F.L.O.W.

Flow. Go with it. Like a lot of good ideas, it came to me in the shower. In the 21st Century costume of a Facebook status update. Sarah is … yes, that is what I would write. Flow. Go with it – my digital smoke signal to the connected world. I could even incorporate the word ‘Flow’ into that imaginary tattoo, the one with the infinity symbol I wouldn’t put on the back of my neck, the one I’d been thinking about not getting since that day in Brazil last year, whilst enjoying fresh fish and caipirinhas at a restaurant you can only get to by boat.

Some things are best left undone, untattooed. You can always change your mind about an imaginary tattoo, because you’ll never need to have it removed. It’s permanent in pure thought form, and that’s as close as I may ever get to ink on skin.

Why flow? Four letters. There is something snappy about four-letter words. No, that’s not it. Flow because that’s what water does, and water melts rocks down to sand, which is a lot more than I can say about rocks. A rock may temporarily block water from its destined flow, but water, being patient, will eventually find a way through. Because part of its persistence is wrapped up in knowing when and how to wait it out. Not as a torture or strategy, but as a natural state of affairs. So, flow.

Flow is about being here, right now, as the moment is flowing, it is not static, and it does not wear pointy shoes. It is round and generous and carries a basket of fruit on its head. Flow does not target or manipulate or try to fit a square peg into any other hole. It is accepting and grateful for God’s gifts, and can recognize them as such.

Flow looks forward but lives fully in the present. Flow is happy, because it doesn’t know any other way to be, unlocking the chakra energy channels of the body, allowing breath to enter fully, freely, rejuvenating and creating a safe space for movement and love to come on through. Flow is definitely love. A love with open hands and complete trust.

Flow is boundless and abundant. It knows no limits. It’s answer is always yes. Yes! everything is possible. Transformation is its daily rite. And we know that we are one with the Flow when we smile, when we feel good, when things are going our way. Because flow wants things to go our way. Every day, it presents us with opportunities to let us in, to embrace it, to let it carry us. Flow is letting life carry us where it wants to take us, because it knows better. It’s been here before.

Flow is ancient and timeless and newborn. In the same instant. And the very fact that we can’t wrap our beginner’s minds around that is proof enough that we should just go with it. And get carried away. Flow wrote this post. I was just the lucky scribe. And when I am in Flow, I am lucky in everything.

Love is holding a balloon in the park on Sunday.

Hand holding string holding balloon flowing in the wind.

Easy Does It

I need a massage. But I’m happy. My life is in constant evolution, transformation, full flowering. I’m putting the pieces together, and making an effort to keep the lessons when things go apparently ‘wrong’. There is a separation between needs and wants. I have the thought, or feeling, rather, in the body, my back in particular, that I need a massage. Fact is, I probably won’t get one. And it will probably be okay. No, it will definitely be okay.

I think about this search for a partner. Which is bogus, and doesn’t lead to its target, in fact it leads away from it. I’m tired. Not in my life, but in my head, in my heart, of hitting the same wall. Instead, I’m going to stay where I am, in this space of love that I have created inside, and radiate that, not as a means to an end but as a state of being, a directive and a state of grace, because I owe that to myself, and because it feels good. Easier written than done, but certainly possible, if not necessary to well being and inner peace. That means looking at my life and thinking, feeling rather, as that is more essential and immediate, that what I have is enough. That who I am is enough.

I accept fully and totally what today may bring, with the apparently ‘good’ and ‘bad’, without labels wherever possible, with a dose of serenity. The serenity to walk through my life and know that as Bob Marley said, ‘every little thing is gonna be alright’. And when I have that thought, it makes me mushy and sentimental inside, and I feel the fragility of my heart, the tenderness of my soul, and I start to melt.

The computer that I am too much of the time, the blonde-haired machine as the wise sage at Concord, Jean, told me once, is draining. The image projected is tiring and inauthentic. I am so much more than this desperate 30-something girl trying too hard at everything and ending up alone, only to feed her own story of helplessness and victimization. It’s an old and worn-out idea, and I set it free, as it doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t belong to it. I let it go, let myself go, and rise and fall and rise again.

