african bliss for bohemian mermaids here you will find: my mind, lost in time linguistic trance-lations of dance, epic mom-ents mosquito net placements and i bet some cosmic revelations inspired by zulu nations

i saw my little sisters today-my sweet brilliant siblings who are so blessed with the joys of their childhood. they are showing me their twenty seven stuffed puppies who all have their own email adresses and online doghouses, and i am thinking about how unreal this is. how so many children have no stuffed puppies and this one has twenty seven. how most adults in burkina faso have never seen a computer and this goddammed stuffed dog has its own virtual shopping mall for accessories. this world does not make sense. my littlest sister sleeps under a mosquito net. it matches her tinkerbell bedroom set and serves as a princess canopy for capturing sweet dreams and fairy tales. there are no mosquitoes in the house-and certainly no deadly insects. children all over west africa are dying of malaria or dengue fever because they don’t have mosquito nets to sleep under, and here is this precious life saving item being used as decoration for a little pixie princess. this world: does not make sense. my family, sitting in a house with such a clean roof over their heads, sitting around a finished wood table and eating so much food that after dinner they can feed leftover grilled salmon at twelve-ninety-nine a pound to their dog. and then the dog gets special doggy ice cream in a little disposable plastic cup every time she sits or rolls over or jumps three feet in the air. the _dog_. what is this imbalance, this world of people feeding their dogs caviar with a detached awareness of the bloated bellies of malnourished children in mali? this disconnection is so massive, the awareness so incomplete that its ineffectiveness is more vast and devastating than the problem itself. here i am, trying to bridge these two worlds with a shaky construction of pictures and memories, trying to explain the realities of poverty and _actual_ suffering that are so far from anything they will ever know; trying to inspire gratitude and compassion and maybe, action. but this world:: does not make sense. i am showing them my pictures from west africa. pictures of schoolchildren sitting on the mud floor of their schoolhouse with no books or desks or pens or playgrounds, telling them about how children in africa don’t have recess when they’re at school, and how most of them don’t have toys. and for my sisters, its not even close to their realm of consciousness to be able to fathom this. i feel like one of those moms who yells at their children to finish their bowl of cereal because “there’s starving children in africa.” exept most moms who say that have never _seen_ a starving child in africa, so when they say it they don’t feel like putting down their own fork and packing up the leftovers and shipping the contents of their cupboards to some village in northern ghana. and that is what i want to do. every thing i touch is felt with this awareness. everything i eat feels like too much. everything i do is filtered through my disturbed consciousness and infused with a contradictory sense of devastating gratitude.surrounded by such sparkling abundance-this world : does not make sense