Scribbles

Grandpa

Grandpa, Uncle Bruce, and Dad built the 16 Wellesley solarium in the early 80s. Its tall windows and wooden beams extended the house to the backyard garden. Later in life, with pride, Grandpa would ask me, "Do you know who built that solarium?" He asked me the same question every time we sat together in the solarium.

I cherished thinking of Grandpa and his sons building together, so I played along with each retelling, acting delighted that my father knew how to hammer a nail.

A cassette player was in the corner of the solarium next to a large, soft armchair. Grandpa relished sitting in the armchair and listening to Spanish love songs. He would recline, sun on his face, eyes closed, and croon the chorus. I smiled. My Grandma rolled her eyes.

Hiking

As we huddled together in the dark expanse of the mountains, I thought of our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago sitting just like us around the fire.

Our mastery of fire was perhaps the first revolutionary stitch in a tapestry of human ingenuity that made life a little more possible and pleasant for the next generation. Our survival and ascendence were not inevitable and never straightforward; progress was painstakingly slow. For millennia, the defining feature of human existence was hardship. Until the 20th century, life expectancy was 32, and the third leading cause of death was a runny tummy. But the last 150 years have been, for much of humanity, something of a miracle. Revolutions in production, energy, and medicine afford us longevity and a lifestyle with comforts unimaginable just two generations ago.

What do we do with these miracles of comfort and pleasure?

We voluntarily walk 1.5K meters straight up for 4 hours with 20 kgs on our backs in the scorching sun in order to sleep on dirt and rocks in 5-degree weather for "fun". We then dare to celebrate snotty oats, sachets of Mexican tuna, flowery button-downs, and Cremora as heights of human achievement. We can do better, my friends. We owe it to our ancestors. End hiking now.

Prayer

Before takeoff, I close my eyes and say a prayer. I know when I die, we will meet again. Life is change. Life is movement. My identities — dad, partner, son, brother, friend — are momentary. The matter that makes me is energy. I appear solid and stable, but look deeper: I am frenzied motion, energy and emptiness. If anything happens, I will transform and wait for you. We will meet in another form, in another place. How will you find me in the vast universe? How will you know where to look? Your heart will open its eyes to the truth — we already exist as one.

Scented Memories

You said: The sky is Berlin blue in spring. The air is crisp, like London in March. I'm lost, but I hear our coffee pot hissing in the taxi's horn. The winter air smells of rosemary, honey, cassava. I see, Athina, as I stare at the white ceiling at 2 a.m. I imagine, a Serbian priest at the intersection. The hammock under the Frangipani is the curb we sat on at the world's end. I feel, the crest of a wave when I drive with the windows down. Every moment charged, with an electrical pulse of you. I remember, the colors, the smells, of Cape Town in the time of love.

Three Simple Words

My 14-year-old mercurial daughter has refused to say, "I love you," for 1,263 days.

Three simple words, but the three that count.

Every day, I declare, "I love you." In return, I receive only silence and contempt.

Good morning. I love you. Have a good day at school. I love you. Guess what? I love you. Good night. I love you.

Today, in the car, she was calm. Still. Listening. I praised her hard work at school. She didn't seem angry. I continued.

I mentioned her zigs and zags on the soccer field. I asked about her friends, her weekend. She was softening. We were connecting.

Finally, after 1,263 days, I saw those three simple words forming in the curve of her mouth.

"Father," she said. "Yes, daughter," I replied, expectant.

"Please. Stop. Talking."

Tidy Up

I declare, cleanliness is close to Godliness! It's one of the commandments, written in stone. By divine providence, Put your watermelon squish mellow on the couch. She rolls her eyes, Dismissing my command, And replies, with contempt: I'm more princess than Goddess. In the Kingdom on Earth, My word is law.

Tree Puberty

During a Grassroot Soccer workshop, we discussed where young men learned about sex. Most of us agreed, our (mis)information came from peers. One male coach said, "Let me tell you about the time I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. That wasn't the worst part. It was my first attempt at masturbating." The thing is, he explained, there was no privacy where I grew up, and my friend told me that the safest place to do it was perched on a high branch, where you can see someone coming from kilometers away.

When we get it right, Grassroot Soccer creates a safe space where you can let your guard down; speak your heart. Where you can tell a group of your peers you jerked off in a tree, without being judged.

Veeries

Veeries are small, elusive, olive-brown North American birds. Ornithologists tagged a flock with tiny GPS devices that looked like backpacks to track their winter migrations. It turned out Veeries like to travel. They flew 6,500 km from Newark, Delaware, down the East Coast, across the Atlantic and Caribbean, and into the lush Amazon basin of Brazil. Remarkably, some returned each year to the same tree in Delaware.