There is an unrelenting strength inside, beyond the façade, beyond what is usually shown to the world, beyond the endless pleasing rituals and poses. As crude as it sounds, as a friend said, I can feel free to ‘rock out with my cock out’. I know, that is beyond vulgar, but you get the point. I do not have a male member, nor do I want one. But until society stops using masculine genitalia to illustrate strength – to have brass balls, et cetera, I can show my real self, in the true intention behind these expressions.

I have had an experience recently, with a guy, who first became a good friend and then turned into the possibility of something more. Like the Romanian woman in the winery said, ‘things happen according to you’. She was referring to a German enologist who was very uptight and cold, and when she worked at the vineyard, the bottling machine was always breaking down and they lost a lot of time repairing it. Instead, the current enologist is down to earth and relaxed, and the machine for the most part works like a charm.

Her simple comment, along with the typical question and answer ‘are you married?’, ‘no’, and ‘you have plenty of time’ (am I a ticking bomb, excuse me?!), sent me into the bathroom crying. Certainly they were tears that needed to be come out, and she offered me the occasion to pierce the balloon inside.

I had the realization that I had put too much pressure on the guy, and that was why things were apparently falling apart. To be fair, it takes two to tango, and I was not alone in the story, but I want to own my half of the dance. It was a slowly flowering situation (and still is) with someone who I’m not 100% convinced is ready for a relationship, and therefore all the more delicate. I had walked on eggshells, to be fair, and didn’t communicate how I really felt, a part I thought I had to play, because I didn’t know how to authentically be myself without losing him. That is the crux of it, right there, fear of being left, which manifested itself ultimately, as it always does in these situations.

There it is, I didn’t allow myself to be authentic from the get-go. And so that downward spiraled into confusion and miscommunication and an eventual blow-up, specifically I got annoyed at him for being indecisive and wishy-washy about whether he was going to come visit, after he told me that he would, which of course backfired and made him run away. He has since come back into my sphere, don’t’ think he ever left really, he just took a few days out, which in my state was more than enough to consider him ‘gone fishing’.

To not digress into mental masturbation, I was afraid to lose him before we even established a relationship. How crazy is that! I was afraid of losing something I didn’t even have. That is insanity. So I lost it, temporarily, but long enough to feel that deep abandonment labor pain.

Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. But the lesson here, to be learned at all costs, once and for all, imprinted in my head and heart, is that life is not a pressure cooker, but a flow. There is an expression in Italian: se sono rose, fioriranno. If they are roses, they will bloom. Seeing as I can feel my life in full flowering, and that is happening organically, and destiny and free will play equal parts, I resolve to view love and relationships with the same lens.

If they are roses, they will bloom. Roses bloom because it is in their nature, in their DNA. They need water, but not too much, sunlight, but not too much. Even the things we see as positive work exclusively in moderation. Everything functions in moderation. Otherwise it’s suffocating, in every context of life. I vote for freedom, for flow and peace.

Taking Back the Light

Time marches on while I dance in the garden, dressed in garlands of bougainvillea and ripe yellow roses. I am not a soldier, and I do not march. I will not act my age, or be dictated by a calculation between the year I was born and today’s date. You, all of you, can continue to play your games, bien sur, just don’t deal me in.

I am on a train to Monaco, past the rocky precipice of the blue French Med. I am on a beach in Rio, shouting back at the coconut man in Portuguese. I’m sitting on my stoop in Brooklyn, watching the hipsters pass by. That’s how I roll.

Wine school? Hell, yeah, and I’m doing it in Colorno, in the province of Parma. What about the international TV business? Sure. I happen to be an expert.

So, form an orderly queue. I’m not taking numbers. And I’m not giving mine. Who said soft couldn’t be hard? Who said sweet-looking blonde girls have to behave like fluffy little bunny rabbits? I do not come when called. I come when I want to. And seeing as I can come on my own, you better bring something more to the table.

Surprise me. But don’t expect me to be waiting at home for you to show up with your token of ‘wow’. I might just be dancing in the garden. Garden, whose garden? Hmmm, that would be too easy, now wouldn’t it?

And now, for some decoding:

Right, I have been lectured left and right, from a New Yorker to a Paulista (Brazilian from Sao Paulo), about not being too available, about keeping my cards close to my chest, about having it my way. A bender, pleaser, organizer, pacifier, this does not come natural for me. Should we assume that all of our natural instincts are for the best, that there is no room for improvement? I beg to differ.

