a long and happy life

sometimes i feel lost.


me, still wandering at 28, trying to find some meaningful way to spend my short time on this rock.

the ngo workers that i meet are so itinerant; vagabonds all, just passing through. these incredible, huge-hearted people doing some of the hardest work in the world. but they never stay too long in any of the camps.


my friend simon is gone. he rescued me from a breakdown in the desert. i always think about him every time i am in goz beida, swatting flies and cursing the neuron-nuking sun.

in my airplane, two miles above the sterile saline sands, a sad song from colorado pierces my heart. it makes my toes curl up inside my boots to grip at the sudden loss of balance:

looking for something i've never seen
alone and i'm in between

i think about how my own time in africa is winding down; confused at how a year can go so fast.

this obscured adriftness sometimes twists my entrails into a sadly-sweet knot hung high above the parched wastelands. my ship rises and dips in the turbulence, and i raise a wing to bring her back to level. we sail on through the salty indigo sea.

sleeping under a starry velcro-blue sky. ears filled with the ever-present sounds of generators and crying babies. waking to the buzzing call to prayer. the squeak of tires on gravel. the smells of smoke, sweat, trash, dust, heat. flies everywhere.

the place that i'm from and the place that i'm in
a city i never been

everyday, i fly over some of the loneliest places on the planet. places where there is nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction; no sign of life amongst the heat-baked rock-strewn sandy washes. a tiny fly buzzes above the skillet. rising heat waves register as inconsequential bumps in an otherwise fluid sky. the airstream hums over my wings, flowing around the curves of my bird in a smooth caress that feels like love.

a quick glance at my gauges: every needle where it should be. so far, our lady of pratt & whitney has never abandoned me. she always comforts; safely suspended above the purgatorial furnace lands below. without water, you couldn't survive more than a day down there. even the rebels don't want anything to do with it.


but i found a friend or should i say a foe
said there's a few things you should know

i throttle my ship back. landing in am timan with the donkeys and camels loitering on the runway. trash piled against the crumbly mudbrick walls; goats fattening themselves up on humanities' waste before their day of glory. you are what you eat.

the sound of an airplane gets the whole town running. i park and survey the scene:

tiny unsupervised 2 year olds running around in malarial stupors. young boys playing on unexploded bombs.


women cloaked in radiance; the wind whipping their flowing wrappers of lime, cherry, and orange-creamsicle colored dresses. tiny thin barefoot legs sticking out the bottom like popsicle sticks. such a honed contrast to the drab dusty sunburnt straw-colored wastes. a shout against insignificance; a brave attempt to stand out against the noise.

the ladies stop to smile and wave at me. pausing, setting down the bowls and baskets they carry on their heads. they sit on the ground in a crescent, at a safe distance; gesturing and giggling amongst themselves. i sit in the shade and lean against my bird.

bright white teeth flashing smiles: those all-together-too-rare, girly, flirty, passionate glances that provoke a stirring of your loins and make you thank god you're a man.

the men gather. they squat in the sun, each shading their eyes with a thin, bony hand. taking measure of this white man and his magnificent flying machine. none have anything better to do; their full-time occupation is idleness. for here there are no jobs and too many to do them.

we have the watches, they have the time.


i am happy to serve as an injected slice of variety into their daily dusty existence. my visit will provide a topic of conversation for many days to come. i feel important. i feel like an animal in a zoo with everyone looking at me. what thoughts are behind the stares? is it lust, jealousy? mutual bewilderment at the economic disparity?

the average lifespan in chad is 47. in the united states it's something like 74. a monotonous poverty and brain-baking heat dominates their 47 years. do these people feel cheated? what is important to them?

last night was a going-away party at the south africans'. there seems to be one almost every week. my friend devan is leaving. he's getting married; building a home. a nest. a family. a life.

we don't want you to see that we come and we go
here today, gone tomorrow

i know what is important in my society across the sea: what celebrities are doing. it seems many americans spend way too many of their 74 years caring deeply about things that don't matter at all.

i look back at the departing young women, baskets and bowls balanced gracefully on their heads. how can we justify the mere existence of our pop culture, while staring these people in the face? and we pay for magazines at the grocery store that spell out our inferiorities.

many of the hollywood stars come here to take a few pictures. some stay a day or two. a few, maybe a week or so.

if i say who i know it just goes to show
you need me less than i need you

we in america never outgrow our focus on the cool kids from high school. our lives are beauty contests without end. we allow the cultural currents to sweep us along, unquestioningly believing in such ridiculous invented notions as fashion or the hollywood coolness caste system. how would i explain these things to the people of am timan?

sólo los peces muertos siguen la corriente del río.

is this just one of humanities' many tricks to temporarily escape from the crushing transitory nature of existence?

a cosmic reckoning awaits us for these misappropriated years.....


******


one last stop for today. dipping a wing, i cross overhead the field and survey my awaiting passengers. slipping her out of her element and into port once again. parking next to the terminal tree. walking over to the shade to greet my passengers. one of them, a petite, graceful, down-to-earth woman in a large sunhat comes right up; offering her hand. hello, i'm mia.

hello.

i look at my manifest. mia farrow.

i ask her how her 3 weeks in koukou have been. we discuss the living situation of women there; the rampant domestic abuse. she asks about congo.

i tell her about how congolese soldiers rape and pillage. forcing a father to violate his daughter at gunpoint, or a mother and son. and then probably shooting you in the head anyways.

take it from me we don’t give sympathy
you can trust me trust nobody

mia shudders. our eyes lock, and i hang onto this common humanity between us.

she has had a disappointing and famous family life. frank sinatra, woody allen, drama with adopted kids. adrift in the lukewarm, briny tangle of human relations.

but i said you and me we don’t have honesty
the things we don’t want to speak

i think of my friend devan.

one man leaving this darfur delirium to start a family. one woman leaving the frustrations of domesticity behind to plunge herself into the madness of goz amer refugee camp. here, her fame means nothing.

for what are we all looking? a long and happy life?

i'm not sure.


i'm also not sure how i'm going to take leaving abéché, leaving africa. leaving the people i've tried to help this past year with my fumbling efforts.

the spooling of her engine spurs herds of goats and donkeys into movement; and i smoothly roll in the power. at 70 knots my girl is ready to fly, and i gently coax her back into a vinegar sky. banking over the trees towards home, the hopeless nomad following the winds again.

i’ll try to get out but i never will
this traffic is perfectly still

we climb out and i set my ships' course through the gritty lemon-colored swells. she settles down into the trimmed-out tedium of cruise; once again my mind can wander. i know i will be haunted by this continent; haunted by the ghosts of barefoot children running and yelling and waving at me as i taxi by in my airplane.

we're only taking turns
holding this world


it's how it's always been
when you're older you will understand