Pulling The Loose Thread

The flicker of fire coming from the lighter faintly illuminates the large interlocked stones that line the hallway of the elaborate entrance to Angkor Wat.  The light is just enough to see where we’re headed while also creating shadows that follow us through the ancient passageways.  While most visitors at this pre-dawn hour wait outside this 12^th century Khmer temple ruin in the hopes of capturing that picturesque vacation photo – sunrise colors cast behind the jagged spires of the temple, the lotus-filled pond reflecting a mirror image of an awe-inspiring scene – I and two other explorers creep through this ancient Hindu, then Buddhist, worship house. 

Our bodies hold a mixture of adrenaline and fear.  It’s exciting to be walking through these old halls; where yesterday, throngs of people filled the hallways and courtyards, now the only noise is our footsteps and the squeaks of bats flying in the dark above us.  It’s also a bit creepy; as I pass by headless stone sentries tucked into nooks along the hallway, suddenly appearing from the shadows, my mind wanders to imagine the activities taken place here over the past 900 years and the spirits that might be lurking about.

Through the entrance, into the main courtyard but still outside and just below the main temple, sky reappears above us.  I’m grateful for the space around me.  The sky is clear and still dark enough to see the stars.  It’s quite a view looking up, just beyond the spires, so close now, into the night sky.  It is warm; it’s amazing how much the stone surrounding us has created insulation from the cooler air outside the complex.  Despite there being no ceilings here, the stones beneath and around us have captured enough heat from the intense tropical daytime sun to provide a comfortable warmth well into the next morning. 

I find an old stone, a fallen piece of this ancient ruin, gathered together in a pile with some fifty others in one of the corners of the courtyard.  I sit, taking in the silence.  Even these fallen stones still show the work of the stonemasons, the intricate patterns and shapes etched into the sides of the rock.  The stone serves as a gateway for me, a connection to the past, and I’m awed that I am able to so freely connect with it, that it is not behind some glass in a museum or better protected onsite.  As I sit, I try to imagine the worker who chipped away at the stone and what that day was like.  Did they imagine someone sitting here, so many years later?

It is a special thing, to be able to enjoy this space, usually so filled with light, people, and noise, all to myself.  I sit until the sky begins to brighten, the stars begin to fade, and people start to slowly shuffle in. 

Angkor Wat Sunrise

The next morning, I am sitting in a café in Siem Reap town, the main hub for the many tourists that come to this part of Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat.  Of the many restaurants, cafes and bars that line Pub Street, the usually busy nighttime hotspot for visitors to find international food and some cheap alcohol, I choose a small place that boasts a socially conscious mission.  Joe to Go, the narrow two-story café with good food and a long history of decent coffee, is one of two entrepreneurial businesses that financially support The Global Child, a local nonprofit whose aim is to give Cambodian kids who would otherwise be begging for money on the streets the opportunity of an education. 

As I sit sipping on my Americano, watching the diverse array of travelers walk by on the street beside me, I write about my experience in the temple the day before.   A middle-aged man with no legs in a wheelchair comes in to the front patio where I’m sitting.  He’s selling books.  There’s a sign in front of the books written on a loose piece of paper.  It says something about how he’s a victim of leftover landmines from the war.  It is not the first time I’ve been put in this situation since being in Cambodia.  He’s distracting me from my writing.  I say “no thank you” and continue to look at my computer screen.  He eventually wheels himself away. 

Ten minutes later an older man walks in.  He’s only got one arm; the other is cut off at the shoulder.  With his remaining arm, he holds out a ratty hat by the bill, asking for some money.   I am starting to get annoyed by these ‘distractions.’  I look at him the eyes, trying to recognize his unique humanity, politely refusing his request.  The damage has been done though.  I can no longer think about my temple wanderings.  Trying to get back into the scene with the dimly lit hallways, the only thing that bubbles up into my mind is the emerging underlying story of my visit to Cambodia. 

