Little girl lost

She is beautiful. She has his cheekbones and is immaculately made up, her hair tightly braided. He wouldn't have liked that, apparently. Rastafarians like their women 'au natural' - no make-up, no hairstyling, just looking as they were made by Jah. I like that, the bit about being natural, not so much the idea that it was forced by the men on 'their' women. I digress, though. There she was, manicured, and talking about him, her father, Bob Marley, in the documentary of his life - Marley - which I watched yesterday.

Her beauty, her perfect manicuring, however, did little to disguise her sadness, which poured out of the screen, a product of parental neglect, still at forty-something utterly tangible. It was as if she just wanted his attention, but never got it.

It's not that he was a bad man, his ideals were good, loving, human and his music, well, we all know his music. He just had no idea how to be a father. It's not surprising in the greater scheme of things, his father was completely absent by the sound of it, a white man having his way with as many beautiful Jamaican women as he wished. And Bob Marley had eleven kids from seven mothers. I never knew that.

It's a fascinating story, about a fascinating man who did incredible things, but it was her, his daughter, that has stuck with me. He was riddled with cancer when he was flown back to Florida from Germany to die. He was only 36-years old as his family gathered at his bedside to bid him farewell.

"I thought then, maybe this time, that I'd get to have my moment with him, just us," she says with barely contained sadness that borders on bitterness. It broke my heart.

Heartbreaking

There's photographic proof. Year's of it. They were the beautiful, young lovers at university, she blonde, waif-like, beautiful, kind, smiley; he skinny, long-haired, just as beautiful. It was at that time, the one when everything seemed perfect, the air was clear, we were filling our brains with learning and love and the freedom of youth and they were like a snapshot of it - the perfectness of young love.

Their's lasted, it wasn't a fleetingly beautiful moment in a small, dusty town that swelled hearts, broke them and swelled them again, their's was more. As is the nature of leaving university we all scattered in the wind. They married, more photos of love, and with the invention of Stalkbook, suddenly those pictures were there for all of us to see, to be allowed to believe in love. The photos documenting them, and us, growing slightly older, possibly wiser (or not), but settling.

That's what the photos showed - them, love, a clarity in it all that I've seldom seen. It was tangible through the pictures although I didn't see them in 'real life' after varsity. In a moment it was over. No, that's not true, I heard the whole story, it wasn't a moment, it was over time, as cancer ate her alive, that beautiful, waif-like creature, so young, so lovely, so in love. And he was left. Alone.

My heart breaks at the cruelty of it. She died a couple of years ago now but an old friend was here over the holidays, a good friend of his, so it came up and I recoiled, again, at the heartbreak of it.

She saw him while she was here and reported that he is healing, smiling again, and I'm almost 100% certain that that is making her smile too, in the ether.

Desperate mecca

We drove in around the back, by mistake, past the big black bins oozing waste, past the back doors of the restaurants, past the chef with his greasy hair and nicotine-stained finger nails, puffing away sitting on the pavement. He didn't even look up, as we drove around the corner, into yet another non-descript parking lot filled with people hunting for bargains with fistsful of cash.

The thing that struck me first was the wierd silence, despite the people. Each little shop crammed full of shiny, plasticky stuff and "brand name" takkies, people inside quiet, the only sound some high-pitched Chinese pop music, as synthetic as the rows and rows of polyester panties and matching bras. Each shop with an owner sitting higher than the shop and one or two shop assistants, acting like they'd never seen each other, were strangers.

We stayed a while, until we both admitted to being overwhelmed by a sense of despair, this little shopping mecca had driven us down and we couldn't decide whether it was some kind of spiritual aura left in all that merchandise probably made in sweat shops behind closed doors, or if this was just the desperation of a displaced population seeping into us like damp, people living oh-so-far from home in a country with a strange language, trying so hard to make a living out of their sweat shop merchandise.

Chinatown. Not somewhere I'll be rushing back to. It did, however, make me want to pick fresh spring flowers and deliver bouquets to each of those sad, silent, people. To hand them over with a hug, and a kiss on the forehead.

