Anticipation

I've been back in deep winter. What on earth could that possibly mean in a place where the weather is full of splendor on the weekends?! The weather may be sunny/windy, rainy/calm, indecisive/lukewarm, but my body and my mind are in winter of the subzero sort. Conjuring up thoughts of ice crystals on my eyelashes in Chicago, I've been cooped up, trying to make sense of the summer to come, of the year to come (all without the buffer of Christmas music in December)....

I feel like this blog is in a slump. It's been easy to post-date blogs, showing pictures of my travels & to recount (with lots of commas & lots of clauses) all the details of my fancies over the last couple months. In reality, I haven't been so forthcoming with all the ins and outs of my personal life. It's easy to write about the coffees, the international dinner parties, the German films, the penguins, the prospect of lovely dates, traveling to Lesotho, Koyaanisquatsi, amazing hikes, whale watching, good aubergine (eggplant) dinners at home, figs and naartjies, cheap Indian food, and so on (again, the commas). But, the emotions & the nitty gritty feelings of feeling lost are difficult to translate into words. It all seems to have amounted to a lack of good writing.

It's 10:34 and tomorrow is Monday. I've spent the last week in bed with a cold, hacking away at my computer keys, trying to find answers on the world wide web to ease the lack of solution in my life. Tomorrow I will find out if the Anglican Archdioceses will sponsor a position for me to continue teaching at St. Paul's Primary School for the year of 2010. I am nervous as a coot, scarf on, bundled in bed, unable to sleep. With little else to do but write, I find myself here, typing to a mysterious audience.

I'm on this verge of determining my life direction and I want it to keep me Cape Town for at least another year. I cannot put my finger on it now, but I'm tapping into something whole, a sacred part of myself in this place. And yet, my insides are bubbling with confusion. America gave me a real mind-trip because now I'm reflecting on the cupcake bliss of June. It feels all but real as I never hear from anyone except a few members of my family. And that makes home seem even further away.

It has been a busy month back in school. The past 3 weekends have been busy with volunteers, amazing helpers from both the school & the non-profit Organizing for Africa, all helping to ready the library. We've made a lot of progress and in fact this Friday I will open the doors to students to make use of the library! This part of my time in CT has been a long, dedicated journey and it is impossibly exciting to enable students access to books, books & more books.

Over the last 8 months in CT, I benefited from the graciousness of my cousin Margaret, who's allowed me to stay in her flat. Circumstances being as they are, I'm in need of a new place and that is part of the unsettled nature of my current head. I look forward to finding a place to share with others as living alone has led me to devious behaviors, such as watching soapies in the afternoon & taking maybe one-too-many bubble baths out of boredom.

While the flat situation is one part of my anxiety, the other is dealing with funding for my position. Hopefully some of that will be resolved tomorrow, but in the meantime I've been working on a grant proposal to fund me to organize books and libraries for 10 schools in the year 2010. It may be in the end that I work 2 separate jobs with 2 separate sources of funding to satisfy my desire to continue at St. Paul's.

Why is it so important that I stay on there, you might ask? I have poured myself into my work here & I know that the library will be a much stronger institution at the school should I have a chance to work on it longer. I need to involve more teachers, more parents, & more students in the ongoing running of such a place and the only answer to this is guided time. The more time I am able to offer, the more "in-place" the library will remain. The idea is to ensure that it can be self-sustaining without external support. That will take a lot of responsibility on the part of the school & parents. Building a "book culture" is a strong aspect of motivating such responsibility. It might be more than a two year task (this being year-one) but by next year we shall be able to see the impact of having available books for all readers.

I devoted a lot of energy while in the USA to consider graduate level education in the area of Arts Education. As I try to determine my status for South Africa for next year, it feels like a lead weight is keeping my hand from cracking the dreaded GRE book on my coffee table. I feel so secure in knowing education is what I want to dedicate my future to, but I suppose I'm taking my time in working towards certification. It could still happen in 2010, but it might be further away in 2011 or... I feel like a degree in Literacy Education is also tugging at my sleeve and perhaps I need just a little more time to determine if that's the best route for me.

On a lighter note, the book I've been collaborating on with my friend, Maya, is set to be sent to the publishers this week! It is an exciting moment and a long-awaited one. While we certainly don't expect immediate results, we have other buns in the oven. Our next book is just a notion of missing socks, with endless possibilities awaiting an outcome. One more exciting adventure to grow...

I suppose that's a wrap for tonight. Sometimes it takes sending words out into flatland to feel sorted.