The Aloneness of Christmas

Of course, this title is untrue in my world. I am entirely surrounded by humanity, being in the City of Melbourne, and have been riding the agitated river that we two leggeds embark upon Christmas-wards, forming queues in shops that sell colourful plastic rubbish destined for the garbage bin in a week. This festival wordlessly imposed on the citizenry, even though significant parts are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, atheists. I wonder if everyone just comes along for the ride, as really, they have no choice when our whole year revolves around this holiday and the sales. “Consumer confidence is down”, or up, or whichever obtuse code the high priests of Capitalism measure the mystery of economics. I really don’t believe they have a true grasp on what is occurring.  If they did, economic crises would be averted and volatility would be an under-rated concept.

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about. It’s the festive season after all, and I’m not entirely cynical.  Two weekends ago after my morning shower, my coffee pot followed the arc my body carved as I turned quickly from the stove, as if connected by an invisible line. It dipped and tipped, and with fantastic speed and a triumphant crescendo, the white porcelain smashed into the black ceramic kitchen floor tiles. The hot black liquid covered my legs and feet, cooling surprisingly quickly; it dripped down the walls in elegant dribbles.

I’d needed that coffee. It was 11am and my head was thick, swollen with heat that my liver kicked out. An eruption of anger shot up from the base of my torso, larva, but I paused, reluctant to give it steam or space.  Could I really be bothered with another morning of extreme emotion, rage against what simply is? What occurred, objectively, I thought, was that my favourite coffee pot tipped over because I’d switched the cast iron pot supports above the gas jets when I cleaned the stove, and hadn’t noticed that the vessel wasn’t adequately supported. What happened was that the coffee pot had smashed and the floor and walls were now covered in coffee and porcelain shards.  That was all. I chose to simply clean it up, rather than falling into the torrid stream of thought where existence was punishing me, neglecting me once again.

Instead of writing, as I had planned to do, a prospect I regarded as enticing as cleaning the fridge, I decided to go to the Mediterranean Wholesalers on Sydney Road and buy a new coffee pot. I’d also buy one for my ex-boyfriend whose last girlfriend broke his, the emotional context of this breakage politely undefined.

What a fabulous exit strategy from the onerous task that writing a novel had become.

The Saturday morning traffic crawled down Sydney Road, predictably everyone and their kids out. The ring of pre-Christmas shopping thrummed in the air and I was pulled deeper into the Mediterranean Wholesaler by the sensory cacophony of this broad, bustling, purposeful community.

On top of the usual Saturday morning business, people hovered around the mountains of panettone and Christmas sweets. Beautiful tins of biscuits embossed with nostalgic pictures of little girls, delicate butterflies and misty-eyed damsels from that romantic yesteryear were on display. Plain torrone or covered in chocolate and filled with Strega, thirty varieties of bright fruit liqueurs, mountains of wafers, crackers, cookies - everything looked delectable.

Without warning my heart sent a lump of sadness to my throat to burn the back of my eyes – my family. Christmas again in this hot mad land of Australia with no family. I chose it again this time, needing a break from the financially draining transcontinental travel, needing to stabilise my health and income after a year of sizzling burnout.

But this searing, this sadness that fell over me like a useless tent emptied me out, cut off all connection to the buzzing families around me. Once more I was truly alone, relentlessly, excruciatingly alone.

Submerged under this hollow fog, I wandered down the Aisle of Pasta; I’ve always loved being in this spacious shop; the sense of it, of Europe, of an old fashioned family store. The giant pasta shells appealed to me, and I found anchovies, a pale smelly cheese, preserved artichokes, the coffee pots I wanted.  The packs of lemony crostoli were too big for one person.

Once safely out on the pavement, I considered that I could act on the sadness and buy an air ticket to Jo’burg that afternoon, mess up my finances and create more recovery work but bask in the perfection of Johannesburg's summer, or wait for the wave of sadness to pass, and plan for next year.

In the hot Aussie Saturday summer, I moved up Sydney Road through the crowds of Muslim women draped in fabric, dark moustachioed Mediterranean men and the bright pale skinned young things seeing the world through their heavy black eyeglass frames and kooky gear, into the refuge of Spotlight where the beauty of hundreds of pattered fabrics soon diverted my heart’s focus from its empty homestead to enchanting prospects of all the things that can be made, sewn together; the bliss of fabric.

So soothed, I made my way home, and the next day my dear friend’s mother announced without prompting that she was adopting me, that I would spend Christmas with their family and always be considered part of their family. How sweet, and kind, and timeous.

I feel less alone, and have been very attentive to my mother that she is taken care of for Christmas, spending time with her family in Pretoria, as her tired eighty year old heart would also be heavy.  And my brother so far away in London; well, they’re burying his wife’s mother this week, the deep sadness around and life moves on. So fast, and so intense, that I daily have to slow down, slow right down to locate my heart and assure it that it is safe, that all is ok. And today is Chanukah - which is about light, peace and those lovely donuts. Blessings to all this festive season!

Smashed

Its just as well I had the session with the Maori astrologer in June this year. In her Jungian language, she warned of rough seas from July though to October, and that it would be wise to find shelter out of the cities, far from the noise, traffic and intensity. To commune with nature.

