New country, new book, new poem...

A Woman Young and Old
by William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

I
FATHER AND CHILD
SHE hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.

II
BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE

IF I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

III
A FIRST CONFESSION

I ADMIT the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.
I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.
Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

IV
HER TRIUMPH

I DID the dragon's will until you came
Because I had fancied love a casual
Improvisation, or a settled game
That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
And now we stare astonished at the sea,
And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.

V
CONSOLATION

O BUT there is wisdom
In what the sages said;
But stretch that body for a while
And lay down that head
Till I have told the sages
Where man is comforted.
How could passion run so deep
Had I never thought
That the crime of being born
Blackens all our lot?
But where the crime's committed
The crime can be forgot.

VI
CHOSEN

THE lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subtetranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
My utmost pleasure with a man
By some new-married bride, I take
That stillness for a theme
Where his heart my heart did seem
And both adrift on the miraculous stream
Where -- wrote a learned astrologer --
The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.

VII
PARTING

i{He.} Dear, I must be gone
While night Shuts the eyes
Of the household spies;
That song announces dawn.
i{She.} No, night's bird and love's
Bids all true lovers rest,
While his loud song reproves
The murderous stealth of day.
i{He.} Daylight already flies
From mountain crest to crest
i{She.} That light is from the moom.
i{He.} That bird...
i{She.} Let him sing on,
I offer to love's play
My dark declivities.

VIII
HER VISION IN THE WOOD

DRY timber under that rich foliage,
At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
Too old for a man's love I stood in rage
Imagining men. Imagining that I could
A greater with a lesser pang assuage
Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
I tore my body that its wine might cover
Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.
And after that I held my fingers up,
Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
Down every withered finger from the top;
But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
Or smote upon the string and to the sound
Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
All stately women moving to a song
With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng,
A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought --
Why should they think that are for ever young?
Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught,
I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
And sang my malediction with the rest.
That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,
Those bodies from a picture or a coin
Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
But my heart's victim and its torturer.

IX
A LAST CONFESSION

WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.
Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.
I gave what other women gave
"That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,
And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There's not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.

X
MEETING

HIDDEN by old age awhile
In masker's cloak and hood,
Each hating what the other loved,
Face to face we stood:
"That I have met with such,' said he,
"Bodes me little good.'
"Let others boast their fill,' said I,
"But never dare to boast
That such as I had such a man
For lover in the past;
Say that of living men I hate
Such a man the most.'
'A loony'd boast of such a love,'
He in his rage declared:
But such as he for such as me --
Could we both discard
This beggarly habiliment --
Had found a sweeter word.

XI
FROM THE 'ANTIGONE'

OVERCOME -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.

from Kampala to Kigali

from whence 7 Hills turned into 1000...

"we're 3 years to 30...weird, right?"

happy crazy ugandan birthday!

i love you to the moon and wish you so much joy. keep living it up.

and here's a good reminder from rilke:

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

love of the forever and always kind,
karis

stay hungry, stay foolish

stay hungry, stay foolish

"I’ve seen people come and go, I’ve shared my dreams with them, I’ve given my all to see the companies grow and blossom, even at the expense of “a life”, but somehow, everytime, at the end of the day, it’s just God and I left standing. I know He brings people in our lives for a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, they leave. Their work in your life is done, and your work in their life is done.

But, like I told some team members at Node Six, it is a very lonely place, being at the leader of any organisation. You watch the tides turn, you watch the storm come in and you watch the waves rise. Everyone else is allowed to react naturally, to flee the impending disaster, but not you. Nope, like the captain of a sinking ship, you stand at the bow, and face the storm. You stand your ground, and let the maelstrom destroy everything around you.

When it’s all over, you huddle in a miserable water-drenched pile in a corner and cry a bit.

And that’s when God taps you on the shoulder and says, 'Dude, whatagwan? I’m still here.'"

