of mangos and triangles

Mangos have always been a source of comfort for me. They seem to follow me: dried mangos stashed in the basket on the kitchen counter at home were a staple growing up; giant jugs of mango nectar (occasionally dropped on the floor and wasted) was consistently the drink of choice at late-night Mosaic staff meetings; the monthly San Francisco women’s party called Mango began to allow me glimpses into an intriguing new world; when in season, I packed my backpack in high school with fresh mangos and serrated knives wrapped in paper towels and rubber bands, to be enjoyed during lunch (or fifth period) in the park. And -- call it coincidence or call it subconsciously seeking out comfort -- my newest coffee shop gig is at a sweet little spot called Mango Ginger. So maybe, despite all the urgency I was spouting to run away from home for a while, I can’t get too far away after all.

Triangles, on the other hand, are somewhat of a new phenomenon in my life. The bulk of my days lately have been spent in the office of a Cape Town NGO called Triangle Project. (No capitalized ‘The’, an omission over which the anal copy-editor in me has a minor identity crisis, as I’ve been so well trained to include it without fail in grant applications for The Mosaic Project.) Triangle -- www.triangle.org.za for whoever’s interested -- is a place that resembles Mosaic in more than their (almost) parallel names. It is a community that has slowly begun to adopt me -- but not without my pretty constant solicitation.

I am currently working on a project on lesbian sexual health and HIV/AIDS that has given me some sense of purpose, manufactured as it may be, over these last few weeks. I am doing research and will lead a workshop in a couple weeks with an exchange program that brings together young lesbian-identified women from Sweden and South Africa to share their experiences and (theoretically) turn them into aspiring little activists. Lofty goals, I suppose, but I’ve also been trying to get over this strange cover of cynicism I seem to have adopted and let the idealist I’ve really always been show through. We’ll see how that one goes...

So here I go, attempting to bridge an old and familiar fruit with a new and foreign shape. I've never so much been one to do things the conventional way, so here's to a new spin on mixing apples and oranges.

But in all honesty, as much as I ramble about the theoretical and poetic meanings of all that I'm doing, nothing feels like it has changed too much. I've moved to a new city... and that sort of feels like the long and short of it. Things really are falling into place in a way I never could have expected, and it's been quite an excercise for me not to fight it. My mama says it has all been relatively painless because I'm 'growing up'. I think it's because I needed to do what I'm doing, and now and I'm doing it, and it's working. Hmm... maybe just different ways of saying the same thing, as tends to happen with me and my mother as we navigate this whole 'growing up' thing. But that's another story for another day...