Sea and Land, Land and Sea

When I think it no longer matters,

when I think that the sea has finally swept our footprints from the beach,

it all returns: a tide stronger and deeper than ever.

then I remember, and know that nothing has changed.

Memories are not footprints: I was the beach: you are the ocean.

You go where you will.

But whatever other shore you wash up on,

a part of you always washes up on me, cleans my thoughts, and sets me free.

I love cricket, so why am I not going to the Wanderers anymore?

I always loved cricket.
It was the first game that I was able to play as a boy, and although I was never really very good at it, I couldn't get enough. Pickup matches in parks, and later in boarding school would always find me amongst the hopefuls last to be picked, but first in enthusiasm!

TV came very late to my family, so the habit of being at the ground stuck with me.
In the early 2000's I moved to Rosebank: and one of the attractions was the Wanderers just down the road. Close enough to walk to, in fact. So I was one of those people that you see on TV, where there are more players on the field and in the dressing rooms then there are stretched out in the stands.

It never worried me that they weren't large crowds watching cricket. In fact, in some way that was part of its attraction. The fact that the game persisted at the grassroots level despite everything else, for me that was always pretty cool. Truth to tell, you get bigger crowds at the club games than at the Currie cup and similar provincial games. And I still wander down to the zoo lake these days, and idly stand by in the late mid-afternoon sun on Saturday afternoon and watch for a while. Mostly the spectators are family and friends, and it's a pretty safe space for kids to run around and make a noise. So maybe that's why cricket is still so popular with ordinary people.

you might say it's a little bit odd that I no longer attend any of the international matches up there at the big Wanderers Stadium. It's not a friendly place any more to take your friends for a day's outing. From the security guards with their officious, invasive, and plain stupid regulations, which they enforce as if the purpose of the game was to provide them with the platform to exercise their authority; to the rip off vendors, whose sole aim is to foist off bad food at ridiculous prices: heaven help you if you have any sort of dietary restriction, because they confiscate your food/drinks at the gates and make you sit hungry for the rest of the day.

Now I read that the cricket authorities have appointed a marketing firm to find out why people are you no longer coming to their grounds. I guess that they are worried the advertisers will leave them if the grounds are empty ~after all, the shorter forms of the game feed off the atmosphere of the grounds, and that's what the advertisers hook into.

I could have told them the answers to why people are staying away: first off the game is set up for corporate advertising, and not for the people who love and watch the game. We are not consumers, looking to be wooed away from other attractions. We are cricket lovers, come for the cricket. Places where the cricket is no longer the primary concern, why would we be there?

Sad, isn't it? Our cricket administrators just don't get it:
If English football has shown one thing, it's that the fans will tolerate anything when the game is the thing.
It's not too much cricket that's the problem ~it's too much hoopla tied to commercial interests.
You can't build the love of the game through marketing experiences, and finding more and more "exciting" experiences. Sooner or later, something more "exciting" comes across the horizon. Without the true fans there is no game, so put your money into building up cricket lovers, down there at the grassroots.

And here is the funniest thing of all: if I don't watch it at the ground, chances are I won't be watching the match on TV either.

The picture is from a game between South Africa and Sri Lanka at SuperSport Park in Centurion in December of 2003, which is still a much more fan oriented venue than its bigger brother down the drag in Illovo, Johannesburg.

Rome and the Barbarians: the never-ending rise of empire

Even though the Barbarians hated Rome, they feared it more. When they destroyed it, its spirit remained and has infused every empire since, all of whom have suffered, or in the case of America, are suffering its fate.

While it is true that the citizens of empire are not evil, the mist of the spirit of Rome clouds their eyes, distorts their judgement, and drugs their senses.
They become "Romans", renamed as Americans, or Colonialists, or Soviets.

When the Barbarians bring down the walls, they take on the spirit of Rome. It is a battle they cannot win, in the spirit of Rome they find their match. Their hearts become Roman.

The spirit infuses their language, it becomes patronising, the language of the master is always the language of Rome. This is how Empire stamps its authority: by taking the spirit of Rome and suffusing it throughout its language.

When the Roman speaks, the peoples know their places.
When the fall comes, the Roman loses not only empire, but also the preeminence of language.
We are all Romans: we are all Barbarians.

Solitude

Solitude is my one true childhood friend: he sat with me in new places, walked with me on strange roads, & slept with me in strange bedrooms.

This is not solitude born of loneliness.

This is the quiet space where reflection comes easy.

I met him in childhood, lying solitary on my back looking up at the clouds, in silent imaginings.

He stayed with me for a long time, as the family moved from town to town, in year and out.

He went his own way when I went to university, and later, after I married and had children I thought he had left me forever.

But now he has returned, and we renew an old and valued friendship.

I have the time for him again, and he for me.

