A Few Lists of Things

Four square walls of concrete encase four rectangular walls of mosquito netting, all day surrounding the four limbs that protrude from my center. I could have extended my day from this bed inside of a room, but my limbs aren’t listening to my center because my mind keeps telling them it’s safer inside. Of course it’s safer inside, but it’s also much less interesting. And certainly less productive –well, perhaps less productive. I couldn’t claim staying within the confines and courtyards of one’s home has never produced productive productions. Emily Dickenson, for example, stayed behind four (or so) walls, and she is now one of the most influential poets of all time. Staying inside all day is a way of perfecting the poignant loneliness of poetic prose (or practicing pneumonic plethora).

Plus (ok, I’m done with the “p”s now), I have gotten a lot done. I took a bucket shower (once), mopped the floors (twice), and played candy crush (twenty-three times –I can’t get past level 40). I also wrote a few lists about the things I have learned, am learning, and hope to learn on my adventure here in Comoros. The actual lists are actually much longer than what I have here, but these are some of the things I think are most important:

Things I’ve learned:

1. How to contort a live tuna into dead chunks of flesh to cook, consume, and eventually digest.
2. The ocean is an extension of the sky; sometimes it feels like the only way off this island is to sprout wings.
3. “Adventure” means exciting homesickness.
4. My homemade mac ‘n cheese is delicious anywhere.
5. A smile is cross-cultural and generally reciprocated.
6. How to accidentally make friends (generally with lots of smiling).
7. The ocean is an extension of the sky; on rainy days (when the two blues of ocean and sky become one shade of bluish-gray), the boats appear airborne like Captain Hook’s ship.
8. How to say “hello” eight different ways, using four different languages, with five different meanings specific to the relationship and number of those involved.
9. Language is limiting –sometimes to a single country, to a handful of friends, to my wrong-colored, skin-covered sentience.
10. An honest smile is always an honest smile and is always comforting, even if it sometimes has less teeth than expected, or is seen only through the eye-slits of a burka.

Things I’m learning:

1. How to say more than just “hello” in two different languages, with intention to become fluent in at least one.
2. Any place that isn’t home is a somewhere without those you already love, but maybe a somewhere with those you will come to love (and maybe that isn’t a good enough reason to go).
3. What to do when a single rat becomes a rat problem, and your solution –though adorable—has fleas.
4. Who my friends really are, not just the ones wanting to use me for English (or marriage, or free food, or status).
5. The ocean is an extension of the sky; swimming in it feels like flying, but heavier and with less breathing.
6. A smile is cross-cultural and generally reciprocated, but it isn’t the answer to everything you don’t understand (sometimes you have to use other facial contortions).
7. How to cook (I thought I already knew this, but nope).

Things I hope to learn:

1. How to refrain from sarcastic comments after my roommate asks “are you home?” as though my shouting “hello” upon his entering was insufficient acknowledgement that our time and space have indeed met.
2. “Adventure” means understanding.
3. The ocean is an extension of the sky; it’s much easier to shoot for.
4. How to tan without people shouting at me for being in the sun (“you’ll turn black,” they say. “That’s the point,” I reply).
5. How to show people that skin is beautiful no matter its pigment.
6. If skin color really is skin deep, or if it is stitched into a history that I perpetuate by mistake.
7. The ocean is not an extension of the sky; it is not the limit.

Maybe now I’ll organize the four woven baskets I’m using as a dresser. Or I could wash my sheets that are covered in wax from when a candle fell from the glass ashtray, nearly starting a fire, and certainly creating a difficult to clean mess. But it’s already 3pm, and in only a few hours the sun will turn the sky-blue to pink, and orange, and yellow, and purple. Eventually both the sky-blue and ocean-blue turn to one shade of black. Like during storms, the ships’ lights fly at night.

I always stare up at space while walking from my host mother’s house to the one I share with her son. The stars melt into each other this far removed from electricity. in the southern hemisphere, the Milky Way scars across the sky, lifeblood of galaxies oozing into the black void. I read once that space is the ultimate black because it reflects no light at all, whereas most man-made black is just a dark hue. It’s pretty cool that a shade that colors most of the known universe is one hardest to recreate. And that that shade is a representation of not what we see, but what we do not. And we all don’t see (and have never seen) the same thing together.

Depending on how you think about it, that can be awesome, or pretty ordinary. We all also don’t see wind together, or fairies, or ourselves. I don’t see the moon at the same time the people that collectively make up my home see it, but I do see their sunlight reflected off of it. Their day literally lights up my night.

But tonight is a new moon. I miss you.

(Also, my kitten may have given me fleas. Send help.)