my brother says...

...that my blog is getting a bit stale. And I suppose I can’t help but agree with him. I must have gotten lost somewhere between the “I’m dealing with so much intensity and don’t know how I can possibly document it!” excuse and the “Internet in this country is a useless mess and I actually just can’t be bothered” pathetic apology. But here I am - four months, three countries, endless hours of digging in the dirt, and countless couches later - attempting to return to a space of reflection and processing and sharing. But as much as I may laugh at myself for trying to hide behind a façade of too many Intense Travel Experiences to actually be able to write anything that does them a sliver of justice, there’s really no way to do it. I’ve been gone a long time. So, with a gracious nod to Marcus tweaked by some clumsy poetic license, here’s where I've been:

I could have written about a tearful last night in Cape Town, during which I intensely evoked Joni Mitchell and her Big Yellow Taxi.

I could have written about a country that lives behind cement walls and barbed wire. And about some delicate mixture of actual and imagined crime – violent and essentially harmless, sexual and gender based, money driven and drug influenced – that has seeped into the national consciousness enough to drape the country in a layer of fear, in all its various incarnations.

I could have written about sending two people to walk a third person home at night, about waiting outside when dropping someone off until they get in all the many gates outside of every house, about taking off jewelry and putting cell phones on silent in certain taxis that go to certain areas, or about locking the burglar bars outside of windows. (Or about the existence of “burglar bars” in the first place.)

I could have written about Friday afternoons making me homesick, and about being surprised by who I found myself homesick for.

I could have written about learning that it’s possible to love again.

I could have awkwardly attempted to write about ubuntu and “Pink Ubuntu” and brilliant lesbian activists who say, “Once you attach a color to ubuntu, it’s not ubuntu anymore.” And I could have written about the complexities of a “Pink City” whose alleyways reek of homophobia. I could have written about celebration and protests and singing and resisting and defeat and returning again and again.

I could have written about thorny understandings of queerness.

I could have written about queues that last for days and Minister’s Exemptions for Zimbabwean nationals and the Department of Home Affairs and an immigration system that just might be more broken than that of the U.S.

In a fit of frustration around a dangerously ripe visa and an absence of Mosaic-esque communities in my world at that moment, I could have written about my need for movement. I could have written about skipping town to Namibia for visa-related purposes and making a decision to leave Cape Town and wander through other parts of South Africa upon my return. And I could have written about the ways that “The Movement” and physical motion are oh so intimately connected for me.

I could have written about communities that opened up their arms and hugged me, both literally and metaphorically, without ever being asked. I also could have written about loneliness.

I could have written about my assertion that humans are not made to forge new versions of lives for ourselves every few days or weeks or months. I would have written this after forgetting how difficult and energy draining it is to do it over and over again, and getting up and running off to explore one too many times.

I could have written in May about feeling finished with something that wasn’t going to end until September.

I could have written about emotional exhaustion and cerebral saturation.

I could have written about craving comfort in the form of someone who knows me and how I function. Just for a little while at least, and then I would have gone back to writing about doing the whole this-is-for-me-to-do-alone-and-it’s-what-I-need-to-be-doing thing again.

I could have written about playing in the dirt, and how good and soothing it is for my soul.

I could have written about homemade bread for breakfast and fresh veggies for dinner and feeding chickens and sheep and cows every afternoon at four o’clock.

I could have written about meditative, lightbulb moments I had while weeding, and about all the garden psychology metaphors sprouting in my brain. I could have written about how weeds can indicate nutrient deficiencies in soil, and how some weeds are harder to pull out than others, and how weeds are useful greenery to add to compost heaps, and how certain weeds generally grow with certain plants, and how all of it is really about the human psyche and I actually just need Amani to help me develop the metaphors.

I could have written about riding a bicycle across a mural in a strange old English bar in a rural Eastern Cape farm town. And teaching old Afrikaners the Macarena.

I could have written about a constant search for peach gummies.

I could have written about the Wild Coast, and how beyond beautiful it is, even to a spoiled California girl like myself. I could have written about how much I need ocean in my life.

