A Stream of Consciousness Interlude

For months I have been percolating on this topic like a steaming cup of long coffee and feel that it is time to expel it on the page, if for no other reason that to take it off my mental docket. And while this topic preceded our trip here to the Ivory Continent, direct examples through experiences here have re-surfaced this thorn in my sub-conscious. Even by appearing here on this canvas reserved for African tales should be proof that it is in the right place, but forgive my temporary departure from tales of the open seas and (as my brother-in-law Eric so loves to refer to as) "mud-butt". We will be right back to our ooohs and aahhhhs of alternate world living right after this.

The weight of words:

As a writer, I am constantly challenged to give words their appropriate weight or sense of importance. Through clever combinations and previously invented punctuations I try to show just how affected we are by specific happenings and momentary decisions.
Example: Some things just need to be said and not taken with an air of significance like "take out the trash". That term implies nothing but a moment in time will be taken up by an act that nobody needs to hear anything further about. But take into consideration something like, "they truly have nothing". Same punctuation, same amount of capital letters, and read (probably) with the same weight as "taking out the trash". But here I ask us to look deeper-"THEY TRULY HAVE NOTHING"......This refers to people that we have seen here on this continent. People with no shoes, no homes (sufficed for the 5 foot mud structures with palm frond roofs), no experience outside a 5-10 mile radius, no reading skills, NOTHING, yet that sentiment does not get instilled with the passing comment "they truly have nothing".

Partly to blame is our rapidly spreading lack of attention. We are too busy to pay attention to the details. Just give me the gist.
We have all CAPS, but that just seems like I am yelling at you. We have punctuation like exclamation points, but by the time you see that at the end of a sentence you just wonder what you missed (you don't go back and read..you just wonder), and my "go-to" has been the multiple periods (....). This works but I am afraid of using it to the point of devalue)

Yesterday Kristen and I decided to leave the apartment on foot and blindly. With no direction and no destination it truly was the definition of adventure.
This got me back into this mental dissertation of word weight.
Upon reaching the gate that guards our compound we posed the culprit question-"should we go left or right?"
This is a seemingly innocuous statement with little to no weight, but feel again.
Whatever direction chosen could (and very well might) lead to us being lost in a foreign world among people we don't know anything about while traveling (on foot) further from the only safe place we have here literally worlds away from anybody we know. Left or Right becomes nauseating and the instinct is to turn around an go the 20 feet back inside.
But we didn't. We went left-and we had a marvelous adventure that took us 5+ miles from our door, deep into the heart of Nairobi, through 3 foot wide alley ways of vendors selling everything from grilled meats to hair washing, across 4 intersections of traffic that LA would be jealous of with no cross walks-in a ongoing game with cars of "our turn or yours?", across man made foot bridges over sewer water, through the brightest red dirt you have ever seen, under trees that had only been seen in books and movies up untill now with the most marvelously purple flowers, past people grilling corn cobs over coals for sale, next to men with business suits on our left and children with no shoes on our right.
All of this because we went left.
Now how do I give that square one "start here" sentence it's appropriate weight in words? Short of asking you the reader to SLOW DOWN and really read, I can just try different word combos and hope.

Sufficed to say, that today.....we are going right. Now think about that for a moment.