The western cedar house in Mullumbimby was the perfect hide-out for the winter months. I had spectacular days at Brunswick Beach whilst the whales migrated south, days of sun and squalls, days of multiple rainbows and pods of dolphins surfing transparent waves in perfect unison. The days which most arrested and shocked me were clear sky days when I strolled along the breakwater, the Brunswick River flowing in to meet the sea, days when this ocean-river water ran luminously clear to magnify the different schools of fish racing along the rocks, suddenly herded by a dolphin cow with her calf, a flash of deep grey.

The two of them came back a few days in a row, swimming right up to a delighted couple lolling in the delicious water. And on my last trip to the beach where the river yet again granted me the clarity of an aquarium, a sea eagle dropped down to catch a fish and soared up and into the coastal forest.

What tremendous blessings I had for those six weeks, to be that close to nature.

The astrologer had warned that I would be faced with a choice during this time – I could either keep doing the psychotherapeutic work I did or finally turn towards and honour my creativity. Knowing that I had been avoiding writing something comprehensive for years, The Book that had been stewing away on the back-burner by now nursed a nasty burnt crust, it had waited so long, probably twenty years. So I seized the rare opportunity of time off and enrolled in a ten month online writing course.

And this has been my companion since the 25^th July, the daily ritual of following the teachings and taking chances on material that seems to want to be written. Some days the discomfort wrings me out, but I know myself well enough that I simply have to show up and write something daily, I must and I will, and I am bound by the investment I have made and am far too tight to squander the money I have paid for this course!

Some days I read what I have written and my confidence is renewed that I can actually do this. Other days, like the last few, are far too bleak, and the material feels dull and that it has a limited shelf life.

Thankfully, our course is peppered with encouragement, quotes drilling into us to simply write everyday. So I do. The last few days I have felt nauseated by the novel, and missed the spontaneity of daily observation. And I have missed my blog, and the medium it offers. So, back I am in blog-land, perhaps not daily, but certainly, I love the platform to interact with the world that it offers. A kind of scrap book of ideas.

********

I mentioned that the astrologer said there would be a choice. It came hard and fast and my fondness for earning money magnetised me. At the very last minute, I was offered a week’s work, to facilitate a workshop, which is what I do. And of course I said yes, even though I didn’t have the right clothes, nor was I in my usual crisp working frame of mind. I was somewhat woolly, but I have extensive experience and proficiency in this work, so I said yes. Not knowing that I was pulling on the cord that would ring the bell, the death knell to my career.

Dramatic sounding? Perhaps, but let me tell you that since the 8^th July, nothing has been the same. I had no idea that one could feel like this, that one could end up in the shower, something like this:

The hot water rained from the showerhead and she let the silent tears glob out and mix with the chlorinated water. “I’m all broken,” the thought nearly came out loud, but she didn’t want her mother down the hallway to hear her.

“I’m all broken and I just can’t handle anymore. I get so flooded by company, by people, how am I ever going to manage letting anyone love me, letting anyone in? My nerves are frayed after three months off and I’m shattered.” A little girl in a 43 year old body. “Restoring furniture, quiet, in a cool old shopfront or garage, now that sounds appealing, but my head hurts, my neck feels twisted and this lump, here, at the base of my skull, this lump of muscle is pulling all of my bones out of their rightful places.”

She cried and let the sadness take form in the tears and snot, felt the pain ease in the left side of her head, and a valve in her heart that had been gathering despair empty out, pour out the weight and let it wash into the water that connects all waters.

“Better. Better for letting it move and come out of the body,” she whispered, as she towelled herself down, the thick blue cotton soft on her thin skin. Able to function now, without donning a brittle surface that would crack at the first dialogue and either splinter into dangerous shards or icicle coolness, the door to her heart near frozen.

“Better.” It was just now, only now that she had to deal with. Only now.

They call it Burn Out. It’s a good term, apt. If you can picture a human form, then see the nervous system alive in it, perhaps see it in fluorescent green so that you get a sense of the phenomenal speed and variety of ceaseless activity is entertains, and then imagine all the peripheral endings singed, burnt, so that the neurological traffic hits walls, creating shortages, you may even hear a metallic voice blurting “system overload” or smell electrical burning, but that would make it funny, which sometimes it really has to be.

So one’s capacity, let me own it, my capacity for life is different. On a bad day I would say its impaired, damaged, broken. But perhaps its just different. My sense of presence in very expanded, now that I live this slow life, I see colours more intensely, I get messages from people’s bodies when I massage them, so yes, something has been broken, cracked, something has fragmented, but perhaps this is what is needed when we have constructed a concrete shelter around our being. That its needs to dissemble, so that we can feel again.

I like the tenderness I feel. I am making friends with my soul. I am listening, I take time every day to be with my soul.

In the last week my divine friend R suggested I find the original hope that I held BEFORE the shock of being human kicked in. Before the trauma, the attachment, before the story. And my original hope was that I be treasured, loved, held and protected. Which is what I would love from a man whom I am calling in.

And I am thrilled to be finding in myself, to be treasuring my own heart, making decisions that value and protect me. And I guess I would never have done this had I said no to that last minute workshop, that smashed me up against a wall I had never met before.

Australia's Most Important Political Campaign

Dr Wong's Acupuncture Model

"You too sensitive," Dr Wong tells me, "don't take things so bloody personally." He pronounces bloody as "bwuddy", and tacks on, "you such a perfectionist. Why you have to be so bwuddy perfect all the time?"