Just four days before, our group had visited Choeung Ek outside of Phnom Penh, just one of many ‘killing fields’ that served as a slaughtering site and mass burial grounds for the 2-3 million people that were killed during the late 1970s Khmer Rouge regime.  As you walk around the grounds, bones and shrouds of cloth still lay in the dirt, rising up due to recent rains.  On the audio tour player, you hear the stories of survivors and perpetrators:  kids torn from their families, and witnesses to intense brutality; kids torn from their families and forced to commit horrendous atrocities.  Later in the day we visit Tuol Sleng, a former schoolhouse turned prison and interrogation center, in the center of the city.  Portraits of the men and women that passed through these cement cells on their way to the killing fields fill room after room after room.

            In the capital city of Phomn Penh, amputees claiming war survivor status sell books and other odd trinkets.  You might walk by them on your way to a sunset cruise along the Mekong River.

Siem Reap is no different.  You are confronted with beggars on every corner of the busy streets that light up with florescent lights at night and serve as a virtual ‘western’ town; where the only Cambodians are those serving your Mexican food or fish and chips.  Tuk tuk drivers are only too willing to offer you drugs or the company of young Cambodian women.

 As we toured Angkor Wat, I got to know our guide a bit.  He was born in 1979, the last year of Pol Pot’s regime.  He doesn’t know what month he was born in: his father died during the war, and he was separated from his mother and sister soon after birth.  Raised by some monks in a temple in the countryside, he doesn’t know what happened to his mother.  His sister lives far away.  This information is not part of the normal slew of facts he normally tells when guiding through these ruins.  It is hidden underneath the surface of this tropical tourist haven. 

It seems too easy to visit this country and not confront the underlying story of violence, oppression, pain and injustice.  As you are bussed from one hotel to the next, eat in one café after another, and visit world heritage sites and traditional dances, you remain in some illusion of reality, a theme park showcasing the beauty of this peaceful, exotic land and peoples. 

But the signs of a different reality are everywhere, if you choose to open your eyes and scratch just beneath the surface. 

My annoyance, I quickly recognize, has nothing to do with these people disturbing me from my journaling, asking for money.  My annoyance comes because they are confronting me, asking me to look at something that is filled with violence and pain.  They are asking me to deal with the questions of why this genocide happened here.  They are pushing me to question my current role in it all, as a tourist just passing through, feeding money to those that have enough power and resource to offer me something I might want in return.  How does my presence here contribute to these peoples' liberation, their domination, their pain, their sadness, their freedom?

I finish my breakfast and pay the bill.  The man in the wheelchair might have appreciated even a quarter of what I just paid for that breakfast.  I leave the cafe.  The sun is now high in the sky shining brightly, but my day is a bit gloomier. 

A Blurred Brush Stroke

          

Norris, yawning.
Big Cat Sanctuary, Addo, South Africa

TBB East
Coast Sand Dunes.  Addo

River Valley looking north to the Dhauladar Mountain Range
Palampur, India

Garden Terrace
Palampur, India

Girls in mandala competition.
MCS School.  Palampur, India

          

 Plettenberg Bay to Addo; Addo to Port Elizabeth; Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg; Johannesburg to Mumbai; Mumbai to Delhi; Delhi to Palampur. 

In just one week, we have traveled over the subtropical thicket and never-ending coastal sand dunes of the Eastern Cape of South Africa to the pine and garden terrace-covered Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh in India. 

We have gone from comfortable homes with all the luxurious amenities one could ask of a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom to the awkward complexities of an Indian home: squat toilets where bidets are more prevalent than toilet paper, different food with vibrant tastes that don’t always settle well in our stomachs, new guests in the midst of a seemingly chaotic ten-person Indian family. 

A little over a week ago, we were walking through townships with hospice caregivers visiting patients with chronic infectious diseases; today the students set out to five different primary and secondary schools, and will be teaching math, science and English to the Indian children in attendance there. 

A little over a week ago, we were on safari in South African bush, seeing the largest land mammal, the African elephant, rip thorny branches (we dare not touch) off of the bush with its trunk and feed it into its mouth just feet from our van window.  We were at big cat sanctuary, sitting just feet away from 2 year old lion brothers - the power and energy felt staring into a lion’s eyes in that close of proximity is indescribable.  If there is such a thing as an aura, I definitely felt the lion’s.  Today, we see cows dodging traffic as they walk up the main road, scrappy dogs nursing sickly wounds, intimidating red-faced monkeys leaping from building to building looking for any food they can scavenge, and all sorts of interesting birds:  green parrots; long, thin-tailed birds with yellow bellies, orange beaks and black backs; brown hawks en masse soaring over the river valley searching the landscape below for small prey. 