Spain 2: Barcelona

It’s true that Barcelona never sleeps. It positively throbs. We stayed in a beautifully central apartment within walking distance of many of the Gaudi buildings and a couple of fabulous little squares, including one with a towering clock in the middle with a tolling bell and the most amazing ice cream shop on its corner. It had Nutella ice cream that tasted as if it had dropped directly from heaven into the old, glass-fronted, wooden-panelled shop with a beautiful, smiley boy behind the counter. Then the Poppy ice cream, like lying in a field of poppies with a Spring sun shining on your face. Sublime.

I’m the first to admit I’m a small town girl so I was initially a little intimidated by the city’s hum, but then we walked through its ancient narrow streets, exploring the back alleys that looked like scenes out of a gothic movie, washing hanging above, little balconies with potplants on them, ancient walls and new graffiti, and I got into the rhythm.

We spent a lot of time just wandering about the back streets, behind the tourist-tat-filled ones and sitting at street cafes, drinking ice cold beer, eating tapas, watching people. One day we wound our way through a narrow alley toward Barcelona Cathedral, confused by the ever-loudening rock music. Popping into the sunshine of the cathedral square, we were met by a stage made of a double-decker bus on which a Spanish rock band were rocking to a large audience of Spanish youths. To the left, some fabulous wall art, to the right, the cathedral herself – beautiful, ancient, intricate.

We stayed and rocked for a bit and then went into the cathedral, her thick stone walls blocking out the noise, her air thick with hundreds of year’s of people’s prayers. I’m not particularly religious but here, in this cavernous building with its many beautifully decorated, gold-bedecked little chapels, I was stunned into silence. I felt like the very air I was breathing contained so many hopes and dreams, mine included. Mainly the shattered ones, although, I’m sure the fulfilled ones were there. I was overcome by sadness and I cried, big, fat tears, the kind that drip off your face and land in your lap, for all the lost souls.

I lit candles in the courtyard outside with the pretty geese and I watched their flames flicker, little lights, symbols of warmth and love and hope and I breathed again, the warm air of Barcelona. Afterwards, anyone watching would've seen three girls disappearing down the side street to find the hidden coffee shop in which to drink carajillos, write postcards and watch life pass us by.

Flitting fug

Somebody called me brave this morning. I stopped myself from screaming “No, I’m not”, throwing myself on the floor and wailing loudly only because he’s a kindly old man who I adore and would hate to make feel silly in any way. You see, I can feel my brave cloak slipping horribly and, when it slips, all manner of ghastly things might show that’ll make people run and scream even more than I felt like running and screaming this morning.

Yesterday I was fugged, today I’m flitting. Fuggedly flitting. From to-do-thing to to-do-thing, getting not one of them done. I have the concentration span of a flea on acid. Or maybe more a flea who’s just smoked the biggest spliff on earth. My senses seem dulled, yet my mind fires at a million firings a minute. I’m sure there’s a better word than ‘firings’ but I can’t get to it.

And through it all I’m struggling to keep the cloak closed because it’s cold out there and my exposed bits are shrivelling and shivering and crying to be looked after. I’m just not sure how to do the looking after right now, being flittingly fugged or fuggedly flitted.

The fug

I’m in a bit of a fug. Post-holiday blues, I’m sure. I don’t want to be getting up in the cold dark and plodding off to the same office each morning. I don’t want the minutiae of my life to take over my thoughts and fug me up. But they are. Minutiae are fugging me up.

In between, I had a lovely weekend with coffee with my old besties, then some admin to ward off too much guilt, a lovely welcome back visit to the market with a bowl of delicious chorizo goulash soup and a glass of bubbles, the perfect combination. Who would’ve thought? Then a rugby beer (again, who would’ve thought?) followed by a surprising birthday party.

It was surprising in that it was a party at which I knew a little of the people well, a couple of people a little bit, and the rest not at all. I’d been daunted by the thought of them, they’re the ‘cool crowd’. I now know how to get over that: place yourself at the bar. It also makes for a cheap night out, as everybody who buys a drink buys you one too. I knew about it on Sunday morning.

While propping up the bar though, I made some new, fun, interesting and, do remember, ‘cool’ friends. Maybe I’m in the In Crowd now? Nah, who’m I kidding? It turns out that some of them are, well, quite cool, and I often forget to put myself out there meeting new people, especially as winter spits her cold breath on us.

