I write to you on a rooftop, from the heights of history and the depths of misunderstanding. From the annals of self-analysis, where I sit in the present imperfect, meditating on errant thoughts and incongruent observations. (Subscribers, scroll down to view images from my camera roll.)
via cristina gottardi / unsplash
Here, above the equator, it’s a bright and chilly winter afternoon. A day full of bird calls and rainfall. Car tires slosh through the streets, accompanying the empty echo inside of me. It all feels too familiar. I bend my notebook inside out and create a makeshift telescope, peeking through the gold metal spine that coils through its pages. I scan the world in front of me, I scan my body, searching both landscapes for meaning.
I spy two friends below carrying a heavy load, each with a handle to hold, sharing the shifting weight.
A man with red eyes and pearl-white teeth smiles broadly, his skin the color of freshly roasted coffee.
A woman with a baby holds her hand out to passersby. I see her and think of all the others who have approached me, while seated comfortably in the backseats of taxis. As I’m on my way to the salon to get my hair and nails done, I avoid the eyes of the people who slip their repeated pleas through the small opening of my window. They beg for money. I swallow my culpability. “You have a father. You have a brother,” an elderly man reminds me. “It’s because you’ve never been hungry,” a young boy says weakly, his eyes aging rapidly.
Today, like most days, the listro boys are huddled together on the corner, sitting on their bucket-stools and twisting their hair, awaiting the next pair of dusty shoes to walk their way in need of shining. I came by the other day with my black combat boots and was quoted 30 ETB (less than $1 dollar USD). I had the nerve to haggle.
Almost daily, I negotiate my privilege. Some days, I am a silent witness to my surroundings, to the problem(s) that persist. Some days I am the problem(s) personified. To be alive anywhere, I realize—but here, especially—is to be in a constant state of conflict. My mind tries to reconcile my place, in the midst of so much beauty, alongside the numbing backdrop of brutality and suffering.
There’s a drunk man on the street talking aloud to no one. Somewhere nearby, I catch sight of a metal sign painted white with blue stenciled type that reads, “Yuan Dong.” Two local numbers are listed. The sign hangs in front of another construction site, the hollow skeleton of a future high-rise, left in indefinite progress.
Just before nightfall, the electricity goes out in the neighborhood, again. We remain this way for 3 more days. Powerless. I imagine an old curmudgeon in front of countless buttons that he presses on and off at will, blacking out different parts of the city and whole swaths of the country for his own amusement.
I spend hours at the hotel cafe, across the street, posted up, charging my devices liberally. I have that luxury, the ability to obtain as much juice as my dollar can afford me. Money multiplied, spending rationalized in my head.
Dozens of birds are circling the sky now, in search of prey. Their wings flap above me, like these pages of stray thought and poetry.
Writing and observing, I note belatedly, is difficult to do simultaneously.
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