A Day in the Life: a Monster Muscles in

(click image to enlarge)

 There's an old Saying that goes ~ you can take the country boy out of the farm but you can't take the farm out of the country boy.

Johannesburg is a Mining city. The City has left the mines behind now, but you'll never take the Mines out of the City. A place is being prepared for this big fellow. He's 80 tons if he's a penny weight, in fact he's so heavy that they had to build a special foundation for him to rest on.

He's arrived early, before the area has been cleaned and the sign erected ~ but what would you expect? When they found gold here, they didn't wait around for the town to form first. Oh no Sir, they just got in there and started digging. Who arrived early went away rich, who arrived late never ate.

That's about the sum of a mining town, and it hangs around for only as long as the gold can be scratched out. But this one didn't hang around and die the death of ghost towns the world over: oh no Sir.

Oh no Sir, it sprawled and bawled and went on to become the Financial bully of Africa, the biggest city not on running water: and along the way (by the way) built the largest man-made forest on the planet. It's a city now, but its still a mining brawl at heart. The mining spirit and culture will always be found here. we don't hang around and wait for the world to decide. We move on and make things happen.

So when I stumbled on this monster muscling in down at the end of Anderson, well I thought to myself, that's just about right. You have to be tough to live in Africa. You have to look out for yourself and your community, because this is not a world of soft pastels and gentle rains. When the rain comes it crashes down, and the thunder and electricity reminds you that you are alive. Even the 6 day Peach rains have that edge to them.

Its a rough and tough area that he watches over, and its a rough and tough city that welcomes him. But walk a short distance East and you will find the largest Financial institutions in Africa, and due North are the Mining Houses that kicked it all off. And just to the left: the Magistrates court. Just in case anyone gets the wrong ideas about whose the who in the zoo. Or veld.

Don't you just love this city?

All images (c) the author.

A Day in the Life: Window Boxes in the City

Its a long steady walk up Ferreira street from 45 Commissioner.

Its a walk I do often enough, several times a week, and its always a there and back between 45C and the Simmonds street Superblock complex. To the left and right are the magnificent Anglo American buildings ~ some built in the earlier part of the 20th century during the Oppenheimer hey days: low and powerful and redolent of the Mining Magnates who once held sway in downtown Joburg; and one at least, to the left, the stunning Anglo Head Office structure built in the late 80's shows the shift to corporate respectability.

Normally there's not much time for reflection, you head on as quickly as you can because at the nether end of each trip is a meeting room and a waiting group of people. I could take the shuttle bus: but unless I have a laptop under the arm I prefer the walk.

Yesterday I nearly stumbled into the granite "decoration" around the pavement trees, and that started a train of thought. I was headed North down towards 45C, and today, as I made my way back up South, I was wondering about those window boxes.

Well, there you see how blind you can be to small touches of beauty along the way!

Now, my mother loved Geraniums and Pelargoniums.

There wasn't a holiday or a trip where she didn't embarrass the family by taking cuttings, and she would snip them carefully (as all good gardeners do) and bring them back into one of the many pots and corners of her garden and verandas. Even at their scraggliest, the flowers are rich in colour: making up for their lack of perfume, I suppose. And if you watered them often enough, then the greens of the branches are a pleasure in themselves.

So there I am striding South, and blow me if I don't have a mommy moment ...

Up against the walls of the Ashanti building, doing their best to cover the steel mesh burglar protection, are 6 window boxes planted with my mom's favourites. And there they have been, if the bird's droppings are any indicator, for any length of time.

And all that has kept me from seeing them in these many months (years?) of walking backwards and forwards has been the meeting rooms at the ends of a long stride up and down Ferreira street.

And we have, I suppose, the answer to the window Box question: accross Anderson Street and not 40 meters from the Rocks in the City the answer is ~ Yes, Joburg is getting soft in some of it's corners.

And all the better for it, I should say.

All images copyright (c) the author

A Day in the Life: Rocks in the City

Look at them ... just a pile of rocks around a nice shady tree.
You'd know all about it if you stubbed your toes on them, let me tell you!
Which I nearly did ...
And which made me think ...

