In church this morning (I know…my blogs have never started with these words…bear with me, please), the pastor gave a sermon on imperfection, greed, and dishonesty; on the impossible world we live in and how difficult it can be to do the right thing and how sometimes doing the wrong thing isn’t always such a bad thing (apparently Jesus did it, too). Now I don’t go to church often, and I’m currently in a stage where I’m deciding whether church is the right place for me right now, but today it was like the sermon had been hand-crafted for me and where I’ve been these last few weeks.
Since I turned 25, I’ve been on a bit of a spiritual journey. Something about hitting that number made me realize I needed to have more to my life than stories about foggy Saturday nights spent with too much wine and I’m-not-sure-what-his-name-was-but-he-made-me-laugh.
So for the last few years I’ve attempted (strong emphasis to be placed on the word attempt) to begin making healthy-life-choices, like “I really shouldn’t smoke that cigarette, even though I’ve had enough booze to sink a ship” or, “I should totally get the garden salad WITH the cheeseburger ”. "Does running away from the police count as exercise?" Or, “No, I really need to pass on the birthday cake. I’ve had three donuts for breakfast already.” Somehow, I feel these choices redeem the thousands of bad ones I’ve made since I turned 18. I get the salad dressing on the side, don’t I!?
In line with such healthy living, I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that I should find a spiritual community, too (which is not to say that when my girls and I have had enough to drink that we aren’t about as spiritual as it gets), but I'm talking about a community that can help me continue to make these healthy choices. And I can’t lie that I have another reason for seeking a church community: maybe I’ll find a nice young, independently wealthy church-going man who likes children, folk art, and wine and who wants to let me volunteer professionally and sit on committees and boards for the rest of my life and spend all of our winters in Africa (Jesus made wine out of water, people, have some faith).
I’ve been church-hopping for a few years now and I've struggled to find just the right congregation for me—somewhere that feels comfortable, and safe. Somewhere that supports my diverse lifestyle, and the lifestyles of my loved ones (read: a lot of my friends are really, really gay and I really, really love them and really, really lack the tolerance I need to be around people who are intolerant), and a church that focuses on peace-making and justice. And that's not to say that I haven't found churches that I like. I’ll find a place that seems nice enough, but beyond a powerful sermon or two, I find there’s really no one like me there—someone who believes the same things I believe and who even begins to understand what I do for a living (which I can totally understand, because I can barely explain it myself).
Partially, I wonder if this lack of church success is because I can’t seem to decide what I actually believe these days. And despite everything I’ve seen, and everything I’ve done, I feel like I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what exists out there for me. So church has been low on the totem pole. And it doesn’t help when there are crazies out there burning religious texts in the name of “God”. I know they’re only about 40 people deep, but 40 people deep too many, I think.
These last few weeks have been challenging and exhausting and at times, painful. I’ve been working impossible hours and facing pretty impossible to-do lists for just one person. I truly love my job, but there are weeks when there are never enough hours and certainly not enough hands to actually get what we need done.
A pretty horrible tragedy happened last week, too. One of my dearest friends and colleagues L. lost a close friend, C., suddenly and tragically, at the hands of a domestic dispute. Though I didn’t know C. well, I had met her a few times through L. and I can’t help but feel devastated by the loss, not to mention the loss for this woman’s children, family and friends. Domestic disputes should never lead to the death of two parents—regardless of who was responsible. It’s eerie to hear the news and know the people that they’re talking about. One would think that I'd become immune to the tragedy of everyday life, when you deal with it as much as we in Baltimore City do, but it never stops hurting. Or stinging. Or biting. It forces you to pause and take a deep breath, even when you haven’t allotted that pause and deep breath into your schedule for the day.
Death is never something we’re truly prepared for, and even when we know it’s coming, it stings hard and shuts down life temporarily (and sometimes a bit longer than temporarily). I know because I’ve grieved for friends and grandparents, students and mentors. I’ve felt the sting. The sinking stomach. The numbness. I started writing this blog about this time last year because my grandmother was dying. I used this space, and you, my readers, as a way to cope with what didn’t make sense. And in the process, I rediscovered a voice I’d lost over the last few years of academic writing and grant writing and all the writing that had nothing to do with me.