 In the anonymity of Murrumbeena, the suburban sprawl that spreads out of Melbourne like an oil leak, he places his needles with jaunty precision. When he's done, he pats me on the leg and says soothingly, with great care, "you rest now". And I breathe in the aromas of moksha sticks, wintergreen and the smoky whisps of previous treatments. When my mind settles, I suddenly drop into deep rest, and if I'm lucky, a far away sleep before he bounces in and says, "You can go back to work now. See you next time."
 

Sydney Road

 I love Sydney Road; there is something so homely about it, so familiar. I love that its so different from other areas of Melbourne, that I am guaranteed to hear flavours of Arabic, and eat delicious food. I love that you buy baklava, or sweets as they are known, by the kilo, and the Lebanese pizza at the A1 bakery, particularly the zataar on pita bread, is freshly baked. Even though the A1 is a big cafe, it feels like you're in a family business, its so personalised.

The A1 Bakery

 And then there are the cars. Vince Colosimo talked about how, as young men, they'd drive their polished cars up and down Sydney Road, so they could look at their reflections in the shop windows. When there's not a tram gumming up the works, you're bound to experience a dropped down, muffler-stripped shining beast of a car, roaring along on pure testosterone. 

A friend who has lived in Brunswick for years tells me there are 85 cultures represented in the area. Along with great live music, some class op-shops, bars and cafes, its a precious part of Melbourne.

Northern Rivers Winter

Home is where the hearth is, home is where the heart is, wherever I lay my hat that’s my home, and John Steinbeck said that home is “where I keep my books”.

I have found a home in Northern NSW for six weeks, and have settled right in. My clothes are packed on the shelves the owners of the house left empty for me, and my food is in a drawer emptied for me too. I’ve made an office for myself next to the fireplace; my only requirements for this home being a fireplace and nature's embrace. 

The peeling outside table has migrated inside, looking out to the northside of the deck, into the forest of tall gumtrees, bracken ferns and ubiquitous camphor laurel trees. This morning a young kookaburra alighted on the branch of a dying camphor tree, directly in the center of the big glass sliding door in front of me. Laughter, joy, they represent and remind one.

I’ve been thinking what I should write for my blog, how I should update it. I notice the writing is far more personal, introspective these Australian days, way less gritty than when I was in Africa. A little embarrassing, but tracking the journey nonetheless. There is less external tension here, at least for me, Australia is so much easier to navigate than Africa, perhaps simply because I’ve been here for over ten years and am habituated to its ways. And I'm learning about how to articulate my journey, without detailing my internal processing, which could be very tedious for readers.

I wrote in my journal a few days ago, “I couldn’t hear myself tell my story one more time. By yesterday, it was enough. The hang-dog feel of things going wrong, getting bent out of shape, even giving it the bland corporate packaging of a life having “a set-back” had started to grate on me.

Time to tell the story differently then.

A week ago, a long drive and a slow day in the country unfolded on Sunday, visiting my friends, the fabulous elders M and B, who live an hour and a half from Melbourne in dry Australian country. The magnificent old gumtrees at their gate are sentries, old ladies, observing the comings and goings of those who visit The Clan. When I returned to Melbourne at the end of the day, it occurred to me that I could simply wait, like those trees, I could be patient and wait for the seeds that I have planted to germinate. I don’t have to throw it all out in the quest for an immediate solution.

You see, as my week in Melbourne got a bit easier, I could take some distance from the incessant distress playing out in my head, the story of not having a home, not knowing which continent to live on, what work to pursue that doesn’t eat me alive. A temporary solution of three dvd’s, a packet of lollies and nine cups of rooibos tea allowed the two day headache to lift.

Images of Africa had started to rise up again. Just flashes of scenes, nothing exotic, like driving to the supermarket or the post office with my mum through Irene near Pretoria, which behind  and beside its genteel country persona sits the dryness of the exhausted grasslands, who witness the tardy creations that the humans bring to form, the second-hand shops with lurid signs, mechanics’ garages shrouded in grease and toil and the promise of emptying your wallet. Nothing built for the sake of beauty, all for function, dominance, visibility, access, nothing built to serve our delicate senses. A creeper spread its suckers all over a bulky concrete pedestrian bridge to the station, forming delicate patterns and covering over the brutality of purpose.

On the way to Pretoria, a four or six lane roadway carves a nature reserve, where late last year a small bush burst forth with clusters of pink and purple blooms, painting the rusting hills with sweeps of colour.

Amidst the brutality of Gauteng, nature seems to slip through. I wonder which plants quietly rise in the baby farms in Nigeria that my friend told me about, the places where women give birth and hand their babies over for $100 to be trafficked?

So during the last week in Preston, in the north of Melbourne, I slept on a single mattress on the floor of my good friend K’s spare room, my generous, quiet friend. I looked forward to leaving for  Byron Bay's soft light and vegetation bursting out of its skin, to stay in this house which I rented in a fit of burnout and distress about what my life had become.  I was trying to take steps to get myself out of the therapeutic work I've been doing, counselling and running workshops, but whilst in Melbourne, I met with two people from a program that is helping me with my finances, and it became clear that I need to keep working. That there is no magic cure. That there is sensible, responsible, and that loving what you do and doing what you love is something you build into, grow into. My plan is to use the time in Byron to write, to spend some time taking care of admin – tax, creating new business opportunities, setting income generating activities up, and to walk on the beach. I’m so fortunate to be here in Australia and to be supported in getting my survival stuff in order.

So what are the blessings of my circumstances? I perceive suffering and hardship in not having a home, but I get to have intimate conversations with my friends, lots of closeness, not have to take full responsibility for the lease or the house, I get to be free and move around a lot. And I get space .. lots of it.