The thick South African English accent, somewhere between a mix of British and Australian, and the clicks of the Khosa language, have transformed into Hindi and the local Kangra dialect. 

We are situated in northern India, 32 degrees of latitude north, nestled between Pakistan and Nepal.  We have flipped somewhat equidistantly to the other side of the equator.  In South Africa, the cool, overcast, drizzly days were becoming longer, hotter and sunnier as we moved from spring into summer.  In India, the days are becoming shorter, as the heat and light of summer transition into what will be a cold and rainy winter.

Palampur stands in somewhat of a striking contrast to Jaipur, where we were for our Indian unit last December and January.  Jaipur was a large city, with upwards of 2.5 million people living in a dusty cement jungle in the middle of the Rajasthani desert.  Old castles and forts adorned the peaks of the blurry, fog/smog-filled hills surrounding the city.  Palampur sits at 4000 feet, nestled at the foothills of the Himalayas.  Behind the town, jagged, snow-capped stone mountains rise above the tree line and stand like cold, unemotional sentinels guarding the town to its north. To the south, smaller rolling hills disappear into the blurred horizons of the sweeping Kangra Valley below.  A large, boulder-lined river valley cuts its way from the mountains through the foothills creating a western border to the town.  Dirt and cement-lined irrigation ditches bring the fresh mountain water to the terraced gardens, canopy covered tea fields, and homes of the 40,000 some odd Indians that call this small mountain outpost their home. 

In downtown Palampur, the senses are overcome with the same infusions as one might find in Jaipur, but to a tenth of the degree. One, main, one-lane road cuts its way through the downtown area, easy to walk through in ten minutes.  Pop-up vending stands selling fried food and fresh vegetables post outside the shops that sell brightly colored cloths and trinkets and goods for everyday living.   The eyes take in the movement and miraculous passings of the cars, tuk-tuks, buses, and motorbikes, the constant movement of people snaking their way up the sides of the streets, avoiding getting hit, ducking into and out of shops, hands filled with food or colorful cloth.  There is the constant honking of horns, revving of engines, conversations loud and quiet, the occasional music of worship and praise.  One feels the density of things: people, vehicles, shops, trinkets and animals – you don’t realize you’re holding your breath until you’re out of the apparent chaos.  There are smells of sweets, fresh baked bread, urine, feces, incense, and the paradoxical naturally fresh rankness of the tea fields nearby.  You can taste the unfiltered exhaust, the delights of the sweet shops, the evolutionary draw toward the caloric, frying samosas. 

Though on a much smaller scale, as in Jaipur, the stimulation is exhausting for this suburbanite.  Retreating to the outskirts of town provides sensory relief.  Here, among the gold of former corn terraces, water rushes from a ditch to flood a terrace.  Once the soil is adequately softened, a cow will help till the soil, and beets will soon be planted.  The corn that was previously harvested from the terrace now lays strewn out on the front porch of the farmer’s nearby home, the red, yellow and orange husks drying in the sun.  Here on the outskirts of town, where the stray dogs scrap with local monkey troops and women dressed in brightly colored saris collect grass from the hillsides, I am whisked away to another era.  Just outside of the chaos of the downtown, time seems to have stood still for the farmers who support the growth of the county municipal seat. 

Beyond the outskirts, following the creeks and irrigation canals deeper north and higher into the mountains, I find the even deeper serenity that the wild brings.  Here, amidst the boulders, bushes and trees, I am transported to a place devoid of culture.  Humans have made no significant mark here, and the lack of sensory input from any human or human-made thing makes it possible for me to transport myself to the Sierras or the Rockies.  Were it not for the obvious ecological differences, I might forget where I am all together. 