Whether there is a God, or there isn't, and there are undoubtedly lots of gods to choose from, they're either here or they're not, and believing they are, or believing they're not, is just a choice. You choose beliefs, for as long as those beliefs serve a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, you choose, that choice is still (and always) there.

taxi strike and nursery rhymes

Yesterday, I worked in the morning, but then I blew off work had some things to do in the afternoon, but there was a taxi (matatu) strike. I got a call from Alex, through a surprising (because we both have MTN, a giant telecom in Uganda) and yet unsurprising (because MTN is a giant telecom in Uganda) amount of static, saying that I'd have to take a boda to Makindye. The cost of a taxi is 2,000/=, and the cost of a boda is 4,000/=, and while neither are expensive, boda rides can add up, and they're more dangerous. But danger being relative, when I got off the boda, to my right just down the street were about 15-20 men banging on the sides of the empty and unmoving taxi, and by that time it was around 1pm, so I don't doubt they were not only angry, but some of them were probably also drunk. Makindye is a suburb south of Kampala, and it has a little bit of everything, from impoverished slums and crowded orphanages, to lower class Ugandans, up to middle-upper class Ugandans, and all the way up to (relatively upper class) muzungu families. But Ugandans heavily rely on taxis, so a day without transport means a day without work, and a day without work can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people, so when taxis go on strike, it is something that is truly felt.

Luckily, taking a boda on a day when there is a taxi strike means there was no (traffic) jam. The extremely ambitious plan (for an afternoon in Uganda) was to go and meet a lady --- who knows Sapheen, who is Ramadan's mother, who is Alex's friend, who is my friend --- who works at a bead factory. When I arrived I found Alex, Gerald, and Jamil as I usually do, Alex listening to music on my iPod (and singing or dancing, often both), Jamil scrawling in a notebook, often writing a letter or drafting a document to raise money for the Makindye Ultimate Frisbee Club or in hopes of starting a business, and Gerald, today looking on as Jamil wrote, but often aligning himself with one or the other according to his mood. I was greeted by being enveloped in a hug from Alex, continuing to dance and persisting to sway me with him before he let go to tell me that because of the strike, the woman at the bead factory might not be there, and the bead factory might be closed. I felt stupid for not connecting the dots (no taxi, no factory, no beads), but that being just 1 of 3 things planned for the afternoon, I told Alex's mom for months, who runs a kindergarten, nursery school, & day care, that I would visit her class and teach the students some new songs, we headed over to Alex's house. I had thought the night before about what to teach such a developmentally broad range of kids (ages 1-5), but capacity building is such a core fundamental at IDI, and in Uganda as a developing country, that I didn't worry too much as some of the older students that learned more quickly could teach the others and the younger ones. It made me think of summer camps songs I used to sing, as a microscopic sting of sadness swept through my consciousness that I don't really remember any songs that I used to sing back when I went to nursery school. (Note to self) I remember more the songs that my parents used to sing and teach to me, and even more the ones that my grandparents used to also sing to me, like the one involving my feet, and going toe by toe (technically called fingerplay by the experts) singing: "This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef (you know you've been in Uganda for too long if, when you fail to remember the words roast beef, you substitute gold teeth), this little piggy had none, and this (the pinky toe) little piggy went wee wee all the way home." I didn't want to deal with feet though, so I settled on 3 songs: I'm a Little Teapot, Johnny Whoops, and The Princess Pat, the last song of which I could only definitely remember the first 2 verses, which equals a total of 4 verses, but the first 2 songs proved to be more than enough material, and so that was my injection for the day, steeping some Ugandan children in some American culture with nursery rhymes!

[insert video here]

Dream, Child

Dream, Child by Solomon King

Dream. Like never before.

Dream, child. More fiercely and wondrously than the dreams of yesteryear. Dream and listen not to the taunting voice of careless mistake past, but rather, heed the cheer of lessons learned and a path well troden.

Dream of the impossible. And dream of the insane. Dream of crimson skies blazing with a thousand cold suns. Dream, the fiercest heats of numbing cold. The blinding clarity of the scent of zero.

Dream.

The kaleidoscope dances of midnight rainbows. Dream the whispers of thunder and the roar of silent laughter.

Remember the dreams that filled and gave purpose to your yearning soul. Remember the dreams that woke you up to furiously scribbled midnight epiphanies.

Remember those dreams, and remember well. Gossamer wings and scarlet flight. Inky space and time’s turbulent ordered chaos. You remember don’t you?

Those fleeting dreams, child… those dreams that you rejected so carelessly… they were the first rays of a brilliant dawn.

So. Dream, child.

Again. Like never before.

These are my names in Uganda

14. Susani (pronounced Suse-ah-knee)

15. Susana (Luganda for Susan)

16. Suzela (as in vuvuzela)