how does it feel … to be without a home … a complete unknown … like a rolling stone ???

…and the earth becomes my throne

I adapt to the unknown

Under wandering stars I’ve grown

By myself but not alone

I ask no one

Free to speak my mind anywhere

And I’ll redefine anywhere

Anywhere I may roam

Where I lay my head is home

So amid me giving you my opinion on all kinds of things you didn’t ask for my opinion on, I suppose I forgot about that whole ‘travel blog’ thing …

Soooooo … since I am not traveling, here is a snapshot of this life that is mine.  All things are vanity. 

I am still in Blantyre, Malawi.  I am working full time for this incredible NGO called Story Workshop.  I spend my evenings and weekends out drinking and gallivanting with other ex-pats, sitting in a beautiful tropical garden reading amazing books and having long, intense conversations about aid and art and everything in between.  I feel that old urge to stop time, as the pieces of my life seem to be very glove-like in their fit at this time.  How tragic that time moves so fast!   

Story Workshop (www.storyworkshop.org) is exciting and, after spending most of my 2^nd week banging my head against a steady stream of brick walls, I am finally starting to feel the road moving under me.  It looks possible that my contribution will be setting up a partnership with a Canadian NGO to take the success of Story Workshop and replicate it in five other countries.  It’s really exciting to possibly be the catalyst behind something this big.  I have seen a lot of terrible NGO’s out there, so I am excited to be helping to drive growth for one that really does something of tremendous value and does it incredibly well. 

While I love Story Workshop, I think most NGO’s are pretty much bollocks, and I am extremely cynical about the entire NGO/aid concept.  There is something about fighting to keep more people alive when we can’t keep alive/support the ones we already have that seems tragically short-sighted to me, but I am still sorting it out for myself.  Remain on the edge of your seat for further updates.

I am increasingly fascinated by radio and its astounding power to drive social change.  For a long time, I have been thinking of investing myself in newspapers, but more and more I am seeing that as a mere support structure for a radio network. 

I am still immersed in my exploration of religion and am currently reading about atheism and having many conversations with avowed atheists.  I have missed Hinduism so far, and am truly disappointed by this, but there is a temple in town, so am hoping I can at least take a passing glance.  I also hope to spend 2010 in rural India, so I suppose there will be time.  As my personal belief in God is now rooted almost entirely in Eastern ideas, I expect Hinduism to offer a lot of solutions to things I am still struggling with.  My studies of Christianity and Islam leave me fundamentally discouraged for the future of our species, and I could use a little optimism. 

I am more and more fascinated by statistical personality typing and the ‘clumping’ of behavior patterns within personality types.  I have been hearing a lot about facial expressions lately, and think that there is a bottomless pool of understanding to be found in them.  I am excited to get home so I can start to explore them in more depth.   

Story Workshop has loaned me a lappy to use, so I have suddenly found myself immersed in music again.  I am listening to classical acoustic guitar, African hip-hop, modern R & B, late 90’s soul, 60’s folk and 80’s southern bluegrass rock and roll.  I love it all and am feeling increasingly frustrated with myself for not having yet mastered a music instrument.  I have music in my mind and in my heart and I desperately want to give life to it.  I should have listened to my mother.    

I continue to find the experience of being here and doing what I am doing immensely rewarding in every way possible.  Professionally, intellectually, personally and spiritually, I am being constantly and unexpectedly challenged and exposed to new insights and ways of life, and feel myself tremendously richer for it.  I have, of late, become acutely aware of the sensation of being alive.  It came quite unexpectedly, but has been perhaps the most rewarding revelation of my life.  It has brought with it profound liberation and the discovery of an enormous pool of inner passion and energy, but also a dangerous dose of recklessness that, to be honest, scares me (but just a little). 

I will say, prematurely, that this journey’s greatest experience has been a complete re-imagining/re-defining of life and the experience of living it.  I did not know such freedom and joy was possible, but I see with dismay how utterly self-absorbed I have become.  It is reconciliation of this dissonance that I hope to find in Hinduism.  May I find a way to transfer the peace and joy I feel within to those around me.

I spent the past weekend at the snail parasite lake with a beautiful Italian girl and her co-worker.  After aspending the previous weekend in the company of tropical feverish dreams, I was convinced that I was not going to swim.  Then it was like 40 C with 100% humidity, so I was back bathing in snail parasites.  Hopefully, this time I skip the 20 odd hours in bed, tossing and turning, in and out of consciousness, sweating and shivering.    

That’s my life right now!  I have another impossible girl in my heart.  Macy Gray and Dusty Springfield are playing in my mind.  I am reading Everything is Illuminated and The God Delusion.  I am sitting in a garden writing.  I find I like writing more and more with each passing day. 

Tomorrow … well … that will just have to wait until tomorrow.  I have today to live, and so do you!

Peace and love.