Voy a nombrar las cosas, los sonoros

altos que ven el festejar del viento,

los portales profundos, las mamparas

cerradas a la sombra y al silencio.

I’m going to name things. Sonorous

mountains that look upon the festival of wind.

Deep passages. Shutters

closed in shade and silence.

Y el interior sagrado, la penumbra

que surcan los oficios polvorientos,

la madera del hombre, la nocturna

madera de mi cuerpo cuando duermo.

And the sanctuary within. The half-light

that marks dusty practices.

The wooden image of a man. The 

wood of my body when I sleep.

Y la pobreza del lugar, y el polvo

en que testaron las huellas de mi padre,

sitios de piedra decidida y limpia,

despojados de sombra, siempre iguales.

And the poverty of the place. The dust

in which are traced the footsteps of my father.

Stone places clean and resolved.

Empty of shadow. Always the same.

Sin olvidar la compasión del fuego

en la intemperie del solar distante

ni el sacramento gozoso de la lluvia

en el humilde cáliz de mi parque.

Without forgetting the compassion of fire

in all the elements of solar space. 

Nor the sacrament of rain falling

into the cupped hands of my garden.

Ni el estupendo muro, mediodía,

terso y añil e interminable.

Nor that stupendous mural of noon.

Blue and polished and unending.

Con la mirada inmóvil del verano

mi cariño sabrá de las veredas

por donde huyen los ávidos domingos

y regresan, ya lunes, cabizbajos.

With the immutable gaze of summer

my beloved will know the paths

where Sundays flee like lovers.

And return, Mondays now, downfallen.

Y nombraré las cosas, tan despacio

que cuando pierda el Paraíso de mi calle

y mis olvidos me la vuelvan sueño,

pueda llamarla de pronto con el alba.

And I’ll name things so slowly

that when I lose the paradiso of my street

and oblivion turns her into dream

I’ll be able to call to her suddenly at dawn.

                         — Eliseo Diego, 1949

The hermit is the one who's always home

Beso negro, cappuccino, latte. 

Chocolate ultra concentrado de 3 onzas. "Todo un tocamiento obsceno."

and yet one travels in order to be visited 

...along alleyways and through plazas.

Diego Rivera was born here in Guanajuato.

Diego Rivera, "Flowered Canoe," 1931 

"De todas las toneladas de tinta que se han escrito en mi contra o a favor de mi, lo que realmente soy es un guanajuatense," él dijo.

"Of all the tons of ink that have been written against me or in my favor, what I really am is a Guanajuatense," he said. 

And so it's good to be on the road again. Especially together. 

"Keep your pilgrim self alive," we told ourselves years ago.

But it's not so easy. 

Because no matter where you are (at home or on the road) the task requires disentangling.

"Coddiwompling" is the expression Debi likes to use.

And for the picaresque, though there are waystations and adventures...

...there's no clear end.

The steeple of Saint Hilaire

A novel doesn't translate what's real into fiction.

And the most important books must teach us how to read them.

An object's not inert. It's not even an object.

And everything that's real is a relationship—not a phenomenon.

Aunt Leonie's house.

The bell on the gate that only Swann would ring.

The clapper that would rattle when anyone else would enter.

The siphon coffee system Uncle Adolphe loved to use.

The hawthorns along Swann's way.

 "The autobiographer relates what he has lived through; the novelist lives in order to relate."

                                                                         — Jean-Yves Tadié, Marcel Proust: A Life.

Tansonville.

M. Vinteuil's along the Guermantes' way.

À la recherche du temps perdu.

We've been to Chartres before.

But in that winter month five years ago the labyrinth wasn't open.

And this time it was.

At first, I was a little irritated. Some people were breezing across the labyrinth inattentively—in a hurry to get somewhere else and seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were jostling right through others' prayer.

But it was as if each mindful step was clarifying itself nonetheless.

And soon those of us who were walking

...were walking the labyrinth together.

In a labyrinth sometimes you seem to be moving in the opposite direction from another—and then the next moment you're face-to-face. When you seem furthest from the center, at the next turn you might find yourself entering it.

Nor in that winter five years ago did the cathedral put on a cosmic light-show.

It feels like we're back on our long pilgrimage again.

With places and friends so beautiful and dear that it always feels too unbearably soon to leave them.

"Keep your pilgrim-self alive," we reminded ourselves five years ago when we were heading homeward.

And we're reminding ourselves of that wisdom once again.

In Kiswahili, you say urafiki.

Yolanta, Tutu, Katulica, Edith.

