did you dance in the rain today?

It's been raining a fair bit here in Freetown. When it rains, it pours. It's almost as though the clouds were just holding on and just waiting for the right moment to let go. When it comes, the sewers get flooded, the side-walks swamped with rubbish pushed by the water, and if you happened to live/work in buildings with zinc roof tops, the drumming of rain onto the tinned material is impossibly loud and sometimes unnerving. Actually I don't know how best to describe the rains here in Freetown. I did find it very uninviting in the beginning. I hated it. It impairs my mobility, my daily routine, or anything I wish to do because it makes moving about just so much harder. But I noticed something else too. I have become more reflective when it rains. I am a lot calmer and I think more in general. I am also seemingly productive, not that I am not to begin with. And today is no different. As I am typing these words, I have my cup of English Breakfast tea in my yellow-white porcelain mug. Piles of paper are everywhere. I've got my bottle of Grafton water and beside it, my Digestive biscuits. There's a small green apple plucked from the gardens of my colleague, Joe, in Northern Lebanon. There's my new Nokia phone in Pink, which Tim got for me a few months back and also a book I'm currently reading entitled "A Man of the People" by Chinua Achebe. Gary Jules is playing quietly in the background. And in times like these, I feel like I have motivation to write, read, think and reflect. The rain does something to you.

I still have a thing about writing. My words are simple and the emotions almost void. I seem to simply skim the surface, entirely uncertain how best to write without sounding as though I am trying to hard. Then again, I write as how I see it, without ornaments. And maybe they sound childlike or unimaginative.. but perhaps this is why one keeps writing. I have no intentions of writing a book but I do enjoy writing as a creative process and so I keep trying, at the espense of boring you to death about this.. Anyhow...

I had an online conversation with a friend a few days ago. He was pretty unhappy where he was and with what he's doing in general. Our conversation reminded me of how exciting my life has been in general. How many people will do what I did? Pack their bags and go live a life in the poorest country in the world? Many people relish the idea of doing something adventurous but will never have the guts to do it. I say to those people: DO IT! Do whatever you want to do (0r feel like) and don't feel like as though it's a wrong turn. I don't have a great job, I don't have loads of cash. I cannot drive very well. I don't have great ambitions to rule the world or make big bucks. BUT what's important I guess is I enjoyed the greater things that so many others could only dream of. I'm here in Africa, a part of the world which has always been seen as the "other" and now I live here. And I'm happy. When I think about where my life has been, I'm doing pretty alright. I have danced in the rain in the early hours of dawn in too many places. I have been hugged a million times over by people I love and care about. I have kissed under the moonlight. I have watched leaves dancing about in autumn. Lie on the grass staring right up the sky, smell the grass.. so much more than I ever imagine. Little things that fit into a bigger puzzle. I have lived. And I think that's ought to matter today, tomorrow and the next day or so. I have remembered all those that matter. So if it pours again today, I think I might just go dancing.

X

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees

This is Pablo Neruda. I am posting in reference to the poem "Every Day You Play"

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.