Over time, scientists noticed puzzling behavior. Some years, the Veeries migrated earlier, cutting short their nesting season, a risky move they couldn't explain. Eventually, researchers wondered if the timing was linked to conditions along the birds' route. When they compared migration data with hurricane records, a pattern emerged: Veeries seemed to know months in advance when hurricane season would be especially severe, leaving early to avoid the worst.

Miraculously, Veeries could predict the severity of hurricane season as well, or better, than global meteorological systems. No one knows how.

Walls

Big rocks at the base. Dirt. More rocks. Walls to hold earth and memories. Walls to guide water, this way or that. If I live behind a wall, let its gates be wide, adorned with bougainvillea, to welcome neighbours and strangers. We can sit and share stories of our grandmothers. Her Nanaimo bars at Christmas; divine.

Joe

Proprioception is your body's sense of position in space. Without you knowing much about it, your body constantly coordinates a symphony of inputs, information, and actions, sending a frenzy of electrical and chemical instructions to your brain and muscles so that you, with the grace of a drunken trapeze artist, lurch backwards and grab the handrail when you slip on your icy front porch descent. Or, in my case, fail to grab the handrail and slalom down the stairs on my coccyx, to never sit quite right again.

At six, Simone Biles, hesitant and shy, inched forward onto the gymnasium mat for the first time. A few cartwheels later, her coaches knew something was different. As she tumbled, twisted, spun, flipped, she was never disoriented and never lost her balance. Years later, the Olympic broadcast replayed her gold medal tumble in slow motion, showing the world that as she completed a pike double backflip — a move which no one else had or has since performed — her face was calm, with an expression of "isn't this a nice view" as she landed in perfect balance with a smile. Turns out, Simone's proprioception isn't affected by trivial matters, such as the location of the floor or ceiling; she always remains clear-headed and in control.

Like Simone, Joseph's athletic gifts were apparent early, though no one noticed. He was short and compact. By 10, his arms had little golf ball muscles, and his legs were wiry, full of fast twitch fibres. However, if Simone possessed a proprioception superpower, Joseph was the opposing cosmic force — a truth he learned on a Tuesday, after stumbling upon a group of bird children; a moment that turned his world upside down.

Joseph lived on a loud, dirty, busy street with all manner of human, animal and machine passing his zinc front door. Inside his house, it was crowded and hot, filled with too many people and not enough love. He had three triplet older sisters. Triplets, honest to God. They resented sharing a room with Joseph and were bitter for all the times, in his infancy, his needs caused them to miss partying with cute, older peers when their parents made them babysit. He reminded them they were making up for any forfeited teen romance with abandon, and without discrimination, puckering up for every neighbourhood delinquent destined for life behind bars. When he got cheeky with the triplets, they slapped him in violent harmony across the face. He never got around to telling them apart, and neither did his parents. His mother resented Joseph for his late arrival. She was fifty when he was born and tired of mothering, which she only did in short, punitive bursts. Worst of all, the doctor had called it a geriatric pregnancy. Or was it generic pregnancy? She hated both implications. His father was in his 60s when he was born and even more tired, though not from fathering. He was rather indifferent to his children. His parents did laugh a lot, but not as much as they smoked cigarettes and drank box wine. They always had friends over to play cards and listen to music, mostly 80s rock anthems. Joseph hated their music, except Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer, which resonated as a poetic description of his life. When his parents and their friends drank, which was nightly, they made Joseph abandon his homework to bring them Pringles and to clear plastic wine glasses from the table. These gatherings kept Joseph up late, ruining his sleep, and warping his dreams. He lamented that instead of chocolate bars or adventures climbing trees, he dreamt of rock stars in tight leather pants. Sometimes an anthropomorphic Pringle container would lip-sync the songs. After a few hours of stunted sleep, the neighbour's chickens and the street's motorcycle horns would startle him awake at sunrise, while his hungover parents snored peacefully. A 10-year-old needs more than a few hours of sleep, he would exclaim to himself. His life felt unbearable.

You know, the thing is, Joseph didn't single out for blame his vulgar sisters, indifferent father, and unloving mother for his misery. It was the cumulative ruckus of his family and surroundings. The constant noise, people, demands, smells, dust, and bad music had caused a condition called chaos brain. His brain was buzzing — a beehive, an ant hill, a Lagos or LA traffic jam of foreign thoughts for which he was not the author. He had not a moment of quiet. Even in moments of solitude, his mind raced. Not a thought of his own. Nothing original. His essence had been crowded out, and he couldn't stand being a stranger to himself any longer.

