqua-blue slushy fishy wonderful ocean.

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The new babe who was born on Friday is doing well and so is the Mum. There has been mostly peace in Kenya since that babe was born and I'm thinking he's doing a fine job honoring my request (see previous post). I should have asked him for a Pats win too.

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Mosaic on Suffering

I. The lines of a children's story that repeated in my head all week

In the middle of one night
Miss Clavel turned on the light
and said, "Something is not right!"

And afraid of a disaster
Miss Clavel ran fast...
                                ...and faster,
and she said, "Please children do---
tell me what is troubling you?"

II. The way disaster strikes

Even though there is calamity elsewhere, here the afternoon sunlight fills the yard, interlaced with lengthening shadows. The grass, I notice, needs mowing. People in offices and in produce shops go about their work and business like there's nothing different.

Even September 11th started out like any other day. Clear, blue sky. Unremarkable. Then, airplanes started flying into buildings.

III. A certain curse

Beautiful women must be satisfied, if not elated, with life. When they're not, when they wrestle with inner demons and the suffering shows, they're often accused of being 'spoiled'.

IV. Some thoughts on suffering

Living in East Africa, we are surrounded by suffering. After a certain length of time (depending on the person), one tends to retreat from it: cloistered neighborhoods, certain shopping malls, even specific roads become part of the deception. The map of my Nairobi is not the true map. It's exclusive. The suffering of others becomes too much to bear, and even considered dangerous.

Most of our professions are geared toward alleviating suffering, in one way or another. But, for the sake of our own self-preservation, the subject is mostly quarantined to the office, and even there it is discussed in abstract terms.

Like: over three million Africans die each year of AIDS and malaria; 314 million live on less than a dollar a day. (What do such numbers mean?)

V. And hope

In a recent Gallup International poll, 52 percent of Africans expected 2006 to bring economic prosperity, and 60 percent expect 2007 to be better than 2006. Across brochures, calenders, reports and posters, the word 'hope' recurs again and again. Hope for the Future. I'm usually skeptical of hope. "Or, you could work for the future," I think to myself, "and maybe see some results."

But now I understand. The element of hope must be there. There must be hope with suffering, hope that the suffering will end. For suffering without hope is despair. And despair can be fatal.

VI. The memory that recurs

After their daughter's christening, we said goodbye in my parents' driveway. This was years ago. They were going out to dinner that night, alone together; the grandmother would take the baby. I would drive back to New York City and it was growing late. I started the car as they returned to the house.

The way his wife jumped into my brother's arms as they were walking up the path, she seemed weightless. Her long legs swung around him like a dancer's. The were giddy from the day---the baptism, the party. They would dress for dinner, and order wine in a nice restaurant, and the following day return with their baby to a warm house on the other coast. She descended back down on the other side of him, and they continued walking up the path, neither of them missing a step.

VII. The final lines, a little prayer

"Good night, little girls!
Thank the Lord you are well!
And now go to sleep!"
said Miss Clavel.

   And she turned out the light---
       and she closed the door---
            and that's all there is---
                 there isn't any more.