saturday night, light rain. a small gathering of uva alumni, only two of whom i’d met before, in one of the old black and white bungalows in wessex estate for a year-end bbq. (it is occasionally nice to be at a gathering of internationals where there is no america-bashing.) met an art historian, who had half a year ago relocated to singapore with her (also wahoo) husband. she specialises in​ the study of​ african​ art, particularly textile​s​, ​and had only just returned from her phd field work ​in liberia, where she documented the role of women’s art collectives and textile guilds in reconstruction economics, and the socio-anthropological aspects of collaborative art making and women’s communities. i feel slightly ashamed i know nothing about and in fact have never given a thought to art of this region, even though i think of myself as someone who love fabrics, yet despite this pang, know too, already, that i would not go away and educate myself. that when we met again i would listen again, attentively, appreciatively, with unfeigned but nevertheless transient interest to her stories, the way at conferences one inquires of new acquaintances their research focus, and listens, at the time, intelligently and sympathetically to abstracts of work in a comprehensible but unrelated field.

genially trivial conversation over dinner, to which i was only half paying attention. i was curled up in a wicker chair on the darkened porch, watching the fairy lights twinkling around the perimeter fence of the compound, lightly drowsy, half listening to the cicadas whispering, the light tap of rain on rafters. the human conversation around me had receded to background noise, and the embers in the bbq already out. i have been in similar black and white bungalows for the yearly wessex artwalks, as a visitor, but never as a guest in the home of a resident, so at home, at ease. the thought rises in one: could one but live here! and subsides: a pipe dream.