I could have written about dreams of veggie gardens and libraries in beautiful, intentional communities, and then I could have written about disillusionment.

I could have written about sharing conflict resolution – Mosaic-style – with an outdoor education center in a real-life fairyland, and then watching it be taught through the use of painfully homophobic skits. I could have written about choosing my battles.

I could have written about the treks across the Eastern Cape made by my beloved St. Paul acquired brown scruffy sneakers -- tekkies as South Africans so affectionately call them. And I could have written about how pitiful I must have looked when I left them in my Cape Town closet for my housemate to inherit, if she wants. And I could have written about how I’m getting better at letting go of strangely emotional items of clothing. I could have written about forgetting.

I could have written about a mountain I never climbed, a bathhouse I never went to, and a restaurant I never ate at.

I could have written about infatuation with American-ness, and about disdain for American-ness. And about people who want to be stuffed in suitcases for largely unrelated reasons. Maybe because they love me.

I could have written about dropping roots gently, leaving, and coming back to find them stronger.

I could have written about a city that – as much as I tried to fight it – managed to find its way into my bloodstream.

I could have written about figuring out how to own decisions that weren’t mine to begin with but have no choice but to be mine now.

I could have written about a closure that was so much bigger than the process of opening would have ever indicated.

I could have written about Purple Converse All Stars.

I could have written about transitions and in-between-ness and need for purpose. I could have written about containers, and about not having one, and about being okay with that, and about creating one, and about not having one all over again.

I could have written about planes and trains and buses times a million.

I could have written about sisters of dear friends who go out of their way to feed and house and love me. And I could have written about complete strangers who do exactly the same.

I could have written about never leaving home without a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth. Thank you, Norton Juster, for your infinite wisdom. And thank you, Maddie Hogan, for a little card you sent me just before I left for Israel six years ago that brought Milo and his cardboard tollbooth full circle.

these are things that make me smile:

1. the way that cape town suddenly became winter. it took about 2 days. i can wear scarves again, and for that i am infinitely grateful. i'm all for nudity, but my neck has felt too naked.

2. a jeep parked outside a house around the corner from mine that is more colorful than anything in the neighborhood. zip zap circus school is a place i might like to visit sometime.

3. the fact that hair grows. (and mine will most certainly need to, as it has all fallen off. or something like that...)

4. five rand/hour internet that only makes internet explorer encounter a problem and unexpectedly need to close every 15 minutes or so. not so bad, given the alternatives.

5. avos on teriyaki flavored rice crackers that remind me how beautiful the world around me is because of their association with a particular day shared with gorgeous people at a gorgeous beach in a gorgeous place.

6. the lack of a second class option on the train. "first or third?" the tellers ask robotically, as if the number 2 had not ever been thought of.

7. speaking of robots, that is what street lights here are called. the thoughts of a robot standing every few blocks tickles me almost as much as hearing people talk and walk in their sleep.

8. the way that the power of language can fluctuate so fluidly and nonchalantly. there is an acute lack of spanish speakers in this country, allowing for me to have secret conversations with myself, as loudly as i want.

9. hearing people routinely yell whatever message to the world i'm advertising through my choice of t-shirt. and still, i am consistently confused when i hear "obama!" or "women!" or "thanksgiving!" shouted at me from across the street, until i remember that that is what people do here.

10. a hole-in-the-wall haircutting place, somewhere along the main road, called obamacuts. you can be president too if you get your hair cut here!

11. vocabulary as a reflection of the way this country sees the world: "just now" means perhaps in a few minutes or an hour or more; "now now" means soon, sort of; "now" means later, or maybe never. patience takes incredible amounts of intention and energy. i'm learning.

12. a gentle reminder in the form of end-of-kung-fu-class wisdom from si-jung justin: babies breathe deep into their stomachs. somehow, as we grow up, we forget how to do that, and instead breathe into our chests, when we breathe at all.

i do this thing where...