Off Chapel St, Prahran, Melbourne

One of my favourite buildings in Swanston St, Melbourne

Today is Saturday in my beloved Mullumbimby, home of six weeks. A rarity, it has no traffic light and only recently got a traffic circle.  Slow and colourful, it is a haven for old hippies and freaks, spaced out meditators and rainbow people. There are a few old farmers too, and a fusty RSL that no doubt has cheap beer and some kind of schnitzel.

I am impressed with myself for this gift of six weeks of rural bliss - impressed as my default position is "workaholic". I can’t tell you how lovely the house is; the smell of the western cedar they used to build it, the orange, lemon and grapefruit trees dripping fruit, the vegetable garden sprouting a variety of lettuces. How much I enjoy the rhythm of setting the fire, scrunching old newspaper, gathering kindling, lighting and tending it, carting wood around and finally sinking back into the beanbag to watch the patterns in the flames.

M came to deliver firewood yesterday, 1.6 cubic meters to be precise, or a ute-load. I stayed to talk with him whilst he unloaded it, threw the chunks of ironbark off the back of the vehicle. His shins were scarred, knees too. He gave me detailed advice on how to build a fire, how to make a good one, the kindling and its different sizes, that it needs air, and that a glass of red should accompany the process so that you can be still and keep an eye on the embers forming.

I bought a new axe yesterday, a little one, a tomahawk I believe its called, so that I can split the logs into kindling. I tried this morning, and it feels far too brutal for me and the wood is so hard. I'm out of touch with that rugged side of me, that loves working the land, brush-cutting, mowing, mulching. I’m feeling delicate, and I need a man to do this work. Perhaps my ex, perhaps a new friend, lets see who comes into my life who would love to yield the axe!

So now I have space to write, space to ponder and meditate, space to walk on the beach which is ten minutes drive away. Its lovely and quiet, and we’re due for some serious weather in the next few days, a lot of rain and possibly flooding. I have supplies ready – kindling, firelighters, food, matches, wine, books, music.

And the good news is that there is a possibility of funding for the project in South Africa. Now, it is a matter of deciding whether or not I want to pursue it.Its something to weigh up, as I feel into what I would like my life to be, not what I think it should be.

I’ll leave it at that, and close with a picture of my desk, up here in Mullumbimby, NSW.

An unexpected salute to Marianne Williamson

30^th May 2011

I am looking for someone to share the depths of life with, not necessarily the minutae of shoes, socks, electricity bills, political commentary. It’s the deeper love I’m thinking of, shared over a cup of tea, after a rapture of entry and outlandish longing, a gate opening beyond its own spectrum, a love never glimpsed but who made its name familiar by the persistent calling it echoed in the night, the early morning mussed up sheets, the afternoons of heart-stopping surges. Power surges who cry, who am I not to love? Who am I not to breathe sharp breath at the sight of four dolphins hurtling down a wave, perfectly aligned? Who am I not to heed the message I requested of the sea eagle, not to sing the song that issues, pouring from my lips? Who am I not to belong, to claim the earth of my red hot homeland, to feel the stillness of time stopping on a beach that holds my secret heart so dear?

Who am I not to claim the unknown, the messiness so exquisitely crafted into foundations for divinity, ordinary divine presence in the greens of the Japanese weeds along the beach, wedgewood blue of the skies that frame the gulls, the crows, pair of butterflies?

Who am I not to love, to extend my friendship, to let my curiosity out on a lead to sniff around your ankles, lick your face like a Jack Russell who never knew any inhibitions?

What gives me the right to keep it all safe when what I see is so utterly imperfect. Sure I can feel unloved or rejected when he replies to my elaborate txt with a greyscale  “ok”.  But today I saw a pod of dolphins splashing close to the shore, the sea eagle flew really low so I could discern his detail, and the terns threw themselves at the water with divebomb enthusiasm, and I am alive, curious about how this illusion works, nervous about participating in a medicine circle, silently inspired by a matrix of healing in the job I get paid to do.

Who am I not to simply melt, and let it all wash away, let it all be loose, and forgiving, and pray-hope that I haven’t done too much harm.

“Park off,” she cried, so I did, right next to the Goddess, as we waited for the kings to arrive.

Sunday 29th May 2011

It's that line other people have written about, spoken about in many a therapy session, I’m sure. That line that’s a tightrope, the edge of an abyss, a cliff, the river below raging, one's existence irrelevant in its flow.

This morning I woke up and asked my angel to embrace me, and take me back to sleep. It was too early, there were too many thoughts lurking, waiting for airtime, waiting for their place to occupy and energise in the mess of the mind.  Sleep approached, that delicious feeling, the surge and cocoon of those chemicals, the precursor to slumber, but they didn’t subside, didn’t settle in and take me to some other reality of dreams which may be neither here, nor there.

I thought of the man I’d recently had breakfast with, and how I could contact him today and suggest a coffee, a beach stroll/loll, a drink, even though I don’t drink these days. And then I thought of a glass of deep, earthy red, a fulsome Shiraz or Cabernet and how that would be nice, how that might even be nice for breakfast. Like those days long ago when I would wake up and resolve to have nothing to do with the world, no contact with humanity and proceed to smoke a joint all to myself and settle into the delicious high, hidden and veiled, anonymous and unavailable, how easy that was, how it soothed me.