It is fundamental to recognize, value and respect one’s own achievements, because if we can’t shine a light on ourselves, we must always wait for others to come round and do it for us. Which doesn’t really work in the end. And so, I’m shining my own light. Which means I might stop listening so much, waiting to be validated.

It’s kind of like coming off drugs, the realization that one can and must have a ‘good time’ without substances. Compliments, positive reinforcement and attention are all drugs. They feed us from the outside, and don’t last very long. They can often take us lower than where we started from. If I know my own worth, that is indivisible, independent from situation and circumstance, and is really the ultimate freedom.

The only person I need to please is myself. Why would I want to please anyone else? The very action presupposes that what I bring to the table isn’t good enough. Well, there will be no spectacle this evening, or any other evening. What you see is what you get. If it don’t jive, it ain’t jazz. And everything I’ve gone through to get to this place is a blessing. It is my journey.

Whole

Seeking is one of the stages of being. When a child attempts to crawl for the first time, or reaches for something, or reaches for everything that is just beyond its grasp … this instinct comes from our curious nature, which gets elevated to spiritual ends, in our search for God or the universe within or higher power or whatever/whomever we may call it - that which some believe gives life, for those who believe.

It can happen that one realizes there is no actual seeking to do, or rather that there is nothing to find. However, it is hard to ‘arrive’ here (if it is an actual arriving) without having first done some seeking … and this is a bit of a puzzle. Why do we need to seek to stop seeking, or to realize that our seeking wasn’t necessary? It’s like we have to look until we get to the place of not-looking, because there is nothing to be found but ourselves, and we are the seeker, and we are already there/here. There is not a finding but a re-discovering that one is already whole and complete, that one is not missing anything.

Speaking to the separation from the greater energy, the longing or loneliness of feeling oneself cut off from the universe, may ebb and flow as one feels more or less connected to the All. But it does not take away from ones’ essential wholeness, ones’ essential completeness, the true state of being into which we were all born, with nothing to add, nothing to take away, that we all had at birth and will carry to death and perhaps beyond. Whether this wholeness points to being part of the Universe and sensing that as a stronger force is irrelevant.

Intellectualizing that any further is unnecessary. Wholeness is enough at the moment. Whether in enlightenment terms, that realization is seen as first base and not a home run, that might just be where I am personally ‘at’, developmentally, and there is more to ‘get’.

For now, as someone who has suffered the falseness of a supposed missing piece, and that something or someone could fill that gap, knowing that I am already full just as I am and don’t need anything else is already such a state of grace and relief that I’m happy to float here for awhile and see what else comes up, whenever it does or doesn’t choose to come up. But this kind of thinking can be dangerous, because then enlightenment becomes something to ‘get’, and that is not at all the case. The spiritual mountain may in itself be a trick of the mind, the concept that we must climb and actively be doing something, when actually we are already at the top, because there is no mountain.

The typical pointer to love and especially romantic love as a way to feel whole without any climbing is tempting. If wholeness can be triggered through the love of another person, our work is done for us. But essentially that just proves our incompleteness all over again, putting us back to where we started.

Idealized love means we can just go bumbling through life and then this outside thing happens to us, and bam, we are complete. It is as if our incompleteness was a necessary waiting game, and then poof, we are fixed. This is the stuff of fiction, and not at all true. If two people who don’t understand their intrinsic wholeness then come together, hoping to fill their emptiness with each other, it is just a recipe for more experiences of incompleteness, now with extra fuel to the fire, in the form of expectation that the other person will make up the difference, which can of course never be fulfilled. And yet, we’ve based much of arts and literature and music on this fallacy. It is very dangerous. I am the first to champion love, but fear I’ve been doing it for all the wrong reasons. I really thought it could replace everything, and most of all, replace the bit that I thought was missing in myself. Which isn’t missing.

The idea of romantic love as a path to enlightenment or wholeness is just one of many false spiritual cure-alls, and it happens to be an extremely strong and pervading myth in our culture. The concept of twin souls or soul mates and the implied separation and reconnection in that has caused a great deal of suffering, for those that have not ‘found’ that person, and believe that to be the meaning of life, and for those who have ‘found’ that person, the slippery slope of a pedestal with a very high place to fall from.

