(Thriving Ivory)
This time last year I was in Rwanda with 31 other American students and a bunch of Ugandan students. We were travelling to different Rwandan cities and memorials of the Genocide of 1994 by day- cramming ourselves into buses, driving across the dusty roads through small towns of waving children and stern-faced adults. By night- we were being hosted by the nuns of Presbyterian guest houses and served piles and piles of sweet bananas and various rice-based meals before Becky and I would lead yoga in the open courtyards under the stars.
Here in New England there are no large buses waiting to swallow me into the melee of mixed races and backgrounds- offering bonding and cheesy sing-a-longs and lifelong friendships in exchange for my willingness to sit on a rugged seat for the duration of our travel across the country- across the border- etc. In New England I hear dogs barking and trash pick-up outside my apartment that I share with four other girls, rather than monkeys and exotic birds screeching in the dawn light from a cement dorm of about 20 girls that I grew to love out of natural inclination to befriend those around me when I knew no one. Here in New England I have to put on a helmet to ride on the back of my best friends’ racer motorcycle; there is no more access to boda bodas with Ugandan men who will drive me anywhere on their motorcycle taxis for less than an American dollar.
This time last year I sat atop a cement ledge on a gazebo-like structure in the Rwandan hillside in part of a guest house overlooking the city of Kigali. I remember writing an ode to September- missing the New England fall with its pumpkins and apple cider and changing leaves and natural ability to change everything about itself in time with the season. I wore a skirt and had a tan and long hair and sun-induced blonde highlights. I was eating mangos and breathing in the equatorial air of East Africa. Today, after a very exciting year of waiting to experience the Autumn I missed last year, I walked from Atomic back to my apartment via all the small streets that weave through Beverly- sporting their New England old home porches with the beginnings of reds gracing the tree leaves along the way. A cool breeze swept around my whole body as I clutched my cappuccino and my essays of Wendell Barry.
I’m happy with the coming of Fall but the cool gales of Autumn are sweeping up more than leaves and pushing along more than cigarette butts on the gutter line of my street. It’s bringing back that nostalgic state of mind that keeps you rewinding all the things you’ve loved, you’ve lost, you’ve dreamt of. It’s pushing all my desires into a heightened frenzy: do I stay here, do I go back to Uganda, do I go to grad-school out west? Abroad? Ay mi dios- no se!
While it’s all whirling around in my mind, my body is exuding this faux message of calm- sprawled on my floral couch that Amelia picked up from a mansion in Manchester by the Sea, ripped jeans marked with holes from Fisher Farms and paint from past projects… basking in the chilly breeze through the window and listening to Thriving Ivory. I’ve only been back since January, and since then I have moved from one apartment to another for a weekend…back to the original apartment, and out again to this new place I’ve been in now for a month. And still- despite the living on my toes, a new job, classes at two schools and taking mini adventures through new parts and new mountains of New Hampshire and Maine on a regular basis- still I’m fitful. Still I can’t be still. Still I fight the urge to fly.
