metal heart

2 safaris in Yala National Park this week. The first, a full-day affair with a honeymoonish Italian couple who delighted in The Nature, and each other, and didn’t tip Dinesh. My phone ( = camera) battery ran out just after lunch, basically the point at which the safari went from really good to amazing, with perfectly framed, close-range, gorgeous photo op after photo op presenting itself, and me, more bummed about it than I should’ve been - the single water buffalo wallowing in a gigantic mud puddle in the middle of the road, with the sun low behind her casting a perfect shadow of her entire head and horns in the milky brown mud; the Changeable Hawk Eagle sitting close by in an open flood plain of bleached white mud and wispy blue sky, surrounded by the white feathers and down of its prey, the remains of which it was eating with great relish; my very first sighting of the more rare Chestnut Headed Bee Eater, and so it went…these words now my album and archive. Also seen, a mama and baby porcupine, 2 jackals hunting (scoping out, not yet moving in on) a newborn water buffalo (!!!) getting licked to life by its mama, a trio of leopards (mama and 2 cubs) lazing and stretching in a tree, another leopard, very close, in a little glen just off the road, and much more.
The second safari, a half-day, was a wrist-slap - I almost didn’t want to go, because I felt like it would be Chasing God, hunting “lost opportunities” one should rightfully accept as gifts, not menu items… but I went… and sure enough, everything went just a little bit wrong, our timing was screwy, and none of what I’d hoped (in spite of myself) to see really presented itself to me. That said, it was a beautiful drive, and the park, stunning as ever.


Sri Lanka seems hellbent on teaching me about expectations and the letting go thereof. I recognize, and often truly appreciate, the lessons, but I can’t say I’ve noticed a sea change in behavior on my part! In fact, if anything, I think the continual stream of petty frustrations and disappointments, the myriad of things I have to talk myself through and/or down from, the endless and seemingly futile attempts to understand, and be understood by, Dinesh, have just collected, like little beads of nitroglycerine, mercurial, and volatile. ARK, who once was a jeweller, used to tell me that if you work a metal too much, it hardens and becomes brittle, as if it only holds within its molecules a limited, predetermined number of times it can be bent. Perhaps I too am made of such metal.
Anyway, in this Sri Lankan mirror, what is sometimes reflected back at me is not so nice to look at: 
I’m kind of a bitch! 
…who knew…?

(don’t answer that.)


slideshow 1: Yala - place

​slideshow 2: Yala - feathers and fur (& scales)

slideshow 3: yala - tusker butt flipbook