cyril's musings

Squirreling away

2019-05-02T03:32:00.000-07:00

With Autumn upon us here at the Southern tip where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans merge, our Cape Town squirrels are busying themselves before the Cape's rainy Season sets in...

Summer shade
Winter cold
squirrels gather
in Autumn Gold

is the romantic take on it . . .

this is where my thoughts go, though!

I met a little squirrel, all sat beside my hat
he spoke about the Wirral and I of this and that
my thoughts were on his middle,
I cannot tell a lie!
me Nan's cast iron griddle, an Autumn squirrel pie

They're cheeky little buggers though.
Hard to catch too, and likely need a whole family to make that pie 🥘.
Put that way, maybe I'll just let them be this time😉

Lipstick on the Pig: Street art in Jozi

2019-04-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

Lipstick on a pig
and a jury that's rigged
a crisis you say? what crisis?

(covering the bleak walls of decaying buildings)
stirring words & slogans!
inspiring images of transformation and change!

(as the images decay and slip away
revealing unchanged beneath
cement and brick and fading mortar)

disguise
from our eyes
a State that's captured,
while taxes enrich the entitled

Imraan Christiaan does a lot of great work using his camera as a vehicle to further social change. So it makes a lot of sense to extend the reach of that work out into the wider community.

Putting them up, and then letting them wither and decay is, well ~ ironic at the very least. Grand ideas need grand actions, Grand actions need grand funding. If the best we can do is to send soundbites out to our community, and then let it all wither away, what does it say about our grand ideas?

Some say, put up or shut up.
I say, put up and keep up.
And then I say, put and build up.
It's in the doing that we build our nation, not in the speaking.
The doing and the spending.
We know the real intent of a Nation when we see how fairly it budgets it's income, and where it then spends the money.

Image (c) Author: Street art in Jozi, October 11, 2018

suddenly grown, endlessly growing

2019-04-10T03:18:00.000-07:00

Summer days dazzle as he dips
into her well of youthful vigour
it's only till he's grown a bit she thinks.
Somewhere within she knows:
her youth has bloomed
her once upon a times are faded:
uncertain futures dawn his every day.

Image (c) Author: Aug 31,2019

A day in the life ~ Victoria Yards

2019-04-09T06:07:00.001-07:00

Excuse moi? I'm trying to find my way to the ArtyBollocks! exhibition . . .

Take a badly depressed area seemingly with nowhere to go. Look around at it, and what are you likely to see? Nothing neat and clean like the little one up there showing me the way ~ More likely ruined pavements, yes almost certainly. Garbage piled up, overflowing into sewers and running across pavements. The primordial sight and smell of the homeless who have no access to sanitation and create nests and nooks in any space that provides a smidgeon of cover. The people who prey on them, and in the absence of policing, are now the landlords of whatever they seize. The few remnants of society who, through obstinacy or need have remained or migrated and are clinging on behind barriers of rusting barbed wire and burglar bars. Everywhere, overgrown grass, weeds and the remnants of abandoned gardens. That's what you'd expect.

What would it likely have going for it? Nowhere to go but up, for one. The prospect of inexpensive land with the potential of services that can be upgraded. The hope crime can be brought under control. The goodwill of the community to welcome it, if that can be gained. Maybe something can be seeded. Which is one reason why I’m travelling south to old haunts this Sunday morning. Besides, there's a touch of nostalgia.

So all of those thoughts, and more, were going through my mind as I dropped out of Hillbrow and travelled through Bertrams before swinging right down towards Lorentzville where a patch of the area near Ellis Park has been carved out for urban renewal and possible gentrification. I used to live in Bertrams when my folks first moved out of the ‘Brow to start a real home for our little family: Free Staters migrating to the big city to make a life.

The apartment block we used to inhabit is decayed, and as I drove past a mental feeling of what it was re-surfaced. Different now. Homies and their piles under the bridge, the garbage, broken sanitation and pavements, tough looking kids and the barriers their parents erect to keep crime at bay ~ all there. What else would I find? On that other side of the coin?

On Sundays it’s easy to find the Yards. The lack of parking signposts it. The pavements are incongruously taken up with late model cars leaving a little walking strip for their occupants streaming down towards entrances. Everywhere parking jockeys with Hi-Viz vests. Hmm. Good thing I know the area. I can inch through and find a spot near the Old Synagogue while everyone else mills around the immediate side streets. Up the rise, swing left and into a lovely empty side road, and there it is, the Old Synagogue.

Deserted now, but not quite abandoned yet. An electric fence keeps the vandals out, the powder blue paint is faded and the magnificent wooden doors sun-bleached and in desperate need of varnishing. Commissioned in ’26, nearly a century ago, its race has run. This area used to have a thriving little Jewish community, now an enormous mosque dominates at the end of the same street. Where there’s a place of worship, that’s generally the roots for community. In its own way, that’s a good sign.

I lock the car and make my way down to the Yards, picking my way past piles of garbage and taking in the sights and sounds of Sunday community. There’s a little stream along whose banks we wild kids used to forage. It’s been fenced off in order to let the water flow freely and uncontaminated. That’s another good sign. From the window of a car the fencing looks forbidding.

Up close and looking through it’s a different story. It’s also the boundary of the Yards, so I know I’m close now.

I’m here to see the ArtyBollocks exhibition, which is a fun concept with a darker underbelly. It’s in one of the converted properties making up the Yards, and I’m also hoping to meet up with one of the artists whose work I enjoy and persuade her to take a coffee & chat about her entry and the that of the other artists, and how well the idea has been realised.

After that I’m intending to roam around and see how an abandoned industrial estate is being transformed into a budding site for entrepreneurs: Artists (of course, they are always the first!) printers, manufacturers of this and that, foodies, studios and so on and so forth.

