Thursday, May 16, 2013

Today I


Today I ate some mangoes. Today I watched the red sun rise. Today I made peanut butter stew. Today I got stung by a (tiny) scorpion. Today I finished a book; The Thing Around Your Neck, and it made me nostalgic for many things, not all of them good or happy. Today I thanked fourth graders for carrying rocks. Today I bought meat and fresh bread and okra and bananas that tasted a bit like cloves. Today I borrowed a wheelbarrow. Today I smashed many rocks with a sledgehammer. I got so sweaty my pants were wet. Today I took antibiotics and a malaria prophylaxis. Today I explained the difference between calculating mechanical power and electrical power. Today I yelled at a girl for headbutting a boy with her headscarf. Today I picked eggplant in our garden. Today I ate some of some more mangoes and some goats ate the rest. Today I tried to guess which vegetable was which while I ate my dinner in the dark outside. Today I saw the new moon.

Like I knew that I would


I’m feeling good. Of course there are many ways to feel good, even limiting oneself to the literal somatic feelings that the body experiences, which is what I have in mind. Running nine miles feels good, going back to sleep feels good, breaking the surface tension of water feels good.

I can’t identify why I’m feeling good.

I know that the chair I’m sitting in usually isn’t this comfortable, but today its contours and misaligned slats are welcoming me like any fauteuil would after four drinks.

The wind is light, mostly, and not all that cool. It seems to change directions now and then. Sometimes the sky flashes red in the east, and fewertimes booms as well. It was raining earlier; not even a real storm with a dry-spell-shattering deluge, but real enough to remind us here that the rainy season will come again. The sky was half yellow and half blue while the stormcloud was lit from above during the sunset.

I know that the antibiotics and malaria prophylaxis in my bloodstream shouldn’t have much effect on how my body feels while I’m awake. Also, peanut butter and molasses and bananas shouldn’t make me feel this way either.

Maybe it’s sitting here on the terrace and feeling my subconscious shift from “every day is dusty and forty degrees” to “every day is green and your flipflops will flip mud onto the back of your pants”.

Maybe it’s reading Playboy for the articles of course and being saddened by the large variation in the quality of editing. Aren’t they supposed to be at least a little bit proud of their prose?

Maybe it’s watching day become evening becoming night, in thirty-five minutes.

Maybe it’s done with school in three weeks done with Peace Corps in three months done with Africa in October.

Maybe it’s purposefully not watering our garden for the first time.

Maybe I don’t need an explanation.