And a year later, I’m still using this space to process the things that don’t make sense and to celebrate the things that work and to share the things that don’t work. And this public stage is refreshingly raw and revealing. There are times where I hesitate to write what I’m thinking because I wonder how it will be received, or who might read it, but I generally push forward and think, “if not now, when?” And what is it that causes the hesitation? What kind of super human expectations do we have on ourselves if we can’t be true to ourselves? If we can’t be honest with our friends and families about our stories?
I’ve written a lot about expectations in the past—expectations that sometimes feel unfair and that confuse me and that overwhelm me. Expectations that cause me to wake up at four in the morning and pace and write emails (and sometimes online shoe shop or bake muffins). Expectations that we women weren’t told about when we were whispered stories by our mothers about someday being Wonderwoman. The things they didn’t tell us when they taught us to idolize the suffragists and to become good feminists—to raise the bar for ourselves and to destroy the glass ceiling. I mean, I almost hesitate to compare our lives now, as modern women, to the lives of women one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, but I can’t help but wonder if the expectations now are almost too high.
The things we women are expected to want to do—don’t you want to pump your breast milk with your automated breast pump in your $600 tailored suit in between meetings? Don’t you want to be expected to want children but to also want a career, too? Don’t you want to have the burden of figuring out how to fit it all in—the growing up, the going to graduate school, the finding of someone who isn’t a total freak and/or apeshit NUTS that you actually want to share a life with (and then the follow-up dating that needs to happen), the marriage (the planning), the birthing of babies, and then the subsequent raising of said babies, while not giving up on the education you spent $200,000 on (okay, you, your parents, that bitch Sallie Mae, and the federal government)? Don’t you want to have a conference call on your iPhone while you’re waiting in the carpool line? And we're supposed to do this in high heels, something gracefully feminine, without ever looking tired, and without ever falling victim to the all-day-yoga-pants and arch-supportive-shoe. Or without going into debt. Or without getting too fat.
These last few weeks I’ve been running around at breakneck speed, zooming in and out of meetings, eating lunches out of plastic wrappers, working fourteen, fifteen hour days and planning every minute of my day, down to the exactly three times I’ve allowed myself to pee. My dog has been so mad at me that she pooped in the house twice last week (and I admit, I’m jealous that I too can’t take out my anger by pooping in the middle of someone’s floor) and she keeps giving me this look that screams, “go ahead and leave again. I’ll just be here at the house. Doing absolutely nothing while you’re gone. All day.” My Blackberry has become my best friend. My confidant. And my accomplice to this messy lifestyle. She never leaves my side, even when she's been silenced. Sometimes her little red blinking light is like my very own personal lighthouse.
And a part of me feels so accomplished when I survive these weeks. This is, in part, what they wanted, I think. This is what those women, for so many years, fought tooth and nail, so that I could run around with a Blackberry, saying the things I’m supposed to say in meetings, looking the look, with that ease that says, “oh hey, yeah, I made these muffins from scatch at three a.m. when I couldn’t sleep.” I’ve conquered not only one domain—but TWO. I can work AND bake. Hand me a breast pump. I’m a modern superwoman.
But theres the part of me that hates it too, and hates what it does to me. The me who doesn't ever want to be like the women in Sex and the City or the women in a bad Bravo reality series. The me that hates that we're expected to pull all this off; to be smart and feminine, sexy and maternal, nurturing and understanding, successful and yet, still simple, and low-maintenance.
But then when we're forced to pause, when the cycle gets disrupted, we're allowed a finite window of time in which we can really evaluate our lives. We can challenge our own truths and be critical of ourselves: Am I doing the things that make me happy? Am I doing the things that fulfull me? That enrich me? That propel me forward?
This morning we talked about a parable in Luke that deals with a shrewd manager and a greedy landowner. The sermon went deep into the story, theorizing all the ways it could be interpreted, but more importantly, discussing the many, many ways in which our world is imperfect. That we’re guided towards choosing wealth and greed because we’re supposed to advance ourselves and grow our bank accounts and 401Ks and become someone. But that Jesus tells us that we need to get in the habit of making choices for the good, even when what’s good doesn’t seem clear. This, of course, led us to a discussion about how to even know, or understand, what good and bad means anymore. The many, many ways in which we’re expected to make smart choices when there actually aren’t always smart choices to be had among the handful of choices we’re usually being asked to decide between. We make the best choices we can, with the best of intentions, and hope that we’ve done the right thing. And ideally, the take-home message for someone like me is that the expectations I’ve put on myself for anything above and beyond just doing the right thing shouldn’t consume me anymore.
