Is it a microphone … or is it a trowel? How I perceive it is up to me. The same goes for my body. I’ve spent most of my lifetime seeing it as a problem … fat, weak, U-shaped rather than V-shaped. What if there’s no “reality” to any of that? There’s merely a body here – white, thin in most places, of seventy years. How about no judgments, just a witnessing of the physical life’s ebbs and flows?

And now a new moment: Gnima wants to hold my cell phone (I’ve learned how to spell her name since last time). So I give it to her, knowing that her 4-year-old hands could easily drop it. It’s simply a new way of seeing things. I wonder if I can apply this to all of my life. What freedom is available here?

Now Gnima is cuddled up against my chest as I tap these words. She’s enthusistically examining her hands while commenting en français. Another now has her up and away, tossing the shark-face beach ball to herself. Everything feels loose, untethered.

I watched a soccer game two days ago – the young men of Toubacouta in red, the fellows of another village in green. I watched their grace, their speed and joyed in the flow of movement, the deft flicks of the ball to teammates, the explosive shots on goal. There’s no need to refer all this back to Bruce. I can merely celebrate youth, power and the lungs going full out. A better choice.

Over the last few days, the body has spoken:

1. It wants to rest, walking some and reposing a lot

2. It struggles with the heat of midday in Africa

3. It coughs a lot in the dust and fumes of Senegal, and enjoys puffer times each day

4. It balances precariously between constipation and diarrhea, seeming to lean towards one or the other at every moment

5. It feels midnight pains and knows that there is a way through this. There is intelligence here.

6. It sees the absurdity of tanning, of accomplishing an appearance that will fade over the span of Canada’s winter.

7. It doesn’t want a lot of food, being in the middle of a sufficiency that doesn’t require adding to the essence.

Let us be at ease then, dear Bruce – in mind, spirit and body. Let us abide here within the African moments. Let us continue the study of French so that I may come closer to my friends. It is enough.