Desert Flower

“I didn’t expect you to come back.”

I handed the boy my shopping bag full of groceries including bread, lunch meat, and drinking yogurt.

“Well, I did,” I smiled. “So you told me that you would tell me why you didn’t want to come with me when I returned.”

The boy hesitated.

“You promised,” I insisted.

“I didn’t go with you because I don’t feel comfortable going in those places.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the boy sneaking a peek through the plastic to determine its contents. He smiled shyly. I handed the bag to him, then said goodbye and continued into town.

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My mind travelled back to the windsock dancing in the wind, alone amongst sand and distant blue waves, which were beginning to whitecap. Each individual strip of fabric was undulating to its own tune, but the collection of movements was all together a tune of its own, beautiful to witness.

As I was interacting with my glider wing, I noticed that when I was listening to, giving, and receiving with the wind, my mind was quiet – I wasn’t thinking! Mario later scolded me for that very point, saying that I missed the objective of the entire lesson and didn’t complete even one of the exercises that he had asked me to do. He asked me in a very frustrated voice what my goal had been out there, in the desert off to the western side where I had wandered, and I tell you now that no matter how hard I try to rack my brain for reasons as to why I did what I did, and forgot what I was supposed to do, I honestly cannot come up with any. I only remember feeling that the wind was speaking to me through the wing and when I genuinely listened, it danced with me. Whenever I became distracted or reverted to an automatic reaction, the wing dropped to the ground.

I was so focused on this interaction that I became oblivious to the direction in which we, the wing and I, were heading, or at least how quickly we were moving there. I remember wondering, “is this something like God?” as my wing filled with air and I responded with the brakes and A-risers.

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Fleeting interactions with Charles came and went. His communication was irregular and not always clear. I met his family in an outer suburb of Swakop; we had dinner and watched a movie together. Charles was silent most of the time and tended to avoid me. I couldn’t determine whether this perplexing behavior could be attributed to extreme shyness, general apathy, or perhaps even regret towards my presence in his home. In the end, it was I who lost interest in the whole endeavour of meeting with him and getting him to talk. Why should I try to force a situation into a direction it doesn’t want to go?

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My heart warms when I think of Nico, his wrench which he always carried on him (“because you never know when you’ll need one!”), the flower strapped on the nose of his plane with a :-), the way he always called me Milady, with a bow, our antics in the hangar practising our switches, watching a Namibian sunrise from above. I miss you, Nico. You understand what magic is and how to summon it. You do what you do because it is what you love and what you find to be inspiring. People judge and criticise you because they don’t understand you; their ignorance is illuminated through their ridicule. You, like so many other things I’ve discovered since I’ve been here, should continue to exist—and need to—because you make life beautiful. You make the lifelong daily struggle to find meaning worth it through simple (inter)actions that you may never know so greatly impacted another person. The time I spent with you was a wonderful gift and I will never forget it.

Please, Nico, continue to exist as you do.
Don’t give in and never give up.