If belief is seen as married to doubt, then the following of a faith or doctrine as a thing outside of oneself which will bring wholeness is just as dangerous. If God is seen as something intrinsically separate, it only serves to reinforce our separation. Faith is then seen as a life-preserver that we must hold onto to not drown in the sea of life, and in that we are not relying on ourselves to do the navigating. I do not posit that there is no God, or we are alone, quite the contrary, that in our wholeness we are absolutely connected to everything, which means that God is neither inside us nor outside us, and with our very being, faith or trust is not necessary because life is the proof of everything. We are here, and that is enough. When we point to God in church, we are actually pointing to ourselves, to our own existence.

On a personal note, having found my own wholeness, I can share that with others, and help them to recognize at least intellectually that such a thing exists, and has existed all along. If we remove the sense that any one person can complete another – which assumes falsely that one is born incomplete, then we must also look at the notion of complementing, for to compliment is to supply something with the other lacks, and essentially implies the same meaning. What are we left with, then? Relating is a start, to have or establish reciprocal relationships, of separate and whole beings coming together.

I do not attempt to project this singular moment in which I understood my own wholeness onto the whole of human nature. Just like the animals on one island who started to use a rudimentary tool to open a nut or fruit, others followed suit on another island, and that happens with human experience as well, so I am making the assumption that if this has happened to me, it has happened to others as well.

“The richness of not wanting wrote these poems” – Kabir, Love Poems from God

Waiting is resistance hard at work. Because it implies a state of not having, and the drudgery of patience while one is in that place of lack. It is resistance to the most simple of truths – wholeness. It is not sexy or exciting in itself, although the initial moments of release from the pain and exhaustion of looking can feel like ecstasy, if momentarily. Separation collapses, and it can’t really be put back together again, because it wasn’t real to begin with. It is the illusion that collapses, the yearning that has itself as the object beings to fall apart – the wanting to want loses its power. This is a surge for the one no longer seeking, because all of that power had been given away in the search. There is so much more energy to tap into once the searching is deemed unnecessary. With nothing to do but give it away, nothing to do but share it, to be in the wholeness and enjoy it, because it is a gift that we’ve all been given. It is our birthright - wholeness, completeness, just as we are, nothing to add or take away.

Happy Birthday, Dad

The day I remembered my father’s birthday, or rather that I learned when it was again as if it were the first time, was September 25th, 2009. His birthday is the 29th, tomorrow, or today as it’s 1:30AM.

I’m certain that the date was in my head somewhere, pushed under a seriously heavy carpet for the past twenty years, literally. The years, not the carpet. Well, that all depends on your imagination of course, and belief in metaphors as real, living and breathing things. Not to digress.

I now know my father’s birthday, on a conscious level, and don’t think I’ll ever go back to forgetting it. Something has shifted there, and only in the checking of the email for our next planned conversation, this our second in two weeks, after speaking sporadically over the past 8 years, as in sometimes years without contact if I remember correctly. See, it’s the remembering that’s been the problem, the haziness, the cloud around all that happened, and all that didn’t, and it has somehow centered on numbers and dates.

It’s quite telling that I was having trouble sleeping a few weeks ago on a trip to Sao Paulo, and I started playing with numbers in my head, calculating my salary and how much I needed to live or something to that extent, and it was soothing to me, comforting.

And then I remembered how I would watch my grandmother do people’s taxes, with her old-school calculator that spouted out paper and made loud noises, and the long, long lists I would make on yellow legal pads for the things I wanted for Christmas, with the item number, cost and any other relevant (usually numerical) information. To the point of the list I made, possibly mental, possibly written, of what I would do if I won a million dollars, the amounts earmarked for different family members and how … all of this gave me comfort. I suppose that something concrete that I could hold on to, that wouldn’t leave or lie or bring me confusion, was to be found in working with numbers.

I don’t know when the haze began, if I knew and stopped knowing, but for years now I’ve not remembered how old I was when my parents separated, was I eight or nine or ten … if people asked or I was telling people ‘oh yes, my parents are divorced, they separated when I was …’ and I drew a huge blank, for years.

