Thursday, May 28, 2009

28 May 2009

As each day passes, my time is Africa grows more distant in time and memory, like a numbed pain fading into the forgotten. My mind betrays many of the details that were, are, and one day will be once again upon my return in the unknown future. I struggle to recall both the drudgery of daily routines and the excitement of a promising new adventure. I expect that soon I will have lost most of such experiences to the void left by my physical and emotional detachment from that place. Even now, like a dream, I struggle to piece together coherent portions of fleeting memory, and, like a dream, I am only certain that I have forgotten so much. And like the morning after a friendly dream, the best parts remain forgotten, only recognizable by the shadow that suggests their presence, only obligating me to desire to remember what once was so much more. Fortunately, i know it was a good dream and that is enough; for if we forget the "why's" and the "how's" of life we lose the route to our happiness, the path leading us to our state of reserved satisfaction, but we are still in that peaceful bliss nonetheless. So it is with Africa. My peace remains, though I forget exactly how it was first gained.

Like childhood. I could not exact every reason why I am so fond of my upbringing, nor could I provide too many complete stories exemplifying the great times I had in my most youth of youth. But the thought of growing up softens my heart and warms my soul, and for this reason alone I know with sternest assurance that it was good. In the same fondness with which I miss my old home in Tennessee and cements my endearment for my childhood I reflect upon the months in Zambia. I remember it was good in every sense of the word so I need not the details. What a Blessed Assurance... Yet somehow I think the vagueness allows my mind to fill in the gaps time has created with my own more ideal details if I so choose. And I do so choose...

It is a said thing that something so bright can be dimmed by the events that have unfolded, but so it is and so it forever dimmed will it be.

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