The Past is an Old Man's country

The Past is an Old Man's country
landscaped by memories and dreams
hopes and fears now bordered
by children's laughter and screams

The Past is an Old Man's country
memories and dreams entwined
hopes and fears portraited
left hanging in memory's mind

The Past is an Old Man's country
the highways clear in sight
the byways weave through fog and mist
dimly distant through fading light

The Past is an Old Man's Country
but it won’t be visited by me:
Release me at the turnpike!
release me and set me free

Image: from The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali)

Thoughts at my Son's wedding

the present is in our children's hands
their race is well begun
the future is their children's lands
uncertain, unspoken, undone.


the baton has been handed
the transformation complete
spectators now and relaters,
our Glory days are done.


the karma bequeathed to the future
awaits our children's children's hands
we shape their thoughts, (and so hope, restore)
our broken landscape our damaged shore


As I stood watching and taking part at my son's wedding I couldn't help but reflect on the courage youth always has in it's future. When we set out ~ when? 1972! the world had just stepped back from the Cuban missile crisis, France was recovering from student riots, the iron curtain more firmly divided the world than ever before, China seemingly ready to collapse from it's cultural revolution, and Capitalism stood poised to smash the unions and separate the rich few from the many poor. And here in South Africa, an increasingly recalcitrant and truculent apartheid Government was deepening its hold and its propaganda on its citizens, poisoning the few and disenfranchising the many. The collapse of our society seemed at hand.

Such a morass the world was in!~ who would raise a family in that?
Who would tackle this mess before us?
Yet we lived our moment and waited for our time when we would have the means and the ideas and the courage to give the future generations ~ our children ~ the world we would have liked to have had.

So many things are so very much better now: yet so many more seem irreparably damaged: Climate, Economy, and the deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots, new things seems so threatening once again.

Yet when I looked at them, and the wedding guests, it seemed to me that they had that same courage and hope, and these new challenges would find their generations ready to deal with them. And the question of division is addressed at the personal level, and it seemed to me that there was still a role for us, the fading generation: one of bringing together communities, of breaking down cultural and ideological barriers ~ who better to show how to live than those who have survived life?

And I can't say that this thinking was a sequential process, but it tumbled around in my head, and the words above took shape and have been sitting with me: now they have their own space. They seem to pull together all those thoughts.

All images Copyright (c) the author

Lazy Sundays composing Limericks at the Cricket

 

Last Sunday Niranjan and his family persuaded me at last to spend another day watching the cricket at the Wanderers.
Of course, there are always moments of silence and daydreaming at cricket matches. That's a whole big part of their charm! (Goes without saying ...Five-day matches, not those frantic short games!)
The commentators, also having time on their hands, (in those long stretches of deep concentration and dot balls) decided to call for Limericks. Which gave me all the time of the world to come up with this lot:

Commentary on commentators:
Have you heard of ze Commentator's curse?
Please send us your limericks diverse!
  Just mail us some rubbish
  Mit your name ve vill publish
Vitch is verse? Ze curse or ze Verse?

The referral system:
The umpire's scratching his head
"Is he in? Is he out? Is he dead?"
  With this newfangled referal
  I can do some deferal
"Third Umpire, Its your problem!" he said.

Billy Bowden and his crooked finger:
Billy Bowden still thinks of the girl
made his finger go up in a curl
  the this that and the other
  that he got from her mother
was worth all her giggles and twirls!

Fancy a bit of spot fixing?
I'm hoping that you'll play the game
I'm hoping that you'll think the same
  Leather Jackets, plane tickets
  are better than wickets ~
You're the Cops?! No No! It's a frame!

Clark's first test lament:
An Australian captain called Clarke
Thought this cricketing thing's just a lark
  forty-seven runs later
  he needed a 'gator
to get his team back on the park ...

Legspinner's tactic:
Oh I know of a spinner or two
who make cracks on the pitch with their shoe
  See, it isn't enough
  to talk about stuff
If you're quick, you can find "What to do"

Shane's a pain
Mr Warne's on his way back again
He longs to call out this refrain:
  (when it's pitched in the rough,
  and it's turned just enough),
"Howzat! you're on the next plane"!

She's had it with the cricket!
She picked up his bat in mid-winter
and "Whack!" she caused it to splinter
  Now when nature calls
  his old cricket balls
keep apart his suppurating sphincter

Five-day tests in a nutshell:
I know what you mean my old friend
5-day cricket seems never to end
  the interesting bits
  the wickets and hits
only happen when you're round the bend

All Images (c) the Author

My Love affair with Music: Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane & the White Rabbit

Grace Slick was the original Acid Lady, and she paid dearly for it. She took something over an hour or so to write White Rabbit, so they say ~ and this is her singing it at Woodstock. Prescient, maybe: But that was the 60's, and we never knew what was to come, or where all that tripping was leading to. Jefferson Airplane may have taken the Credit: But this was Grace's song, in every way, it was also her. And you can see it here in this performance, at (where else?) Woodstock.

Marriage: it's not about me, it's not about you: it's about us

The Value's in the picture the photograph, not the frame Velvet, Teak and Silver do not recall their names To keep alive the memories of friends and colleagues past renew their smiling faces: look through beyond the Glass

Thursday, December 9: just after 5:30 in the evening Lanie and Jacques will tie the knot, and I will have the great privilege of being there, to observe and celebrate that most important thing we do: commit to a future.