Just a few weeks ago, as I was in the throes of a highly emotional moment, I asked my mother. Funny that I never thought to ask her. I suppose I was still content in the fog. It is lifting. Hallelujah. Maybe just one cloud at a time, but it’s lifting nonetheless. And now I know the date of my father’s birthday, because I happened to decide to contact him a week before his 55th birthday. Otherwise, a year might have passed before knowing, if not longer.

I do not think I ‘happened to decide’, instead it was written that the long passage through the dark tunnel is coming to an end. The light is clearly visible. The light of forgiveness, of remembering and not needing to forget anymore, the living of it all in equal beauty, grace and measure. Of saying, this is okay, I accept this, I accept my life, and it has been chosen for me just as much as I have chose it, on the soul level from both directions.

The old ways no longer work. And so they are shed, like snakeskin. Because new skin needs air to breathe and it can only be nourished in the open air, in the clarity of the oxygen and unrestricted space. Something is moving through me, and not just because I want it to, but because it wants to.

It is egotistical to think we’re doing everything on our own, and silly to think everything just falls from the sky. Perhaps one of the keys to life is finding a balance between the two, between destiny and free will. Between our understanding of their mutual forces and individual relationships with their energies. I’m not sure there is a final understanding, to be fair. Some things are not for us to know.

Maybe it’s just about accepting the way that things are, without needing to figure it out all the time. Precious life energy is spent on analyzing, obsessing, reviewing, that’s a lot of churning for the head, a lot of heat and blood in the brain that could be better spent elsewhere.

For me, in my own, small pocket of the universe, I am shedding skin. And it feels really good. It’s a skin as old as the oldest landscapes in my life, the earliest characters and accoutrements and misc-en-scene, and it’s making way for something new. What a remarkable feeling.

And it’s not about going somewhere or doing something, because my life has always been movement. It’s more – and I’m starting to get the tip of this iceberg – about a way of being in the world. And a way of not being. A growing up of sorts. I’ve slithered on the ground long enough, and it’s time to find out what’s up there after all. What’s up there in the land of the soul’s freedom, with open hands/eyes/heart.

Because our journey here is samsara, a circling, but there can be evolution. There can be a barrier crossing. I think for a long time I didn’t think it was possible. And there are still certain emotional moments I’m living now that I fear will last forever, but this opening of remembering, processing, passing through, is proof that those moments too will be digested and hence exhumed. What a relief.

I get what Buddhists say about uncomfortable moments, and how they are lessons in patience and sitting with ‘what is’. And not judging. That’s a big one. A great one, rather. Knowing there is just as much to learn there, if not more. I’ve spent so much time running from ‘what is’, and now there is some recognition.

And what is recognition? It is not only an act of recognizing, but also a state of being recognized. It is the perception of something as existing or true, a realization. Further to that, it is the acknowledgement of something as valid or as entitled to consideration. It is expressed as appreciation, and lastly, most importantly perhaps, is the acknowledgement of the right to be heard.

I am giving myself the right to be heard. The right to passage. Of what wasn’t able to move. I think that as a kid there wasn’t much room for me to be heard. Even the fact that all those great acting classes that Rachel and I used to take with Hugh King just ended, and just after that I started writing poetry with Mrs. Webb’s sixth grade class, having found a new outlet.

There was so much going on, at home, so much change, and certainly emotional turmoil that wasn’t spoken, that I created a character that didn’t recognize or appreciate or at least let the world really see this fragile, deeply sensitive girl who was also so full of life, joy and reckless abandon.

I know that my soul is older now, I am a woman now, and re-finding and re-membering those qualities and incorporating them into who I am now, or who I think I am, is a challenge. Not associating the qualities to personality is already one step in the direction of not assigning them an age, per se. It’s tricky territory, better not to over-think it, just allow for the joy and curiosity and sensitivity to be there, the tenderness.

A recent emotional trauma has given me the license to let my emotions be there, to practice inner kindness. And in that realize that I wasn’t actively taking care of myself on that level for a long while. For this I lost my faith. Because abandonment on that level was equivalent to abandoning God, denying the gift of life. As I flow out of that experience of loss and grieving, I do not dwell in what could have been but wasn’t. That has not been my choice.

