Did all that really just happen?

All that, as in, Africa.

From the Brooklyn Bridge, it sure seems like it didn't.

I've been in New York since Thursday. But I only realized that fact yesterday, in a way. Yesterday was tough.

I finally had time to be alone; Central Park. For four hours, without moving. Time to digest, mentally, all that has happened to me in the past year, all that I have seen, smelled, felt, lived. It wasn't quite meditation, but I sure wasn't talking. And I sure didn't feel all too connected to reality, as I peered through the haze into the faces of strangers, and wondered if they ever wondered. I was in a haze. It was overwhelming. It was a different version of reality.

The stimuli of a modern Western city are astounding. No wonder we're all A.D.D. Our very way of life screams at you to keep moving. With an exclamation point, keep moving! Skyscrapers and vast amounts of white people -- move! Cell phones and iPods -- move! Tattoos, honking horns, English newspapers, rude cashiers -- move, move, move! People, they walk by without acknowledging one another -- no time. A smile is a sign of weakness, or of stupidity, perhaps -- who the hell are you?

Giant buildings and edifices and institutions, they appear on the surface as grand monuments to our place in human history; they act as monuments to the greatness of our way of life. This is the end goal. This is why we promote development in the third world. Everyone, one day, wants to be like this, like us. A sort of concrete Garden of Eden. The skyscrapers are the trees of life. The monuments, they are simply testaments to our new covenant with the Creator: We are the new children of Israel. When I look at them, though, they seem as sturdy as paper, destined to come crashing down like a scene out of Revelation, minus the fire and the brimstone. If there's anything I came away from Africa with, it is a sense that the meek shall truly inherit the earth, some day. Even if it seems like the going can't get any tougher for people living in mud huts in the modern era, I have a quiet belief that when it's all said and done, those people will still be around when we're long gone.

If they want development, I think it's all well and good. I just want to make sure that the African people realize the pot of gold they're after, it doesn't bring all the answers. Nothing gold can stay.

But in the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself from going crazy. I need something to stabilize my emotions -- I just need to watch a baseball game, chill, drink a beer. I've never been to Yankee Stadium, one of those paper monuments I was referring to earlier. But I'm going tonight -- I've got two tickets to the Sox game. That should get my mind right.