Officio Africa

Finally - six months in the making - and I'm a Zim resident. Doubtless there will be a time when I will write with wit and poetic language. As I'm on an hour at an internet cafe - bullet points will have to do!!

Jet Lag
While I'm sure Australian or Asian jet lag is monstrous - jet lag to the southern portion of Africa is pure hell. By the time I hit Jo-burg, I was just dizzy on my feet!!! But all my luggage arrived intact so that was lovely!!! Fond memories of the new terminal 5 at Heathrow which now has a KRISPY KREME!! (joy and joyness)

Spiders
I've apparently come a long way since my growing up in Florida days upon which I freaked out at every spider. Now there is one living in my shower and three in my room (which is palatial in size). So instead of freaking out - I chose to make them a deal - everyone stays out my way and everyone can live!!!

Money
All of you are capable of reading a news wires (or whatever your means of news gathering is) so you would have heard about the “inflation” here. And if you’re like me – you’ve read it and have no clue what all the rates really mean. So, here’s a solid example. As of this week (and it’ll change again by the weekend) 1 trillion dollars = US 10. So, if you’re trying to shop with a bunch of 50 billion dollar notes (roughly 50 cents worth), 20 of those = 1 trillion. Whew!!! So – I bought 3 baskets at the flea market this weekend – and he wanted 2 trillion – I talked him down to 1.5, roughly 15 dollars and 30 of the bills I had. Yes, I feel like a drug lord carrying all that cash!!!!

School

We’ve only had country orientation – all faculty starts meetings on Thursday, then dept meetings. Again, I’m the head of my dept – so I will spend from this afternoon on, sorting, planning and decorating. The school and theatre are beyond gorgeous!!! I have FLIES and TRAP DOORS and beyond brilliant theatre managers!!!

Domboshava

Last Sunday after the brunch with the Zebras, we went to Domboshava national park – these large rock formations put there by God that overlooks for miles!! It’s an ancient place; Shona bushmen used to live there, there are cave painting that are thousands of years old.

Forensic Accounting

I’ve always loved history – from, well evers I suppose. Reading about places gone, my first visit to St. Augustine, when I was 8 ish, created tales of forts and swashbuckling and Spanish ladies in their mantillas. History gives us the pieces of the known as we add our artistic spins to the might-have-been, the mystery.

My great-aunt Weeta, now her house was a treasure trove of what might-have-been. Not a blood relative, there was a mutual adoption between my family and her spinster sisters and her. Born in 1897, saw Halley’s comet in 1910, married in 1914, father was a cattle baron of central Florida. (Now cattle –baron is truly my spin on the tale, but Mr. Carpenter did amass a nice chunk of estate from the cattle industry – everyone involved in any part of the story is dead, and besides, this is my tale, not yours!) She went on to marry Hamp Brown, who was a boarder of her mama’s and who made his money in oranges (as once upon a time, we all could in Florida before the greedy housing developers raped our lands).

As a young girl, who was boisterous and who needed to stay out of the way of the three sisters, as I made them nervous, I was frequently in rooms by myself where I could look through photo albums from an era I had only studied – now here was pieces of time gone by with faces I knew. Here was the house where I grew up in – with the original owners standing out front of in the 1940’s. Here were the sisters on a river cruise…one could only wonder about their story – who they had met along their journey.

I jumped into the river of nostalgia when Daddy died – I think everyone gets to that point at some time or another in their thirties, I HAD to for necessity for my mental state, for Daddy was my entire life, and to cope, I put myself back into my childhood – remembering life with Daddy and Papa and then mama, who died a year later.



This brings me to today - May 28, 2008. They’ve torn down all the places where I lived growing up – all that’s left is boxes. Every time I come back to Florida (I’m in the middle of figuring out where “home” is, so it’s hard to say coming “home” to Florida) I go through some more boxes. Today they were Daddy’s – looking at the complex puzzle pieces of who he was.

The part of him that saved everything and it’s part of my history too. So unlike if I’m reading someone’s biography and reading photocopied old records, or seeing them stored in a museum, or seeing a land deed signed by Patrick Henry at my Aunt Alicia’s (since we’re supposed related to him) – THIS is most different, for Daddy’s story is intertwined with mine and fills in blanks I didn’t know I had. Daddy was complex and Daddy first so many of his complexities, I was just beginning to understand when he died, and now I have these boxes. What he chose to keep, from cards of mine, to various receipts or church bulletins…it was like he was right with me, I can see him so clearly. And while that’s hard, it’s comforting at the same time.

We keep our life in papers, photos and boxes, the boot of our cars….we make little altars everywhere constantly leaving clues of who we are and what’s important to us. And it’s not until we are completing the clues of the mystery of those we love best that we really begin to know how to read those clues.

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This is one of those things I began in May. And by the time I came back to it - the idea and flow had lost steam. Perhaps if I were to go back into the boxes. I will, to be sure, just not today.

These women......

these dear women...how they have
blessed my life and heart and spirit.
I'm A firm believer that EVERYONE wants to dance - this fact has been dubiously confirmed every time I teach a choreography unit. This past semester the assignment was a dance off to Thriller - guys v. girls and the results were amazing and hilarious at the same time. (and for the record - 2nd block boys are still the reigning champs!)