An immediate win! The gallery is right there by the southern entrance! It’s mid-day though and most people have decamped to the Food quadrant leaving the space largely empty. This is great for gallery viewing, but sadly the hoped for chat isn’t going to happen.

Anyways, I could move about the space as though I owned it (and of course did!) It also gave me the time to pause and detach the 3rd paragraph of the bollocks (which went to "intent") and see how close the artists came to mirroring it back thematically (you see how easily we start talking that way!); & that was REALLY interesting. Some of the artists seem to have treated it ironically/playfully, and others had taken the challenge head-on ~ a much more difficult exercise. I had a half hour or so of uninterrupted viewing in which to reflect on the more (to me!) interesting works. I also enjoyed the curator's role, sometimes placing artists work tightly bound and others letting works from different artists interact.

Right! Time to explore a bit, a slow walk around the studios and buildings, lurking in the background and watching as people looked over wares and haggled. The studios are often both the workplace and the sales point. When it works this works really well, and for many of the smaller enterprises this is the norm. There are three different kinds of spaces: Large barns with that typical flea market feel, small studios, and somewhat larger more retaily type spaces that felt as if the owner(s) are already well established, or have capital behind them. This gave a nice eclectic feel to the Yards.

The passageways between the buildings have been designed with the visitor in mind, with enough space to allow for an up stream and a downstream, with the space between the walkways and buildings taken up by gardens.

Gardens. That's an abiding impression I took away. The shopping and browsing and studios are definitely the key reason why anyone would visit the Yards, but there are other rewards for exploring the space. The gardens that proliferate around the buildings are both decorative and functional. Mixtures of flowers, herbs and vegetables make a great show and some of those gardens really are good enough to eat!

For the next year or so this site is a work in progress. Which means lots of empty building shells to explore, many buildings that have been cleaned and so you have an appealing "raw" feeling both inside and outside. You can look up and see people circulating and chatting in what anywhere else would be a derelict building. It's often like moving about in a surreal noir movie, but where noir has Alice-like become the norm. Beware the rabbit hole! and watch what you eat ~ one bite could make you smaller, another make you tall. Unlike, as Grace Slick sang, the pills that mother gives you, which don't do anything at all . . . Ask Alice, when you're ten feet tall!

Lots of nooks and crannies, interesting views, people popping in and out of corridors and stairwells, light cascading and fading. If you're an artist or photographer, a short lived opportunity. If you're an explorer, you can let your inner child run free. Take it all in before it becomes settled. It's like Maboneng, before it all congealed into solid spaces with defined boundaries and borders.

And the hope? what about that? The community? any clues there? Just this one, as I was exiting for the day and heading off to the Radium Beer Hall in OG. A little spaza shop selling everything from clothes to sweets and ciggies. And 2 games machines solidly taken over by the youf of the day. If we'd had them back in my day, Id've been found doing something similar.

But since I'm not, it was down to the Radium for Beer, Burger and solid Sunday Jazz.
I like the Radium, its got no airs or graces and is tolerant to all sorts. Its the kind of place that I'd take my mate Piotr to. He has Asbergers, a sort of high functioning Autism. The Radium's the kind of place where difference doesn't matter that much and mostly they leave you to get by.
Just don't mess with the Jazz . . . .

A day in the life ~ Navigating the Mad Giant

2019-04-05T08:46:00.001-07:00

It hadn't started that well.

Saturday coming up for one-ish and we think we'll drop into 1 Fox in downtown jozi and poke our noses about, pick up a pint & pizza and that'd be a nice way to set up the rest of the weekend.

We'd circled around in the drizzly wet heading for a parking spot I knew which was good on busy weekdays and offered free parking if you drink at the Mad Giant.

Only no-one had said anything to the parking jockey and he nicked a twenty off me which annoyed her because CLEARLY there were empty bays outside the lot. And a misty off-on drizzly which didn't improve the mood as we walked past the empty bays down to the entrance. A girl doesn't like her hair getting frizzy before the weekend has kicked off.

So you can't blame Mrs T-Potts because she offered a moment's pause from the wet and if there're two things herself loves its books and flowers. Even if the books were leaning over a bit. It wasn't the books or the flowers that delayed us though ~ Tea pots, Tea sets. and teas, teas, teas everywhere. A quick moment to catch breath and warm fingers and toes and plunge on became a drifty "oh that's nice", "what about this" "I really can't afford ..." (~ wistfully, that one!) and it was a good 20 minutes before we stepped out to head to the Mad Giant and his inhouse brews and tables.

Looking up bits of sky were visible and the light much brighter, even though the clouds had deepened to black and steel. That was a warning sign, should've taken note!

Now, I really like the Mad Giant. Fridays the team'd trail down from the offices and fill the bar and tables with chatter and work-related stories, slag off the bosses and wipe the foam from the mouth as the brew sipped down. By the time we dispersed the stress of the working week'd be dissipated and its all become good.

You don't notice in that atmosphere that really, this is a fine dining place, with fine dining waitrons (hate that word!) and menus. Something that's glaringly obvious when the place is mostly empty and the fine waitrons are amusing themselves ~ well somewhere. Still and all it's a nice place to look at, the high ceiling, the copper vats and pipes, wooden counters and benches contrasting with the fine dining tables.

So by the time we'd done that, and decided the food hall across the way was the answer, those black clouds had closed off the sky and the light outside had dimmed.

The sound of hail on a tin roof is very distinctive! and we knew as we stepped out under the afdak that we'd waited just a little too long.

So here we stand under that same afdak and think . . . "just a measly 3 meters or so from the warmth, the smells, the happy chatter in the food hall. Beers & Pizza! just 3 thundering meters away . . . " and then we lean back up against the wall.

Soggy underwear and squelchy shoes? somehow just don't go that well with beer & pizza. The gods will be kind. We'll get there soon enough.

and so they were.
and so we did.

