The thing about a story is you never find out what happens after the end. What is a happy ending anyway? Did Harry Potter have a mid-life crisis? Did Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy get a divorce? Does Odysseus ever venture back to sea? And what becomes of the ill-known, but ever vital supporting characters? Names like Samwise Gamgee and Little John become lost to our grey matter.
The thing about real life is that the stories never end; they blend together forming images that make up our past, present and future. Each new experience, each daring adventure adds a new hue for you to paint with. Sometimes you end up with colours the shade of earwax, but you may also find a hue that would be alluring to even a rainbow. Immersing yourself in a new colour causes you to reevaluate your entire palette. Maybe what is blue to you is green to someone else.
Its funny how once you return to your armchair by the stove things so easily fall back into routine. Old habits reemerge and the patterns of life flow on as if you had never left. Watching the people around you makes you wonder, where has life taken them? What colours has life given them? As you pass someone on the highway, do you ever wonder where are they going? Or have you ever looked at a family photo taken at Mt. Rushmore and wondered who those people were in the background? Our lives are surrounded by fillers, people we see everyday but don’t know. Perhaps a prolonged absence causes you to see your world more clearly than the new world you’ve discovered.
As I emerge from my own adventure, however less daring than Harry Potter’s or less dramatic than Ms. Bennet’s, I find myself with a palette of possibilities, each colour holding the secrets to a new adventure. Though the past is behind me, the colours are still there, showing who I am and providing inspiration for future murals.
I do not have any more knowledge, other than the knowledge that I know nothing. I do not have an understanding of anything, other than the fact which I understand nothing. But I do know that my eyes have been opened to the subtleties of life and just beyond the shore I can see a whole new ocean of colours waiting for my paintbrush.
17 July '10. Mara: I presume "The End" means you are ending the blog. That makes sense, but it is sad. It has been a pleasure and an education to read, and it reveals a young woman who seems wise beyond her years (and also a compassionate mother whom I am pleased to become better acquainted with). I wish you the best as you begin college, and Cindy the best as she returns to the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro. Which reminds me: The accompanying map has no scale, and some readers may have little insight into its extent. Elaine and I viewed Kilimanjaro in '87 from two sites across the border in Kenya. It fills the horizon. Have I mentioned before that, in Nairobi, we bought a contour map of Kenya + Tanzania? If you assume that Kilimanjaro begins where the contour lines bunch up around its base, the extent of the encompassed area is the size of Rhode Island. And, yes, Cindy, the 2012 Linnaeus seminar sounds interesting. Peace, Evan170 8.1
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry. There is a scale of miles/kilometers. Evan
ReplyDeleteBeautifully said, Mara. (Safi kabisa!) I'm inspired to look at things freshly again, to love the way my own life has been colored by years in Tanzania and many other places, and to be more alert to, and appreciative of, the unique colors (just a few of which are shades of earwax!) with which other peoples' experience have painted their lives.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, it's been fun to read your blog - asante sana!