For the past two years, I've taken various dance classes from jazz to latin to bellydance (it's all hips and fanny and I've got PLENTY to work with !!) A year ago I started taking a tap class. Now when I was 6, I had this big photo book of a girl who was a little older than me, and the book told her story of being in the nutcracker with the American Ballet Co. in New York. I have ALWAYS wanted to be a dancer, but genetics and my clumsy factor did NOT agree. Until two years ago - when one just DOES not matter what the inner "but...." list kicks in. Obviously I'm a Broadway junkie (I mean let's just be honest - I'm a gay man) and so Tap seemed the obvious choice. Not only do I like it, but I'm pretty decent at it (not Savion by a long shot, but I can hold my own). On the flip side of this -I've been at quite a "doldrum" place between places - the wood between the worlds if you will. Leaving for Zim in a couple of months - shutting down everything here - trying to make time for people, but knowing there's already that emotional-self-preservation that's kicking in. Hoping upon hope that the petit-bebe's truly understand that I am NOT abandoning them recklessly. I don't have time or space for new people, as I'll be an ocean and a continent away. I've desperately missed the intimacy of a small group and this tap class - unwtittingly so - marvelously filled that void.

In a culture that pits women against women - survival of the prettiest, skinniest, richest, best mom, cleanest homemaker, blah blah blah - we as women are programed to compete from practically birth. The other side of that coin is guilt - women who don't feel they measure up -feel in a constant state of guilt that they don't DO enough aren't enough. After cancer, when I was well enough to strengthen up my body - I joined a gym and started going to classes. From aqua aerobics, to spin to sculpt and what not - the common denominator was that most of these classes were comprised of women - not skinny -shallow -sorority -Sally's either. But real women - with complicated lives and hundreds of body types. And I would at first shyly observe and then feel as one of them. And it's a beautiful process. It's been just that with Tap class - to be folded in and loved on in a season where I've felt like such an outsider from most of the world - unless I'm ensconced in my Theatre with the Vagabonds.

This morning was my last class - and they gave me a blank book in which to write out steps - I'm constantly writing steps and choreography on slips of paper. Val created this beautiful 3D rendition of the logo and everyone wrote me a sweet note of encouragement. That gesture was unbelievably kind and inclusive - two factors that I seek to find and seek to BE.

Dance on.

A day with cosmo..

Happiness - time with Cosmo always is - I took him for his first visit to Cherokee Blvd park. Doggie paradise. Of course I have so many memories of the blvd anyway from the last decade, from ultimate frisbee, to picnics and countless QUALITY time with friends. There is the point where I am able to relate stories and my thoughts in general with clarity, warmth, and even wit. Unfortunately that moment is not now - when "The Soup" is on and my intelligence in sucked into the American vortex of pop-culture lazy muck!!!

Simpler days with dogs and outdoors - that is in my near future!!!

According to Kenna....

I should write down all that moving overseas entails - from the packing and choosing what goes. To the emotional aspects of radically changing my whole life and culture and everything I know. And that's a GREAT thing.... all of our stories are written differently, some of us are meant to get married and live in cul-de-sacs and breed. Others are meant to be these rugged hard-core people that can live on one pair of pants and tree-bark. I like to think I fall somewhere in the middle!

So, as I pack up my life - and go through the triage of the choosing (triage is definitely my word of the month!), I think - TEN BOXES! Not dis-similar to one of my favourite episodes of The West Wing where Josh was trying to get the Presidential platform down to ten words. A life in ten boxes. When one merely moves from house to house - there is generally the paring down and the salvation army drop-offs. When one is moving to a place where Target or even Tesco's is not readily available - on the whole other side of the world, it requires introspection. And naturally, since I have the apparent attention span of a baby-goldfish, it requires focus: to sift through the memories.

There's my smokey bear I had from back when I was four - recently returned to my possesion. The russian inkwell shaped like a bear's head -I picked that up in the market in Ekaterinburg and talked the guy down to 500 rubles from 700. Little pieces of me - little altars everywhere that tributes my core and my passion for my family, my friends, my Lord... grief, but I just could sit amidst of pile of "stuff" all day. And remember.

To quote my old friend Dis. "It's a good life, it's a great life, it's green and wild and it's fine..."

Isn't it rich....

but where are the clowns? Don't bother they're here....... In what I'm sure will be more reflection required....I closed my show season with the Vagabonds for good tonight. "Dearly Departed," - what AMAZING writing - joyness indeed. But oh this cast - it's been ages since I worked with one so loving and respectful of each other - not a diva in sight. It was divine indeed and I'm soooooo grateful.

A new chapter...

hell, another BOOK really, is about to begin. I'm Zimbabwe bound!!!! I hardly know what to say or how to tell this part of the story, I suppose I'm still in a bit of a fog. I know that I'll try to tell it well.

I have remembered what it's like to share news. The last time I sent out the "bat-signal" it was when I had cancer. I remember what that was like, who responded how and such. This is similar. Everyone expected me to move - but to Europe. Even I expected that up to a point. But once Africa started to blip on my radar....that was that.