And as we sipped the beer and piled into the pizza the thought was also that here's something quite fine about standing under a sturdy tin roof with the hail clattering down, waiting for that moment when you can duck across skipping puddles and torrents and into that warm waiting space. There's nothing quite like beer & pizza to restore the blood-sugar level, is there? Time enough for a little Scientific Research!

1992: midpoint of a crisis

2019-04-01T15:31:00.001-07:00

Anton Karstel ~ Untitled (1992) - oil on canvas

1992.

It's 2 years since the referendum in which White South Africans voted by a massive 80%+ to embrace universal franchise and consign (formal) apartheid to History's dustbin. They have voluntarily placed themselves in the hands of those they oppressed: the alternative of a spiralling police state had momentarily brought everyone to their senses. In 2 years’ time the first all-inclusive elections are slated to be held. Talks, negotiations, call them what you will - they are ongoing. A new constitution is seeding, but it's all terribly fragile.

We are at the midpoint in the changing of a nation. Those whose inclinations are towards Fear and uncertainty are frightened and uncertain. Those who have a natural optimism expect something better. Those with hatred stoke it. Those who seek power manipulate and manoeuvre. Those with things to hide desperately try to bury the past: everyone prays for Truth, Reconciliation, and a peaceful reboot. Those with the money and the lack of scruples take it and run, mostly to Commonwealth countries, the UK, Australia and New Zealand especially welcome the money and ignore the institutionalised colonial racism they are seeding into their own communities. Some parts of the country burn, others maintain their outward appearances: luck is a factor for the individual and his community.

It's 1992, and Anton Karstel paints this image of a person which perfectly captures the mood of all those I've mentioned, and many more I haven't. Does it matter that the person looks somewhat like a woman? No: it makes a perfect sense. Women in this patriarchical country have suffered under every regime. She becomes androgynous here.

One face rages or cries out as it stares at the abyss. Another gazes up and calls for help or searches for answers. Its one person, and we are all that person. It was a terrible time, a precarious balancing point with collapse on either side a terrible long fall into a nightmare future. What difference does it make if you fall into this side or that of a chasm? Blood does not care if it sprays to the left or to the right. Blood does not suffer: only people do, the dead do not suffer**.

We were all this image, yet somehow we made it through.
These days, things seem dark and troubled too, what with corrupt politicians, entitled free loaders and a whole new way to express prejudice. When it feels all too much, I pull up this image from my digital archive and revisit it. I'm reminded that nothing will ever be as bad as what we sidestepped, together, all those years ago.

** Robert Green Ingersoll (1883)
Photograph (c) the author: taken at the Pretoria Art Museum Oct 28, 2018; artwork (c) the owner.

Separation anxiety

2019-04-01T05:01:00.003-07:00

~ Separation Anxiety ~

flowered from a genesis is birthed a role
drifting away
fault lines now hold sway

Image (c) Author: Cape Town Waterfront Aug 28, 2018

a day in the life ~ Saturday morning at the Pantry Market

2019-03-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

After a deeply thought provoking walkabout hosted by the artist Robert Slingsby at the neighbouring Circa, I wandered over into the Keyes Pantry Market to give it the once over, it being new there and all. Lots of lovely little stalls, all in a carefully coded corporate livery and not at all like the usual little market stall places.

The people manning the stalls are lovely though, and the goods yummy and worth the trouble and expense. Frequented by the kind of people whose 4x4's traverse the urban landscape, climbing pavements for parking on the weekends and shuttling hockey sticks, cricket bats and footballs during the week. The clean middle to upper classes, if you know what I mean.

This place really works for them, and curiously I very much liked it too. Space enough to gather and chat to the stallholder, try some of the wares and not feel jostled and forgotten. The stall holders like it too, they can go to the loo and not worry that their goods will be stolen or mishandled. Sometimes less definitely is better! Especially if the less has enough to satisfy the need. And I picked up a really nice pesto for a friend whose cooking talents are legend. A win all round.

And that's how it was for most of the stalls, excepting one joyous little corner in the bottom section, run by Bilkees who is Creative director at KolorKids in Parkhurst. If you go to the Who we Are section on their website you will see the very image of a director gazing professionally back at you ~ "How can we be of Service, Sir or Madam?" But here, Oh here she was simply beaming from ear to ear as she stepped away from the weekday business to just have fun with the kids coming by.

You really do see people as they truly are when catch them engaged in what they love to do, don't you? If they weren't so old & ugly I'd have my kidz there too! (well, maybe the grandkids, one day. They, of course, are perfect!)

Do Vampires Fear Aids?

2019-03-29T15:53:00.003-07:00

Aids is only an existential threat to Vampires

Vampires
feeding on blood in the divided dark
dark shadows of a bloody night

Vampires feed and the body bleaches
cold and pale in still moonlight
withering and dying in day made night

For all the shadows of darkness
the fear inducing night
mothers must as mothers do
bring calming light
to nightmarish flight

Aids thrives only in darkness
in the shadows of fear we hide
Bring sunlight to your fears!

Sunlight on mental darkness
Sunlight on a great divide

The cure for HIV-AIDS begins in the community. It starts with those who are healthy, not those who are sick. We who are healthy should not - must not - no, must never drive the sick into the darkness of fear and retribution.
That is the beginning of a Great Divide. Sick people are not vampires to be sent back into the Dark. Let them come out into the sunlight, for sunlight on a problem is the first step towards remediation, and the most important one. Anti-retrovirals are the tools, the community is the framework within which it can operate best.

If you have it, or suspect you do, or know someone who might ~ remind them, remind yourself: there's help, & hope and a life waiting to be lived. Bring it out into the sunlight and away from Dracula's shadow.

the image© is a detail from Blessing Ngobeni's 2018 acrylic and collage on canvas "Everyone is a VIP" ~ an apposite title for this theme.

The Fates: What lessons do the Ancient Greek Sisters have for us today?

