There and Back Again

The journey from Z to C a long one, but at last here we are again.  The four walls of the condo, the familiar sights, the tradition of breakfast pizza.  Books and wine and the Application for PR to be submitted.  Time to open the wedding clock gift and start into a cheesy love story, before initial petroleum pricing work in the new year.  Might have to get internet to represent the client at a hearing, at long last, so make that call as well.

More reflections to come, as well as a re-reading of March and April posts.  Quite the life accomplishments since then.  As you play a “partner information session” on audio this morning...  “do you... work?”  Oh what a life.

Manhattan

Night Four.  A shame to leave, nice of the giraffes to come and say their goodbyes.  Massages, Scotch, Arsenal, pool, Falls, food, even a memo to the Town of Mahone Bay and the addition onto the FNB bank account.  What a dream.  Long may life proceed accordingly.  It takes effort and time and magic and good fortune, but oh the rewards.

And no shame or hesitation in saying that Mirriam’s God is great, Hitchens scepticism notwithstanding.

Royal

Night One, after the flight and Mr. Robert and the return to the Baobab tree.  Some things change... some don’t.  The joy at the picking up of wine and tonic.  The love people have for the newlyweds.  The soft magic of the glowing Zambezi.  Fridays.  The joy in sharing these moments with this holy beauty. 

Remember Doubt’s fedora, the pictures, Josephine as MC and correcting her, Willard’s "colleague” and interest in negotiating the bill, the madness of the registrar’s accusations in front of her family at the Civic Center on wedding day, then the attempt to further “register” amid the hordes at the NRC fiasco?  

The magic in returning to the same places.  Mentos Room beckons.  This tour through Livingstone as we set the wife (the wife!) up for the next few months such a fantastical thing.

“Wanted to wish you well before I remove our connection.”  

Incredible language.  How long past is that?  To laugh, and remember.  Funny as I only realized nothing had come in terms of acknowledgement earlier in the day.

Aye.  Such a world.  The Baobab as fulcrum, Nov 24 to Nov 20.  If you could go back and tell them what to expect, who’d have believed it.  

How I love it.

Slide

Taj breakfast.  Two hours until the Civic Centre.  Again, no thoughts other than for the day to play itself out.  No looking back, and it feels fuckin’ excellent.

Always the last minute complications and misinterpretations and phone calls, the herding of cats as part of the story.  The inexplicable drycleaning delays and the Inspector-General security uncovering a flaw in Sandy’s timing.  Was just about to add that weather seems to have cooperated, except in checking there’s now a 50% chance of showers at noon?  Mirriam also forgot about the nails, so our Tongan waitress is checking with the ladies.  The purple colour will not suit, but is a memory.

No matter.  It will all work itself out.  All of it.  How?  It’s a mystery.  Imagine this day, pre-pandemic.  Imagine this moment and all that came afterward, pre-Europa.  It is to laugh.  Adorable J, champion of randomness, lover of strange capers, embarking on the (second) greatest undiscovered country escapade, with As You Like It humming in my ears and laughter coursing through every good thing.  Even as you have tried (and often failed) this week to maintain a Zen-like equanimity in face of everything.

That lyric has been running through my head since this scheme was hatched.  The Goo Goo Dolls is appropriate, as is the song title.  Do you wanna get married?  Yes.  Yes I said yes I will Yes.

Mr. Charles

All good.  The return to Batoka over bumpy roads, the joys of the communal shower and outhouse and Zanzibar Moon.  Getting reacquainted with Mirriam’s upbringing at Primrose House and spending time with her family.  Photos with the white man and the matching dress.  All part of moments that will live long in the memory.

Best was the Lubono process.  Why the plates were even used, who knows.  The shuckster uncles put in their place by calling out the lack of prayer a true highlight.  The silence regarding price the only way to address the matter in the West, while the amount paid a way to contribute back to the village that will remain behind and honour the future.  

Settled in safely now to the luxuries of the Junior Suite at the Taj, as Mirriam sorts her dress and teeth cleaning before the big day.  A perfect Monday, with the work of wedding and honeymoon and immigration forms ahead.  As the As You Like It reading states...  Good in Every Thing.  I Would Not Change It.

Windhoek

The stress of the wedding compounded by questionableness of Lubono.  I suppose the worries would be amplified on the other end in dealing entirely with your side of the family, but it really does start to get to be too much, then to be blamed at that.  What to do, how not to put words in the wrong place, to trust in stepping out further in what already seems an incredible leap of faith.

Instead, tears, matching the heavy rains outside.  A taste of what could come next Wednesday?  Or heavens opening up to ensure it doesn’t happen?

First think back.  The lost sunglasses, the charger left behind, the extreme road that took Prince’s car so long to drive.  But the unicorn, and the Douglas Green, the suppers, Sardanis, the shaving and massage, the monkeys looking in the bathroom window, the lion pissing and the cheetahs on the way home (incredible to know how far the rumblings of the lions travelled).  The beauty of those white/orange outfits, the unexpected discount of the locking band, the awkwardness of Willard’s request for money for ceremonial plates, just at a most annoying time, and as his phone runs out of airtime with Mr. Soneka.  

