Seaside for the weekend

Spent the weekend by the sea making the most of doing nothing. I found a chair facing the ocean, put my feet up on top the low rock wall. Wrapped in blankets, I just let myself drift. I finished two books and wrote some letters, and didn't think about Dakar or about home. Sleeping in the night, my window faced the sea and I felt like I was curled up right next to the tide hearing it pass it's way to the shore and back. After lunch one day, a friend and I walked as far as we could down the beach letting the wind take our words. We sat on the rocks and recounted what it was like to love for the first time, the names of people in our family, childhood nicknames, the pain of losing someone, trying to make good in our relationships with our mothers (love you, mom), and just letting ourselves feel like today is all we have.

I'm starting to feel how living here can be a balance, one ever-so difficult to achieve, but one in which I'm slowly learning -- sleeping on it from one day to the next coming up strong making that walk to school and that same walk back and no longer getting sick from the water or the food, relying on my instincts again, seeing the familiar faces of my family each night at dinner and pulling them close bit by bit. Walking the streets of Mermoz and feeling like it's old turf, turning the corner to run into someone I know, going back to visit old families and as little as it is, feeling important to them at just the right moment. Realizing what it means to learn from someone even though you might not be able take them with you journey-by-journey or be able to relate par-for-par, but that you can sweep pieces of their experience into your own and live by it. And I thank the Alchemist for giving it a term, and so it is, in my book too, The Universal Language.