2019-03-25T14:36:00.001-07:00

The sisters ponder on and weave the tapestry of a life *1

Read from ...

Lachesis
Chlotho
Atropos
Conclusion

The Ancients believed the three Fates had roles at the start and ending point of their lives, and at the various crisis points. They were the mistresses of the mother thread in the life everyone, both gods and humans. Is there something to learn from it today? That's the topic of this blog post. Let's kick off with a brief summary of who they were. Looking at the image, we see

Lachesis (the assigner, sitting at the back) she decided how long you would live for;
Clotho (the spinner on the right, that's the thread of your life she's pulling on), Clotho spun the story of your life and intervened at critical moments in it; and
Atropos ( on the left - the 'unturnable', preparing for the moment when she will cut off the thread) she also ensured that you never deviated from your fate.

Each of these women acted independently from the others, i.e. they could not influence each other's actions. No doubt, being women they likely gossiped about our foibles, but at the key points they acted on their own volition. No court of arbitration. No appeals. Dice rolled, wheel of fortune spun, now get on with it. You wish our leaders could act with that sort of firmness and decisiveness!

How might this work then? and what value did people get from the process? Why were they so accepting of it? Let's do a plain language, somewhat allegorical deep dive into it.

Lachesis

She had a rod which she used to calculate the length of your life. Your life would be spun on a spindle, so her measuring rod was used to determine how much thread is allocated to you. Think of it this way ~ every heartbeat is a stitch, and when all the thread is used up, your time has come.

Freedom from the fear of death
You might say that there doesn't seem to be much value in that! Not so. The ancients were very pre-occupied with the reality of death. Life was uncertain, and death or misfortune could strike at any time, from anywhere, without warning or mercy. Much like today, in fact ~ only we put it to the back of our minds. Modern life insulates us from death until it strikes those around us, and then we are overwhelmed by it. Thereafter it haunts us, a silent breathe on the nape of the neck.

Lachesis takes this most primal of fears away: this fear of dying. Since our days have been numbered, down to the last second, they were able to live life fully and without fear. You're going to die when you're going to die, whether you act with cowardice or courage, with honour or deceit, so you're free to live your life to its allotted span. At the end of your days you will be remembered for how you lived, and for nothing else. Your legacy is in your own hands. This is the promise of Religion expressed in a different way: both view death as a portal rather than as an ending. Both offer a means to immortality.

Having done her work she plays no more part in our lives: Easy job. Some goddesses have all the luck! Look at her up there with her chin in her hands, chatting about this or that while the other girls do the hard yards.

Clotho

She has skeins of twine with which to weave your life's story around the mortal thread. Not forgetting a spindle and a needle to do the weaving with.

Imagine it this way. You're living your life, and unbeknownst it's been recorded on a tapestry which can be seen by those who have sight of it - not mortal people, of course! but by those who'll judge you one day and call you to account. We have come to a Big Moment waiting on a Big Decision. Maybe your relationship with your partner has soured. Maybe chance has brought someone new into view, and temptation beckons. What to do? Well, let's see …. hmmmm. Divorce, that's an option. Murder. An Affair (sounds exciting!) Couples Therapy? Maybe do nothing (because doing nothing is a choice with consequences!)

Knowing you (as Clotho does, she's been weaving your life's story since birth!) she knows what you would do in the event of each decision, and so she weaves a different path for each choice: one that you will be fated to follow once you've made up your mind. Beware! The law of unintended consequences always applies. Clotho is also the Goddess of Chance. She (metaphorically speaking) spins a wheel of fortune and let's that influence her weaving. And so Murphy's Law was born . . . . .

Let's think about this for a moment. Your life now comes down to a cycle of issues and events that lead up to a decision point. It's your decision, no one else's. You could get someone else to decide for you, but again that's what you chose. Having made your choice you're committed to follow whatever transpires. Once begun Divorce follows its path. You can't undead your partner once the murder is done (or attempted.) There's a process waiting, with police, judges, jails and who knows what else. The affair, well that could go anywhere! And not all of it to your liking either. Doing nothing will most likely lead to a deepening of a poisonous relationship steadily souring two lives. More if there are children or other dependents in the equation. Maybe couples therapy would've been a good choice after all . . . committed couples therapy, that is.

You live your life, you're confronted with choices, make them and then you're on an irreversible path. Nothing much has changed in 5000 years, has it? To live well you must choose wisely. But wisdom is not given us, it is acquired through our life's choices and reflections: we are iron hoping to be forged into steel in the furnace of life.

Atropos

Atropos has a pair of shears, probably better to think of them as scissors, these days. They never had modern manufacturing plants. The modern Atropos probably dresses like a Goth and has a range of really cool scissors in her hand bag. And hates her parents & siblings (careful dears, those scissors have purpose!)

So what's her role then? Keeping the end in mind, once the length of your thread has run out, she makes sure to cut off any that might somehow have remained. She cuts off the thread and so ends your life's tapestry simultaneously drawing an end to your life.

She has other duties during your life. After her sister has woven the possibilities, Clotho steps away. Atropos waits until you choose and then cuts off the ends of the lives you chose against. These are your ghost lives, shadowy possibilities of might-have-beens irrevocably pruned and composted.

There is no value in the moment of cutting, the value comes later in self-reflection and awareness, if you choose to make it so.

Wisdom begins here, because as we reflect on the lessons of our choices, and ponder our ghosted lives, so we start on our journey towards it. We come to understand that the Wisdom of our mentors and influencers are their stories partially realised in ours: the contexts of our own lives might differ, but human emotion, honour, morality and ethics and their opposites are eternal. To become wise we take the wisdom of the past and adapt it for the present, and then hand it on to the future.

So what is there to conclude?

That the process the Fates followed are a mirror of our own lives maybe?

How will your tapestry look, laid out at the end of days?

