South Africa

It’s all just ‘stuff

~ monkeywithgun ~ Leave a comment

It was 4pm and the flames had just started to lick the top of the mountain behind the house. They’d spent the previous 2 days marching through the hills and valleys unseen from Hout Bay. All we had seen was smoke and a faint red glow in the night sky, but now it became real. By 5pm the mountain had a mane of fire along its crest…a solid wall of menacing red. By 7pm the line of fire had descended a 100 meters or so from the summit and the smoke pumped hard and furious towards the bay. Tension and nervous excitement zinged above the crowds pulled out of their houses and it was hot. The hottest day in recorded history. Summer of Sam played through my mind.

By 11pm we could hear the crack of the flames and breathing was becoming painful. We shut up the house and tried to sleep. I woke up and went to the window at 5am expecting the cliff face that had been below the flames to have starved them of the vegetation they needed and to see only a few whisps of telltale smoke. The flames were in full force, still in formation, none breaking rank…steadily marching down the mountainside, snatching at anything green and living. At 7am the helicopters resumed their water bombing, which seemed both valiant and useless at the same time.

With news that the wind was to pick up and gust it came time to think about what we should pack in case we needed to evacuate…and this is where it hit me. It’s all just ‘stuff’. Standing in front of my cupboards with an empty gym bag, I had no idea where to start. 20 minutes later I’m still standing there and all that’s in the bag  are a couple of t-shirts, a pair of boardies and some boxer shorts. There was simply too much ‘stuff’ make a decision. Separately in her cupboard my wife had the same experience (notice she was in her cupboard and I was in-front of mine)…too much ‘stuff’. It was in this ridiculous situation, forced on us by the largest fires the Cape had experienced in 15 years, that we had our simultaneous moments of clarity. Pure clarity of the fact that all the stuff we’d been buying, hoarding, treasuring and using to make us feel better about ourselves was just ‘stuff’…simple. It was a massive relief and an embarrassing expose at the same time.

So what happened…nothing. The fires raged for another 2 days. It got quite hairy and harrowing at times, but then the flames died. The smoke gradually cleared. It’s been a month now and ash is still falling. Life has continued and all our ‘stuff’ is still in the house but its hold on us is weakened, and it feels great.

Cocaine, dwarfs and business associates

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Last weekend I find myself standing, swaying ever so slightly, in a throng of party people I didn’t really know. It was a 40th. I get a perverse pleasure welcoming others to this decade, so make a point of going to them. They go one of two ways. You get the ‘I’m 40 now, so I’ll throw a pseudo-sophisticated dinner party to show I’m grown up’…these either end bloody early as they’re boring as, or wind up slightly later with people throwing up in plant pots and arguing with their wives. The other way they go, which is the way this one certainly looked to be going was ‘I’m fucking 40 and I’m going to party like it’s my last day alive…mutha funkstas!’…my favorite of the two options, but that’s an aside.

I’m bouncing from one knot of people to the next and relaxing into the night. The little trip to the powder room has imparted a comfortable buzz. The night moves on and all things ratchet up a few notches. I’ve just extracted myself from the rant of some ex-architect who now makes leather bikes seats and my god had I seen his wife? Isn’t she wonderful and did you know she was black, you couldn’t tell by looking at her and look at those legs. Did I tell you I made a bike saddle for so and so and etc etc, and am taking a private moment when my focus pulls in on a short (ish) woman standing in front of me. She’s just called me by my name. My memory banks come up empty. I mentally scramble through recent occasions and events – still blank. I therefore assume we must’ve met in the desert recently…at that bastion of madness, Afrikaburn. That would make sense. Similar people. Similar vibe. That must’ve been it…but it wasn’t.

‘It’s me, X, we met at your office last week.’

I feel myself draw up straight and move into auto-pilot. The scrambled synapses find their sequence and we chat. When I say chat, we danced. We conversationally tangoed each looking for the opening to broach the ‘are you high?’ question. Neither of us allowing that opening to occur. Neither wanting to be the first to drop the pretense. How ridiculous, and I remember thinking this at the time, that two adults were struggling to be adults on their own time because of a link to their grindstones. This continues for a while until some guy (who turns out to be her husband) sidles up and offers us both some MDMA, and the faking and parrying ends and we have a blast and uncovered a whole lot of shared history.

