There are really very few things in the world that make me want to burst into tears as instantaneously as getting conked on the head. I stood up on the bus today and conked my head on the mirror right above me, and the guy sitting next to me asked, "Are you okay?" I wanted to say, "No, I just hit my head on the mirror and it really hurt. How could I be okay?" and start crying, but bursting out crying on a crowded bus is really only acceptable until the age of about 6 or so, so I smothered my bursting and just said, "Kind of." I miss being little enough to cry loudly when things HURT, like it HURTS when you catch a hard object on the flat of your head.
(I also miss foot-stomping. Wasn't foot-stomping fun? I can do grown-up and it even feels more natural now to hold back on the foot-stomping, but some days I miss being little and having fewer internal censors.)
...
I spent hours today looking through photos on my computer. I wanted to change the background on the desktop. It has been Rwanda and Liberia, but never Tanzania or Sudan or Ethiopia. I am feeling further and further from being able to go to the places my heart craves, and so it seemed appropriate to choose one from somewhere different. Anyway, the Rwanda photos especially were all too brilliant and colorful (see examples here). I needed something to match the constant rain outside, the inertia of days whose light is gone by 5 p.m.
I chose this photo of barren mountains in dry season outside Lalibela, Ethiopia. I took it from the back of a mule on my way up to a cliff church. It is not bright and colorful, this photo, but there is beauty in the starkness, and a great span of sky, and it seemed right to acknowledge the most recent visit I made to Africa, to a whole new country that I barely began to know.
(I also miss foot-stomping. Wasn't foot-stomping fun? I can do grown-up and it even feels more natural now to hold back on the foot-stomping, but some days I miss being little and having fewer internal censors.)
...
I spent hours today looking through photos on my computer. I wanted to change the background on the desktop. It has been Rwanda and Liberia, but never Tanzania or Sudan or Ethiopia. I am feeling further and further from being able to go to the places my heart craves, and so it seemed appropriate to choose one from somewhere different. Anyway, the Rwanda photos especially were all too brilliant and colorful (see examples here). I needed something to match the constant rain outside, the inertia of days whose light is gone by 5 p.m.
I chose this photo of barren mountains in dry season outside Lalibela, Ethiopia. I took it from the back of a mule on my way up to a cliff church. It is not bright and colorful, this photo, but there is beauty in the starkness, and a great span of sky, and it seemed right to acknowledge the most recent visit I made to Africa, to a whole new country that I barely began to know.
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