Despite the fun that was had, I am still fuggy. Very much so. I want to write fun, happy, stuff, especially that chronicalling our Spanish adventures before the memories start to get buried under those minutiae again. I just don’t seem to have the energy. I just feel sad.

The old man

He was old. The kind of old that squishes up your face with wrinkles that tell a million stories of a long and difficult life. He was crippled, limping along with a crutch to help him, up the long hill to the hospital where he’d sit all day, waitingwaitingwaiting for somebody to see him.

We stopped in our big-comfy-car-with-just-two-people-in-it, he struggled to get in, his one leg stiff and sore. Close up, he was even more wrinkly, his face filled with stories I’d love to have time to hear. We glided up the hill, dropping him at the entrance. He quietly thanked us, unnecessarily, as we helped him out, asking for his little plastic bag which he’d left on the seat. Inside: some dry bread, to keep hunger at bay on the plastic chairs while he sits waitingwaitingwaiting.

And again my throat constricts at the great divide as I try to swallow my priviledged tears and try to think of how to make it better.

Not okay, just not

Sometimes I want to scream and cry and shout at humanity. They’re just a crap lot a lot of the time. Let me back track. I don’t often talk about Real Work here because, well, I just don’t. My Real Work is fascinating, excrutiating, depressing, ecstatic at varying times. I work in HIV, and that’s all I really need to say to quantify my previous statement.

I try very hard to separate work and the rest of my life. I try to leave the stories I hear while I'm at Real Work there. I have to, otherwise I’d throw myself from a bridge. Some/many of the stories are just tragic. Don’t get me wrong, there are some incredible, inspiring, wonderfully happy stories too, I just don’t get to hear those very often, due to the line I’m in. I do get to help, though, which I like.

So back to trying to leave the stories behind. I’m not very good at it, because they’re unfortunately, not just stories. There are people behind them. Often people who are trying really hard to survive in a world that just keeps on kicking them – on the shins, in the back, on their faces.

Mostly, I manage, but then I hear something that makes me want to scream, and cry, and shout, and hit out. Like this morning. A 6-year old girl, who had been raped. There are no words. My faith in humanity shatters a bit more every time I hear of these things. Hers, I’m pretty sure, is broken terminally. How could it not be? She’s 6-years old. Six. If I knew the fucker responsible I could not be held responsible for what I’d do. Instead, I do what I can, and do my tiny bit to help mop up the mess that he’s left, as my heart breaks for her.

Sigh

I couldn’t sleep last night, at all. First my body turned into some kind of roaring furnace. I was so hot I thought I might explode. Then I was just awake. And when I’m awake in the dark I get to thinking and over-thinking and those shadows, you know the ones, flit about and try to suffocate me. I got to a point where I was so tired I just wanted to cry. But I was too tired for even that.

I’m not good without sleep and there are some big, important things I need to deal with that I don’t really want to deal with and they weigh on my mind. Which makes me not able to sleep. Which makes me unable to think straight. Which make things seem even more impossible. And then I can’t sleep. You see how this works?

So I’m a bit miz really. And I fear if anyone prods me, physically or metaphorically, I may dissolve into a puddle on the floor and drip away into nothing.

Fourteen years

Today is the day I feel naked, unzipped, unhinged. Silly really, but there you have it. Fourteen years ago, today, The Tragedy happened. Around about exactly now actually. I commented to G this morning that in all those fourteen years, each 1st of December has dawned as bright and blue and sunny as that one in 1996. I normally take the day off and do something beautiful. This time, I’m at Real Work. Feeling naked, unzipped, unhinged. The clouds are coming over. Weird. Maybe it’s because I came to work. I will do something beautiful over the weekend.

Everything just seems so close to the surface when I think about it. It’s watery and bare and it stings a little and it feels like yesterday that I lay on my dig’s carpet in the room I had packed up into a couple of boxes and a suitcase – four years of learning, living, loving, completely carefree (except, of course, for some good doses of teenage angst) into so little material stuff and so much wonderful ‘internal’ stuff. I listended to Eddie Vedder sing Off He Goes loudloudloud on my Walkman and cried fat tears for leaving that life behind. It feels like yesterday, but it was yesterday fourteen years ago.