As fun as it was this little encounter got me thinking: is there an etiquette in these situations? And if so what is it and what drives it? Surely as two functioning adults, what you get up to on your own clock is your business and not something that you need to hide? Is it though? I’ve tried to project our next ‘work’ meeting and wonder how it will pan out with the knowledge we each have about it each other. I’d like to think it will be more open. That we’ll each understand where the other’s coming from and that the level of professionalism will remain intact and be more authentic for no longer being clouded in fake funk. Has my view of her changed knowing that she tucks into the same recreationals as I do? It would be more than hypocritical if it has. I wonder if I’ll take her as seriously? We’ll see…

Anyhow, the night moved on to include a woman jumping out of a cake, a bunch of grumpy little Playboy bunny waitresses getting grumpier and the smallest dwarf I’ve ever tripped over wondering around, dressed in a ring master’s coat, with beer and cocaine on a plate for the party boy…but that’s another story right there, which I may, may not get around to writing. If I do I’ll call ‘Who’s exploiting who: the ethics of dwarf hiring’, or something similar, but right now it’s time for a swim. Over and out.

It feels like ‘that’ time

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I’m not a pessimist and I don’t sit around waiting for bad things to happen…but I don’t blind myself to the fact that bad /. unfortunate / sad things to happen and for some time now I’ve had this ominous feeling, like sludge backing up a drain, or  a dark stain squatting just over the horizon, that something’s coming.

If you’ve read / suffered through any of my previous ruminations you’ll know that I’m in a happy place. Life is great. I have 2 wonderful kids and a wife. I’ve been given a second to chance to live in a country that I love. All four limbs and five senses are in working order. I’ve got old friends I’ve reconnected with. Life is good, but I can’t shake the feeling.

If I do little else this year I want to learn how to live in the present – how to stop my mind getting stuck in the sidings and derailing, or shooting ahead of the tracks themselves…when really all that has any impact is the right now…so in all of this, the presence of this dark stranger is forcing me to lie on my own couch and bare myself to, um, myself.

Is it because I’ve got so little to complain about in life right now that I’m feeling that I should have. That things are too good? Because that’s a fairly, if not completely, pathetic world view and I don’t mind saying it. Does the absence of bad shit mean that bad shit must be coming, or that if I was swamped in bad shit already that it wouldn’t matter…so I wouldn’t be worried. And given I can’t do anything about this tonne of hurt that’s supposedly barreling my way, what the fuck am I giving it airtime for anyway…damn it!

Then I take a breath and the myself that’s on the couch rises slightly to one elbow and adjusts itself to a more comfortable position as posits thus…

Maybe it’s because you’re getting old? You’re finally becoming aware of the march of time and the effect of it’s dirty footprints on you and your friends? You’re no longer the bullet proof superheros you thought you were and that little sea of ‘pre-cancerous’ cells you just learned about in that latest Tim Ferriss podcast has got you spooked? If these are the reasons for the dark passenger you’re cruising with, then you’ve probably got good reason to have him there…but you still can’t do anything about it, so shake it.

You know what I find myself replying, to myself, you might just have nailed it. The fun may start at forty, but so does the dying. It’s just life. Your group is likely to thin slightly every couple of years from now – if you’re lucky you’re the one noticing the ‘thinning’…if not, no need to worry, because you can’t…worry that is, when you’re fertilizer for someone’s grass patch or favorite tree.

So just maybe this ominous feeling is just a result of becoming more aware, and now that I’m aware I need to become more present…because when all’s said and done what will be will be and why waste time worrying about it. Nuff said…now I’m worried about this post having gone live before it was done…oh well. From the schitzophrenic hip’s what you’re getting.

Too old for Facebook?

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It’s 3am, I can’t sleep so I’m on Facebook. Why? What’s so fucking fascinating that I need to be on Facebook at this time? Nothing, but it’s my go to place when insomnia grabs me by the short and curlies. I’m not ignorant. I know by sticking a backlit blue screen in my face in the lonely wee hours is not helping matters. In fact it’s ensuring that I can’t go back to sleep by turning on regions of my brain that shouldn’t be…but I can’t help myself.

I cottoned on to Facebook early on, living in London, feeling unremarkable and bored with life. It’s been an on again off again relationship ever since…and there’s a definite correlation to my state of mind for whom ever cares to track it. Bouts of over sharing and contribution interspersed with brief periods of rabid consumption and flat out frustration – set to repeat.