The rambunctious friends from Zambia stayed in Dave and Ronah's apartment.

Yolanta, Ronah, Tutu.

Ronah and Katulica

Miss K.

While Dave's (and our) friend Christian...

...hosted the California contingent in his beautiful Nairobi home.

Allison, Dave, Amy.

Rod.Karen.Amy and Miss K.Of course, it's not like the two groups of travelers stayed apart for very long.

Allison knew she'd be surrounded by new friends in Kenya, but just to hedge her bet, she brought a few old pals along with her anyway.

Here's another one.

So by the time of the wedding, everything was already rocking-and-rolling.

Yolanta.

Gilbert

Dave and Tom.

Esther.

Tom, Rod, Gilbert, Dave, Monte, Christian, Chris.

This one's a caption contest.

Zachs, Edith, Ronah, Yolanta.

Ronah, Dave, Amy, Allison.

Sister Agnes.The bravest thing I've ever done in my life was to get on the dancefloor later that night with these Kenyan and Zambian dancers.

Don't ask.

No, I didn't hold my own.

Faith and Masaa.

Miss K, Allison, Monte, Tutu.That's a Tusker in Monte's hand.

Now and then—like when watching futbol and eating nyama choma—Masaa and I have had a few of those with Monte, too.

Earlier at the reception there had been a sudden downpour. And now on the way to the dancefloor, our bus slid off the black cotton road into a ditch.

Karen, Yolanta, Tom, Allison, Amy.For some that just meant that the dancing began a little earlier.

And anyway here's comes Gilbert to the rescue—in the wedding-festooned John Deere.

Earth from three lands mixed—Zambia, Lukenya, California.

We were meeting Ronah Mussenge, David’s bride-to-be, for the first time.

And that first time was on their wedding-day.

And not only that, but the wedding was going to be at the Red Rhino Orphanage Project in Lukenya, where we hadn't been for four years.

So we experienced all three—meeting Ronah, being at the wedding, and seeing these children in their home at Red Rhino—all in one day.

When we had been at Red Rhino four years ago, the steel trusses for what would be the kitchen and dining hall were going up.

And now, four years later, the building was hosting the wedding of the orphanage’s director and the children’s Auntie Ronah.

The children were going to dance Ronah up to the altar.

“We’re going to lose it then,” I told Monte who’s made three earlier trips to work as a volunteer at Red Rhino.

“I thought you were exaggerating,” Monte told me later.

“But, yeah, I lost it then myself.”

Afterwards, as the girls—Prudence, Faith, Rachel, Frida, Peace, Mercy, and Mrs. O’Bama (because her name is Michelle)—flocked around their good friend, Ronah told them that there was one small diamond on her engagement ring for each of the children at Red Rhino.

And so the girls counted the stones meticulously. There are twenty-two children at Red Rhino.

“But there are twenty-three stones,” the girls said.

“One of the stones is for your aunties,” Ronah told them.

 The children’s aunties are the women who look after them.

On the day of the wedding, when we had turned off the paved Mombasa road onto the murram Daystar road to the orphanage, the conversation in the landcruiser went mostly silent.

So many memories rose as we traveled along this road again.

For one thing, each of us has had important experiences with giraffes here.

Once, for instance, as we were returning late from Nairobi, we spied these stately, shadowed presences moving quietly through the night.

"Can we stop and get out?" I begged.

"Sure," said Dave, "why not?"

And so soon—the engine off now—we found ourselves wandering as if in a dream among these graceful night-shadows.

There were no giraffes in sight along the road on this wedding day, but there were elands, and as almost always, wildebeests and zebra and Thompson’s gazelles.

We’d seen photographs of the orphanage completed and the kids at home. But we hadn't been there in person yet.

What strikes you—whether it’s your first time or you remember the land as nearly barren and barely delved—is simple.

Home. Unsentimentalized. No need for cute.

What, if we’re lucky, each of us has found once, only to lose again. It seems that most of us can’t simply inherit home. We have to create it, too.

And yet at the same time, how many places, so deeply lived in, welcome us back home as well?

The kids have as much of a stake in this marriage as anyone. Maybe more.

They already call David “daddi” and Ronah “auntie.”

So on the day of the wedding, the discussion among the children became rabbinical.

“If you’re marrying daddi,” they report to Ronah, “then you must be mami now.”

“Do you want me to be your stepmother?” Ronah asks.

“No, not stepmother,” they answer.

We haven’t introduced the guests. We’ll do that next time.

But in the meantime, suffice it to say, this wasn’t a “destination” wedding unless the destination—no matter how complex—is home.

