Inspiration Flags (Not to be confused with Tibetan Prayer Flags)

18 October 2020

[Above photo: In Nay Pyi Taw with Profs. Tin Oo and Sun Lin and Lecturers Kyi Min Tun and Le Le Khaing two months after I first arrived in Myanmar. Three of them have recently been hospitalized with Covid-19. All are doing well.]

My muse must be sleeping. Awaken, Muse! Up and at ’em!

Over a period of 48 hours we’ve had one day and one night with torrential downpours and terrifying cracks from nearby lightening strikes, making the windows rattle repeatedly. The night episode was so dramatic that I stayed awake for 2 hours, counting the seconds between light and thunder to estimate the proximity. Apparently, Ollie, the much-loved but fierce and frightened 120# pooch of Irene and Jose, was terrified by it all. It is understandable, since I was and I actually recognize how slight is the risk to me.

It’s Sunday afternoon. We had brunch with Irene and Jose today, a really good quiche Lorraine and croissants with Damson plum jelly.  (As Garrett Morris might have said on the original SNL, “Lorraine, she been bera bera good to ME Tank you, Hane.”) Kelly left us to play tennis at l’Opera and I stayed on, chatting for two hours.

I am in a quandary.  I don’t want to attempt a 3^rd CAP course if we do not have a clinic for the entire duration. The 2^nd group of trainees was short-changed by covid and did not see, in the flesh, a sufficient number of children. Zoom is a very valuable tool but there is no substitute for being in the presence of children and their parents.

At the same time, I plan to go home for at least 4 months in 2021, from June through September, to catch the summer in Maine and a month in California. If fires are raging again, Ill either stay in Maine or return here early. It will be a problematic time to leave here, in the midst of the training period, but I want to enjoy a few summers on the Island while my mind and body are still vigorous.

Also, I want to find and buy a piece of land and put a winterized dwelling on it for subsequent years. I hear my clock ticking and want to do more than I can, in all likelihood. I started here too late to give it the 10-15 years I would like in order for the Burmese to accumulate sufficient experience and knowledge to assume the program. As it is, everyone is too early in their career of seeing children to fully take on the leadership. Aaack!

A simple distraction from the dilemma I face is to turn to designing and building a small, lovely warm cabin on a piece of land in Maine.  With internet I can stay in touch here, although the time zones make it challenging. I do not like feeling this torn and uncertain of my path forward. I don’t think I would if covid hadn’t sequestered us all.

The election, with all the hypocrisy, hurried late rules, voter suppression, false accusations, dark money, histrionics, lies, and Supreme appointment, consumes my mind. I try to read other than current news publications and find it difficult to concentrate, although The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration of Blacks out of the South is gripping. Let’s just get it over with, as many others must feel.

A bright light during dark days was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s (Dem, RI) testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings re. Amy Barrett. It is worth your time.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjcXVKg43qY He addresses the real Deep State, fabulously rich Republicans giving vast, anonymous money to weaken our regulatory systems.

It is so much nicer at Kelly’s, where I am now writing this, than at my apartment that I think I’ll move in before my lease expires. HIs company is wonderful; we laugh and laugh. We cleaned up the bedroom adjacent to mine, emptied a large closet where I can store my stuff, and re-wired the overhead light in my bathroom, so I can switch it on before going in when it is dark.

My good friend, Peter Finch, in Malawi grew up in Zimbabwe. He once went into the bathroom as a child and was greeted by a cobra. It is an enduring, if not endearing, image, ever present when I visit a bathroom or outhouse at night in snake country. And then, of course, there was the green mamba in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.  All I’ve encountered here is a single large cockroach, easily dispatched by a single flip-flop smackdown. 

It remains to be seen if Kelly and I can elevate our cuisine above variants of putanesca sauce (mine) and W. African peanut sauce (his). His diet has been plant-based for 6 months and I’m not opposed to moving in that direction, although I dearly love eating meat and fish. I’ll still use milk in my tea or coffee. It seems to me that the secret is in the seasonings and sauces, so expanding our skills in those areas will be rewarding.

Never could arouse the Muse. This week’s post is, thus, a placeholder. My apologies.