hard and clear.

ajan chah used to hold up a glass and say, “this glass will one day be broken.  for me, though, it already is”.

write hard and clear about what hurts.  that’s what hemingway said, anyway.  i guess in that way, you could write about the whole, wide world.  sunsets, murmurations, those friends walking hand in hand, between these buildings, five floors below.

the other day, i sat to get my shoes shined, gray as they were from bole’s dust.  three young boys jostled to be the first at my feet. i  chose the one who had first raised his hopeful brow, mimed with his brush.  i pointed at one of the other boys and said in amharic “tomorrow”, to the other, “wednesday”.    today grinned, tapped the wooden box with his brush.  i set my foot on it, and watched the world go by.

the boys laughed with each other and tried to speak with me, until we were all  lost in the street scene .  taptap. one shoe done.  zap.  the laces flew out of my other.   a security guard appeared behind me, and tossed a sandal on the ground.  it’s strap was broken.  one of the boys, the one with the tuft of hair at his front (the style in addis, these days, particularly if the tuft is dyed blond), opened his wooden box and took an awl out, and a length of thick black thread.  he punched two holes in the sandals broken sole, pulled a loop of thread through with a small hook, another hole in the broken strap, tied it all together, and handed the shoe back.  the woman dropped a single birr on the ground, 6 cents, then turned.  the boy with the tuft of hair turned it over with the awl, disappointed, then put it in his pocket.

where i was from, i would have explained if I had the words, my friends would have, i mean, i would have, just thrown both shoes in the trash, and bought another pair.  the old ones would have been carried to the curb, then lifted into a large truck whose engine ran all the time, that drove to another, bigger truck, then from there to a place where even more powerful engines pushed mountains of broken shoes over each other, because noone knows how to fix them anymore or anyone who does, and for a rare blink of time, we can pretend that this doesn’t matter, we can as be ignorant of value as we are blind to the chugging boats carrying containers of plastic shoes from chugging factories to chugging trains are, like we are the growing piles of plastic shoes waiting their thousand year turn to dissolve into parts ready for another turn.

taptap on the wooden box.  two shoes done.  i paid twice the price.  as I walked down the long hill towards churchill road, blue mini-buses strained in the other direction, packed full.

i sat with the doctors and nurses who had helped during the difficult death of the young boy i spoke of last time. i tried to gather them just after, but the day was too full, too many patients on the ground or leaning on the backs of chairs, huffing.  tomorrow, then.  we need to talk about it.   not because anyone did anything wrong; the opposite.  we did the best we could, but we are pushed by that bright impulse to do it better, only ever better, never perfect, only practiced.  as importanlty, we need to be clear about what hurts, lest it turn into something else.    it’s ok to feel sadness when a young mother weeps over her son’s still frame.  it’s what we’re supposed to feel, and if we don’t, it’s because we’ve hidden it from ourselves.  but we’re in it together, with each other, with him, with her. it’s ok to mourn. let it come up, and through, bear it, let it do its work, and it goes.  ignore it, and fixes in your heart like gum, then hardens into anger, or unease, and fingers swing wildly at at each other, from the fulcrum of our own heavy heart.

in that small room, six of us mourned quietly for that young man, and his family, said some silent prayers, voiced some new ideas, and left it renewed.that you can transform suffering into compassion by being clear about it is one of the most wonderful gifts love has given us.

today is the anniversary of my grandmother’s death.  a year ago, i stood in front of a group of friends and family in lac la biche, alberta, snow piled high in the parking lot of the small church, the nearby lake, frozen hard, and talked hard and clear about what hurt.  i’ve been back there since to see my grandfather, and as i slowed to a stop in front of the kitchen window where she invariably stood, washing dishes, or cleaning carrots, an excuse to peer into the dark, watching for the jitter of my headlights on the gravel, it was empty, full only with the bare wall behind it.  like me, like you, like that boy, she was already broken. i walked in, and my grandfather was sitting quietly at the table.

“she always gave more away than she kept for herself.  not just her garden, but her love,” i  a said to my dad today, her son, as he stood framed by that same kitchen window,  talking in turns,  the millisecond delay familiar from all my times away.

“yeah…that’s it……”  he said, then paused into a long, thoughtful silence.  finally, wish you could be here.  me too, i said.  love you.  love you.  bye.  bye.

last week, thursday, lunch with someone from the ministry of health.   “we are ‘visioning”, he said, “for the next five years for the health system of Ethiopia.”  while I’m sure you have your own, given your deep knowledge of history and place, the context and resources, i’ll share mine, i said.  it’s this.  a young boy, from a wealthy family, is walking late at night home from a football match. he has no money in his pocket, no phone.  he left both on the kitchen table before he went out to play.  a car careens around the corner, and he moves to leap out of the way, but twists his leg on a stone, falls, and is hit.  the driver stops, horrified.  a crowd gathers.  “don’t move him!”, someone shouts, as the driver bends over to lift his crumpled frame.  an ambulance is called, and medics tape his broken neck to a spinal board, and take him to black lion emergency department, because it’s where people go when they are suddenly sick and don’t have any money, and at the door, they are met by doctors and nurses, who from the first minute  know exactly what to do.

we might be broken from the beginning, our hearts, perhaps even our bodies, but life has seen fit to create a system where it puts itself back together, at least temporarily, because it knows there is great work to be done by every single soul as it looks for the sweet release from what holds it back from connecting fully with what moves it.

speaking of sharing. i’ve finally found a connection that allowed me to get some new music.  like water, to a thirsty man.  got this record.  recommended. love.