But I am in my friends’ spare bedroom this morning, their five year old daughter goofing around, screeching and blaring inanities, and yes she’s loveable and a precious little thing, but on the edge of this line I am so quiet, and so needy, so hungry, that I don’t have it to give her.

I miss my flat, my eagle’s nest with my books and art and things, my kitchen full of delicious comfort and my sewing machine and fabrics. I don’t know what happened, how I uprooted like that, how I ripped it all up and landed here, without a plan, without a trace. People keep asking where I live and my answer comes out that I’m a nomad, looking for a home, spoilt for choice. I think I’m breaking all the rules, all the sensible lines of what I should be doing, doing to create: a life, abundance, a relationship. Perhaps my life has been a series of misguided decisions – like giving up my apartment in a gesture of welcoming another in – it was a house-for-one, and I thought I could affect the alchemy of life by stepping out of that nest and making myself available. 

My flat in South Yarra

This line, this edge, is so weary, so overused. Deep footprints worn into the grey rock, scuffed into the viewing platform where many before and after me have contemplated the jump, only to wearily turn back to their tired lives, deep breath in as we approach yet another excavation.

“Don’t you learn anything from the work you teach?” someone asked me yesterday. Deep transformational processing and This is where I land, This is where I hesitantly stand.

Lets face it. I’m not doing well. The astrologer said to wait until mid-July, that it’s a terrible time up until then and nothing would be clear until earliest mid June. Even here in the Shire, I feel like I do not belong. My psychologist friend says she and I share the pattern of estrangement, a perception of never belonging. Last night, surrounded by people, who mainly talk about themselves, I felt alone, disconnected, unbelonging.

Today, I feel tired, a bit more uplifted after writing, a bit more able to connect. But I still miss my flat, my privacy, and the touch of a beloved who wants me. 

Wollumbin, Rainmaker, from McAuley's Lane, Myocum

Rules for visitors to the Highveld Park Post Office

Rules for train passengers in Cape Town

She described the feeling as being like a polar bear on a small island of ice, everything melting away around her. There was no apparent panic, only the sense that everything she had held in high value was losing its colour, losing its grasp, losing its ability to dazzle.

The only unclaimed prizes in the treasure hunt of life which still stroked the strings of her heart, still retained soft hues of appealing colour, were the possibility of love and art; the infinite possibility of moving through this life, this passage, with another, and the necessity to create beauty so that the subtler truths, which are the important truths, not submerge in a mire of spreadsheets, appointments, public transport and marketing bombardment.

What a life it had been. The twenties were glamorous and harrowing; money, drugs,  entertainment, death and sex. The thirties were introspective, seizing on maps and doggedly travelling in the identified direction, only to melt down and resurrect financially, vocationally, more than a few times.

Now the forties. Left-over longings for children and family surface like old photographs packed away for some future purpose. Every intimate situation infused with the disappointment that the longing exists within, and may not be met without. The endless baggage dragged into relationships by suitors – children, divorce, separation, disappointment, resentment, financial decimation, homes stripped of their anchors, bitter ex wives, resentful ex husbands. And then the inflammatory trend on the dating websites of people claiming to have ‘no baggage’, or requiring prospects to also have ‘no baggage’.

When I bring this all right back to myself, I’m grateful for the ability to move one day at a time, and surprised that there is little panic in my seemingly intractable situation.

Last year in October I uprooted from my magnificent Melbourne life, packed up my eagle’s nest apartment with the spectacular city view next to the Botanic Gardens, and put my boxes of books and clothing into my friend’s S Kilda ceiling.   

Off to Africa I went, to set up my life there, to be close to my family and put in motion The Enterprise Powerhouse, a program to develop entrepreneurs in low socio-economic areas, which I’d been nurturing for a year.

I was welcomed back with warmth and interest: why would I come back here, to this place falling apart at the seams, the president taking his fifth wife, infrastructure collapsing under gross negligence and incompetence, corruption so rife that its become the norm. Why would I come back to the next African disaster?

Over and over again I said, “I just missed it. I missed my home, my country.” Every day, like an officer in the field I was out there, meeting, researching, running workshops, promoting, talking, talking, talking. Stuck in traffic, dodging potholes, feeding on Talk Radio 702, the most astute current affairs station available. 

Plugged in to the pounding, relentless energy of Jozi, gold mining, acid mine draingage, gansters’ paradise.  I loved the debate, the engagement in a new democracy, the ferocity of civil society in trying to hold leaders accountable, or people trying to hold onto what they've got. I love the connecting, the slow conversations, incredible art, ambition, humour, playfulness. I was drained by the absence of beauty in the urban landscape and the endless grey traffic jams.

I got The Enterprise Powerhouse to a respectable place, partnering with a social enterprise in Ivory Park and a high end corporate training facility in Woodmead, so secured a venue, some investment and community support. We pitched the idea to a multinational, but haven’t heard back from them. My feeling is they won’t invest, that the program is, perhaps, too bulky.

I came to Australia at the end of March as I had some contract work booked, and discovered I was completely burned out and in a career crisis. I felt incompetent, lacking skills and weary of humanity. I didn’t want to hear another person’s outpouring of complaint, grief or despair. Ironically, another project I’d been working addressed vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue. Whatever I put into the world is what I need, it seems.

Australia opened its big, wide dusty arms and took me in. First my magnificent women friends in Melbourne, and then my colleagues. We were educated in non-violent communication in our annual team training weekend, and it was there that I shared my distress about my career, and my fear about letting go of it. What emerged was that I long for some ease; a break from the hard work and bullish commitment that has me setting high expectations and loyally expending my energy in moving towards them. A life of ease. What a thought. What a very odd concept.