 During the first several days walking around the rural fringes of the town, I noticed things that reminded me of my time in Yunnan, China.   Terraces carved into the hillsides with constant use over centuries have created the appearance of strong, sturdy earthen steps naturally carved onto the steep slopes.  The dirt paths that line the edges of the terraces, used to move between plots and to and from houses and town.  Corn, spread out in a single layer over cement porches, drying in the sun.  Small shrines scattered about the hillsides, constant reminders of the ties here between spiritual and physical labors.  Overall, I notice both agricultural and spiritual activities and a pace of life that, if not for the clothing and language and types of deities, would make me think I was in China.  After looking at a map and realizing that here in Palampur I’m actually further north than I was in Yunnan, I recognize just how much geography helps shape culture.  Despite the borders that separate China from India, there is an overwhelming sense that the these peoples’ connection to the land and to the seasonal cycles in these hilly and mountainous parts of the southern Asian continent ties them closer together than any political border keeps them apart. 

As for me, it is hard to internally track the seasons, travelling across oceans and many degrees of latitude over a short period of time.  My body, slowly tuning itself to the lengthening of days and the energy of summer suddenly must adapt to the early darkening and closing in of winter.  An internal cycle of life and death and the associated movements within us, something all animals have evolved with and adapted to as part of the natural rhythm of life, is disrupted.  This creates an uneasiness within during these very unnatural transitions.  My thoughts, emotions, and body fall out of sync. 

However, we are resilient creatures.  Time heals.  Routines set in.  With the help of chai tea and new friends, I slowly become present to my new place.

Confronting My Storybook Africa

In the spring of 2011, in a foundational Peace and Justice course, my Human Rights professor included a reading in our syllabus titled, How to Write About Africa.  The short essay, which first appeared in the journal Granta in the winter of 2005, was written by a Kenyan-born novelist and short-story writer, Binyavanga Wainaina.  The following is a short excerpt from that original essay:

“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.”

Many times since I first set foot on African soil last February, I have thought of this satirical essay.  Now, as I reflect on my recent vacation experiences that in many ways dealt with the very issues Binyavanga satirizes, his criticisms are even more pungent. 

I recently had the pleasure of breaking from my work as a gap year program leader for a week-long vacation in a region of South Africa known as the Transkei, or alternatively, the Wild Coast (I much prefer this term, as it allows me to tack this descriptor onto the list of exotic ‘coasts’ I’ve visited the likes of which range from the ‘Lost Coast’ to the ‘Slow Coast’ of northern California).  I chose this part of South Africa to explore based on the recommendation of Blue, the owner of the local Surf Café here in Plettenberg Bay.  Having spent the entirety of my six weeks last February and March wading through the stark socio-economic disparity between the comfortable resort town of Plettenberg Bay and the seeming disease-ridden townships surrounding it, I’d convinced myself that there had to be something more to South Africa. 

Blue’s tip that the Transkei ‘is a piece of Africa as it used to be’ found a home in my subconscious and struck a chord with my naïve images and expectations of an Africa the likes of which Binyavanga satirically warns one from writing about.  Even though I’ve been informed, through studies and conversations with native Africans, that Africa is a huge continent filled with numerous races, ethnicities, ecosystems and cultures, with conflicts, stories and people too numerous to generalize about, it would be dishonest of me not to admit that there is also an image in my head, bred into me since I first began hearing about Africa, of a place where black people live in the savannah alongside rhinos and lions, shepherding oxen and sheep with long sticks, covered by simple pieces of colored cloth, by night dancing in trance-like states around a fire to the rhythm of djembe drums.  I call this Africa my children’s book Africa.  Despite the knowledge I have gained of a mixed and varied Africa, and despite my most recent experiences in Plett seeing an ‘Africa’ very different than my internal storybook image, I must admit that a part of me still yearns to see this Africa of my youth.  Here in South Africa now for the second time, I went to the Transkei in search of this ‘Africa’. 

I spent the majority of the last week hiking southwest along the Wild Coast, from one lonely backpackers lodge to the next, passing through rural !Khosa settlements represented by pin pricks of colorful round huts scattered on endless green hilltops.  The wind ripped strongly off the ocean and over the hills, varying daily from my back to my front as I made my way, sometimes on a single-trek dirt path, sometimes on the sandy and rocky beaches below.  Humpback whales made dazzling displays consistently throughout each day, sometimes spouting, sometimes breaching with a huge corkscrew jump and splash.  The sunrises over the Southern Indian Ocean never failed to wake me from my sleep and lull me in a dream state to the cliffs to witness that celestial art display. 

