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.