What’s the over/under on leaving the bride-to-be alone in the bathroom to cry?  I think it’s time.  The plan not to drink was the good one.  Oh my, how will this caper yet unfold?  Remember the sound of the rain?  The owner of the lodge talking about his son the Rhodes Scholar, while refilling his highball glass full of Jameson?  It beats the usual, though.  There was never another choice.  Oh, the human bean.

Zambian Brewery Responsibility Pledge

Quite the Sunday.  The gathering of the clan, meeting with various people required to show “respect” and honour traditions and the rest.  

I should say first the transit proceeded spectacularly smoothly despite the long hours.  The stayeasy a solid and comfortable opening.  Errands being run and some of the difficult but necessary conversations underway.  What is helpful is that all still feels inevitable in ways that make you smile.  The pure absurdity of the randomness of being exactly here, amidst everything else.

I’m a bit lost, as I keep waking at odd hours local time.  And the full absorption into the foibles and vagaries of the backstory of a foreign family you are - in real ways - about to join, it’s fair to be overwhelmed.  To perceive yourself “performing well” while not at all having any objective perspective by which to make the assessment.  The difficulty of squaring up to your weaknesses, the obvious criticisms of others backhandedly revealing the same pettiness and the same superiority complexes within yourself, and the limits of rationality and argument.  Thoughts of restraint/behavior expected or hoped for in others colliding with what’s in your own mind and how you go about turning two people as completely into one as possible while retaining individuality and balance and respect for the values most deservedly placed on the pedestal.

The elements of human nature so illuminated by the nature of these life-changing actions - to get married.  Willard’s wonder at your “speech”, the hand on the forehead blessing as if from the deceased and contradictory thoughts on the almighty in the same grace (omnipotent power and yet acknowledgment of deprivation throughout the world), 

Our union not because we are a bit clever? Yet the leaving of this phone on the table almost a disaster, returned to its owner in a sign of honesty (or because iPhone resale or reuse value limited?)  The perception and extrapolation of the thoughts as seen through another’s eyes, to the point where tonight there is a gap in understanding similar to the Mizingani “acting” crossing of lines, and frustration at the inability to talk through it quickly to obvious ends.  

I do fear this is likely a future stresspoint, roots calling acros the ocean and such.  But eyes wide open and you cannot say you have not seen fair warning.  The alternative is not to experience it and so maintain a far more mundane experience of this life that does not test, and leaves you, in the final analysis, alone.

What you learn about yourself in the coming days is key.  Showing off the privileges of your life that must seem phantasmagorical, and do even to those at home, reminders of the selfishness driving everything to its core... your own default to bragging...

This is such a rambling piece, full of thought and no immediate conclusions.  The fairytale should be examined and confronted, the curtain glimpsed behind to check reality, before falling back to what has brought you here.   Not for the first time, an Arsenal result dictating mood, the 0-3 to Villa among Arteta’s worst and so a few shots and complaints of ogling to dampen the atmosphere just 80 hours in.  The pressure is self-explanatory, so much rides on it.  The reliance on destiny and the shaping hands beneath all required because otherwise it is just a lonely raft in an ocean of water on all sides, no land in sight and no direction home.  

Enough.  To bed.  Remember now the initial memories, the yellow dress at arrivals, the speed of the Tongan tongue, Willard’s “mmmmm” and reckless driving (first open bottle drinker since Estacinho!), zebra and ostrich roadside, the smashed beer from the ripped plastic, if it doesn’t say yess just say no, God is Able mat on the floor, the scraping of the car and replacement of the shock during the remembrance parade...  “snap” and dreams of Shakespearean lines for the wedding service and all the rest of it... 

“What have I done?” he said, the car stalled in the intersection.  The needle on the gas broken, and so the simplest fix.  Here the fun is in the letting go, and planning being done for you.  Revel in that, not through lens of how others would view it, but as it comes, as life experience.  

Be less reactive to attacks of acting fraudulently, accept and roll with the life force of it, be true simply to yourself and, containing multitudes, let mere existence argue the case as you go off.  Do not rise to the bait of accusation, meet it with Zen-like shrugs of understanding.

Yes, remember your heroes as you move through these days.  

Good in everything, I would not change it.

Union

From the arrival on the UP and the literary festival’s emphasis on multi-culturalism, the immigrant’s speech of being soft like water, and strong like a rock, to the sunset over the Royal York, the CN Tower and the Delta, to the Taverna’s menu of Meantime Ale, beets, Last Word, Verdicchio wine, and so forth.  All before the Steamwhistle as the air grows cooler. 

And we wait for Biden and the late ballots to turn the screw.  It is not the ideal world, but such a one would have no drama, no randomness, no struggle, no mood swings, no rollercoasters.  The highs are what make it worth fighting for and there are enough of them to go around.

Two weeks.  Until you are married.  Imagine.  Where did the impulse come from?  Wherefore the reason why?  Onward.  The only way is through.