More enlightened fascinations

"Do you get annoyed when people say the 'did' a country? Like, 'I did Sudan?'" Matt asked. Obviously, his preconceived expected response was the positive.

But that's just it - what do we do? What do we accomplish, achieve, create of our own accord? Once more, where does this newness come from? Humanity, that is, has certain limits of creation on all levels that, well, fundamentally disallow basic creation. Thus, we cannot "do" much at all. We cannot create experiences, we can only live them. We cannot acquire knowledge merely by doing a country, or by visiting a blip on an interesting portion of map within the bounded political authority with an exotic name, a government built on no more than one of the 48 laws.

So we do only set, understood, lonely-planet defined tracks in SE asia. We do the annapurna circuit's laid out track. e do the standard traveler backpacker crap that everyone does. That is, all the superficial "follow me" experience revealed in "I did it" comments.

But then we lay aside such basic human creations as pre-defined lines through un-creatable geography and throw ourselves a little closer to submission to what is. A bike trip from Tanga to Dar isn't "done." Nobody, that is, "does the Tanga to dar thing" , after all> No, such raw thrust into the thick of the unknownd does us. It challenges, powers, forces humility. It destroys our old perceptions with, yes, new ones and our only input to produce such results is consent to be moved.

That's why comments that things "look like they should be in a movide' drive me more berserk every time they're spoken. Such consentual dominance of mind in allowing idiotic blindness to reality dominate existence irk ractional being, to say the very least. Hollywood does not, will not, never has "done" anything. It does not create the spectacular mountains, the idyllic lake, the African Savannah - yet somehow one of those 48 means to acquire power, or one on a deeper level has dominated the massses of frequent viewers (with consent, of course) in convincing that truly fantastic, beautiful, wonderful, inspiring things, scense people, places can only be manufactured by man's imagination. NO.

As Roie and Hila profoundly experience in the Tsunami re-birth, man's creations crumble easily in thier imperfections. In Hollywood, the creations are illusions only, moving images buried under more of the miracle of marketing to sell our own world oto us as a fantastic wonderland; freal only on the far side of never. In fact, someone who laid eyes on Meru National Park or the Ngorogoro Crater had the same thoughtt as you, Hollywood-praiser; except that it was visionary not clouded. Your thought reversed: "this will be in a movie."

Through the formatted to fit this screen context, he won your mind and brought your disbelief at your own world. "Americans have love for the beauty of their own accomplishment," Amir said in Tanga, "but they have forgotten love for the beauty of God." So we wander our world, aching for someone else to package it and sell it to us. Orwell's famous last line, perhaps.

As it was today, that is, deep in the Ngorogoro where we, and hundreds of others, forked out mightily in dollar sums to purchase existence, passion, beauty. Forked out for a package of nature. And in the meantime, forgot why we were there. Land rovers and cruisers raced to be the first down in - to beat out all the red-shirted church groups and bare-chested punk frat boys who'd forgotten that they don't typically venture outside without a little external organization and a good dose of polluting combustion. They race for their spot at the front of nature, but the race can't be won. For dust ceaselessly pours from the tires and into the sky like a jets mist following its way, and we all end up in teh same destination, anyhow. 20 cars around a no longer solitary beast. A herd of wildebeest overcome by airborn road, pelicans and flamingos waiting for the uber-long lense of the photo pro to click (should he be able to frame them without reality imposing on artful cration - without masses of European tourist sin the background, that is.)

And as each animal gains its crowds, one can almost hear the mental pen checkin gthe box by its name in each drivers' head. "alright, take your photo, let's move on already. We've got to beat them to the Hippo Pools now. I want to get home early."

We zip, and so we miss most opportunities to sit and bond with an elephant, or to admire a black rhino because it's just a wee bit too far away for the likes of the driver's itching foot petting the gas pedal. We saw them all, yes, but what did we really earn as we captured the "I saw a Hatebeest, Joe Chicago" superficial bragging right? What did you earn, Sr. "I flew in just for this" high-roller that was worth turning nature into a sideshow?