When we were flying home on the last leg of a 10-month journey around the world, I gazed down from my window seat upon the vast canyonlands of the American west.

"Ah," I felt in my bones. "This is it. I'm coming home."

Debi and I are on a roadtrip into these canyonlands right now. We crossed the Sierra on Route 120 through Tioga Pass, a drive we had made a year ago, as well.

The next morning we were on Route 168 amid ancient bristlecone pines.

Then in Nevada, we hit Route 95 and first made a slight jag north to visit Goldfield, the boom-and-bust mine town where Debi's great grandfather once managed a gold mine.

But isn't mining by its very nature already boom-and-bust?

Then...what the hell...Route 95 takes you right through the phantasmagoria that is Las Vegas.

So we drove the Strip with all our car windows rolled down and Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" blaring from the speakers. 45 minutes driving through Las Vegas was quite enough.

And we happily lit out for where we're really heading.

Tonight on Good Friday, Debi and I attended a beautiful "Tenebrae" service at the Carmel Mission. And so the poem "Tenebrae" by our friend Denise Levertov came back into our hearts as well.

Tenebrae

Heavy, heavy, heavy, hand and heart.
We are at war,
bitterly, bitterly at war.

And the buying and selling
buzzes at our heads, a swarm
of busy flies, a kind of innocence.

Gowns of gold sequins are fitted,
sharp-glinting. What harsh rustlings
of silver moiré there are,
to remind me of shrapnel splinters.

And weddings are held in full solemnity
not of desire but of etiquette,
the nuptial pomp of starched lace;
a grim innocence.

And picnic parties return from the beaches
burning with stored sun in the dusk;
children promised a TV show when they get home
fall asleep in the backs of a million station wagons,
sand in their hair, the sound of waves
quietly persistent at their ears.
They are not listening.

Their parents at night
dream and forget their dreams.
They wake in the dark
and make plans. Their sequin plans
glitter into tomorrow.
They buy, they sell.

They fill freezers with food.
Neon signs flash their intentions
into the years ahead.

And at their ears the sound
of the war. They are
not listening, not listening.

                    — Denise Levertov, Fall 1967

At the end of the vice-presidential debate, when Martha Raddatz asked Vice-President Biden and Mr. Ryan what role their Catholic faith has played in their views on abortion, Debi and I wanted to answer the question ourselves.

It was a golden opportunity to walk Ms. Raddatz (and the rest of us) back from the initial narrow framing of that question to the wider panorama of what being on the side of life really means in the context of the Gospel.

Had one of us been Biden, we’d have answered…

“Martha, here’s what ‘pro-life’ really means. Jesus didn’t say anything explicit about abortion, but I personally accept the Church’s teaching that its view is a logical extension of Jesus’ teaching on the sanctity of all life. But while not saying anything specific about abortion, Jesus unequivocally made clear that we, as a nation, will be judged on how we treat the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the naked, the ill, the imprisoned, the stranger. Not only that, but that how we treat ‘the least of my brothers’ will be how we have treated Christ himself. So to single out abortion as the one-and-only religious litmus-test, even though Jesus never talked about it, and then to systematically deny, warp, and ignore how close to Christ the poor are — in contrast to the absolute roadblock Christ says hoarding personal wealth is — to do that is, at best, rank hypocrisy. But what one is really doing then is perpetrating the gravest violence against the Gospel, and as a Christian-Catholic, I won’t stand here silently as that happens.”

Worst of all, by wrapping his politics in a pseudo-gospel that borrows more from Ayn Rand than it respects Christ’s teaching, Mr. Ryan is depriving those fooled by his mis-characterization of the very real benefit that Christ’s actual teachings could give us in these troubled days.

                                                       _____________________

Thomas Friedman also addressed this subject in his NY Times Op-Ed article "Why I Am Pro-Life."

Cézanne's atelier at Les Lauves

"I have begun to think," he wrote in a late letter,
"that one cannot help others at all." This
from a man who once called friendship the highest
virtue. And in another he wrote: "Will I ever
attain the end for which I have striven so long?"
His greatest aspiration was certainty
yet his doubts made him blame himself wrongly,
perceiving each painting a disaster. These swings
between boldness and mistrust, intimacy and isolation
led him to stay at home, keep himself concealed,
becoming a sort of hermit, whose passion for the world
directed every brushstroke, changed each creation
into an expression of tenderness, which he dismissed
writing: "a vague sense of apprehension persists."

by Stephen Dobyns

The gardener Vallier, Tate Museum