All your struggles and choices laid bare:
a legacy built from the ugliest clay in a life well lived,
or one torn down from a golden plinth?

We know and understand so much more, yet still our lives are woven under the influence of random chance and in the midst of mindless chaos, and here's the only difference between then and now: The Ancients had an external force to blame for how their lives unfolded. We can own our lives.

*1: Public domain image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

I don't live to assuage the guilt of the dead

2019-03-19T13:39:00.001-07:00

In the moment of change
its not for the last
nor for the least
not for the next
or even an act of contrition
or a longing for redemption.

sourced from what I know
and've learned about myself.
insight,
absent of guilt,
in a moment of realisation
brings a dawning awakening light

knowing how it ripples
as tiny droplets do
rippling across my memories
each ripple washing a neighbour
in waves moving over and on.
each drop is driving a difference
a necessary needed difference
steering in some small measure
an outlook and new perception.

another droplet will fall
fashioned in its moment to be
another and then another
driving the changing me.

this is no river of tears
it carries no retribution
the past is not assuaged
no garden of Eden intention.

this change is a gift to my future
and a possible gift to yours

All images copyright (c) the author

this thought

2019-03-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

as my ego fades

this thought

Sometimes
as the mind slips to a tipping point of emptiness
a thought starts to surface about me
and then of you.
And other times its you first, and then me.

9Jan14

Image (c) Author: Woodstock graffiti

all the pointers they have shown

2019-02-23T06:06:00.001-08:00

all the pointers they have shown,
that you & I need time alone ...
(our busy lives are just a cover to keep ourselves one from the other)

not just each other!
a busy life will keep away the mortal truth of life's decay
I'm fine just me!
I'm free you see!
Let's make a date!
what's that? too late?

There's duty & things that closeness brings
...
take response a bility
some account a bility
selfish gene a gility
...
well then ...
Let it not be.
not you, not me.
we'll always find another!
and yet . . .
and yet, never to another.

Oh hell.
Just use me when you need me, find me when you will.
my shadow's there beside you, a shadow there until
there's no one else to need to
or the minds have lost their will.

Image (c) Author: Woodstock graffiti

me without you without me

2019-02-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

Me without you is a still wind in a cemetery
a headstone without words
an ending without beginning
a living unknown
a falling suspended.

begun unseen ended
darkness in sunlight
heartbeats distended.

Me without you is a midnight extended

dawning to sun-setting
a dream.

Othertimes.

othertimes me without you feels no better than any other combination that has me in it without you.

Image (c) Author: Woodstock graffiti

April 5th, 1986

2012-04-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

Last year it was 25 years since my mom passed away
25 years!
Now its 26.
A tiny pang under a fading scar
sharp and unexpected
liquid and deep
gone before I could find it
pick at it
scratch it
make it bleed.
I would have liked to savour it
But it retreated too quickly, back into my flesh.
Who would have thought,
After all these years,
I could still miss her?
Who would have thought

Keats, 2 Odes, and 2 Things to avoid in Relationships

2012-02-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

Most of us struggled with poetry in school.
So much heavy lifting, and really, all the poet's saying is "I'm feeling depressed because the girl doesn't fancy me any more". *sigh*. *deeper sigh* "Anyway, I'll keep on loving her and then maybe it will be all right or I'll just end it all" *deepest sigh of all*.
All pretty straight forward, now let's get Adele to set it to music and we can all listen to it and Feel Deep About Life and Stuff.

Sadly, the academic world doesn't want you get down to the guts of the matter, they want you to be intelligent about it. Never mind about them, I ended up liking Poetry despite the best efforts of all those Teachers.

Let’s talk Keats and Relationships instead

Its 1819 and Keats is struggling with the idea of Beauty.
As life and chance would have it, he ends up in the London Museum in front of this great big vase with a number of scenes engraved on to it. The Grecian Urn. He walks around it, and there's a scene from a hunt, another of a bull being led to sacrifice and then there's a young man promising love, life, and the pleasures of the body to his girlfriend. This is it! Beauty! Everlasting, unchanging! A frieze perfectly frozen for eternity!

But then he has an oh-oh moment. He changes his mind about this Meaning of Beauty thing, because - well basically because there is no fulfillment. The hunt will never end, the bull remains unsacrificed, the couple never get it off. So, like - hey, what's the point? It’s all an abstraction and we get stuck in that moment and ... who needs that?

This depresses him (as most things seemed to) and he is left with no answer other than that it is what it is. After a Great Deal of Agony he writes his Ode to a Grecian Urn.

Some time later (weeks/months/days?) he is sitting in the park in this state of depression when he hears a nightingale sing. The song is so real, he finds himself so moved by it that he is convinced that he has found the Meaning of it All. But, oh-ho. (there's always an oh-oh when it comes to Keats). Oh-oh ~ it dawns on him that the bird can fly away, leave him, drop him back to the place he came from. Like any number of girls I have known, this bird can fly. And so he pens his "Ode to A Nightingale".

So,
what do we learn from this?

Don't be his Grecian Urn ....

What is it with some people that they want you to be stuck in that time zone when they met you, only stripped of everyone else who was in it? What is it with them? While they carry on living and changing and growing, the only thing you are allowed to be is congruent with them. Which is another way of saying it's OK for them to have careers, find new challenges, friends and so on, but your role is to adapt to them and Stay the Same as when We Met.
Be the Muse.
Like I want to live the rest of my Life as your Muse?
We all know what happens to the Muse 5 years down the track ...

Why are you so Afraid I'm your Nightingale?

There's something so wrong in the idea that if I meet new people, build a career, go ANYWHERE without you that I'll turn into a nightingale and take the song away forever. Where do you get such a low self-image? Trust me, if I'm going to hop off, fly away and never come back to the nest it won't be because we're not permanently joined at the hip. To the contrary, joined to your hip is the best way to lose my song.
And I happen to like my song.

