Sylvia's Journal

My alarm is synchronized with the BBC report on the FESPACO (film) festival in Burkina. I listen to the daily report while taking my shower. I try to imagine what it would be like to be in Ouagadougou with tens of thousands of people trying to get into theatres that aren’t necessarily designed for crowds. Maybe they are now but when I was last there it was a small harmattan-dusted town with rattling taxis that held together with wires. I have never felt enticed to go there and witness this remarkable event. This morning an Ethiopian woman living in Ghana was interviewed, exactly the two countries I am in between now.

My dreams where full of symbols that would give a psychoanalyst a field day. Now I was on a train track in a car anxiously waiting for a train from the other side to pass me on the right track; then I was in Haarlem giving my car keys to a young American woman who did not know the city. At one point I took a short piece of red USB extension cable out of the hair of an old man. In the dream we all wondered where that came from, just as I now wonder what the dream symbol dictionary would have to say about this artifact of our time – connections through wires.

I drove home from work yesterday in the light. Spring is indeed coming. It is wonderful to arrive back home in daytime. The carriage house at the beginning of our driveway looked stunning in the late winter afternoon light; something it rarely does in its otherwise drab pale yellow color. I sat in the car in the driveway for awhile trying to figure out what will happen to this nice light at this specific time when we return to daylight savings time. I think it happens this weekend. This manipulation of time is something that I never can get my head around. It is as if those specific neural tracks in my brain are always temporary; shaky connections that are put in place twice a year and then removed to storage, like our duckboards. I have a similar thing with time zones when I travel to the Far East and back. It’s probably the same circuit.

I went to yoga class again after a two week absence. I am still unable to do any of the poses that twist my upper arm and shoulder. The balancing that I was so good at before the accident is now a real challenge; it used to be easy to do the Eagle pose but now my performance is dismal. Axel promptly recommended remedial action, as men are wont to do; I declined and wondered why I keep telling him things that will elicit advice when that is not what I am asking for. I have enough things to do like flossing and shoulder exercises and icing and feel guilty enough not doing all that. The icing is for my 3×3 inch deep purple bruise on my upper arm from the fall on Sunday and my rotator cuff tendonitis on the other side of the arm. The bruise is similar in color (but not in size) to the bruise after the accident that covered my entire upper right side of my body. It’s a beautiful plum color with yellow edges and brings back tons of memories of that intense time.