I remember very well the heady excitement of the now unlimited connection. Now I could pepper my days with looking up old friends, party people, girls I wish I had but hadn’t and so on. For the latter group Facebook felt like a tool from God to put nagging ‘what ifs’ to bed…and I certainly wasn’t alone in seeing it for that. The newspapers were reporting on the lunatic rash of infidelity unfolding. The mad reunions. The Facebook affairs, flings and marriages. The unions and the separations enabled by a connected world. The good and the bad. This was awesome stuff to a bloke flopping listlessly from one dead end relationship to another. I did my looking. I poked and poked some more. Got shut down and opened up to in equal measure. I Asked questions and told lies…and engineered a definite answer to my most nagging ‘what if’…and that answer was a resounding and sweaty ‘yes’ in the form of a ‘athletic’ night in a top end hotel off The Strand with some girl I’d once shared an E with on the side of a mountain in Africa 5 years earlier. We never spoke again and didn’t need to. Facebook had answered a nagging question for us both. Magic!

But I digress. That’s not what this post is about. This post is about my more recent feelings towards the social behemoth and what it says about me and my closer friends. I find myself taking photos of the kids that have a purposeful glimpse of the pool in the background, or making sure the cars’ steering wheel badge is clear in the bottom corner of any staged photos to show how fucking hot it is on the car’s digital thermometer (it’s a Merc since you ask). Pathetic, I know. I find myself trying to out wit other parents with the captions under photos of my kids, as if anyone really cares…and this is the bit that gets me. People genuinely pretend to give a shit…and when I take a step back to consider, I lose a little respect for them each time they do.

I’m a social media hypocrite, and I’m online selfish. I refuse to ‘like’ dumb shit that my 300 odd friends post (they’re not all odd, but it’s an odd number because nobody has 300 friends), but I like being ‘liked’. If I feel they’re being insincere or only posting for show, I make a point of not reacting (it’s like pretending not to be home when the door bell goes – you’re the only one that knows it). I don’t ‘like’ to make people feel good. Facebook brings out the churlish side of me. The side that people don’t see face to face. It’s easier to be a non-responsive prick when you’re on the other side of the world…

…and it’s this level of dissection and wasted cerebral flexing that makes me think I might be too old for Facebook. Or am I too immature for meaningful digital relationships? Who knows, but 10 bucks says when the insomnia snags me in about 6 hours from now, I’ll be glued to the punishing blue screen making sure my photos from today are suitably filtered and accompanied by wit…and going out of my way not to ‘like’ those who look to be having more fun than me.

Kids know it

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You can’t hide greatness – especially from kids. We’d spent the winter solstice (+ 1) at a kid friendly wine farm. Weather was spectacular. Kids and adults had a great time. Loads of jungle gym type things to keep the daughters entertained. At various stages throughout the day I tried to get some photos of daughter 1 at play because I love taking them and more importantly because I’ve noticed she’s getting very shy as she grows up. She’s gone from wanting to be in front of whatever camera happened to be around to not wanting to be near one. Could be just a stage or she’s beginning to develop issues with her self-esteem. Who knows. She’s only 4 and a half. Every attempt to get a photo was thwarted with a turned head, pulled face, whinge. I gave up in the end. Skip to end of day and daughter 1 and I are walking to the car whilst everyone else  said packed up. To the left stood a 10 foot high statue of Nelson Mandela with one of his loud shirts and a walking stick in his hand. Daughter 1 grabbed me ‘Daddy please take a some photos of me with Nelson Mandela. Please’ She shot off and planted herself next to him, standing bolt upright with her little chest puffed out and smiling. I took a picture. Her head came up just above his knee. ‘Take another one. This time I want to hug him.’ She hugged his calf tight and I snapped away. ‘Now I want to stand in front of him and hug him again.’ I did what I was told, my mind racing. ‘Daddy I want you to put the pictures on Facebook so everyone knows I love Nelson Mandela.’ ‘Sweetie of course I will.’ She laughed and skipped back to me. Nelson Mandela died about 6 months after we moved back to South Africa. He was not a part of her life in Sydney. She hadn’t heard of him. So this well aimed love for a man she’d only heard about recently was staggering. She wasn’t fawning over One Direction or Katy Perry it was Madiba. How awesome is that? You can’t hide greatness. Especially from kids.

41 year old virgin

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I’ve got a gun in my face and a steely-eyed 21 year old at the other end of it roughing me up and barking orders. My t-shirt’s ripped and I’m sweating like a pig. He shoves the gun harder between my eyes, I grab, twist and lock his arm whilst dispatching 3 quick kicks to his groin…and nobody bats an eyelid, for I’m just another self-defense virgin having their intro session to the ways of Krav Maga. ‘What the fuck’s that?’ you say, ‘sounds like a Vietnamese sauce or some vengeful Hawaiian god.’

