Severally Alone

Jo'burg feels oh so different from Mumbai, though there are parts that are eerily familiar. I admit I let myself be intimidated. How does fear form? In warnings, in an extreme sense of not belonging, of standing out- being the only white person in sight. In an emergency button I'm supposed to push in case someone tries to break in during the night, in, "so I'll just ask directions" and "umm, no. Don't talk to anyone" Everyone, black, white, foreign, local say to be in by darkfall- which means 5 pm! Because of the cold and the fear I feel strangely hibernated tucked in to wait out a violence that will probably not come, but whose presence seems lingering. Venturing to the market felt like an adventure- the way people were talking I pictured- what? gangs roving the streets? Instead, it was a sunny crisp Sunday afternoon. Could have been any inner-city area. I saw a literal craigslist of agitated white handwritten papers with crowds pressed in. It felt surreal, people lined as though watching parade or army pass by- but staring instead at a wall full of overpriced non/possibilities.

Babies are the warmest people I have seen. Securely strapped to their moms' backs like sleeping spherical precious cargo. I want their security- or even the comfort of caring for a little person. I imagine they are tiny sloberingsnoring furnaces- even warmer than the sun that settled over my own shoulders and back as I sipped endless tea- trying to imbibe warmth and confidence.

The minibuses felt incredibly familiar, and safe to me. It felt like AMIGOS, or like Mexico city. I love watching everyone on their way to work, school, the drivers joking with each other, instead of shooting up as I'd been told.

I slept under four blankets, the tip of my (I swear) growing nose frigid. While the chimes chimed, and the dog orbited my "cottage," the inexplicable movie of my dreams unfolded. They say you don't imagine strangers, but I have never met the man I loved last night. Only I could see his bruises. I traced the texture on his back where he had been beaten with wood. The grain pronounced in his epidermis like a wood cutting. We were trying to save a child.

The city felt untouchable, impotent, from the 50th floor of the Carlton Center. It made me feel lonely and as though I could never understand or touch anything about this place. I love the quotes at the beginning of 'Maximum City'; "We are individually multiple" (Kabir Mohanty) and "I am severally alone" (Kumar Gandharva). The Soweto Artists gallery was the perfect anti-venom- Peter's colorful chalk pastel rubbed off onto me, and the grassroots single room filled with dancing, pain, music, AIDS, poverty, gossip and flirtation calmed me in a very real way.

I've lightened up and am so very mobil that there is none of the distracting "settling" in that normally eases me into a place. This nomadness, my utter lack of a plan that is in fact necessary- knowing this is almost the end, and that Dawn is coming- all of this swerves me into countdown kind of mind. Is this good? Bad? I think it just is. So much of life IS; value judgement free because of its inevitability. I am not an advocate for passivity, but the moments we have the least control can be oddly liberating.