Losing the way

I have lost my way again. I wanted to be writing faster, writing more, turning out page after scintillating page of the story of my years in southern Africa. Why? For myself, mostly, to be there again, to document those years after which I was forever deepened, chastened, humbled, and enriched. I wanted to examine those years in the only way I have ever been able to examine anything: by writing about it. I know what I know if I can write about it. If I don’t write about it, it slips away into a vagueness. I don’t want to lose those years, so I want to write them. And Sue said to me, “Write it while you still can.” Yes, I said. Yes, I will, yes.

And yet Bella’s eighth birthday comes along, a friend visits from the Bay Area for a weekend, Sue and I wring our hands over what’s going on in the world: the climate, this mad President, Brexit, the breaking of Venezuela, the abysmally stupid wall. Life happens now, and the writing comes slowly. I sit with that stunning past. I read again the notes that remain from my journals. I walk and pace and rock and dream. I write and erase, start over, begin again, erase again. Now that my camera has Returned, I make a few photographs every day. It’s how I express my love. This, I say, pressing the shutter. And this. This is what I love. Now. And that is what I loved then. It all matters to me.

I ask myself, do I go on and blip, between episodes in the #Kendall_ProbablyNeverFinished series? Yes, I think I do. Not every day. But sometimes, when the need is strong—when there is so much to love that I will burst if I don’t share it, then I will blip. And I’ll use the tag as a way to find my way—a way another person could find their way—back to those times in the past that are so vivid if I can find the words to tell them.