What is the thing that we do, this marriage?
And is it still relevant?

"Up till now, to just this moment before, to know you, all I had to do was to know you". This is what my grandmother said, and she continued "but after this moment, to know you I must also know this person next to you".

There is something subtly profound about that.

In this age, where it's all about you, all about me, all about self-expression and finding ourselves: marriage takes a different view. Marriage is a coming to terms of difference. The bringing together of two lives in the hope, in the prayer that much more will emerge from the union than could be had from the separation.
It is not just about finding your soulmate, it's not just about love ever after: although of course we all hope that that is what you will ultimately gain. It's a knowing, it's the knowing that you are planting the seeds of a garden, and a belief that if you look after that garden, a flowering will endure through to the ends of days.

Having said all that I was wondering: I was wondering about wedding presents. What do you give to a colleague? The strength of the relationship grew through the interaction of many people, not just the two of us. When I stand in the church tomorrow, and listen to the vows, the shadows of others will be around me, the colleagues in the team, a small community who I had the privilege of being a part of for such a short, much too short a period of time.

In memory of them, and as a way of having them with me, my gift to Lanie and Jacques is a framed photograph of the engagement party that we had after she announced that the journey had begun. You can see it there below :-) Doesn't she look cute? Not to mention happy! Don't we all :-D?

advice for the boys (who would be men)

Listen up!

A girl of an age never changes her age
and her friends who know better
are her aides and abettors

The young girl she knows
she blossoms forever
The cougar she proves that with age she improves

So:
The girl will be mistress of every man that she kisses
but:
keeps age under cover when she hunts for a lover
(watch her friends who conspire to corral desire)

what of we, other gender?
Ah, we.
just accept the ageless gift:
for a girl whose every favour will have no downstream labour
becomes a timeless beauty
just assume the easy duty
... and ignore that growing number ....

Listen up!
Stay on the page!
a girl of an age ~
she's always the same age

...

On having her on my mind, afraid of what is being dusted off

You Climbed into my head today
and stayed there,
poking around
those dusty,
unfurnished rooms.

Nobody invited you

So
Who
EXACTLY
gave you the key
to the back door
(the front door being long since locked and barred
With heavy beams of Mental Oak).

I hope you locked up behind you when you left.

My grandmother said: about regret, and forgetting, and living in the moment

Some years ago, I found myself in that unusual space: letting go and moving on.
This is not an easy thing to do, we all know that!

On the spur of the moment, I took a bit of a holiday and went down towards Plettenberg Bay, kind of sorting my head out. And I thought about letting go, and moving on, and all the while I was spending quite a bit of time looking back.
Something my grandmother had said to me many many years ago came back, as these things often do.

Here is what she said.
"You only regret what you remember."

At the time I thought, "That's so easy!" If you forget there will be no regrets.
But I soon discovered this is not the case. It's not possible to completely wipe out the past, and the memories keep flooding back.
So I went back to her, and I said to her, this doesn't make sense to me. She gave me that odd look that older women give when they are feeling wise, and said "There is no place for the past in this exact moment. Right now, in this moment. If you are putting everything you have into this moment, then there will be no need to forget, and there will be no room for regret either. The past will simply be what led up to now, and of course you would not have now without it."
But one forgets these lessons, until one day it all comes flooding back.

So I drove up to Storms River, which I had been avoiding, and I spent some time there assimilating the past while taking in the moment; and you know, I have never felt so alive.

And I have never again had to live with regret.
And best of all, my memories stay intact.

My Father, like so many fathers of his generation, kept his silence about the war

My father fought in the Second World War.
He did not speak much of it.
In those far-off days, it was uncommon for men to admit to emotion, let alone show it.
Instead, they would hold it inside.Occasionally they would meet at the old Moth Hall in downtown Johannesburg, and in the company of other survivors let alcohol loosen their tongues and their memories. But that is as far as it went.

But there was one day of the year that he might put on his jacket, and the medals of service, and go down to the Centopath to pay his respects, and, occasionally, show publicly his memory of loss.

That was on the 11th day of the 11th month, at the 11th minute of the 11th hour: at the appointed time and day when the promise was kept: "we will remember them". In my own time, as a member of the Transvaal Scottish, Second Battalion, I too have marched up to the war memorial, and stopped there to pay the respects that every generation always pays in its turn, the respect of this generation given to those who have gone before.

If there was one thing which would bring the spark of emotion visibly to my father's face, it was this: the poem that brought to life Poppies Day. I hope that it moves you to. Here it is, in full.

"In Flanders Fields"

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


by John MacRae
the image is of  his original handwritten copy 
About the poem: The making of 'In Flanders Fields'

The Echo Remains, the song won't fade

Is it so wrong hanging onto your song?

Was I just mad?
that time - the best ...?

And if not plain crazy
Was I just lazy?
How did I lose?
Did I just fail to choose ... ?

Of course I survived.
But
what stayed alive?

Deep in my head,
like a book I've just read
the story returns

an echo which burns
but
wont
fade
away