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

District 9

26^th Feb, 2011

I spent the day in Ivory and Ebony Park yesterday, presenting the first Enterprise Powerhouse information session. W was the first to arrive early, and we had a great conversation about him and his business. His father left early on in his childhood and didn’t send him to school, and that is his big boulder on his shoulder, that he didn’t get an education and so can’t do his dream job, boilermaker. Boilermaker? Dream job? OK, if you say so. The guy has fabulous energy and is an entrepreneur. I asked a few questions around what he had gained by not going to school, the inquiry needed to go deeper but we made our way there. The Theory of Equilibration is such a great tool to reposition one's thinking.

Ivory Park is lovely, from a certain perspective. Its got  a great vibe, its like being in a rural area. Slow, rounded time with people everywhere. Being with J, much greeting and many introductions, we spent a really lovely afternoon putting up posters for the information session and letting people know about the project.

The day was marred by a massive traffic jam, so that it took me 3 hours to get home. At one point I got my laptop out of the boot and checked my email, and came across discussion on Facebook about a Spoek music video, that is quite dark and primal. The discussion started around how the gaze in the video was disturbing, and then it emerged that it was made by the same folks who made District 9, or “the loathsome” District 9, as the writer named it. I read on, as I enjoyed the film and thought it well made. And this is what was written on the discussion:

I don't think there is any subversion here looking at the credits of who made the video the usual suspects

The Gaze is coming from same place that produced our representations in the loathsome District 9. Its from a particular location in white South African's gaze and psyche and received perception which goes unperceived by them,uninformed, uninterrogated, unreconstructed and underlying the unrelinquised, innate and deeply comforting supremacy that cushions their existence in sunny SA, even the ones with "political " backgrounds or suss. Am still astounded how I have always been met with blank stares and "who is that?" when referencing Hall or Gilroy when talking representation issues. Happily, I have long abandoned educating the Other's Other. And so I stay sane.

I was very shocked that I hadn’t made a deeper inquiry into District 9, that I am in fact one of those white folks who hasn’t reflected past my current perception, and allowed the voo-doo-isation of black people to exist, so swept up was I in the horrific xenophobic attacks and the condemnation of South Africans’ actions against foreigners resident in SA. When it has all been too frightening and this group is herded into a mass of “the Other”, and when our unspoken feelings of exclusion and vulnerability seep up from our unconscious mind, it is this kind of thinking, this voodoo-isation, that creates the separation, like a mist that creeps in, a veil that wafts between black and white. I see this, the interpersonal dead-wall.

I am very disturbed that I so easily enjoyed District 9, a sci fi thriller about a space ship full of aliens that is stuck over Joburg, and when freed by the army, are kept in a fenced off area where Nigerians control the monopoly of cat food to which the aliens are addicted. The film represents aliens (illegal African immigrants) as such, and stereotypical Nigerians as vicious, slobbering predators, South Africans as negligent, careless observers, with a violent public service.  

This debate is what makes South Africa an incredibly important place for me to be in. Nowhere else would my thought be thus stretched. I have not encountered this level of debate around race in Australia, perhaps because I don’t move in the right circles. I don't see any evidence of a public debate on race there. This is also the discourse that runs in private conversations, black conversations, and which I would love to see go public. But then, I wasn’t here when District 9 was released, so I don’t know what was publically debated.

I am grateful to have my peers lay it on the table this vividly, so that I am moved forward by their experience and into more critical reflection of my interactions in this world.

Such dangerous stuff to write about, if I made it public I do believe I’d be making myself available for some rabid criticism. What comes from myself is what I fear coming from others – that I didn’t have these critical thoughts myself, that I am terminally white (no argument there), that I am dense, not insightful enough. Perhaps its all true, as I have been living my experience elsewhere. And this is how I learn about race and dynamics, to be here, and to see through the various filters we experience each other through, that the fear has created.

I find on Facebook some fairly vicious, if intelligent, comments about white people. I guess that’s because so many of us live here only focussed on our own wellbeing, protecting ourselves against whatever perceived threat. There are still maids and gardeners and people who raise other peoples’ children. Fat cats, beggars on streets, people walking, trudging, missioning everywhere.

What I love about being in Ivory Park is the humanity, just being there in a place of Africa, how ordinary it all is. I like the rounded edges, the softness in the air, the friendliness of the people. And I wish for other white south Africans that they could experience this too. I know they did with the rugby in Soweto. I don't mean that I'm having a quaint experience. There is tremendous hardship in Ivory Ebony Park, but what I see is a lot of white South Africa missing out on the positive qualities of black culture, because they exclude themselves from participating in it. 

Bismillah.