And so I take that energy into my life – in my nuclear familiar background, for starters, my sister Rachel and I were born, that could have not happened, but it happened, and much joy has come to the world if I can say so without appearing egotistical.

When Rachel lost her first baby, there was a lot of sadness, but she got through it. By at a certain point no longer focusing on the void. And where there were none, now there are two – twins! This gives me hope as well. Hope not in the sense that things will fall from the sky ad infinitum, but how 360 things can change, in her case 720 … !

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I think that sentence should be reversed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not, it’s just how we deal with it all with deep breaths that makes all the difference. Well, it’s 2:19am, time to go to bed now. Big life decisions to make tomorrow, and a birthday call to my father, whose birthday is now firmly, always, always, in my head and heart on September 29th.

Is this it?

Eternal myth and superconsciousness. The intuitive understanding of how and why the world is, all that is seen and unseen, the motivation for this life beyond mere human desire or motivation as a moving forward, a locomotion of sorts, is present and intact when I sit in my room and read Joseph Campbell. My mind and soul standing on the shoulders of this and other giants, perched high on books that reflect that inner, sacred knowledge of what is.

And yet, in the world of preoccupation, the majority of this existence spent in worry - will I make mistakes in the editing this week, can I afford this party, will I get my visa, what will happen with my job, will I get married and have children? much of it spent in ego - if I wear this dress to the party, there will be looks, and that will fill me with confidence, or I think I'll douse myself in some self-tanner tonight, pump up the light bronze of the afternoon.

And back to the books, and the wisdom of the soul, and the battle with how the outer world of things, feelings and impressions possibly fits into the higher leanings. Terra firma is anything but, it is a constant yearning and striving and disappointment and wanting to be elsewhere or not wanting this place to end, or fear that it will. This turmoil gurgles at the surface. And underneath is a peace, that much has already been decided, it is only a weak body and mind reacting to life, as it does, as it always will, until it awakens in death.

There must be some divinity to this existence in forms, in opposites, in carnal desires, or at least a parallel, and not a fight, not a negation of all that is outside of oneself. For separation is a trick of the mind. The bible says,"The kingdom of God is within you," and yet another translation replaces the word 'within' with 'among'.

I suppose the real, burning question is why have we (I, you) not created an outer world that reflects our inner world, our innermost knowing, our superconscious selves, the light of God and truth. Why do we prefer to sit in the darkness? The answer is not mine to know, not now, maybe not ever, but I will certainly pose the question, be it pregnant or be it frail and wanting, the question at the very least opens the door for an answer and perhaps on some small level, redemption or light.

And, yes, I know, we've been here before. Many times. And we'll come back here again. Until, until ... tomorrow's undoing, I suppose, if the word's meaning can be sophomorically dissected. Un-til. Up to a time. Until death do us part. But perhaps not from each other, but from our selves. Our outward, individual, small and sometimes helpless selves. And to the greater energy of the universe, and so the saying could go "Until death do us reunite."

Adventures in Africa

This is an old one ... May of 2005. I was living in London with a boyfriend called Antonio, who I was very much in love with at the time. As I was cleaning up my in-box, I stumbled upon this, and realized that it's not only my in-box I'm cleaning.

We had taken a trip to South Africa, and I wrote a little something about the trip, which changed my perspective on poverty. Here it is, rough around the edges and largely unedited ...


One of the big jokes of the trip was that The Westcliff in Johannesburg checked us in as Mr. and Mrs. Coursey, which my Mount Holyoke feminist self got a big rile out of. I asked my boyfriend Antonio if he would take my name, and he said yes. We enjoyed two days of reading The Corporation (think Michael Moore for big business) and Life of Pi. Just kidding about the name. He actually laughed!

Down to Cape Town, we checked into Mount Nelson Hotel, named after the British explorer Lord Nelson, which ironically shares the name of the country's liberator from the vestiges of racist, colonial rule, Nelson Mandela.

The market stalls are filled with Kenyans and Nigerians who sell hand-carved wooden tables for 8 British pounds, and understand the favorable value of their currency to the extent that they say, "We make it cheaper for you so you have to pay extra for the weight at the airport and it's still OK!" Thank God the three pound carved hippo we had to have didn't tip the scales. Haggling is easy & friendly compared to northern Africa, and they even tell you the best time to come and get a good price at the end of day!