Ah, but that's just one option in this schizophrenic medley of reaction -and is it really the one to grasp for? Awe and wonder did creep into my life in that crater today too. The magnificence of the now broke through Hollywood's disguised manifest of National Geographic as I saw the crater as it truly is every day. I saw no predators maiming wildebeest or devouring gazelles, but I saw the more mundane yet common scene of unified living. Eater and eaten, side by side, content, complacent. Seemingly indifferent as kills are necessary exception for survival, not the everyday norm. (Perhaps wildebeest could teach Bush a thing or two about Freedom vs. Fear). I saw reality, unedited.

In fact, at moments I was overcome by inundation in experience. I felt no fear, only wonder, as I stared into the sining eyes of a cheetah. I understood some piece of his being as he stared through his striped face and spotted coat right back at me, and I knew something more of what I, and he, are in this world as he laid in the grass, colors merging to one, in one of the most beautiful sights I've seen. At that second, I had to remind meyself to look up from him to count the score of over-equipped safari-mobiles "smothering" his natural solitude. I had to consciously tear myself from immersion in the magical to gaze toward my glitches and count reasons to justify my, let's face it, pre-concluded accusations of impure, imperfect experience. But before I looked up; before I re-realized my ability to let simultaneous onlookers taint my own understandings, I felt the magic I'd come to see.

And I felt it, too there in the row of package tourist non-travelers looking on at the pool of hippos. I felt it as an elephant appeared from nowhere, and with the herds of buffalo providing so stark a contrast to the lone roadside wanderer in Meru. I felt it as a pride of lions moved away from their tree and we rushed to intercept their path. I I felt it as they crawled under the land cruiser to our front, and rubbed against the side of our own. I felt it as I came close enough to touch a female's battle wounds, even as flies fought over teh prime real estate in their gooey heaven. I felt it as they rolled in teh grass and as I saw them groom each other as if putting on the show just for me.

There, too, I forgot for a moment to notice the hoard of onlooking 4 X 4's, even as the pride wove its way in and out of them.

So even as our driver V-lined for an early exit, and as he pulled away from the prides I could have spent hours with, I silently (mostly) let him check off my boxes for me, and found difficulty in successfully condemning the day outright.

After all my eyes met with a Cheetah today, and after that, which of the battling reactions would you leave with? Against all expected understanding, perhaps, I'm stuck in the middle of both. Maybe next time I'll just walk down in there after hours with nothing but naked hands and feet and stare into his threatenting eyes without the steel box of safety... Maybe then..

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Not this time, however, as that day has passed further out of the present and into memory, while my body moves away. Ducking away from the magnificent cloud-crushing tower of Kilimanjaro (which obliterates intents at its own capture on paper by appearing to the distant observer as an uninspiring mountain on glossy print as it stands in impressive majesty in person), we moved back to Nairobi for an afternoon of calm sunday streets, a few more Kenyan beers, and a night bus to the contrasting chaos of Kampala streets. Dust, grime, grit return full force in the chaos of the new taxi park there, but we arrive in Entebbe on the shores of lake Victoria nonetheless.

Unexpected, uninvited, we drop in on a few lectures at the International Primatological Society convention (obviously, we were out of our element, and mostly unwelcome there but enjoyed nonetheless topics regarding our closest animal relatives - annoyed, though we were, that we'd missed an opportunity to freeload the opening speech by Jane Goodall) and marvel at the world's second largest lake (looks about like you'd expect a big body of water to). A little lament for Ghana's loss, a few beers at the generosity of a new friend, and a late ride back to the hostel in the Uganda capital brought the day to a close.

Moving again, today's bus landed in Fort Portal and brought opportunity for the first interactive history lesson since Luxor; as the caretaker at the royal palace of Tooro showed us pictures of the boy king (at age 14 now) alongside none other than Mr. Wellington E. Webb. A million miles from home still, but connected as always.