hello, again

While sitting on the plane today from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to Johannesburg, South Africa, I was reading The New Yorker quietly and just listening. Surrounded by a lulling mixture of languages-- Swahili, Xhosa, Afrikaans, German, French, and English (in every accent but my own)-- I felt very aware of my independence, my American-ness, and my privilege to be sitting on that plane, in that part of the world, at that very moment, on my own.

As I flipped through the pages of my magazine, feeling a bit daunted by the writers' complexities and qualms, I suddenly found myself stuck on a story that spoke to me. The dreadlocked, rotund, eccentric visionary whom I had learned about briefly in one of my Comm. classes (they attribute the term "virtual reality" to him) was being interviewed about the future of technology and the current effects of social media.

When discussing the instantaneous and anonymous nature of new media, he had a message to send: "If you listen first, and write later, then whatever you write will have time to filter through your brain, and you'll be in what you say. This is what makes you exist. If you are only a reflector of information, are you really there?"

Thank you, crazy, profound, genius, Jaron Lanier. Finally, a good excuse for my lack of blogging during my entire trip in Tanzania! No, but really. This guy knows what he's talking about. We're all so caught up in sharing-- read: broadcasting-- what we're doing, thinking, planning, buying, etc. that we can lose sight of the REAL act of doing it!

And so, between my lack of access to technology and my complete immersion into wild Africa, I really did some "existing"... some living. And now, after some "filtering," it's time to write.

Chapters 1 (Serengeti), 2 (Kilimanjaro), and 3 (Zabzibar) are complete. I'm safe and sound in stunning Cape Town-- have already had tea and rusks, and about to go walk on the beach-- and am ready for Chapter 4 (becoming acquainted with the city of my parents' dreams, and writing, writing, writing!)

Be ready... I've got a lot of "existing" to write about :)