Just random journaling on vacation…
Woke up at 3 AM to take a bus out of the Maasai Mara land to Nairobi by way of Narok. Got to Milimani Backpackers around 11 AM, chilled for awhile, and am now enjoying a triple house coffee at Java House, watching the Kenyan rain outside the coffeeshop window. The sounds of civilization, of blenders whirring and spoons clinking in mugs and the smell of coffee mixed with the rain makes me miss home, and strain to remember how these were everyday things. There is a little piece of my world in this world, captured somehow and sent halfway around the planet.
I miss being alone, travelling alone, playing along with culture and being as “cosmopolitan” as I could be without giving myself away. I could be anyone, with any job, with any motives or agenda. I long to feel grown up again, to walk freely among the living.
Experiencing a thousand memories at once, reliving bits and bites of moments gone by, they flood my awareness until this moment collides with that moment in a burst of hallucinogenic recollection. The french cafe in – where was that? Sydney? With the cream of mushroom soup under puff pastry, talking with a woman and her baby girl about nothing grander than ordinary life. Dinner with Candice in Hong Kong before the skyline light show. Tapas bar in SPain with Dick, Pat and Grandma, up up up the curvy steps of Torremolinos, built into the sandy side of a Spanish hill. 3-story Starbucks in Myeong-Dong, chock full of overdressed Koreans taking cutesy couple photots on their cell phones.
How can all these moments be here at once, in this little coffee house in the middle of Nairobi? “This moment contains all moments.” (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce) Lewis knew it well; what is time and where does it go? How can then, now and tomorrow be the same? Silently observing, I pass through liquid consciousness…
I am a time traveller.
Stop goofin off.
Love Mom
Ahhh. Nostalga..It is good stuff all of our lives. At 80 it feeds my soul often. I am often grateful for rich memories. By the time you are an old ‘folk’ you shall have many to warm your old bones. Good work!
So hope that your “vacation” added a restful time & sweet memory. Am praying that your trip back to Uganda goes smoothly. In Christ’s love,
You’re such a beautiful writer Jess! Everything is poetic and picturesque. Keep writing it’s great!
You and me and gonna take a vacation to the Kings Island water park! Dream about that! Cruising down the water slides with ole B-ry…