Those who know me well have undoubtedly seen me having intense arguments, debates, discussions with myself, most likely out loud, more often than not when I’m walking down the street in broad daylight. Call it overanalyzing, being stuck in my head, or nothing more than intellectual masturbation, it doesn’t matter; this is one time you will hear me say that the practice of naming is utterly irrelevant. They are conversations that somehow keep me going, that are often the turning points in big, important, lightbulb-type moments in my life. Or at least they feel like they are when I’m deeply involved in such an episode.

But let me backtrack for a moment, and fill in the blanks on some day to day logistics (and, of course, my intellectualizations about them). I finished working on the project I was doing with Triangle last week. For the most part, I felt good about the way the workshops went, and proceeded to spend some days trying very hard to convince myself that it was good for me to very deliberately do an intentionally capitalized Nothing for a bit, while I braved the inbetweenness that inevitably must come before whatever next steps may emerge in my work with the organization. (As a side note, this whole “dating other organizations” thing is a good experience I guess, but confirms my suspicions that I will, in the end, create a domestic partnership with my first love.)

And in this limbo space, I was – still am in certain ways – feeling a bit containerless, like I was wandering aimlessly without a clear context in which to place my purpose here. It’s quite a new and at times strange feeling to be without school, work, a clear cut community to contain me, even if I consistently feel the need to leak out the edges of such containment when I do have it.

But in this particular version of containerlessness and inbetweenness, I have had plenty of time to bury myself deep in my head. I’ve spent the last several days making big decisions about where I’m going and what I’m doing in the next few months slash years slash life, only to completely change my mind and make a very definitive decision the next day that will probably last all of several hours. I was beginning to feel like the poster child for the typical college freshman who changes their major – in thinking if not in paperwork – weekly, or in my case, hourly.

All that aside, I think I’m actually doing pretty well navigating this new space. Yes, it comes with rockiness and frustrating bumps along the way as phone calls and emails go unreturned and meetings are postponed time after time, but I’ll be the first to say that this city in slow motion is actually very good for me.

But so is spinach, of which I eat far too little, exercise, which I do far too infrequently, and calling my mother, which I also could do better at. So my restlessness and acute need to build lactic acid in my brain won out, and culminated in one of those distinct arguing-with-myself-out-loud-while-walking-down-the-street moments a few days ago. The result was a conclusion that I had only two options: 1) I could make something happen, or 2) I could change my ticket and immediately go home. Ok, so I was being a little dramatic, I know. But being the doer - overextended by habit and need - that I am means that art projects and museum hopping and good books could only take me so far.

So I wrote a few more emails and made a few more phone calls and scheduled a few more meetings - this time with a little more conviction and purpose in my tone - which has both calmed me slightly and excited me enormously. I feel like I’ve finally begun to tap into something – albeit possibly only in my own head – that explodes with potential. In an only slightly more rational way than I approached my excessive decision making, I’ve begun to begin. I’m envisioning project upon program that borrows pieces from various organizing efforts I’ve been privileged enough to be exposed to, or even put creative energy into myself. And I don't want to jinx it, but I'm actually getting an email or phone returned here and there. Oh patience...

And here I am, six weeks in, and this feels like the beginning I was waiting for. I had a meeting today with a very smart and experienced individual who I met through one of those small world stories that is undoubtedly meant to be. In between phone calls and physical absences, I began to see this haphazard conversation as another turning point for me, a catalyst that threw me head first into a doorway that I had been knocking on up until now with about as much courage as the lion in The Wizard of Oz. I’m pretty sure that said brilliant individual remains completely unaware of the overactive synapses firing in my brain during this conversation, but that’s completely irrelevant. I’m ok with that.

And then came arguing-with-myself-out-loud-while-walking-down-the-street moment number two. I left with more questions than answers about what is next and why I will place pieces where they may or may not belong, and it’s such a refreshing feeling. I miss this brain massaging that makes me jittery as I connect people, ideas, memories, in my head as a rehearsal for the tangible practice of doing so.