On a Tuesday, after a particularly rowdy 80s rock anthem themed party, he was exhausted, walking zombie-like with his feet dragging, the sun hurting his eyes. It must have been summer break because other kids were playing in the streets. He walked and walked, with the usual swirl of alien thoughts in his head. He must have walked for hours, ending up in a completely unfamiliar neighbourhood. He looked up from his dirty Converse All-Stars to find a small playground with patches of dry grass and soft earth. Just beyond the splintered seesaw he noticed an unusually large bird, that turned out to be a small girl flying. Not technically flying, but there was more space between her feet and the ground than he'd seen. She eventually landed on the soft earth. Then he spotted another bird, this time a medium-sized boy, who was flying upside down, then right side up. He noticed a whole group of these bird children waiting to fly at the far end of a 20-meter dirt runway. They had dug a hole in the ground and filled it with a rubbery old car tire. One after another they ran as fast as they could, pushed down hard on the tire, and were catapulted higher than three Billys stacked vertical (Billy was the bully in Joseph's class, held back five years running, and rumoured to be the tallest 4th grader in history). Some of them even twisted or rotated mid-air. Joseph must have been staring with his mouth open wide, because one of the bird children called over to him: "Hey you, stop gawking and come try. We're training to be Ninjas." Joseph was neither brave nor shy but was aware of his unusual athletic powers and decided to give it a go. He quickened his step and said hello when he reached the group. When it was his turn, his tightly spun muscles unfurled and he sprinted as best he could, tensing his lean legs as he thrust himself onto the tire. The children all squinted as they stared up at the sky, searching for this peculiar boy among the clouds. They spotted him flying high — at least five Billys high. A world record, at the playground at least. When he landed, they all cheered but were starving for more. After all, he was a stranger; if he floated away or was dismembered upon landing, they could get back to Ninja training without remorse. They yelled, "Do it again! This time with a flip."

Joseph had the general idea of a flip, though he had never attempted one. He ran even faster this time, throwing his full weight at the tire. He shot straight up, six Billys high, and at the peak of his flight, tucked his knees into his chest, flipping himself upside down. And that's when it happened. When he whirled around, the thoughts in his mind shook and then vanished, like an Etch A Sketch. He became completely disoriented — detached and disassociated from his thoughts and body. He flailed, and then plummeted to the ground, landing with a loud thud, his limbs extended in unnatural positions, leaving a deep imprint in the earth. The crowd made an audible ooh. Joseph lay still, staring up at the sky. Something was different. Everything was different. His mind was completely quiet as he stared up at the clouds, momentarily forgetting who and where he was. Yet he was filled with a feeling of peace and calm, and in the time before the children rushed over to him and the world came into focus, his mind was blissfully empty, and the momentary nothingness was glorious.

The children huddled around him, talking fast over each other. "We were sure you were kaput," they said gleefully. One of them was tugging on his leg in disbelief that it was still attached to his hip. The children were full of nervous excitement and awe, but Joseph's mind was elsewhere. In a moment of divine inspiration, he hatched his plan. He now knew how to set himself free from his alien mind. A drastic act that would shed his mind's old snakeskin: a pike double backflip. He was sure that would do the trick. A straight-legged double backflip would create a complete disorientation, a severing of the thoughts clouding his mind, a clearing of the fog, and in that empty space, his essence would arise. Like a wet dog, he would shake off his neurons. Only then would Joseph's neurogenesis begin, producing authentic neural connections, thoughts, a new identity, a new life. Joseph trained for weeks, night and day, rain or shine. In the few hours he was home to sleep, he cleared the beer bottles and chip bags and quickly irritated his sisters to invoke hard slaps, ensuring no one noticed he was gone.

After four weeks of bumps and bruises, of blissful but temporary emptiness, he was painfully close to his goal. On the 27th day of all-day training and attempts, a small brown garden snake carrying a bright green frog on its back slithered across his morning path to the park, pausing briefly to wish him a good morning: "Morning, Joe," they said in unison. Joseph knew it was a good omen. Today was a day for the weird and unbelievable. He arrived at the park especially early, with dew dampening the dirt and patches of grass, and no one in sight. He stood at the start of the runway, taking deep breaths and trying to feel his belly and chest expand and relax. He closed his eyes to focus, but instead only heard electric guitar riffs. This only fortified his conviction and fuelled his desperation. He let out a primitive, guttural growl, and set himself in motion. His arms pumped, the balls of his feet struck the ground as he raised his knees high and powered every muscle fibre towards the tire. He rammed his legs into the tire, exploding up, seemingly defying the laws of aerodynamics, and when he noticed the air was lighter and cooler, he knew he was at the top of his trajectory. He stiffened his body, relaxed his lower back, and moved his centre of gravity into a rotation. One rotation. Still in perfect form. He closed his eyes and tightened his core as he started his second rotation, and then everything went blank.