Little did I know how big and fat those tears were. Maybe I did know. Maybe that’s why they were bigger, fatter, hotter. Or maybe they’ve just turned into that in the time that has passed since.

I am still here.



Off He Goes, Pearl Jam

Know a man
His face seemed pulled and tense
Like he's ridin' on a motorbike
In the strongest winds
So I approach with tact
Suggest that he should relax
But he's movin' much too fast

Said he'll see me on the flip side
On this trip he's taken for a ride
He's been takin' too much on
There he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

He's yet to come back
But I seen his picture
It doesn't look the same up on the rack
We go way back
I wonder 'bout his insides
It's like his thoughts are too big for his size

He's been taken...where, I don't know
Off he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

And now I rub my eyes, for he has returned
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned
For he still smiles... And he's still strong
Nothing changed but the surroundin' bullshit
That has grown

And now he's home and we're laughin'
Like we did, my same old, same old friend
Until a quarter to ten
I saw the strain creep in
He seems distracted and I know just what is going to happen next

Before his first step, he's off again

Green beans

I love green beans. Green beans make my tummy hurt. I, therefore, avoid them, so my poor little tummy doesn’t hurt. I’m at a point, though, where there’s a hole in me that I can’t seem to fill. I just ate a whole bunch of green beans for lunch. This is not good sign for where my head is at right now. Not at all.

Horrible news

My best friend lives in Sydney. Her mother lives here and survived breast cancer about five years ago. I’ve just got an e-mail from her saying her mum has it again, possibly in her lungs. She’s waiting to see the oncologist this afternoon. It’s at times like this that I hate the distance. I mean I always hate the distance, but even more so now. I’m sure she’s hating it more than me, though. It’s just crap.

It’s one of those things where there is nothing you can say or do to make it better. Makes me feel helpless, and I hate that. That helplessness thing again. Cancer is so very, very, frightening. Monstrous. And it makes my heart break.

PMS... of course!

Why didn’t one of you lot say something? Hmm? Couldn’t one of you, just one, look back and see that last month, around this time, I became as gloomy as the velvet-nosed but not-so-happy Eeyore? And the month before, and the month before that. You see where I’m going with this? I’m shifting the blame onto you, my two readers. It’s your fault that you didn’t pick up a tinge of PMS. God forbid, however, one of you had actually picked it up and told me that. I might’ve bitten your head off. Or, more likely, burst into tears.

Okay, I’m not denying that there is some shit going on my head, completely non-hormone-related stuff that is making me very sad but, mostly, I can push it back down into my murky depths. I know that’s not the healthiest way to deal with such things but it’s the only way I can at the moment. And what’s the point of having murky depths if you can’t push things there?

So here I am, feeling slightly better (slightly being an operative word here) after realising that, perhaps I’m not spiralling into a deep depression from whence I will never come back (drama queen, me?) but am, instead, just going through the motions of being a woman.

It’s been twenty years already. You’d have thought I’d have worked it out by now, wouldn’t you?

Losing equilibrium and fighting monsters

I keep bursting into tears. Well, not bursting really, more like drizzling into tears. My nose runs, my eyes get all teary, and the lump in my throat makes it hard to breathe. It’s like there is a miniature storm brewing, just below my surface. It seems that there is nothing under my skin but salt water and it is expanding and sploshing around. I need to keep very still not to let it spill.

One minute I’m fine, the next I lose some equilibrium (see something, hear something, think something) and it starts leaking out of my eyes and nose. I know all the probable reasons for this leakage, but I push those little monsters back, swatting at them with whatever is near – a plastic fork, a broom, I even threw the little baby food jar that contained the balsamic vinegar for my salad for lunch at a particularly ferocious one earlier.

And, simultaneously, the hollowness echoes in my terrarium, making the sploshing salt water that makes up my being so loud it almost blocks out the sound of the wind howling outside the Ivory Tower. I know the gale is there, though. I watch the birds trying their hardest to fly into it, being bashed backwards by its power, and that makes me leak again. I can relate.

I wonder how I can make myself keep completely still, so the leaking stops?