I went to a open mic the other day where somebody asked me, because of how filled I felt afterwards and how much I felt like I missed that sort of creative energy in my life, if I was an artist myself. At the time, I faltered. But now I answer yes, I do need that sort of creative energy in my life because I do think of myself as an artist of sorts, fueled by the creation of projects, workshops, programs, community engagement, that, if we are returning to the practice of naming things properly in order to identify and understand them, would qualify as art in every way possible. So once again, I am beginning: envisioning a tower made of triangle and mango shaped legos and smiling as I imagine what it will sound like when the pieces click together.

i am here because...

Each day, I seem to place a few more pieces where they belong as I continue the process of realizing why I am here. Yesterday, it came in the form of paying R30 (the equivalent of about $3) for 53 minutes that had me convinced that I am here for the sole purpose of connecting with my family history. I returned to my leaky-eyed self in the middle of a play about journeying through stories of loss and memory and displacement, and was painfully reminded of my relative lack of connection to and knowledge about an entire half of my own family. Those tears, coupled with a particular email I received last week from my uncle about the possibility of my paternal great grandfather having lived here in Cape Town, was enough for me to decide that I’m here to belatedly connect with my dad through piecing together patchwork stories of his – and my – family history. (And remind me again why I had to come just about as far away from home as possible to do that?) But that’s another story for another day…

Today, it was an upsetting moment I had in the lagging space that comes while waiting for a mini-bus taxi to fill up in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s biggest township. I realized, or perhaps articulated in a way that I had not been able to up until now, that I think I came here hoping to be proven wrong about the world and all the painful realities it holds. I had been telling myself that maybe, just maybe, I would learn a new way for a society to exist – one that actively engages with the realities of its past and works to move through them towards the creation of a just, healthy, safe space for everyone involved. In a word, I guess I was looking for hope.

I’m in no way saying that there isn’t good work going on here. There is, by all means, and I know that so much more remains out there to be discovered. But in all honesty, I’m starting to be convinced that things just aren’t that different here when it comes to the ways that injustice and inequity operate.

I say this tentatively. I hesitate because I don’t quite feel like I’ve been here long enough to make any sort of authoritative statement about “the way South Africa works.” (That said, there may always be an element of walking on eggshells when making this sort of sweeping generalization as a foreigner.) But more so, I hesitate because, in beginning to admit defeat, I feel like I’m giving up on something I had both hoped with all my heart would be true, and also known in my heart never would.

I also make this statement with certain traces of guilt and naïveté. I admit guilt because I have been working very hard at convincing myself that I arrived here without preconceptions of what I would find; without a need to impose the paradigms through which I see the world on this version of it. I claim naïveté because one might think I would know better than to hope for anything different than those paradigms I already know, especially given my consistently spouting analysis of the interconnected nature of structural injustice, oppression, power, privilege, all that intellectual speak.

These hesitations reflect a process that has begun to delicately and gently wake me up; one that is not ready to dramatically scream at me that the world is really just made up of different incarnations of the same shit everywhere, even if I’m starting to believe that’s the truth.

I see it in the way that the white South African woman I met on the plane – who, it is important to note, is only coming back for a visit and has decided to “raise her kids somewhere safer” – fiercely cautions me not to take public transportation anywhere in this country. She very obviously claims every reason in the books other than the fact that I will undoubtedly be the only white person on board.

I see it in the way that the white director of a recent Cape Town street theater festival, despite being incredibly well intentioned in his efforts to “bring art to the people”, answers the question of why there were no black South Africans involved in designing the shows. “They just didn’t answer the call for submissions,” he explains. “I put out three separate calls, and the only people who responded were white gay men!”

I see it the way that my neighbor, who is a white gay man, tramples all over the deep offense that many people take to the incredibly racist and insensitive theme of this year’s Cape Town Pride Festival, brushing off such concerns because they come from whiners without valid reason to be upset. (And I see it in the ways that the queer community – no, the multiple queer communities are burdened with the same plague of racial divisions and the pain they cause.)

And these are just the subtle ways I see it playing out – intellectualizing, rationalizing, unnamed fear. The bigger, more glaring structural things, those have to be another story for another day…

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...