I want to touch her, where she is, in the distance, on the hottest day of the year. If anyone thinks it's hot here, & predictions are for hundred plus temperatures today, August ninth, then one can imagine what it might be like in the center of Africa, where a bag of ice placed on the table makes the sound of a bag of silver coins clinking. Up in the Lualaba Lakes district, the region is run by a Drunken King with red skin. Sun in August. Congo's a long way from the sea. It's going to be quite a while before this Red King is deposed by a cool black nighttime breeze. She has to go to the hospital today. We got that mask from Congo in Paris. I want to touch her, in that distance.

Just south of Congo, in Zambia, a woman has lain her sick infant on the ground, upon an animal pelt, next to a lump of chalk, which the diviner has used to paint circles around the child's eyes. The diviner sits on a stool behind a large wooden mortar, a metaphor for the womb, within which he searches with his hands, through stones & bones & feathers, from which he'll diagnose the problem, prescribe appropriate medicines. She's going in for ultrasound this afternoon. I want to touch her there, in that bloody heat, & unknown distance.