Unattached in a terrarium

Sometimes I just feel like I’m looking at the world from inside an aquarium, but without the water. So maybe it’s a terrarium. That is the one with the lizards and chameleons in it, isn’t it? I digress. I’m looking out, feeling a little sad, but not knowing why exactly. It’s just like there are thin threads of heartbrokenness swirling up my nostrils and down my throat with every breath I take, and I feel detached. Even the sounds I hear seem muffled.

They cleaned our windows today in The Ivory Tower at Real Work. It’s been a year, and the acid rain had deposited a layer of dust so thick on the outside that, after they were cleaned, my colleague exclaimed: “I can see cars!” She overlooks a four-lane highway. We are blessed with huge, 8 x 6 pane windows that stretch up two metres, so cleaning them changes the light completely. It’s suddenly crystallised.

Oh, you see? I’m making no sense, I can tell, but I’m too far detached from earth to be able to do anything about it. I’m sure the clean windows are explaining my terrarium feelings, but the sad detachment? Where’d that come from?

Untitled

I woke in the night from one of those terrifying dreams that make you gasp awake and lie for a while trying to get your breath back and order the tangle of thoughts flying around your head back into reality. It was all betrayal and sadness and, well, paralysis, but of the emotional kind.

The kind man’s death of the previous post is weighing on my mind. I keep going through the phone call from my mother, thinking of what I was thinking as she told me. And what it was, was this: I kept wishing the sentence would end: “Childhood friend called (please stop), her Dad fell down those treacherous stairs (STOP, please) and he had a terrible head injury (for fuck’s sake, stop now) and he died.” Deflation, heart break.

I wrote Childhood Friend an e-mail this morning but words sound so hollow at times like this, don’t they?

Heartbreak and joy

The father of one of my childhood friends from the dusty Small Town in the Free State fell down a flight of stairs yesterday and died. He was a wonderful, caring man who was always kind and gentle. He reminded me of Father Christmas. I am so very sad for them all. A reminder, again, of how fragile we all are.

My mother’s call to tell me this came after a morning of sinking feelings as Real Work dealt call after call of horrible, suffering-filled stories, mostly involving children. My heart breaks a little more with each one I deal with and, on one hand, I long to run away and leave it all behind where I can’t see it. Then I remember the man I spoke about above, and the good he did and force myself to be grateful that I can do something, despite having to hear it tearing me apart. Over and over.

And then I am constantly reminded of the whole cycle – my beloved friend, Pop, halfway through chemo, doing so well, pushing through. She is beautiful in her hairlessness, she seemed almost translucent when I went to take her some trashy reading yesterday while she sat, looking small, in the big Lazy Boy, the chemo dripping into her veins, chasing that monster away.

Another friend is in labour as we speak, her baby boy being oh-so-comfortable still, having waited over a week past his due date to start making moves towards joining us here in The Big Wide World. I am sure the wonderful man’s spirit is watching it all from above, smiling and also feeling the joy of the circle of life. Here’s wishing that little boy a safe ride in (and his mum a not-too-painful delivery of him, it’s been almost 24 hours of labour already!)

To heartbreak and joyousness and the celebration of life and my managing to keep my head above water.

A liitle sad story

She was running, as fast as she possibly could. She imagined that, to someone watching her, her legs would be a blur. She breathed raggedly, sucking in lungsful of the freezing air which felt like it slipped down into her lungs and created tiny icicles falling and piercing her insides excruciatingly.

Attached to her wrist was a red helium balloon which was bobbing comically in the air, trying its hardest to escape from the humdrum of this running-as-fast-as-you-can-standing-stillness. She’d flown away with it, into the bright blue sky, over green fields, but that was before she got concreted. Each time a growling car passed, the balloon bumped and pulled.

Looking around she realised that, in fact, she wasn’t moving at all. She tried to run faster, but she was concreted in that one spot, surrounded by suburban houses trying to outdo each other with higher walls and shinier doorknobs. Cars and taxis whizzed past her, growling, baring their teeth, and coughing their poison gases over her. She smelt the rot of the city.

On the verge was a small patch of grass upon which five children sat, a steps-and-stairs bunch, playing. They seemed to be conducting some sort of experiment with some snails and two ants. She tried to run towards them, her breath shortening, but she remained rooted and they started to blur, first losing their outlines, then their entire beings, until all that was left was a small shadow on the grass, an outline of love.

