Monday, September 26, 2011

On Pilgrimage

Friends,
     Our time in DC was a wonderful reunion--much better than anything, speaking for myself, I had dared hope for.  Thursday night and the two Saturday events stand out especially in my mind.  Thanks so much to Char for her steady hand throughout, to Rufus for taking care of all the logistics in advance and then turning Saturday night into a climactic celebration at his home, and to Bob Hopkins for coming up with the idea for Thursday’s dinner and then providing the funding to make it possible.
The feeling for each other, when most of us hadn’t seen each other for nearly fifty years, was startling.  The gap in time may have had the same effect on you as it did me; I was able to see that so many people have been on pilgrimage.  The loud-mouthed, crude, boisterous Char of our training days is still loud-mouthed, crude, and boisterous--as well as gentle, compassionate, and wise.  Jane has a radiant vitality and love of life, Mary Mullin D’Amico an aura of kindness, Ursula an openness that has made her stronger rather than vulnerable, Bob Gross a quieter attentiveness to others and an ability to listen and hear, Jerry Mills the courage to reveal his love and pain, Mary DeWan a steadfast, ageless commitment to justice and making a difference, Steve a spiritual home in Buddhism, Wilbur a healthy gratitude for who he is and for a life that almost slipped away....
It seems wrong to stop there when I could go on and on, but I wonder if others had that same sense that this was a group of people in which many have, over the course of an often-difficult life, struggled toward the light.  I was humbled and honored to find myself among such friends.
All the best,
Tony

Toward the light

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Chapter 8

     In this last chapter of  My Heart Is Like a Cabbage prior to our reunion in DC, Jerry Mills chronicles an abysmal first Christmas abroad by his protagonist Stephen, who sees things go from bad to worse and worst.  Here are the first few paragraphs; for the rest of the chapter, click on the link under "Pages."


“Kusheh, Mr. Livingston,” a voice, nearly a whisper, said from somewhere behind me.
A hair-raising rush brought my body to high alert, and the paperback I was reading fell to the floor.   Visitors were forever materializing from nowhere at our bungalow.
Craning my neck, I saw Kadiatu leaning against the arch at the entrance to the living room.
“Kusheh, Kadiatu.”  I retrieved the book hoping to disguise my lost composure.  “Aw di bohdi?”
“Di  bohdi wehl-o . . . tehnki,” she replied shyly.  “Mr. Clifford, he say to tell you dinner is almost ready.”




Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Another Fortnight, Another Chapter

     In Chapter seven of My Heart Is Like a Cabbage, a lonely Stephen is preparing to spend a very "white" Christmas, feeling alienated from his fellow staff members, his Peace Corps training, and his surroundings.  Here are the opening paragraphs; to read the rest of the chapter, click on the title of the novel under "Pages" on the right side of the blog page.     - Tony


The Sierra Leone of our contemporary consciousness—infamous for diamond smuggling and the rapacious savagery of a “civil war”—this was not the Sierra Leone I believed I had come to in 1962.  For me, located where I was at the edge of the Colony mountains and within an hour’s time from world-class beaches on the Atlantic, it held all the charm and, more, the unrelenting monotony of a South Sea island.  It was the land of palm wine, hammocks, malaria, and bureaucratic ineptitude—a kind of shuffling, swaying, sensual dance toeing the tightrope of survival.  The only violence that assaulted my senses in those first few months was the appalling poverty and in-your-face presence of disfiguring and debilitating diseases—elephantiasis, yaws, ascites, kawashiokor, even leprosy—afflictions not hidden from sight in hospitals or clinics, those institutions of convalescence that keep pain and suffering hidden from American eyes.  
There was an undersized, precocious boy in my first form English class, delicate of feature, so irresistibly cute your heart melted as he hobbled from the classroom at the end of the period on a leg swollen to the size of a tree trunk by elephantiasis.  And, yet, Kei’s disarming smile is what I remember most, those perfect white teeth gleaming, an uncomprehendable felicity, a charmed mystery that defied understanding.