A couple grows together, or it grows apart: that's the homily ~ but the truth is we all need space to grow ... so let's take a message from Keats and his struggles with Beauty:

Being someone's Grecian Urn - not on. Get out of it! It's dark and lonely and sad stuck inside a Vase, no matter how beautifully its engraved; and,
If you're being treated like a Nightingale, then it’s probably best to fly away before your wings are permanently clipped and you find yourself in an iron-clad, not-so-gilded cage ...

You deserve better.

Sadly, Keats himself died shortly hereafter from Tuberculosis, lost in love to Fanny Brawne.
But he left us a legacy, and an unwitting message for Relationships in general.

All images under wikipedia's Wikimedia Commons

A Day in the Life: The passing of the Boekehuis

2012-01-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

Champagne and Cake, Goodbye and Good Luck

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til it's gone" **

The Boekehuis has closed, it's gone: Goodbye.

It's passing will be mourned for many years to come, not only by those who visited it regularly, but also by the occasional visitor, looking for something specific. I can picture them arriving, and then wondering "Now where on earth are we going to go?!"

There is a distance between author and audience that's rarely narrowed. The commercial imperative of a book signing, the hidden agendas of TV and radio interviews ~ these create and maintain the distance.

If you dropped down the hill from Melville, travelling along Lotherbury Avenue, then turned left at the first traffic light, you would have found yourself at the Boekehuis. For 12 short years, this is the place that you went to if you wanted to narrow the Gap. Most Saturday mornings between 12:30 and half past one, and often well beyond that, the Boekehuis played host to an array of South African talent and their works. And yes, they sold a lot of books afterwards; but not because of hype: no, you bought them because you understood enough to know that you really had to have them.

The formula was simple and straightforward: a 10 to 15 min reading from a particular work, followed by a panel discussion, then an open discussion with whoever was in the audience. The audience was not chosen, the agenda was not fixed, and the interaction between all the people there spontaneous, revealing, often deeply insightful; but never trite, commercial or (most important of all!) boring.

There were special occasions ~ a conversation with a person or group whose work and life had contributed in some meaningful way to the enrichment of the South African landscape: Politics, Art, the Struggle, Literature, or even just Social engagement.

How do I explain the experience? There is so much to be gained by sitting in a small room crammed with deeply interested and engaged people and listening and understanding what drives them to do what they do, how this has changed them and the communities that they live in, and then seeing how this played out in our own lives.

But the space itself is not enough.
The intention, no matter how well conceived counts for little unless you have the right people driving the process through. Rudyard Kipling has his Roman General say to his two young lieutenants "It is always one man's work—always and everywhere!" – before giving them the impossible task of defending the Wall from the Barbarians.

For these last 12 years, this has been the work of an extraordinary person~ Corina van der Spoel is an artist at getting the most out of people: persuading them to take the brave step of engaging directly with a spontaneous, critical, and sometimes aggressive audience. And then ensuring that the whole process is rewarding to all the stakeholders, prompting questions, stepping back when needed, and engaging firmly to keep the conversation at its best level.

Corina keeps a watchful eye:

standing, as always, and

ready to step in when needed

There is a peculiar talent that some people have, of being able to lift or lower their conversation to the level of the person they are talking to, so that the person feels its all about them, that they are being heard: and so they open themselves up. Corina has this knack, whether it is the author, the panelists, or the audience. No matter who you are, you feel you have a voice, and its a valuable voice.

Drive, energy, commitment: a large network of people whose lives have been touched directly by her; the demands to take forward some new project will come streaming in from many sides. I should say her difficulty will be in choosing between opportunities, not in finding them.

I'm not sure what persuaded Nationale Pers/Media24 to bring the project to a close. Maybe the economy is biting too deeply. Maybe they think it's not part of their core business: maybe, maybe, maybe. Who's to know?

What I do know is that so much of what I have absorbed about South Africa, its culture, its people, its failures and successes has been given context from the understandings gleaned from arbitrary Saturday mornings, listening to people who have researched our world, reflected on it, or merely speculated. From the funny to the serious, I will miss them all. Let me say this: for a while I became somewhat reclusive: the only place where you would find me out and about would be the occasional visit to (where else?) the Boekehuis: at 12:30 in Auckland Park for an hour or so, before slipping back to my hidey hole.

Now, like Joni Mitchell, at last I know what I've had.
And that it's gone.
But unlike the singer, we are the richer for the experience: and we can ignore the parking lot :)

All Images copyright © the author
** From Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi Cab song

A Day in the Life ~ My one wish for Rosebank

2012-01-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

It's a short walk from my apartment building to the Rosebank mall.

It's a particularly rewarding walk on a late Sunday afternoon.
Especially in spring and summer, when the jacarandas are either in full bloom or bursting into a canopy of spring purple. Stretching from either side of the street and touching at the centre they drop just enough dappled shade to soften the Highveld sun.

I couldn't help but compare it to the other malls that I spent most of yesterday fruitlessly travelling backwards and forwards to while I hunted down a decent Bluetooth mouse. The biggest of them all, the Sandton mall, well you'd expect it to have everything, wouldn't you? Not a chance. Lots of the same stuff in a hundred and one different shops, just different markups, different salespeople, different storefronts. But that's another conversation for a different time!

Aside from Rosebank, there's not a mall that you can get into without going in by car. Even the short walk from the high-speed Gautrain terminus to the Sandton mall is fraught. There, even the pavements disrespect feet! They are small and cramped, often dirty and populated by the people who keep the place working, not those who shop in the mall. No, you wouldn't see a consumer (with or without kids or partner!) walking along those pavements. Its a place of work, not a thoroughfare for shoppers. Shoppers enter by way of the car parks ~ pavements are for workers or people who can't afford cars.

These malls are built like fortified cities: Everything from tasteless Tuscany to faux Tudor, and not forgetting the gleaming blandness of glass and steel.