Metaphors of the future rooted in the past

The problem with Science-fiction writing is that the metaphors in that imagined future world are rooted in the immediate present of this one. In a very short time these metaphors give the story a dated feeling.

Where metaphors are imagined, the passage of time soon makes them feel anachronistic.

Very few writers are able to transcend this: Philip K Dick is one, and probably Neal Stephenson another. What makes them special is not the imagined future, but the reality of today's psychological problems retold in a different way.

Because these authors apply themselves to the universal problems of the meaning of our lives, like Goethe and Shakespeare they transcend their time and will endure: despite the fact that these futures will always be antediluvian.

There is no escape from mortality: all things drift towards the ends of time. The vastness of the universe ensures that the short life, biodegradable wrapper that we call our bodies, located on the equivalently short-life time capsule we call our solar system will utterly disappear.

Our only hope is that God exists, and is aware of us.
Well, of me in particular :-)

Airports: here's what I hate about them, and especially Cape Town Airport.

The time
If ever there was a place where time is important, it's at an airport. So naturally there are no big clocks at airports. Instead, there are zillions of screens stuck in high places. The time? It's somewhere at the top right in the smallest letters possible.

So to see the time you get off your seat, walk up to the screen and peer. Leaving all your valuables behind. Ah, I see you thinking: "You've got a watch haven't you? You've got a cell phone haven't you?".

Blah blah blah. Getting at that stuff isn't always that easy at an airport. Sometimes it's downright impossible. And sometimes your battery is running low, so you switch the thing off. And sometimes the battery life is completely gone - and that's that.

The walk: Cape Town Airport.
Now, if there's one thing that you do a lot of at an airport, its walk. And boy oh boy, hasn't Cape Town Airport raised walking to a new art!

Especially if you have just dropped off a hire car.
Never mind that you drive through the middle of all the cars dropping off passengers, or taking on passengers, and of course the cars coming out of the parking garages:  nor the fact that the rental agencies are put as far as possible from the departure lounges (so you have to walk the full length of the airport with all of your luggage through the departing passengers, and through the parking garages). Forget about all of those for the moment, and go upstairs to the departure lounge.

Once you have collected your ticket, you walk to the center of the departure area, where they have thoughtfully put both the international and local queues right bang next to each other. Think about that for a moment. Everyone saying goodbye, everyone leaving, ALL packed into a tiny area not more than 20 m long.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

The coffee
And what do you see when you get to the other side? Well now: the refreshment area is placed at the furthest distance from where you enter the final departure lounge. Want a cup of coffee? Walk the full length of the departure area, and then all the way back to your departure exit.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

But wait, there's more.

The laptops.
The rule is, the laptop must go through the scanner separately.
That's fine, except you have to get the damn thing out of your luggage, and put into a tray along with all of the stuff in your pockets: cellphones, wallets, coins, anything that is made of metal.
There is no easy way to do this.
Getting it into the trays is easy compared to putting it all back together again.
After you've been through the scanner the tray arrives with all your stuff in it, and all the passengers behind you with their stuff piling up too. And the tiniest of tiny little areas where this lot piles up.
So you stand there stuffing your laptop back, desperately putting all the bits and pieces back into your pockets, while the queue keeps spewing more and more people and the machine spews more and more luggage.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

The elderly, the disabled, the pregnant ladies, and those with kids ...
who, of course have to walk the walk.
Cape Town International had done their level best to make their lives as difficult as they possibly can. Because all of that stuff up there, it's 1000 times worse for them

Yes, congratulations. Airport of the year?
Not in my book, they ain't

Lazy Sunday Afternoons in the Shadow of Table Mountain

It was one of those Lazy Sunday afternoons.
Put the feet up and slope off in the house?
Hang out on the settee with the remote?
Nah.
Not on a beautiful early summers day like today,
with hardly a tourist in sight,
and Cape Town tanning herself under a warm Summers sun ...
and the table cloth spreading out over the Table top.

Chilled white wine, warm espresso coffee, carrot cake and a long Summer's day.
Eat your hearts out :)

oh my aching head when did the sun come up?

saturday? sunday? monday? going to bed or going to work?

oh my aching head ...

the relationship between life, people, and intelligence

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that educated people have had more facts stuffed into them
but that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or clever
we could say that the difference between stupid and intelligent people is that the intelligent people cope better with subtlety.
Education here does not play a role.
So
Intelligent people are not confused by ambiguous or contradictory situations
in fact, they become suspicious when things are too straightforward: here be demons.

Intelligence requires thought.
Intelligence is honed by life,
but life does not necessarily confer intelligence on the liver:
merely growing old does not lead to intelligence
and it is the application of thought that hints at the intelligence that lies beneath
...

The journey from virtue to happiness: The Great Learning

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom,

first ordered well their own states.

Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families.
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed.
Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

~Confucius