I started dreaming of a log cabin in Canada, in the Kootenays in BC, remote as you can get, with a dog and a fireplace. The hunger for big wide open spaces kicked in, huge nature with weather and beauty as it should be. Fortunately, I had some free time in the Byron Shire, on the north coast of New South Wales. So I went to the beach. A lot. I walked every day on Brunswick Beach, a pristine, long beach with bush to one side where I know snakes live, and ocean stretching east. In the sun, in the rain I walked into a squall and felt myself embraced by the wildness of nature, so grateful for it. Sea eagles glided above me, circling, sometimes in pairs, always a sign.

I’ve been back and forward to the shire a few times to teach the workshops and take time in nature. Last time a friend and I took a long drive to the Border Ranges National Park to pay our respects to some 2000 year old Arctic Beech Trees.  My time there is suffused with nature, and a different set of friends who all have rich spiritual lives, expressed many ways including music, massage, shamanic work, belly-dancing, food, gardens and luscious homes, creating beauty.

A couple of times I’ve had some good loving with male friends, and now, I am ready to deeply connect with my man. I won’t be having any more causal liaisons – it leaves me quite disappointed, and often feeling somewhat used, as the encounters are about intimacy and not creating relationship. I’m grateful to these men for helping me get to this place, finally, where I really value my love and intimate offering, and want to engage only with someone who is available, respectful and caring. Hmmmm...

 

Brunswick Beach

Border Ranges National Park

Majestic Arctic Beech Trees

3rd April 2011 

I make the bed my lover and I slept in last night, pull the crimson blanket high over the pillows, no visual evidence of our intertwining. I look for his smell on the pillow, but it’s the smell of the house, the smell of this damp forest. I smooth the covers, he will be here again in an hour and a half, and I have yet to bathe, yet to wash him from my last night skin, this morning still breathing him, still resisting him, curious, defeated, detached, open. A river running over boulders of different forms, so it was with him, just being, now, now, now.

I bring the crystal wineglasses down, down the staircase from the loft, bring down the water glasses the last night’s clothes. Bringing it all down, I eat, I tidy the room making space for the new day, and I feel deeply relaxed, watching the inclination to do things fly by, like the squawking crow outside.

Only to tell you of this, this encounter, which left my heart strangely neutral, table flat and trembling, the terrain unknown, the signposts I had erected to defend me now rusty, forlorn and speaking of another time, another place .

He told me how much he enjoys being single, and I waited for my heart to sink, but it didn’t. He told me the extent of his unavailability and his unwillingness to commit, and I was reminded at the clarity of my choices. To travel, to be free, to create, to do work that seemed important at the time, to follow my heart and soul’s voice. And how this style of life is a house for one, what kind of person it would take to move into it. And I wonder at this thought that surfaces in jest and in gravity, that I am looking for the man that will pin me down, anchor me, and then I will stop.

Between that, and looking at some kind of career change, I am up against myself, soothing pictures of Canada coming to mind, where I work in a remote small town coffee shop, maybe Tofino, somewhere wild and massive, where I live a life on the land and with the land. How lovely to dream of this, and I know the reality that something may bite at my heels, demanding to be bigger, to be done.

So I observe this tender heart of mine, the layers grown over and how my body declares stubborn resistance to being penetrated, when its enough, when its enough of penetration and a limited heart connection.

I’ll speak with him about this at 12.30, when he arrives. I’ll speak to him and see if I can make my way past the projected masculine who only wants to fuck and have a taste of me … aaahhh … that’s it, that’s set my heart in motion, that’s where the fear is. How to do love like this where there is no net to catch me, except me.

Soft Serve Melbourne

20th March, 2011

Melbourne was like a delicious soft serve ice cream cone today. My friend A woke me up from a cavernous jetlag induced sleep at 10.30am. “Its going to be HOT,” she said, and when an Australian says that, you know it will be very hot. After making my way through the morning rituals of shower, coffee, and the intermittent one of trying and failing to get online, I walked through the suburb of Preston, down Bell Street and its hissing six lanes of traffic, past the dusty unkempt cemetery to the tram stop. The aircon breezed around the insides of the #1 to South Melbourne, genteel, a lovely passage through the city, busy and bustling on this bright blue Sunday.

A picked me up on Domain Road, my old neighborhood on the southern border of the Botanic Gardens. On days like these the Moreton Bay fig trees smell so sweet, and there are often avenues of them in Australian parks. One of my favourite fragrances in the world, those figs, with their creeping limbs and giant shade patches.

At Black Rock beach we walked through the small harbour, with winches and utes and people hauling bits of boat around. The fish and chip shop has plastic tables and chairs outside, and ice creams for sale. It was like being in one of those colour photos where you can feel the joy of a summer’s day and know the flavour of that perfect light, the girl in the floral bikini’s tanned skin and golden hair like an Aussie flag.

We made our way through the familes to a quieter spot and immediately got into the clear water. The small bay of our beach is framed by mustard coloured sandstone cliffs behind us, the pier and harbor to our right and quite close to shore a wreck entices one to exploration.  The water was cool and perfect, and the day allowed us to ease in, lean back, and my jetlag ceased to be an issue.

A’s boyfriend T is an architect who recently won some awards and a commission for a large job in China, so we had some interesting conversation about how that all works.