In Rosebank, however, feet are respected. Its pleasant walking there, and no great shakes going home either:

All the major entrances have wide avenues and open doors expecting people to come in from the surrounding suburbs, hotels, and B&Bs. Residents of the area can walk from one tree-lined avenue into the mall and then right across into another. The open-air restaurants, cafes, and sidewalk coffee bars are open both to the sky and to the avenues and walkways that lead to them.

So, if I have one wish for Rosebank, it would be this: that developers will always remember that people are more important than transport, and make sure that all of the people who come in by car or rail do so in a way and using routes that leave the rest of us using pavements that respect ordinary people's feet :-)

There is nothing more satisfying than being able to stroll up into the mall, have a quiet a cup of coffee, drop in to the grocers, or supermarket, bookshop or store and then stroll on home in quiet of the evening.

Please don't change it until after I die, no, definitely not a moment before!

all images copyright (c) the author

A Day in the Life: a Monster Muscles in

2012-01-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

(click image to enlarge)

There's an old Saying that goes ~ you can take the country boy out of the farm but you can't take the farm out of the country boy.

Johannesburg is a Mining city. The City has left the mines behind now, but you'll never take the Mines out of the City. A place is being prepared for this big fellow. He's 80 tons if he's a penny weight, in fact he's so heavy that they had to build a special foundation for him to rest on.

He's arrived early, before the area has been cleaned and the sign erected ~ but what would you expect? When they found gold here, they didn't wait around for the town to form first. Oh no Sir, they just got in there and started digging. Who arrived early went away rich, who arrived late never ate.

That's about the sum of a mining town, and it hangs around for only as long as the gold can be scratched out. But this one didn't hang around and die the death of ghost towns the world over: oh no Sir.

Oh no Sir, it sprawled and bawled and went on to become the Financial bully of Africa, the biggest city not on running water: and along the way (by the way) built the largest man-made forest on the planet. It's a city now, but its still a mining brawl at heart. The mining spirit and culture will always be found here. we don't hang around and wait for the world to decide. We move on and make things happen.

So when I stumbled on this monster muscling in down at the end of Anderson, well I thought to myself, that's just about right. You have to be tough to live in Africa. You have to look out for yourself and your community, because this is not a world of soft pastels and gentle rains. When the rain comes it crashes down, and the thunder and electricity reminds you that you are alive. Even the 6 day Peach rains have that edge to them.

Its a rough and tough area that he watches over, and its a rough and tough city that welcomes him. But walk a short distance East and you will find the largest Financial institutions in Africa, and due North are the Mining Houses that kicked it all off. And just to the left: the Magistrates court. Just in case anyone gets the wrong ideas about whose the who in the zoo. Or veld.

Don't you just love this city?

All images (c) the author.

A Day in the Life: Window Boxes in the City

2012-01-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

Its a long steady walk up Ferreira street from 45 Commissioner.

Its a walk I do often enough, several times a week, and its always a there and back between 45C and the Simmonds street Superblock complex. To the left and right are the magnificent Anglo American buildings ~ some built in the earlier part of the 20th century during the Oppenheimer hey days: low and powerful and redolent of the Mining Magnates who once held sway in downtown Joburg; and one at least, to the left, the stunning Anglo Head Office structure built in the late 80's shows the shift to corporate respectability.

Normally there's not much time for reflection, you head on as quickly as you can because at the nether end of each trip is a meeting room and a waiting group of people. I could take the shuttle bus: but unless I have a laptop under the arm I prefer the walk.

Yesterday I nearly stumbled into the granite "decoration" around the pavement trees, and that started a train of thought. I was headed North down towards 45C, and today, as I made my way back up South, I was wondering about those window boxes.

Well, there you see how blind you can be to small touches of beauty along the way!

Now, my mother loved Geraniums and Pelargoniums.

There wasn't a holiday or a trip where she didn't embarrass the family by taking cuttings, and she would snip them carefully (as all good gardeners do) and bring them back into one of the many pots and corners of her garden and verandas. Even at their scraggliest, the flowers are rich in colour: making up for their lack of perfume, I suppose. And if you watered them often enough, then the greens of the branches are a pleasure in themselves.

So there I am striding South, and blow me if I don't have a mommy moment ...

Up against the walls of the Ashanti building, doing their best to cover the steel mesh burglar protection, are 6 window boxes planted with my mom's favourites. And there they have been, if the bird's droppings are any indicator, for any length of time.

And all that has kept me from seeing them in these many months (years?) of walking backwards and forwards has been the meeting rooms at the ends of a long stride up and down Ferreira street.

And we have, I suppose, the answer to the window Box question: accross Anderson Street and not 40 meters from the Rocks in the City the answer is ~ Yes, Joburg is getting soft in some of it's corners.

And all the better for it, I should say.

All images copyright (c) the author

A Day in the Life: Rocks in the City

2012-01-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

Look at them ... just a pile of rocks around a nice shady tree.
You'd know all about it if you stubbed your toes on them, let me tell you!
Which I nearly did ...
And which made me think ...

What does a pile of Rocks tell you?
Especially a pile of rocks in the city centre?
All neatly arranged around a tree trunk, and every tree on the pavement with its own community of pet rocks?

Rocks

Well now, these are granite rocks, Crushed to size after being blasted and brought up from the depths of the gold bearing reef, deep below.
mini Boulders really, as you would quickly tell if you tried to pick one of them up.
Stop you dead in your tracks if I tossed one at you!
Yet you wouldn't notice them, just to walk by, so tastefully arranged around their trees.
The Pavement runs the length of an office block, and fronts a residential hotel in the heart of the City's business district, right around the group of buildings which the Anglo American corporation owns and has its people in.
... and a short walk from the Johannesburg Magistrates courts, where unruly crowds have been known to congregate. Although, not so often any more.