I laughed inside because I’ve spent so much time convincing myself that there is no place for me at church, and here I am, at church, feeling like the sermon was written for me. Feeling like the sermon was written for C. and for all the women around me who are expected to accomplish the impossible, everyday. For all of us who keep ourselves awake at night, worried that someone will punish us for having made the best choice out of the choices we were given, even though it might have been the wrong choice. That someone will pull the tablecloth out from under us and surprise us with a mandated "stay-at-home-and-bake" day and secretly give our jobs away.
Which causes me to pause. And think.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Like nothing I'd known before, until I knew it better
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. -Sarah Erdman
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Cheers
Keeping up with a blog isn’t as easy as it seems—no wonder some of these career bloggers have literally made blogging a career. As in, they don’t leave their houses in the morning. As in, they have no professional obligations outside of blogging. As in, they introduce themselves at cocktail parties as “writers” but in reality, they’re bloggers who sit in their buffet pants all day and read things like DListed and the NYtimes and 100 OTHER blogs and online newspapers for inspiration. I’m going steady at 2 blog posts a month, something I’m not quite proud of, but I remind myself that I WORK for a living. And while I make a genuine effort to include as much spandex content in my work wardrobe as possible, I’m often forced to join the rest of the American workforce in standard black pants, heels, and pearls, and earn a living. Therefore among many (many) resolutions for 2010, blogging is back on the top of my list.
That isn’t to say I don’t think about writing my thoughts down all the time—but by the time I’m home, with my laptop, I find myself doing something a bit less brain-straining, like Facebook-stalking. Or online shoe-shopping. Or searching craigslist for something cheap and/or weird. So my thoughts and grand schemes for the world are put on hold, waiting for my dreams or for the next day.
It seems the holidays are always an appropriate time for a quick life audit; a check-up (an honest one) of all the challenges and successes of 2009. Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself reading the “life audits” of all my friends and family; you know what I’m talking about—the long, often rambling, letters that update us all on all the amazing things that have happened since the last holiday card hit the post. Some of these letters I find touching, others merely nauseating. Like I’m really shocked that your daughter is engaged—we all knew she’s been sleeping with that bi-polar criminal for years now. She’s probably just pregnant and decided to be classy about it. Let’s be honest.
So here is my letter, the one I didn’t tuck in all of my holiday cards.
Dear Friends and Family,
I couldn’t begin to list all the amazing things I accomplished in 2009—primarily because I don’t keep lists like this, but more importantly because I know no one else cares about why I’m amazing. You already know this about me, intrinsically, and don’t need to see quantitative nor qualitative data to support such claims.
I’d prefer, instead, to list the things for which I’m most thankful, because it’s easy to give thanks when you’re such a lucky girl.
My official list of THANKS as 2009 comes to a close:
I’m thankful for…
- a supportive, albeit ape-shit nuts, family that is hilarious and functionally dysfunctional;
- my amazingly creative and inspiring friends who always help me finish the bottle of wine (and sometimes open a third one), who laugh at my stories and reciprocate with even better ones, who eat my cooking and say it’s good, and who continue to do good things in the world, despite the fact that it all appears to be going to hell in a bobsled;
- my goofy, cat-hating beast I call a dog who makes me laugh, even at 6:45 in the morning;
- vodka tonics, laughter, jigsaw puzzles, best friends, stretch pants and docks (and yes, those are all related);
- learning how mistakes are an important part of wearing my big-girl panties;
- Tarheel basketball;
- cocoa butter;
- the ability to make bad dates into great stories;
- good hair product;
- buffalo chicken dip;
- jeans that look like dress pants;
- happy hours that go until last call;
- Chico’s (because where would I be without it).
So cheers to 2010. Raise a glass of whatever you're drinking (or just the bottle, I don't judge) and sing as much of auld lang syne as you can remember.
Let’s be thankful, shall we? Wishing you all peace, health, and happiness in the New Year.
Love,
Lindsay
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