All posts tagged: mali

on broken hearts

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How many times a day does your heart break? Are you open to it, or do you turn away? Hearts are breaking, lately (Valentine’s day notwithstanding). And by breaking, I mean any state of disarray, from fully shattered to fractured, from weathered and worn to aching. Even those who remain intact still strain from the weight of fear, sadness, anger, deep confusion. Does your heart break from too little, or too much? Does it break on behalf of others, on behalf of tragedy or injustice, or on behalf of your own trials and more than the occasional tribulation? Does your heart break for questions? Do I love her enough? Is he the right one at the wrong time, or vice versa? Will she ever know what she means to me? Is this the sunset of a best friendship? Will she get through this without me? If they are good people, why do they do horrible things? How much hatred can the world withstand? What’s our breaking point? What’s mine? How will I know when enough is …

on a dance

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Last weekend we rose before the sun in Bamako, hopped on a bus in the darkness of the early hours, and arrived to the town of Ségou for Mali’s annual Festival sur le Niger. The Festival is comprised of four days of musicmusicmusic derived from the smorgasbord of cultures that thrive in Mali: from the Senegalese border to deep in the Sahara desert, from Kayes to Timbuktu. And to celebrate the magic, there was dancing to delight in. Around 6:00pm on a Friday,  under a crafty pavilion, the musicians got the itch, and the dance troupe got to swinging. They swung, they swung! Until some couldn’t keep their feet on the ground, and others just could not get enough! The joy was palpable, the rhythms infections, and even the tiniest of onlookers showed great appreciation. The Festival Sur le Niger is greatly advertised throughout Mali, and event are easily found online. It’s truly an event not to be missed.

on abundance

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There are times when absence marks you, when it feels like a great black hole you’ve tipped into. There are times when the lack of something in your life overwhelms. It can be anything–a lack of money or appreciation, or material goods or confidence, time or love or a loved one. You know it’s absurd to seize upon this absence, maybe even obsess over it, when the universe provides as much as it does. But there it is: you’ve got a gaping hole, and it consumes you. The other day I was talking with a friend about desire, and he posited that you can’t desire something you already have; having and desiring are mutually exclusive. So desire is not a great basis for relationships, since it vanishes once the relationship is attained. I’d include our relationships with ourselves in that calculation; desire keeps you yearning and striving, but never satisfied, and never present. Sure, desire can motivate achievements, but as someone perennially affected by Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome, I wanted to brainstorm some alternatives. What can replace it? What …

on optimism

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I’ve been catching myself, lately, noticing thoughts or comments that betray frustration, negativity, disappointment, a lack of confidence. I see it, I hear it, and I don’t like it. Not liking it, of course, only furthers me down the road aways, and gives me another reason to be annoyed. The ugliness might be expected, considering the circumstances, but it’s not really acceptable, considering the circumstances. That is to say, perspective is key. The thing to admire about expats–and I use the word broadly, to include anyone who willingly lives outside their land of origin, and usually those who do so unwillingly as well–is that they’re a crafty bunch. They tend to be Make-Do Royalty, fully initiated in how to go about Doing Things Differently, Other Than Expected, or As Totally Unforeseen. They pivot, they wiggle, they patch and sew, they may squirm a bit. But their Go With The Flowabilities are unmatched by most. Ingenuity, creativity, and flexibility mark the expats I know, regardless of how close to perfection they otherwise come. They are scrappy, and I mean that …