Sunrise in Coffee Bay

Of the indigenous forest that used to cover these hills, adapted to the dry summers and wet winters of the Eastern Cape with succulent leaves and amazingly sharp thorns, all but the hardest to fetch in the steep ravines has been cut down for firewood and building material by the !Khosa people.  These traditional shepherds, who migrated south from the Great Lakes region of the Central-Eastern African continent, displaced the indigenous Khoisan hunter-gatherers and had firmly established settlements by the mid 17^th century when the Dutch arrived in the area.  Confronted by white colonists to their west and the Zulu people behind them, and without more land south to continue their migration, the !Khosa’s traditionally temporary settlements turned into permanent settlements and the result has been of an extinctive kind for the original forest.  The cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and donkeys that graze freely on the hills keep the tall bunch grasses which have replaced the trees and shrubs the length of a well kept soccer field, giving the hills a well-manicured look.  Each village now consists of a vast landscape of these rolling hills, bounded on either end by a river that eventually snakes its way to the ocean. 

Sometimes these rivers were passable on foot; other times I waited at the river mouth for someone in a rowboat to eventually ferry me across.  On one occasion, with a river mouth unusually swollen, I had to backtrack to the nearest village and find some locals to help me find my way across.  Upstream, the river divided into more manageable creeks, and I was able to hop across on some rocks.  I spent most days wandering down the coast by myself, the ocean on my left as my guide, passing the occasional villager and futilely trying to make conversation.  Kids would run up to me asking for sweets or small change, two of the few words I was able to make out during these exchanges.  The nights were spent at backpackers along scattered along the coast – I was usually too tired to make much out of the night with the few other tourists that managed to find their way to these oases of white comfort along the Wild Coast. 

Much to my satisfaction, on my last day’s hike, I was invited to sit alongside a group of women and children gathered outside their huts.  Curious to know what was in my awkward black traveling case, they were thrilled to hear me play some songs on the guitar that came out of it.  Although the older women didn’t recognize it, the younger girls definitely knew some of the choruses to Bob Marley songs.  In the 45 minutes or so that I sat with them sharing music, I was reminded of the universal language that music is, its strong ability to break down language and other cultural barriers and to share a common human experience in what otherwise might look like a meeting of two very different worlds.

Kumbaya my Lord

As I made my way down the coast, I reflected back often on the images of Africa that I came in search of, comparing my current sights and experiences with those of the preconceived images formed in my head.  Not that my quick passing through these villages would give me a fair taste of what life is like there, but from outward appearances, my ideas were being challenged.  The only people I saw doing any kind of work were those few men constructing or refurbishing mud huts, women and children gathering mussels and clams, men fishing off the rocks that jutted out into the ocean, and the occasional farmer tending his or her home’s small garden.  I was happy to create my own visual scenery to the imagery I’d been reading about in the book Sizwe’s Test, set in the same area of this country.  Conversations I had at the lodges at night added depth and understanding to my visual journey through this land.  The government pays a small pension to women who have children.  Most families now live off of this payment, and instead of surviving on subsistence farming as they used to, many families survive on mealie (corn) that they buy at a local shop, supplemented with any seafood they can harvest.  Even the cows that graze on the hills and rest on the beach are seen for their value as a lobola, or dowry from the groom to the bride’s family.  In this way, the cow’s worth lies in its ability to provide a wife, mother, and caretaker rather than as potential food, or even just an animal companion.  With each new tidbit of information, my visions of hunter-gatherers in the bush and drums around late night fires were slowly vanishing, being replaced with the seemingly slow, sedated life of the !Khosa people.

My arrival at my final destination, Bulungula Lodge, was marked by the crossing of the Bulungula River.  Being the end of my trek down the coast from Mdumbi, my shoulders heavy with the weight of my backpack and guitar, I was ready to rest my body.  Although it was still early in the afternoon, the nearly full moon was creating especially high tides that flooded what would otherwise have been an easily crossable, knee high river mouth.  I dropped my stuff on the sandy spit, stripped down to my boxers, and without second thought began walking into the river.  I managed to get to the other side without my feet ever leaving the sandy bottom, although at times the rising water came up to my shoulders.  Happy enough with the crossing, I swam back across to retrieve my things.  I took my backpack, held high above my head on the first go, finding a higher ridge along the bottom to follow to the other side.  On the second go, I carried my guitar, again high above my head, this time having to wait out an incoming wave mid-river that almost picked me up off my feet.  I was not to get dragged into the surf this time around - I made it safely across, my things safe and dry on the other side, excited for the next two and a half days to explore the coastline and community surrounding the small lodge that sits atop the bluff overlooking the Bulungula River mouth, growing much fainter but still beating in my heart the pursuit of my children’s book Africa. 

