Like a prayer

At birth she was a miracle, a blessing, a purpose for her mother, a source of hope. “Margaret is going to be someone. She’ll go to school, she’ll go to University, she’ll make it out of Kibera,” her mother said to her father the morning after she was born. He smiled at her bed side staring out at the slum through the hole in their metal wall. At 2 years old, she was a nuisance, a bother, a mouth to feed. At 5 years old she became a worker, sweeping the mud floors and porch in the morning, making the fire, and carrying her newborn brother around while her mother cooked ugali for the family. At 7, the Kenyan government ordered she become a student; her mother ordered her to stay home and help with her brothers. She tried her best. One day, while buying maize flour at the market for her mother, she heard a song she’d never heard before by a woman she’d never heard of. “Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone…” Madonna became her favorite artist from that day forward.

“I need books mother. I can’t do the work without them, and I’ll never pass the exams,” she once pleaded.

“We can’t afford them,” her mother responded coldly.

“But mother, I need books.”

“Maize or books?” She only ever posed that question once.

Margaret went to her mattress in the corner of the room and cried facing the corrugated metal wall. She couldn’t face her mother; she couldn’t face the answer. Neither could her father. He left one day and never came back. She turned 12 two days later, with no cake nor candles to make wishes on and blow out.

At 15 years old Margaret lost her virginity. At 16 she became a mother. At 18 years old, she became a dancer. At 19 she became a single mother of two.
“I’m not making enough dancing Henry.”
“What are you saying Margaret?”
“I’m saying,” she paused as her voice quivered. She cast her eyes down, “I’m saying that I’m not making enough money dancing Henry,” and a tear dropped to the floor.
At 20 years old she turned her first trick, and her eldest son became a worker, sweeping the mud floors and porch in the dark of the morning, as the smoke rose up from the shacks in the Kibera slums.

Sometimes

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all. That doesn’t make me sound like much of a writer, does it? But so it is. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and stretch out a yawn, crack my back, and all I want to do is stay in bed with someone…but there’s no one there…at least not now. I usually flip open my laptop before I take even one step onto my carpeted floor, which covers the hardwood below, which covers the two by fours supporting my room, which covers the foundation, which covers the earth. Removed. Sometimes I write a line or two, and sometimes I just stare at my reflection on the screen, studying the contours of my face. I squint my eyes attentively, and watch the corners wrinkle and compress, watch my brow furrow. I relax my eyes and breathe; the wrinkles don’t all smooth like they used to. I don’t particularly care. A year ago I cared, but now my hairline has all my attention. In a year I won’t care about that either, I’ll be worried about my eyes. In 50 years I’ll be toothless, blind, with more hair in my nose and ears than on my head, and I’ll walk with a limp, but I won’t be bothered at all. I’ll have more swagger than I ever had before, and I’ll be happier and more satisfied than I can imagine now. So it is.

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all. I said it doesn’t make me sound like much of a writer, but that makes sense. I mean, writers get paid to write. I’ve gotten paid for lots of things—carpentry, delivering pizza, translating, hosting parties, waiting tables—but never for writing. Yet I’d never tell you I was a server, a carpenter, or a translator…I’d tell you I’m a writer. Sometimes, after I close my laptop I want to strap my shoes on, sling my blue Kelte Coyote pack over my shoulder, stuffed with minimal clothing, and just go… Where? Sometimes I want to go anywhere, but other times I want to go to specific places: Aswan in Upper Egypt, Abadiyah in the West Bank, Dedza in Malawi, Amherst in Massachusetts. Sometimes I want to walk into my father’s apartment on Arizona St. without knocking, and crawl into his bed while he sleeps. I want him to wake up and put his arm around me and give me a kiss on the forehead and say, “Hey guy…everything’s gonna be fine. I love you.” Some. Times. Are. Gone. Forever. And his dry calloused hand through my hair.

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing at all. Sometimes I just want to wile out! Get drunk and kick up a shitstorm with my friends, yelling out of the passenger window at all the suckers on the street. Sometimes I wanna tear the roof off this bitch, and just let chaos envelope me and it, I want to be the chaos that envelopes it, and envelopes me; the destruction and delight. Other times, all I want is to sit quietly at the round wooden table in my dining room, and watch the steam as it rises off of my coffee, spinning and swirling in the dark hours of the morning while the world still sleeps.

Sometimes all I want is the silence.

Sometimes I want to describe it.

Minestrone

“I want to make soup tonight,” I wrote Kamilla at 8 this morning.
“Mmmmm. What kind of soup?” she asked.
“I don’t know, any ideas?” I asked.
“ummmmm…Minestrone.”
“Nah, French Onion, that sounds good. Come over, we’ll make soup together and hang out,” I said.
“I’d love to, that sounds super gooooood,” she wrote back.

And that would have been super good, and that would have been super cooool, and we would have had a really nice time talking about random things and laughing, and debating world issues and not debating world issues, and drinking wine…but Kamilla lives in Paris, and I live in Los Angeles. There was a time that we both lived in Cairo, and we passed every day doing nothing but walking around, smoking sheesha surrounded by toothless men, drinking beers at Horreya with the societal degenerates and foreigners, drinking coffee in high end cafes with the elite and the same foreigners. That was over 2 years ago.

I think about my friends. I think about my friends everywhere. I think about Michael Erz and I laughing hysterically in the lounge at our camp kids; I think about Astrid and I drinking beers and smoking cigarettes nightly in the frigid German winter, trembling and musing at drunkards and West African drug dealers; I think about eating pizza with Matteo, staring at the Coliseum without another Euro in my pocket; I think about my homeboys and I, going to the mall on Saturdays to pick out clothes for the night, nights full of fighting and drinking and girls and jokes…all the sheer ignorance and ecstasy of youth.

I don’t live in the past, but I visit her. I bring her cake and tea, and we sit for a minute, but not too much longer because I’ve got so much to do. She doesn’t mind, she’s glad to have me, besides, she’s got things to do too. We converse about lots of things, but this morning we talked about reinvention and evolution specifically. We never talk about history, she thinks it’s self-centered.
“Sergio, you have to keep changing, growing, developing, it’s the only way to live and be happy,” she told me.
“Oh yeah, and what about you?” I asked, feeling slightly defensive.
“What do you think?” she asked rhetorically, winking at me and sipping the Earl Grey steaming beneath her nose. She’s always different, she’s always got something new to say. That’s why I keep coming back.

It’s all so far away now, all so long ago. Kamilla in Paris, Mary on River Road, Kamis in Melbourne, Marta and Ernesto in Germany, Waleed in Aswan, where the Nile flows, and so many others. F A R A W A Y. And they’re not the only ones. Christin in South Central, Sleepy in Santa Clarita, Edwin in Northridge, Josh in Sherman Oaks, Erbin in Sun Valley. Some of my closest and oldest friends live 30 minutes away, and I’m lucky to see them once a month. We used to kick rocks, check out girls, or bump 2pac for hours on end daily, but now we’ve all just got so much to do. Kids, careers, responsibilities, wives, girlfriends…lives; those things we all strived for, fought for, chased after. Where do we go from here?

I finish my tea, pick the last crumbs of cake off my little round plate, give her a kiss on the cheek, and head back out into the world, to reinvent, recreate, learn and grow. I think I’ll make minestrone after all.