Luckily, one of the neighbourhood Ninjas had been sitting on their stoop eating cereal. She saw Joseph in the clouds and, despite her disbelief, witnessed Joseph's complete and perfect pike double backflip — which, as stated, is a monumental achievement in the world of gymnastics and Ninjas. She dropped her bowl, spilling milk and Cheerios on the steps, and ran to gather the other Ninjas.

When they arrived at the park, Joseph was sitting calmly on a patch of grass, smiling. "Joseph, Joseph, Joseph," they chanted. Joseph didn't know what they were on about, remembering nothing of his pike double backflip. He said to them, "Hello, it's lovely seeing all of you, but I've just had the most marvellous idea for a novel. I mustn't waste a moment. Goodbye."

Joseph walked away and the Ninjas never saw him again, though they kept his legend alive for many weeks, which is quite a long time in pre-teen Ninja mythology.

Joseph was gone, but in truth, he hadn't gone anywhere at all. His house remained crowded. The street was still full of dirt, animals, and machines. The music kept playing and the bottles still overflowed. What had vanished was the chaos inside his head. Joseph had his own ideas and knew who he was.

Conception

We ran towards a congested area buzzing with food trucks, fans, and ticket resellers. A symphony of vuvuzelas trumpeted through the cold, night air. Next to me was a blood brother since recess — a fellow devotee of the beautiful game, my best friend. We gawked at the grand, illuminated metallic calabash as the mass of 84,488 people inside it warped time and space, pulling the world's attention in. It was July 11, 2010, and we were outside Soccer City, in Soweto, Johannesburg. The 2010 World Cup Final between Spain and the Netherlands was kicking off in 20 minutes. My girlfriend at the time was already in the stadium preparing, with a hundred other dancers, to perform Waka Waka with Shakira and Freshlyground for the opening ceremony. In a section behind the goal, ten of my colleagues and 100 entranced kids from our programs danced and whirled like dervishes.

In the crowd of resellers, we tried to play it cool, but our faces betrayed us — desperation ran down our cheeks in beads of sweat. We had one ticket between the two of us thanks to my organization's work with FIFA. We needed a second ticket. We didn't have time for haggling, and the resellers knew it, extracting whatever fee was at the bounds of their morality. We paid $1,000 for a ticket. What a steal that turned out to be. As we raced to our seats, Hips Don't Lie was reverberating off the surrounding yellow mountain mine dumps, transmuting to a hymn as we sped down to our river to pray.

We entered the stadium just as Nelson Mandela, driven in a golf cart with his wife Graça Machel, made a surprise, triumphant appearance. Regal, donning a Soviet ushanka hat, Tata waved and smiled to the momentarily stunned and quiet crowd before thunderous cheers erupted.

In the 117th minute of extra time, Andrés Iniesta — a generational talent from the team I love, Barcelona — scored the only goal after a tense and fitful game, giving Spain its first World Cup victory. After, my best friend, girlfriend and I partied in Rosebank to the clacking of castanets in Sevilla, Catalan songs in Plaza España, and Basque cheers as thousands waved Spanish flags in the streets of Bilbao.

9 months later, at 5pm on March 18, 2011, my daughter Nilah was born.

It Was Written.

Devo

It's important that you understand the genesis of Deven's mistrust of authority. He was three. Playing with pebbles in the driveway, where my mom's aqua Ford Escort was parked, when I noticed scratch marks across the length of the doors. Deven smiled, rocks in hands (yes, rocks were children's toys on Marsh Rd at the turn of the millennium), as I looked in horror at the disfigured panels. "Deven, what did you do you little gremlin monster child?" "Nothing," he replied meekly. In my defence, it was never nothing. "Nothing? You ruined the aqua paint by scraping the car!" I yanked him inside, tied him to a chair, shone a desk light into his soft brown eyes and, now accompanied by our father, pressed for a confession. "Tell us what you did. Admission of guilt will result in a lighter sentence." "But I didn't do anything. I didn't touch the car," he replied. We persisted. The evidence was compelling. Smoking pebbles and a history of mischievous behaviour. We just wanted him to admit his wrongdoing and apologize. To us. To my mom. To God. However, at three, the essence of his personality was already present. He was stubborn and defiant. He insisted he was innocent, and only after hours of interrogation, with his stomach growling and me — his revered eldest brother — glowering, did he confess. He lowered his head, crestfallen, and whispered, "I did it. I scratched the car with a rock."

Later that day, when my friend called to say all the cars in the parking lot where I was parked overnight were keyed, I was horrified. I had forced my youngest brother to confess to a crime he didn't commit. I never forgave myself, and Deven would never trust authority again. He knew then, he'd have to rely on himself to make it in the world.