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE!!!!!! Where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic, the world ends and begins again, Vasco de Gama called it Buona Speranza (good hope) because he was the first to circumnavigate the continent of Africa and seeing that he had reached the "bottom" was certainly an encouraging sign. Smooth seas become harsh and temperamental, as edges are rough by nature, and the edge of the warm, temperate Indian becomes a tiger upon meeting the Atlantic. Just on the other side in Mozambique, further up the eastern coast, that same Indian Ocean is soft and lazy, a practical bathtub. Proving that a play of opposites often swings the pendulum to just one side alone, once again there is no melting pot, no happy middle and in-between.

Interesting to see that everywhere on this planet the natives and settlers have had conflict, and to this very day in our modern cities of the Western world we have pockets of ethnic communities, ie people that haven't assimilated and become white, as there is no reverse movement to becoming dark or 'other'. Are we naturally different, and must we celebrate our differences by learning to live apart in harmony, to live separately and together in the same city? That could be alright, if that's the way things are (and that IS the way things are in most places), if the opportunities, facilities, education, water, roads, etc, were equal in both places. This is unfortunately not the case.

This brings me to the Townships. I wrote an SMS to a friend and my sister upon arriving in Cape Town that read: 'this is a moral injustice, living in shacks like this'. The sadness that confounded me would not be shared by the people of the Township. On the contrary. I have never seen such a true community, in every sense of the word. In 1966, a community of 60,000 working class people living in the center of Cape Town was forcibly moved outside the city, their houses bulldozed and demolished. This neighborhood, called District 6, to this day hasn¡¦t been properly re-built, and the people still live outside in townships, more or less shacks with little facilities/water.

Each room sleeps three families. Each family gets one bed. Clothes are hung on the walls, and sheets are tacked up as curtains. Some sleep together on the bed, others on mats in front of the beds. They eat mostly tripe and chicken on barbeques and something called African salad, a soupy dish of corn mixed with sour milk.

In the houses without water, there is an area for sleeping and an area for kerosene cooking, equal to 2 closets put together; and unisex public toilets are lined up outside.

What surprised me is that these Africans seemed more happy and together, with tremendous community spirit, than the white South Africans we encountered in the city. If a mother calls her child to eat, and that child is playing with 20 other children, they all come to eat, everything is shared. Money, clothes, food, whatever they have. And food, for one, as we were there just before dinner time, is pouring out of their kitchens and on the street, and our guide pointed out that nobody goes hungry. With basic needs of life provided for, a people who have no separate word for cousin (they are called brother or sister instead) come together and live quite happily and in peace.

If a man coming from the country has a friend in the Township from his village, that man will share his bed, his food, his clothes, his money, and find that person work, and the man is not expected to pay anything back, because it is understood that there will come a time when he will be able to do that for someone else.

They took us to a traditional healer¡¦s workshop, with dried lizard skins and animal bones and eggs and earth-colored powders and tinctures in unlabeled cans and jars. The healer returned my eyes as we were leaving, and I hoped that he was not judging my Western ways, a stupid and perhaps instinctive urge for what being different can mean to someone else. We were taking a tour in his neighborhood, and he had perhaps not done one in East Hampton or New York to see how we live. It would certainly be less interesting from his perspective. One of the shaman's tools was a string of condoms, hung up on a clothesline in a candle-lit makeshift garage. All of his tools are meant to ward off evil spirits from the body and the house, and of course AIDS is in this category. Condoms are available free everywhere in the Townships.

THAT is all I have to say about Africa, as you can imagine on a safari we saw animals, but this doesn¡¦t need explaining. For all you non-vegetarians, I ate elephant biltong (dried meat), impala, springbok, crocodile, ostrich, and potato ice cream. I got really close to buffalo, and really far away from lions (not such a bad thing).

What I took away from this trip is that nothing material will bring true happiness, neither the lack of running water nor having to share a bed with your family. People can get used to anything, and while I am in no way condoning the disenfranchisement of 90% of South Africa's population, I can say that living in close spaces has created a massive, beautiful intimacy. Happiness is when you take care of everyone you love, and they take care of you, nobody goes hungry, and nobody is alone.