What does a pile of Rocks tell you?
Especially a pile of rocks in the city centre?
All neatly arranged around a tree trunk, and every tree on the pavement with its own community of pet rocks?

Rocks

Well now, these are granite rocks, Crushed to size after being blasted and brought up from the depths of the gold bearing reef, deep below.
mini Boulders really, as you would quickly tell if you tried to pick one of them up.
Stop you dead in your tracks if I tossed one at you!
Yet you wouldn't notice them, just to walk by, so tastefully arranged around their trees.
The Pavement runs the length of an office block, and fronts a residential hotel in the heart of the City's business district, right around the group of buildings which the Anglo American corporation owns and has its people in.
... and a short walk from the Johannesburg Magistrates courts, where unruly crowds have been known to congregate. Although, not so often any more.

So, maybe the Building owners don't want you to walk too close to the trees?
Possibly, they like the artistic effect of the stark granite against the bark?
Maybe they are aligning themselves to the mining activities which they service?
Maybe all, maybe nothing at all.
Certainly, it would have taken a pick up truck to deliver the payload. There's more than a wheelbarrows worth there, and they would've been carted quite some distance!

Rocks around trees ...

So what should we read into that pile of Rocks?

Progress.
That's what I read:
I read progress.
After all, whose going to stack piles of granite-hard rock in handy sizes if they thought -
if you thought for even one moment -
that someone might pick them up and chuck them back at at you.
or your nice plate glass windows!
or cars, or ... or ...
Ah.
So is our uncivilised, dangerous, scary city centre being tamed then?

(truth to tell ... it never did feel that scary to me, but, well -

 - you know -

tourists and the media do know best ...)

They do look rather nice, though - don't they?
All we need now is a flower box or two ...

All images copyright (c) the author

Look at the Clown …

Look at the Clown
Tumbling his balls
You don’t see his heart
How loudly it calls

He smiles cos’ he’s happy
And a little bit vain
It keeps him from going
Entirely insane

And his Heart?
Well its given
And given to you
Now isn’t that interesting,
Crazy mad thing to do?


image from a portion of an 1878 drawing by C. M. Newton in Sporting and Dramatic News, of a performance of The Forty Thieves

More Cricket and Limericks plus a touch of the Weather

Some more Cricketing Limericks for fans of them (both Cricket and Limericks ;) )

Cricket is a byword for Weather conversations. Its all about water from the sky, wind from the west, and how the tide affects the pitch when the moon is full. In fact, I'm sure that the reason why English conversation is so skewed towards the weather is because it has such a deep effect on their cricketing psyche. And I'm equally sure that when they go out on tour they carry their damned weather with them. If only we could harness that!

So. All frivolities aside, please.
Serious Question time: How to beak the drought, please?
Answer: Schedule a 5 day test match.
(Of course, since cricket tours are agreed years in advance, you have to know where the droughts are likely to be at that time, natch.) Having said which ...

There's a heat wave thats baking my brain

My body's burned red & my skin is in pain

But there's nothing to fear!

Cos the Cricket is here!

It'll be bucketing down once again

Which satisfies the farmers and the Ducks.
But what about the spectators?
What about the spectators indeed ...

the rain's keeping us all in the shelter

Its cats and its dogs and its helter and skelter

no matter my son

when the cricketing's done

the sun will come out as a belter

All this talking of Rain reminds me, there's one person who makes bowlers and fielders pray for it.
Lots of it. Especially in India.
Especially in, Well, actually ... everywhere ...

the bowlers are praying for rain

Tendulkars at wicket again

a six through the covers

at the end of the overs

sees their averages flush down the drain

But there's always at least one bowler who doesn't seem to mind whose at the crease :)

a fast bowler (we'll call him Dale Steyn)

sends his balls down again and again

if its not past the nose:

its down by the toes

you want runs? there's no gain without pain

Limericks, Cricket, the Weather ... who needs a girlfriend?

I thought I was here for the cricket

drinking beer and pondering the wicket

but the girls in their shorts

cause ungentlemanly thoughts

and most of them perfectly wicked!

yes I could ... yes I could yes I could yes I could ;)

Images (c) the author

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?