Bulungula Lodge on the hillside.
     I stayed in the second pink hut from the right.

I spent three days and nights at Bulungula.  My time was mostly relaxing and uneventful: much of it was spent walking the shoreline, picking up shells, laying in the warm sand where the forest meets the dunes, and watching the whales play in the near distance.  I laughed at myself, recognizing my privilege of time spent picking up empty shells when those I passed by were carrying loads of mussels and clams on their head after a long morning of foraging the tidal reef.  

On my last night in Bulungula, I found myself watching the sun go down below the clouds that had gathered, casting it’s late afternoon glow on the huts that adorned the hillsides.  At the fire pit just outside the main lodge area, there was a group of maybe five to ten youth of varying ages that had gathered on the benches surrounding the pit, some drumming, some just watching.  I got my hands on a drum and began to join in.  One younger teen with his cap pulled low and a cocky air about him was setting the rhythm.  He was one of the most talented djembe players around it seemed, and the respect others gave him easily showed.  With three or four of us matching the rhythm behind him, he showcased his talent, soloing on top of all of us.  I felt ecstatic.  Closing my eyes, I let the sound of the drums, all in harmonious beat, fill my soul, lift me out of my head and into a place, somewhere in the moment, somewhere in the clouds.  As the sun continued to set, various kids took their turn on the drums, all in one way or another amazing drummers in their own right.  I was impressed by almost every single one of them, thinking about another speculation of mine that Africans in general have great rhythm.  As the sun eventually went down, the fire was lit.  A small crowd of backpackers gathered at the picnic table just outside the lodge door, looking on and enjoying the music from a short distance away.  I was the only one staying at the lodge that had included myself in the drum circle.  As darkness descended, some girls made their way to the circle and began to sing. I couldn’t recognize the song, or the words, but it was beautiful.  At one point I picked up my guitar and added what I could of some melody to the rhythm.  We sat like this around the smoky fire for four hours that night, drumming, singing, and enjoying what we could share together. 

It wasn’t until the next morning as the sun rose behind me and I made my way toward the dirt road where I’d catch a ride back to the closest city some three hours away that I made the realization:  in many ways the night before I’d found what I’d been looking for.  Although it wasn’t on the savannah but rather on a hill next to a backpackers overlooking the ocean, and although it wasn’t on the earth but rather on a large concrete circular slab with a metal fire pit in the middle, my vision of black Africans gathered around a fire beating methodically on djembe drums while women sang repetitious melodies had come true.  I had found my storybook Africa. 

I can't say for certain why I felt the need to satisfy my preconceived notions, undoubtedly as stereotypical as they are, of Africa as I'd grown up imagining it.  Reflecting on the concept of nature being a mirror for the soul - that we notice the things we do while outdoors because our soul calls us to those particular things - I can't help but think that my internal landscape shaped what I'd seen and the experiences that I'd had while on my vacation.  I wonder how often we do this as humans on a day to day basis: to what extent do we let our preconceived notions guide our experiences, looking for signs and clues in the people we interact with and the settings we're in that allow us to defend the judgments we'd already made. 

Now, back in Plett, I understand a little bit more about these people that I visit in the townships.  Images of the Transkei enter my head as I sit with a patient in her 8' x 8' cardboard shack, the caretaker cleaning out a wound in her behind.  My experience has filled me with more sights and experiences to which I can add to the story of South Africa.  I understand more than ever how complex this place is, how rich its history, how varied the story of so many different people.  I understand more than ever that Africa is not a place that I can write or talk about with such grand generalizations; and yet, my night of djembe playing around the fire on the Wild Coast will no doubt live on, imprinted on my soul forever.