I’ll tell you. Here’s the skinny. Krav Maga is a is a martial art and self-defense system developed for the military in Israel. It’s a practical set of moves to help you get out of shitty situations like a gun being shoved in your face or some crack addict / pyscho / assassin bearing down on you with a knife…or any other scenario you can think of. The key is the ‘practical’ – you don’t need to be wearing silk pants and a rope belt, wheeling roundhouse kicks and flinging metal stars, or doing triple back-flips and running up walls. Krav Maga is practical, so practical that it hurts, and that’s what it’s designed to do, hurt alot and then incapacitate / break / kill your attacker. There’s nothing fluffy to see here folks.

Skip forward 30 mins and I’m starting to feel pretty handy. I’m disarming the 21 year old more often than he’s shooting me or I’m shooting myself and I get to thinking why it is that I’m doing this. I’m 41. I’ve never been remotely interested in  martial arts (not to be confused with marital arts which I’m not very good at either). I like to keep in shape, but I’ve not got a violent bone in my body…so I try to tell myself that I’m doing it simply to keep fit in a more useful way, which is kind of true, but sitting, niggling just below that veneer is the very real thought that one day, in this country I love dearly and have moved my family to, I could very well need to know this stuff. The stats are plain to see. South Africa is a violent place and enough of my friends have been touched by that violence for it not to be an abstract concept or simply stuff that happens to other people. I don’t ;like admitting that because that means I’ve accepted that I’ve put my family in a more dangerous location than we’ve been used to…and now it feels real enough that I need to do something about it, like get kicked around around by a 21 year old who could kill me with a flick of his wrist.

Looking around it’s a mixed bag – there’s no one type – women in their 30’s are tossing around men in their 40’s – Gen Y is well represented and seem to be quite nifty at it all. Early stage beer bellies flop against chiseled abs and forearms. The instructor has full control of this motley crew.

Anyhow, that was yesterday and today I hurt, and hurt a lot, but feel slightly less defenseless and a bit more useful than the day before, although I’ve never thought of it that way. I’m going to sign up. I enjoyed it but now feel obliged. Knowing that there is this super practical defense course available to me; something that will give me more of a chance to protect my family and me if one of those shitty, but not too rare, situations finds me / us. It wouldn’t feel right not to verse myself in it’s ways…and I don’t need to buy silk pants to do so.

Fathers’ day stuff

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It was the day before fathers’ day and daughter 1 came and found me in the study. She had something tucked behind her back and was biting her lower lip, her little cheeks puffed out. She does that when she’s proud of something. Thank God I was paying attention and didn’t brush her off with an ‘I’m busy’.

It was amazing, the little hand scribbled card that she thrust in front of my face. ‘For you Daddy. Happy Daddies’ day. I did it myself. Look inside it’s a heart and says I love my Daddy (wobbly lines over dotted letters my wife had drawn out). Crayon and felt pen spirals and lines all over.

‘Sweet heart, it’s awesome. I love it.’ Her little chest swelled and we hugged. ‘It’s from me Daddy…Just me.’ The point being made and the one taken was that her little sister had nothing to do with it.

‘Thanks. I’ll stick it in the special place where I keep all the things you give to me.’ We hugged and inside I chuckled at her making the point that it was HER gift to me and that it was NOT from daughter 2. Angling for bonus points so early in her little life.

Fast forward to the day after Fathers’ Day. I’m lying with a bottle of red by the fire and Daughter 2 waddles up to me, with the tripping gate of a 1 and a half year old with a full nappy. She has a big plastic bag which she drops on my face. Daughter 1: ‘What’s that?’ Me: ‘No idea Peanut. Let’s open it.’ Daughter 2 is pulling the cat’s tail and no longer interested.

Turns out the bag is laden with Fathers’ Day arts and crafts and cards and an ‘I love Daddy T-shirt. It’s just been dropped off by Duaghter 2’s nursery school teacher as I missed the Daddies’ Day morning they had.

I hug Daughter 2, who’s oblivious and look across to Daughter 1 who’s now busy making sure I know that all this stuff is from her too and that she told her little sister how to do it and my heart breaks for her. The little chest swollen with pride is now panting with the effort of jostling for a bit of this delayed Fathers’ Day action and all I want to do is to hug her and tell it’s not about how big things are  or how many things there are, and that nothing can take away from the incredible card she made for me a couple of days ago…but it falls on deaf ears.

It’s bed time and I’m popping Daughter 1 into her pyjamas and we’re getting ready for a story…’Daddy.’ ‘Yes Honey?’ ‘I didn’t help her with any of her cards. She did them all.’

My turn for a little chest swell and throat lump ‘I know. Now come here.’

It’s late and I’m turning in and my head’s full of thoughts about how much goes on in little, really little kids’ minds and how it’s so easy to unwittingly tread on their pride and what’s so important to them…too damn easy and to not even know…