How Close - Beauty and Danger?

Reading for April 18, 2010


Zig-zagging my way up the escarpment, the Accra Plains and the Gulf of Guinea gave up their grasslands and  salt sea air to dense prime forest.  As pitched sharp curves demanded my attention, the altitude and temperature changes stimulated another attempt to link my sub-brain with  my higher faculties.  I was soon passing the mango tree.  As I gunned the engine of the motorcycle to make the climb I realized the tree fork I had rested in, had been nothing less than a crown-seat. 
There had to be only one explanation.
A very large bird was nested below those limbs which held the perfect yellow mangoes.  I will never know if there were eggs, or hatch-lings in that aviary loft; but. I do know, that as that winged creature took to flight, it made a sound.
As neither of us were aware of the other........... intimately ~ ~  we communed in the aerial sanctuary silent
Our physical closeness allowed a sync to my lower brain when issuance of its primordial sound became present in my highest level of lowest consciousness.
What I did not realize, was that as I raced to get back to school before the students broke formal classes for the day, I was racing to mortal danger.

One who would dwell in Aburi, would also dwell within me.

I intended to drive to my house, park the bike, and walk the quarter-kilometre to the school compound.  That short walk was never ordinary. Even when alone on that path, I would exclaim wonder and joy with being rained upon beneath a cloudless sky under the water-dripping tree; or being transported by scent of newly oped flower, the likes of which I had never before known. Yet, this was not to be, for a flurry of waving hands atop jumping students drew the engined-horse to its beckon.
 Twi, and Ewe, the two most common first languages of the students I taught, were both tonal languages.  With their pure enthusiasm of youth, they fired up a chorus which never failed to make my heart dance.  It also healed it.  My dear father had passed away just a few months earlier; and, in this culture of ever present reverence for ancestors, no more nurturing a balm could be had, than to hear festive singing of my family name: Karwowski. The wow was melodiously lifted to song for several seconds, hanging it in air, and charging it with pure joy. It was this gleeful electricity into which I entered.................completely unaware how close I was to what had killed many before me................to be continued.....

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Happy Daze,

Captain Flip Side