Monday, October 23, 2006

Whats happening to me?

It’s late – past midnight. I’m lying in bed staring into space. There’s no one that I can call, I’m all alone. Don’t want to wake anyone, don’t want to disturb people. There’s no use anyway, they’ll only get worried. I’m scared – for the first time, I’m winding myself up, thinking upon things too much. The problem is that they won’t go away. They are getting worse. I noticed 2 more this evening – they weren’t there this morning, I’m sure. They are small but itchy – they are spreading. I keep telling people that I’m not contagious, but I must be – it’s consuming me, bit by bit, the sores are covering me & I can’t do anything about it. The doctors worried now, my immune system might not cope. They have referred me back to the hospital. I sit at home & wait for them to call. Nothing.

I don’t work; I just sit & lose myself. The years of intense work, just gone to waist. I feel myself beginning to vegetate. I don’t even seem to care anymore. I think about crying but what would it achieve. I have to be strong. After all they are only skin rashes – right. That’s what I tell people. I don’t want them to worry. But now, today, things are getting worse, they have started to bleed – the cream isn’t working & I don’t know what to do. I have to wait to see a specialist – he only works Tuesday afternoon. That’s tomorrow & I don’t have an appointment yet. It will be at least a week then. Another week of not knowing. I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m scared.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

“come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be…”

The bum shape left in the sand reminds her of a day in the past, and hopefully also in the future… blue is lovely colour, misunderstood for sadness. Toes covered in wet sand, dreams of shelled castles built and destroyed.

She is whimsical and is a girl. Loves her space and being pampered. She is the girl you see fly a kite every Thursday as a mid-week treat… Then she’d talk to you – if you were feeling leery or sober, calculative or innocent. She couldn’t care for your frame of mind if you spoke to her on the beach.

Would cry if the kite was lost, but give it away back to the kid she bought it from after an hour’s play. You would shake your head in knowing her childlike smile and her toddler tantrums… She loves your bike more than you sometimes. You would let her… now – wouldn’t you?

Her room fluctuates between abject messes to a whole day of cleaning and decorating. She will make you birthday cards, still, not buy them at Hallmark. She writes like she is – whimsical, dancing.

After all she is she.

Her world is more real in her head and she can un-wrap the masks everyone wears. You would let her too… She might even claim to know you better than anyone else. Then again she might be right. She is naïve but can hold-her-own-thankyou-very-much… She pouts for attention when she already has it. She sulks and she makes love with her eyes.

She pretends to be a boy and gets away with it – for a while. She unfolds out of bed and stretches like a kitten only for your attention. She loves shaggy dogs!

I am full of me… upto the brim and overflowing for you to scoop up and savour… This bum shape on the beach is mine as is this world – glass marble won in dirt on my palm.

Monday, October 02, 2006

We saw our first Black Mamba this morning.


We were in the car and are reporting alive.
My favourite lichen stoner talks to me about Duikers -

" Is this a red one? The pellet is a bit big for blue"

" I think it is a blue one..."

" a big blue one?"

" a BIG FAT blue one!"

" a BIG FAT OVERFED blue one!!"

" a BIG on STEROIDS like blue one!!!"

*sigh... field work is lovable...*
The womb of humanity. I stand under a gigantic Baobab – I touch and kiss its grey stem, look at spiral roads upwards… Shade my eyes from sunlight, my clothes heavier carry earth in them. I wish I could stand through centuries, be a solemn witness.

Life would be safe among sacred ruins of a merchant town now populated by Baobab. They look after other subjects: the desert rose, neem from across the ocean, sykes monkeys and African harrier hawks. Africa… Ancient and alive.

All around me – the earth here is reflected in this tree, you are ancient and alive, barely. Barely… Humanity left and forgot you. The visitors will never know (and I don’t) how it was, how it could be. Looking through transparent shut windows into other lives provides exactly that much of a square space to look at.

You Baobab have seen it and felt it and grown - in it and above it… You Afrikaan people, your many beautiful tribes, you all different and yet the same today. I stand in awe and in sadness at the wisdom we have lost. We are a numb generation, not disillusioned but broken. I try to imagine what it could be like – you and me. But my growing up has stunted my mind. I cannot comprehend your elders and your names mean so much that I can’t understand. But be assured I am a friend of you and yours… I too come from an old land forgotten, not of course the womb of all man and any man, but I too respect wisdom and although the new fangled way is the only path to survival I too wail the death of the old, of the wise, of the immortal who’ve left us behind, who we have deliberately forgotten.

I may lie on a beach and laugh at my bikini tan, but I will not help but cry when the Baobabs live not… on this land on this earth…