Her heart was being strangled by the whole scene and she began to realise, while she was concreted to that spot, the balloon wasn’t, so she began to bite through its string until it flew up, carried by that icy wind into the bright blue sky.

She watched it twist and turn and dance and as she watched she felt her substance draining away. A gust of wind blew down the street gathering her fluttering shell up in it, blowing her along the gutter to the rain drain at the corner, next to a Simba chip packet which fluttered disconsolately as she landed on it.

Small Town Sadness

There's something about Small Town South Africa that is dusty. Even a little town in the greenest, lushest valley has a layer of dust over it, like a house that needs a featherduster. The shops in the main street (and I'm talking generically here) generally have sparsely stocked shelves where you can find handcreams still in the bottles they were made in in the 80's and sewing kits with those little silver threaders in them. All made slightly dull with the layer of dust.

It's not only the literal dust, though. The buildings and, often, the people have it too. They don't gleam and shimmer like city buildings and city people. They don't knock down the ugly 70's shop that houses the Pep store (another Small Town requirement) to replace it with a steel and glass architectural monstrosity where beautiful people can sip cocktails while pouting their collagen-filled lips and blow air kisses at each other, falsely. Pep stays, it keeps the same stock of cheap and cheerful clothes, homeware and TV bars at the counter, as it did in my Small Town when I grew up. It still smells exactly the same.

It's real. I think that's why there's the dust. People are just humans, there is no need to silicone, liposuck, extend one's eyelashes because people here know who you are, they've watched you grow up, they've seen you fall, pick yourself up again. Good grief, they've talked about it on a Friday night at the bar. You've talked about them. It works both ways.

Our little town we went to had that dust and the Pep store. We drove through it on the Monday evening when we arrived, the wide main road looked at us quizzically in the afternoon sun. It was quiet but we thought that was just Small Town. The vaguely sad, still feeling was there each time we went into town (from our cottage on a farm next to the river) during the week.

We decided to have our hair cut while we were there, entranced by the local hairdressing salon: Hair by Me, opposite the garage. Me seemed a good person to give one's hair a trim. Stopping outside the shop on the Thursday, we noticed a small bunch of flowers, and a poster with a girl's name on it saying "In loving memory. 2010/09/06". The Monday we'd arrived. Me, the hairdresser was not there. She'd be back next week, according to a sign on her door.

On the Friday we stopped in for a beer at the bar. And there we heard why the little town was so still. A little girl, she was to turn 11 that Thursday, had been knocked over by a bus that was coming out of the garage opposite Hair by Me on her way to school on Monday morning. She had looked the wrong way and stepped in front of it. The funeral had been that morning.

The stillness of the town was not just a Small Town thing, it was a palpable sadness, the heart-wrenching brokenness of a place that had lost one of its young, way before her time.

Tired eyes

Last week I went to see A Serious Man with G, the latest offering from the Coen brothers, whose movies I love. It left me silent afterwards (very unusual for me) as I contemplated its intricacies and the overall downtroddeness of it. It’s about a guy in whose life everything is going wrong. Depressing really, but done in the Coen brother’s signature style which, somehow, brings a humour to even the worst situation. I must admit that this was not their most humorous though, the ‘black comedy’ being somewhat too real (as opposed to their normal kookiness.) Thus my quietness. I felt sad.

During the movie, the main character, whose life is falling apart around him, goes to the rabbi to try and make sense of things. In this scene the rabbi points out of the window at the most ordinary, drab parking lot and says: "I mean, the parking lot here, not much to see. But if you imagine yourself a visitor, somebody who isn't familiar with these autos and such, somebody still with a capacity for wonder, someone with a fresh perspective... You're looking at the world through tired eyes... Things aren't so bad. Look at the parking lot, Larry."

It made me think, and has stuck with me (obviously, otherwise I would’t be writing about it, it would’ve flitted out of my mind like the million other swirlings that have left me before I put them to paper) and I realized why during my insomniac moments in the early hours of this morning… My eyes are feeling tired, I’m looking at the world through them, tiredly, like Larry in A Serious Man.

Time for me to look at the parking lot, right?