a long drought

I have developed a taste for mutton and horsemeat.

My contention has long been that my life has been made more interesting by the people in it. I have written of small heroes in the battle against AIDS in Africa, the goliathian NGOs that consumed all the resources, about the magic of the girls in the orphanage where I lived in Swaziland, and the many lives that slipped away, almost unnoticed. I have shared marvelous adventures traveling through Dogon country where the tiny Tellum used to live in cliffs so high they must have flown to get to their dwellings, and about the taxi driver in Morocco who drove me out into the Sahara, me believing my life was in peril. I have described the souks in Marrakesh where the tradesmen poured tea for us in dark alleys, the Erg Chebbi dune in southern Morocco where I left my son's ashes, the temples and pyramids of Egypt, and the cave monsteries in India, a long life puja with the Dalai Lama, and the women in Kerala bathing in the ocean in their colorful saris. Nothing has been more interesting than the people whose paths crossed mine, nothing has been more powerful than those who lingered for a while.

I have written little in the past year. My life has consisted of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, of meetings and strategic planning. In and of myself, I am not all that interesting. I am starved for meaningful human contact, I am starved for meaning.

Lately, I get the sense that life is about to get more interesting.

Stay tuned. Read more