Travel taught me how to wait—for a meal, a message, a bus ride out of town. I waited, and waited. In the blistering heat. Under the shade of a tree. Next to a mango stand or phone card man. In dark parking lots at dawn. Near the coffee stalls, enthralled. By the port, for my ferry, in a flurry of sweat and swagger. I waited.
I carried a tiny black Nokia back in those days. I could text and make calls, even pick a ring tone, but beyond that, no big cloud existed on which to float except the one in my own mind. I dialed up my daydreams and surfed the waves within, scrolled through my rolodex of regrets.
When I studied at the University of Nairobi in 1996, I stayed at a dormitory called Stella Awinja, near campus. There wasn’t much in the area—a YWCA across the canopied street, lined with a few fruit sellers, and a few old men frying fish in deep black kettles bubbling over with hot oil.
One afternoon, I decided to try the little restaurant down the road. I lost my mind waiting for my food to arrive. (I was an American baby, I had to learn).
Here’s the scene: The waitress asked me what I wanted from the menu. I pointed to several options. Each time, she told me they were out. Finally, I asked what was available. She pointed to a curry stew with rice. I agreed. She shuffled out of view. I waited. I read my book. An hour and half later, my food arrived. I asked her what took so long. She’d gone to the market and back for the ingredients. I felt like a guest star in a sitcom with a laugh track. I never went back.
My tolerance for delays expanded as I landed further out afield.
Monks in monasteries say meditation is about waiting for God. Philosopher Simone Weil also talks about prayer as a kind of waiting—you don’t go looking for God, you wait for God to find you. Christian Wiman says the poet lives in perpetual states of waiting, “enduring silence.” I can wait as long as I’m in motion inside a promise I’ve kept to myself to keep going. It’s only when it feels that life stops that I get sad or enraged. Waiting can feel then like a betrayal, no God in sight.
When we wait, we locate ourselves in the interior. Now, we pick up our phones for quick hits to swat away the boredom. But back in the day, we’d climb inside ourselves and look around for some yarn to pull or shelves to organize inside the mind’s mansions. When the bus breaks down, we can experience it as a delay or an adventure.
I did fear once though, on the road somewhere between Lushoto and Arusha, that I’d never make it home again. And I couldn’t daydream in the heat.
I remember those enormous sisal plants that stood tall on the side of the road like gentle plant mothers that had seen it all and told me I’d be OK. Weird to think of them now, all ancient, prickly and green. I also remember how the preacher passengers on the bus cracked open their bibles and just started reading aloud in the middle of the road in the middle of the day in the middle of the waiting. Parts got replaced, our fear, erased, and we were cruising again back to the city.
The letter home is a daydream. The letter home is a meditation. The letter home is a prayer. I’ve written many thinking the letter was about the other person. But we all know by now the letter is about spending time with yourself while keeping another in mind, your witness. Dear you also means dear me.
Where do you go to practice patience these days? Where do you find glimmers of anticipation? I think a lot about these ideas but at this very moment, I’m writing my way out of the dream and into a calendar. Like you, I’ve become impatient with myself and what a day can do (what I can do in a day). The day as a unit of measure. The hours strung together like a series of letters to myself.
Transit Slips, #26
I carried a tiny black Nokia back in those days. I could text and make calls, even pick a ring tone, but beyond that, no big cloud existed on which to float except the one in my own mind. I dialed up my daydreams and surfed the waves within, scrolled through my rolodex of regrets.
When I studied at the University of Nairobi in 1996, I stayed at a dormitory called Stella Awinja, near campus. There wasn’t much in the area—a YWCA across the canopied street, lined with a few fruit sellers, and a few old men frying fish in deep black kettles bubbling over with hot oil.
One afternoon, I decided to try the little restaurant down the road. I lost my mind waiting for my food to arrive. (I was an American baby, I had to learn).
Here’s the scene: The waitress asked me what I wanted from the menu. I pointed to several options. Each time, she told me they were out. Finally, I asked what was available. She pointed to a curry stew with rice. I agreed. She shuffled out of view. I waited. I read my book. An hour and half later, my food arrived. I asked her what took so long. She’d gone to the market and back for the ingredients. I felt like a guest star in a sitcom with a laugh track. I never went back.
My tolerance for delays expanded as I landed further out afield.
Monks in monasteries say meditation is about waiting for God. Philosopher Simone Weil also talks about prayer as a kind of waiting—you don’t go looking for God, you wait for God to find you. Christian Wiman says the poet lives in perpetual states of waiting, “enduring silence.” I can wait as long as I’m in motion inside a promise I’ve kept to myself to keep going. It’s only when it feels that life stops that I get sad or enraged. Waiting can feel then like a betrayal, no God in sight.
When we wait, we locate ourselves in the interior. Now, we pick up our phones for quick hits to swat away the boredom. But back in the day, we’d climb inside ourselves and look around for some yarn to pull or shelves to organize inside the mind’s mansions. When the bus breaks down, we can experience it as a delay or an adventure.
I did fear once though, on the road somewhere between Lushoto and Arusha, that I’d never make it home again. And I couldn’t daydream in the heat.
I remember those enormous sisal plants that stood tall on the side of the road like gentle plant mothers that had seen it all and told me I’d be OK. Weird to think of them now, all ancient, prickly and green. I also remember how the preacher passengers on the bus cracked open their bibles and just started reading aloud in the middle of the road in the middle of the day in the middle of the waiting. Parts got replaced, our fear, erased, and we were cruising again back to the city.
The letter home is a daydream. The letter home is a meditation. The letter home is a prayer. I’ve written many thinking the letter was about the other person. But we all know by now the letter is about spending time with yourself while keeping another in mind, your witness. Dear you also means dear me.
Where do you go to practice patience these days? Where do you find glimmers of anticipation? I think a lot about these ideas but at this very moment, I’m writing my way out of the dream and into a calendar. Like you, I’ve become impatient with myself and what a day can do (what I can do in a day). The day as a unit of measure. The hours strung together like a series of letters to myself.
Transit Slips, #26
