strange days

On Saturday, I went to the Common Ground Country Fair in a town called Unity, Maine. The Fair is organised annually by MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association), and its intention is to help visitors to make connections with organic farmers in the state of Maine. People can learn about sustainable living; eat amazing, locally-produced organic food; buy Maine crafts and agricultural products; and participate in all kinds of activities (like folk dancing, manure-slinging, jumping off hay bales, horse-riding, and such). Sadly, it transpires that I neither rode a horse nor jumped off a hay bale nor slung any manure around, but I had a mighty fine time nonetheless. I laughed and cavorted with friends, surrounded by stroller-moms in Gap t-shirts and crunchy-granola moms with hipslung babes alike. I ate a moist and spicy hummus and eggplant sandwich, followed by a slice of luxurious-but-tart cranberry cheesecake, both of which were exhorbitantly expensive, organic, made with love, and completely worth it. [And, come to think of it, I have been looking rather thin since I arrived here (due, most likely, to my aforementioned unintentional lacto-ovo vegetarianism, and being sans automobile for a month)... so bring on the cream cheese!]

I spent time at the MOM (Midwives of Maine) tent, hanging out with my sister-students (who were volunteering, handing out leaflets and answering questions about water birth, etc). I also learnt more about the legal status of midwifery in Maine during a talk by a local CPM who is particularly involved in pushing for the legalisation of home-birth midwifery in this state (currently, CPMs are practising alegally, i.e. it's neither legal nor illegal, which is basically worse than being illegal, at least according to some).

On Sunday, I discovered that South Africa's president had tendered his resignation, to the great surprise and alarm of the various internet news sites that I scanned, and I felt rather indifferent, to my own surprise and alarm. The rest of the day was spent foolishly trying to concentrate on my readings for the Informed Choice one-day course today. I instead read parts of Monique and the Mango Rains and thereby reminded myself of the ecstasy of a midwife's work, and indeed why I am here. (Doesn't take much to fuel the fire, really.) I called my Papa in Berlin in the afternoon, and found out that my uncle has indeed sacrificed his hair to chemo, but not his spirit. He is fighting hard, with every spark of life he retains.

Laughing and speaking in unbroken German to my father for an hour rewired and revived my brain sufficiently that I could do my homework last night -- a not-unremarkable feat in these strange times of sporadic numbness and disbelief. At least I can still recognise my own face in the mirror -- that is progress.

P and I have, in curtly pleasant and somewhat heart-wrenching blips, ended our brief mutual silence. After all, where there was (and is) so much shared love, there is also great concern for the other's well-being, which tends to intensify when the two parties no longer communicate. And that doesn't serve either of us well at all.

Turning to the more hum-drum, ordinary matters, I am still without a car, and have finally (yes, finally!) abandoned the occasionally-entertained pipe dream of buying something as ridiculously girlish, dazzlingly cute and yet outlandishly impractical as a VW New Beetle. After much deliberation, and with the dramatic sigh and gnashing of teeth and flailing of limbs that can be expected from a little girl who wanted a new Barbie doll for Christmas and instead got a trashily generic Sandi doll, I have narrowed my search down to Subarus, exclusively.

With a whimper, I now head toward my desk to see if I can manage an evening's Physiology study. If indeed.