A dropped me at the tram stop afterwards; the pavements of Carlton were packed …loud and lazy, great food and gelato being served. On the tram I watched the array of people board and alight – two Somali girls in loose head coverings, narrow skirts, one with spike heeled boots, the other with a leopard print skirt, a bit risqué for Islam, I’m sure. A couple speaking Arabic, some Phillipino friends, an exquisite Japanese girl opposite me with a cream chiffon dress and snake skin wedges, such a pronounced look of innocence on her face I thought it contrived for a moment. Many different accents and languages in and out of the carriages, many people silent plugged into their iPhones or Blackberries.

It was dark by the time I got off at the end of the line, and I walked home, to K’s flat, feeling safe and observing how easy it is to switch between two world in 24 hours, how I never ever walk at night in Jo’burg and how I love the night air, carrying its jasmin scent, in this soft, gentle city.

Reaction: Asshole

9^th March 2011

How to be a White Asshole.

Yesterday I was getting petrol at the Engen garage in Gardens, Table Mountain looming high above us. An emergency service vehicle had parked at the bowser next to me, the trailer attached jutting out into the exit lane.

It was a gorgeous day, bright blue sky and whisps of cloud, an afternoon waiting to happen.

A white woman with black shiny hair and large dark glasses drove her commanding four wheel drive away from her bowser, wanting to get out of the petrol station. Of course she couldn’t, as the emergency service trailer was blocking her way, and, just to amp things up, the driver had gone to buy whatever he wanted to buy in the shop.

She didn’t take long to go from zero to 100, really, it only took a sentence.

“Can you move your car please?” she asked the passenger of the vehicle, also an emergency services guy.

“I can’t, I’m not the driver,” he replied.

“Well, can you get him to move it?”

“He’s not here.”

The tall petrol attendant was fluffing around trying to help but not knowing what to do and so she went for him.

“This is ridiculous, I’m picking up children at school, move that vehicle!” she yelled, now looking at me for sympathy.

The petrol attendant now turned on me and started giving me orders to move, and once I did a four point turn and reversed she could get out, and drove past giving me a look of pained gratitude, as if I’d done her a favour so she could go and pick up her kids. Actually, I didn’t. I didn’t give a shit about her problem as she was being so vile, so rude; I moved as I wanted to leave too.

By the end I felt righteously indignant, and would love to have yelled after her, “you’re one of the reasons white people are so disliked!” Ring a bell? I’ve heard that before ….(in a previous post, I won't assume you're a loyal reader;)

I left thinking what assholes people can be.

Today, it was my turn. I have hit my limit of being a walking cash machine, a soft touch and someone to try and sell shit to or simply demand money from. So when I parked the car at Camps Bay beach, in full view of the cafes so I am pretty much 100% certain it will not get broken into, and therefore I do not need a car guard, and a car guard appears in my face and demands to know how long I am going to be, my irritation rises.

To put things in context, I had just picked my mother up from the airport so my irritation levels were in the red zone anyway. Bad timing on the part of the car guard.

And the jewelery saleswoman, the guy flogging a carved wooden table, the sunglass vendor, the Malawian artists toting lurid canvasses , the beadwork guy, the chicken wire art guy, the lady asking for money for her church, the young guy just asking for money. All I wanted to do was sit on the beach and watch the sea and drink a glass of wine. Not be singled out because I’m white – (is this what was happening? The black people next to me didn’t get approached by any of these vendors). Not to be guilt tripped, not to be cajoled or pushed to make a sympathy purchase.

Is this one of the many legacies we will have to live with, where we are seen as moneyed walking ATM’s that dispense simply because we are white? Which on one hand is fair enough as the divide is so searingly obvious in this blindingly polarised country, with its fake Tuscan security villages and squillion dollar beach apartments.

No. I have had enough. I don't have an apartment in a security village, or a fabulous beach-house. I work hard, and invest my earnings in social projects. I have bought enough shit that I don’t need to fill a cupboard. A pink tartan cap, fake Burberry; a really ugly Springboks cap, a ragdoll, beaded figures. I am done. No more thoughtless purchases. AND I will also not be using phrases like “not today, sorry I don’t have change.” No. I am feeling ruthless. Honest. The Malawian guy’s paintings were hideous. But they would be magnificent on a t-shirt, and I would consider buying one of those. But don’t give me that look and tell me how bad business is. I know how fucking bad business is. Mine's not looking too good either. Don’t sell from a guilt trip. Because when that person sees you again, you will get iced.

Like the bloke who sold me the fucking pink check cap in Irene. I saw him in an entirely different location in Woodmead, and this time, he told me I looked like Angelina Jolie – last time it was J-Lo. But he did his same routine of putting an ugly hat on my dashboard and telling me it was my lucky day, and that he was giving it to me free. I practically threw it back at him when he put on his miserable face to tell me that he hasn’t sold a single hat and in addition, that its his birthday. He was a bit taken aback to be so bluntly brushed off, but he doesn’t realise that I am OVER it.

Neither does the fat teenager who pushed my 80 year old mother out of the way to get into the lift in our apartment block in Cape Town. Little shit. I started lecturing him on manners, and then realised I was a woman in a lift with four men and the fat kid and perhaps I should pick my battle space a little better. Or perhaps I’m just a coward, who doesn’t know spontaneously what to do in these situations.

Race, colour, culture, race. Its incredibly hard to negotiate the variables here, and even harder with ye olde maman attached, sniping at every opportunity.

