I want to add to the beauty.

Sometimes I rediscover what life is about and it is a pleasant surprise.
On Monday I drove to Belmont Street in Southeast Portland to a store called Anansi Beat.
I sat and I asked Nii Ardey Allotey, a 50-year-old man who moved to New York from Ghana nearly 20 years ago, to tell me stories from his life. We sat for two hours.
When I left, he gave me a hug and asked me to call or send him an e-mail if I had any more questions.
When I called the store shortly before noon on Monday, I was planning to ask him for an interview a week or so in advance. Nii Ardey invited me to come to the store as soon as I could come. Approximately 45 minutes later, with the help of my GPS navigation system and a journalist's adventurous spirit, I walked into his store and after politely introducing myself, I found it was absolutely necessary that I seek the comfort of a restroom. My plumbing system has been slightly unreliable for the past few weeks and I was nervous, to say the least.
After he showed me some "funny" videos on this crazy website called YouTube, we proceeded with the business of getting to know each other. I had not anticipated this, nor had I anticipated that I would receive a sincere marriage proposal.
An appropriate journalistic interview is a one-way conversation and it is purely informative. This was not the case. He was in no hurry to begin when I arrived, or for me to leave when I was ready to leave. We were accomplishing so much, even while we just were sitting together. It was obvious.
The first thing that he said to me was this: "The experience will change your life."
When he spoke about my traveling to Africa he said, "You will come back and look at people here differently."
At one point, he asked me if I liked blackmail. I laughed aloud and exclaimed rudely, "No!"
He looked at me with honest reprise and I bashfully realized that the real question he had asked me was, "Do you like black men?"
There are places that life is willing to take us, and we could never hope to see those places unless we let our souls be our guide.
It is so wonderful to recognize yourself in an unsuspecting place.
I saw a part of who I am in a weathered African man who was wearing a saggy sweater with a funny pattern, who owns a store where the heat was so hot that it felt like the Sahara desert, and who belly-laughed at the most unusual times during our conversation.