So, maybe the Building owners don't want you to walk too close to the trees?
Possibly, they like the artistic effect of the stark granite against the bark?
Maybe they are aligning themselves to the mining activities which they service?
Maybe all, maybe nothing at all.
Certainly, it would have taken a pick up truck to deliver the payload. There's more than a wheelbarrows worth there, and they would've been carted quite some distance!

Rocks around trees ...

So what should we read into that pile of Rocks?

Progress.
That's what I read:
I read progress.
After all, whose going to stack piles of granite-hard rock in handy sizes if they thought -
if you thought for even one moment -
that someone might pick them up and chuck them back at at you.
or your nice plate glass windows!
or cars, or ... or ...
Ah.
So is our uncivilised, dangerous, scary city centre being tamed then?

(truth to tell ... it never did feel that scary to me, but, well -

- you know -

tourists and the media do know best ...)

They do look rather nice, though - don't they?
All we need now is a flower box or two ...

All images copyright (c) the author

Look at the Clown …

2011-12-16T14:56:00.000-08:00

Look at the Clown
Tumbling his balls
You don’t see his heart
How loudly it calls

He smiles cos’ he’s happy
And a little bit vain
It keeps him from going
Entirely insane

And his Heart?
Well its given
And given to you
Now isn’t that interesting,
Crazy mad thing to do?

image from a portion of an 1878 drawing by C. M. Newton in Sporting and Dramatic News, of a performance of The Forty Thieves

More Cricket and Limericks plus a touch of the Weather

2011-12-15T04:02:00.000-08:00

Some more Cricketing Limericks for fans of them (both Cricket and Limericks ;) )

Cricket is a byword for Weather conversations. Its all about water from the sky, wind from the west, and how the tide affects the pitch when the moon is full. In fact, I'm sure that the reason why English conversation is so skewed towards the weather is because it has such a deep effect on their cricketing psyche. And I'm equally sure that when they go out on tour they carry their damned weather with them. If only we could harness that!

So. All frivolities aside, please.
Serious Question time: How to beak the drought, please?
Answer: Schedule a 5 day test match.
(Of course, since cricket tours are agreed years in advance, you have to know where the droughts are likely to be at that time, natch.) Having said which ...

There's a heat wave thats baking my brain

My body's burned red & my skin is in pain

But there's nothing to fear!

Cos the Cricket is here!

It'll be bucketing down once again

Which satisfies the farmers and the Ducks.
But what about the spectators?
What about the spectators indeed ...

the rain's keeping us all in the shelter

Its cats and its dogs and its helter and skelter

no matter my son

when the cricketing's done

the sun will come out as a belter

All this talking of Rain reminds me, there's one person who makes bowlers and fielders pray for it.
Lots of it. Especially in India.
Especially in, Well, actually ... everywhere ...

the bowlers are praying for rain

Tendulkars at wicket again

a six through the covers

at the end of the overs

sees their averages flush down the drain

But there's always at least one bowler who doesn't seem to mind whose at the crease :)

a fast bowler (we'll call him Dale Steyn)

sends his balls down again and again

if its not past the nose:

its down by the toes

you want runs? there's no gain without pain

Limericks, Cricket, the Weather ... who needs a girlfriend?

I thought I was here for the cricket

drinking beer and pondering the wicket

but the girls in their shorts

cause ungentlemanly thoughts

and most of them perfectly wicked!

yes I could ... yes I could yes I could yes I could ;)

Images (c) the author

The Past is an Old Man's country

2011-12-06T14:20:00.001-08:00

The Past is an Old Man's country
landscaped by memories and dreams
hopes and fears now bordered
by children's laughter and screams

The Past is an Old Man's country
memories and dreams entwined
hopes and fears portraited
left hanging in memory's mind

The Past is an Old Man's country
the highways clear in sight
the byways weave through fog and mist
dimly distant through fading light

The Past is an Old Man's Country
but it won’t be visited by me:
Release me at the turnpike!
release me and set me free

Image: from The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali)

Thoughts at my Son's wedding

2011-12-04T20:25:00.001-08:00

the present is in our children's hands
their race is well begun
the future is their children's lands
uncertain, unspoken, undone.

the baton has been handed
the transformation complete
spectators now and relaters,
our Glory days are done.

the karma bequeathed to the future
awaits our children's children's hands
we shape their thoughts, (and so hope, restore)
our broken landscape our damaged shore

As I stood watching and taking part at my son's wedding I couldn't help but reflect on the courage youth always has in it's future. When we set out ~ when? 1972! the world had just stepped back from the Cuban missile crisis, France was recovering from student riots, the iron curtain more firmly divided the world than ever before, China seemingly ready to collapse from it's cultural revolution, and Capitalism stood poised to smash the unions and separate the rich few from the many poor. And here in South Africa, an increasingly recalcitrant and truculent apartheid Government was deepening its hold and its propaganda on its citizens, poisoning the few and disenfranchising the many. The collapse of our society seemed at hand.

Such a morass the world was in!~ who would raise a family in that?
Who would tackle this mess before us?
Yet we lived our moment and waited for our time when we would have the means and the ideas and the courage to give the future generations ~ our children ~ the world we would have liked to have had.

So many things are so very much better now: yet so many more seem irreparably damaged: Climate, Economy, and the deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots, new things seems so threatening once again.

Yet when I looked at them, and the wedding guests, it seemed to me that they had that same courage and hope, and these new challenges would find their generations ready to deal with them. And the question of division is addressed at the personal level, and it seemed to me that there was still a role for us, the fading generation: one of bringing together communities, of breaking down cultural and ideological barriers ~ who better to show how to live than those who have survived life?

And I can't say that this thinking was a sequential process, but it tumbled around in my head, and the words above took shape and have been sitting with me: now they have their own space. They seem to pull together all those thoughts.