Day 7: We just keep on living.

I just realized that my boyfriend’s life goes on without me there. And I also realized at the exact same moment that I hate it very much. Not that he’s still living, but that I’m missing out on his living.

I write to you now from the beautiful back patio of the Kalmer’s house. The sun is shining in my face, and the 63 degree winter makes for a nice writing outside atmosphere.

I absolutely love this family. I feel like the little sister, the adopted sister from America. Mr. Kalmer is quirky and quiet, and Mrs. is quirky and outgoing. She makes roughly one of the best salad’s I’ve ever had, and she makes me try olives – real olives. Olives are an acquired taste, she tells me, you should try them every now and then to make sure you still don’t like them.

I feel very at home here in this house. Christine and her brother have taken me everywhere, introduced me to all their friends.

Christine runs cross-country, so Mrs. Kalmer, Herman and I went to her 8k race yesterday. I met Reuben, another runner (though presently injured), who spoke more words to me in the two hours we were there than I’ve ever spoken in a lifetime. He was precious and it was his birthday. His story is great, so I will pass on to you what I know:

He grew up outside Johannesburg, in I believe a more rural setting. He talked about having to fetch water in a river as a boy, which required him to learn how to swim because falling in was not uncommon. He was a young boy during the Apartheid era, when black and white children went to different schools and learned different things – the white children’s schools were in English and the blacks’ were in Afrikaans. Reuben’s parents changed his last name to one that allowed him to go to a better school. The details are fuzzy to me. So his name was changed and he was allowed to go to a good school. There are gaps in the story that I can’t fill in, but from high school he was able to go to the University of Pretoria, where he studied law. He was living with a professor and had absolutely no money. His passion was soccer, but too much work left too little time for practicing with an actual team. Reuben is a born athlete, so he ran each day in the mornings. I believe it was the professor who urged him to join the track team. He declined again and again, but finally the professor took him to sign up, and Reuben was made an official team member. He started running in 2001. By 2003 he qualified for the Olympics. His footprints are dotted around the world now from traveling and running.

With the family and Reuben, we watched Christine and cheered her through her long up- and downhill run. I would have keeled over and died had I even attempted running that distance on that track. No joke.

We watched other runners – male and female of all different ages and colors. Some wore shoes and others wore none. In an 8k men’s race, the first place runner wore Nike (which they pronounce as it’s spelled – Nike, not Nike-E) running shoes, and the second place runner ran in bare feet. Running barefooted for five miles is impressive in itself, but the terrain made this feat incredible. Literally incredible.

That evening, we went to a café/bar for Herman’s friend’s birthday party. It was a contemporary, artsy place for very edgy people and very gay people. It was “quaint,” as we called it. We stayed there for a while. There was only one black couple in the corner having drinks, the rest were white – even the waiters.

Even with two cappuccinos downed by both Christine and I, we still couldn’t keep our eyes open, and it was getting late anyway. So the three of us left the café around 11:30 p.m. while the party carried on in loud laughter and love.

~|~

I came home to talk to Reston online while it was only his evening time. That’s when I realized that he was still living without me – seeing movies without me, going to work without me knowing, hanging out with old friends and making new ones. That kind of thing. It was slightly devastating. But then I read my own blog and realize that I’m living, too, without him. But of course, I thought his life would go on hold and then I would press play once I got back.

But this is what you realize when you travel – away from the people you know and to people you don’t. You’re given new eyes – eyes that aren’t used to seeing what they’re seeing. They pick up everything. While I’m here, I look at people and I see stories – and I forget to look at people that way while I’m at home. While I’m here, I am only a witness, experiencing life as the locals do but without the fettered vision. Traveling allows you to see the matrix in which we all live – to see a clear picture of the dynamic among the different people. Here, I am unbound by the ties my own life at home creates – the commitments, the relationships, the obligations – and I am allowed to roam this world freely and look at every angle of every thing – every billboard, every facial feature, every missing tooth, every grass fire, every spiked gate, every begging hand, every garden, every meal, every laugh, every sigh, everyone. Right now, early in my stay, I am not entangled in the mess of living in a place. My stay has not been long enough. I have had a journalistic approach; I am creating my schemas and doing my background checks.

I have not yet begun school, but already I have learned at least a semester’s worth.