So to end, I think these are all ideal circumstances should you ever aspire to become a White Asshole or retain your White Asshole status. Responses include rolling up your window without making eye contact on encountering a beggar, being rude or abrasive. There are situations where I find myself so triggered that it is nigh impossible to be nice, like when I'm being relentlessly badgered by a drunk Cape Town car guard. I get it that this is the price we pay for the past, this continuous reminder of need, deprivation, a debt that will always be there, in some peoples' psyches. 

The only decent middle ground I know of and aspire to is to be honest and clear. I don't want to be a white asshole. I need help here, Pema Chodron, someone .... someone who knows about compassion in action and transcendence, please!!  It doesn't serve any of us to be ingratiating, pushy or bullying. Oh to dissolve the triangle of victim, perpetrator, rescuer. 

Cape Town Bus Depot Sign

Architects of Destiny

15^th March 2011

Another return to Jozi, this time from Cape Town, glorious Cape Town. I have been prejudiced about dear old Slaapstad, unable to reconcile the Great Divide of bling and excess with the shacks and single storey living.

But I landed gently, and settled into the arms of the mountain, the softness of the light and the sweetness of the air. My body took on a new hue from excercise and sunshine, and I felt full, strong in my muscles, as if I once more inhabited this form that is such a miracle.

During the week my passion for the work I have proposed to do in Jozi waned a bit. I’d arrived feeling burned out from traversing Joburg, the M1, N1, N12, running a workshop, and a lack of consistent support. My adrenals felt hammered, and I didn’t much want to socialise.

But socialise I did, with much fine wine and a day on the beach, which sorted me out, and I was in equilibrium once again.

Today, I read in the Mail and Guardian that Oliver Schmitz made a brilliant film that had a 10 minute standing ovation at Cannes. A few years ago whilst juggling work as a freelance editor and director for hire, he realised that he was “dividing his career path” by doing both, and decided to focus on editing. How very sensible and masculine of him. How very envious I am that he has such clarity.

What do I want to do? I want to set up a home, and in the evenings deface giant billboards, transforming them into powerful social messages. I want to hang beautiful art on my walls, and cover my furniture in brightly coloured fabric, and draw big charcoal pieces, paint large canvasses. I want to find a course of cutting edge study that merges radical town planning and economic transformation and upliftment,  and work with people to realise their dreams of good living. And I want to be with my husband, lovingly, with great friendship and exploration, and adopt some children and create a home. I want to create. And I want to partner with someone to create a home and a life to move and expand into. Its somewhat of a late realisation, this idea of teaming up with my beloved to create something together – it has always been me, just me, the architect of my own destiny. But I now know that my next step is with someone else whom I love and cherish.

                                                        Greenside newspaper advertisement

Cape Town

8^th March 2011

The mist from Table Mountain is right down in the city this morning, moving through the streets as if searching for something, investigating the lower ground. It’s a morning that should be spent in bed with a delicious book, occasional glances outside to confirm the necessity of a cocooned retreat.

What an astonishing place this is. I had forgotten, seeped in personal judgements about the great and glaring socio-economic divide, the ease with which the paler population lives in phenomenal material abundance here. What has always been jarring on arrival is the highway passage to the city, which is flanked by township and squatter camps that  wrench one into the present day moment, a slap in the face to remind you where you are and of one of the pricetags for this city’s narrowly planned evolution.

But now, thanks to RDP (Reconstruction and Development) housing, the wicked scar of shacklands has been reduced to a contained eyesore. Now there are houses, rows of boxes with nary a meter between them and not a tree in sight, but houses, hallelujah. There is evidence of progress, redress, and of course, like an extra limb that remembered to grow, emerging from those houses are corrugated iron add-ons, lean to's, extra rooms to house extra people, of which there are many. Ever since I was at university 20 years ago, the figure of 10 000 people per month has been bandied about – 10 000 people migrate to Cape Town a month – someone said it to me yesterday again. I’m not sure how they count this migration.

I made it through the highway passage, my senses intact, relieved to arrive at my friends’ house in Tamboerskloof, a lovely old home with a stoep (porch) looking bang onto Table Mountain, the whole chunk of rock right there in all of its glory, embracing the city. My friends are film-makers and social activists, so its always inspiring to be around them. There is interesting conversation and vigorous perspective, as well as great food and wine.

So I put my social equity scanner on stand-by, and let myself simply be and enjoy where I am. I lived in Cape Town for 6 years in my early twenties, so, like Johannesburg, there is memory projected onto many buildings and streets, but thankfully, I am a fully fledged adult now and have shed some of the scales of the less pleasant and destructive behaviours we so gleefully engaged in. A walk on the mountain is just that, my sense of smell alive after years of not smoking, the fynbos giving up such sweet, delectable scents, whilst above us the cloud pouring off Table Mountain moves into dragon shapes, helicopter and shark shapes, according to my friend’s six year old son.

Sunday was my birthday, what a beautiful day we had. I had happy birthday sung to me in English and Afrikaans by my three adult friends and the four children. We blew out candles and gorged ourselves on cake, swam, laughed and enjoyed the bright blue skies, Southern Hemisphere style. 

I was gifted with a bottle of Suikerbossie Premier Grand Cru, subtitled, Ek wil jou he (I want you). Such a gentle way to celebrate a birthday, unassuming and full of family, small children, in whose presence I rarely am.

 

 Above: Devil's Peak from Bo-Kaap

Back of Table Mountain from Bakoven Beach