Life through the eyes of a South African writer: ALL I COULD DO IS WRITE

Life through the eyes of a South African writer: ALL I COULD DO IS WRITE: "January the tenth, while the community of Tumahole was possessed by the unbound music that ruptured the sky’s still portrait and draped it w..."

ALL I COULD DO IS WRITE

January the tenth, while the community of Tumahole was possessed by the unbound music that ruptured the sky’s still portrait and draped it with fiery colors that leapt from torches used to celebrate a year’s infant steps; while minds ,caged in prisons of time heavily guarded by regrets, sought new gods for freedom as they sung new hymns of resolutions to the gods’ pleasure; while thoughts took on many forms so as to sculpt glittering sculptures of the future, a call that quaked my still world and sent monstrous waves down the ocean of my quiet life I answered: ‘Rantoloko, hurry to your grandmother’s house apparently she has been murdered.’

 

She was laid to rest aged eighty nine years, the second elderly women to be raped and murdered by those that worship the dark clouds that hover over my township.  My family tasted the bitter raindrops that fell from these dark clouds singing of a future that my fellow neighbors have fallen blind to.  My mind emptied of weeds of questions that profusely grow in the garden of my thoughts, I followed lullabies that sprouted from the loud mouths of emotions and I was lost in a delirium.  There I saw boys and girls plant seeds and their weakly bodies struggle to pick up the vessel used to water their seeds; I saw shadows stealthily poison the water in these vessels and work together to poison these seeds; I saw elders weary of the weight of the vessels give in and drink out of lighter vessels so as to forger and rid their bodies of the aches induced by the vessels.  I watched these seeds crookedly grow into trees bearing fruits with hatred flowing through their veins.  From everywhere I heard the few dying trees scream the message from Gaea:  ‘Warn them out of their illusive stupor brought on by the sparkling wine of youth.  Only they now possess the strength needed to bend the road away from oblivion.  Tell them to protect the elderly for they know the ingredients of ancient potions that lightened the vessels, only they still remember where the road needs to be bent to.  Protect the old spirit trees only they can teach my language, only they still remember the songs that shatter the shadows.’

 

ALL I COULD DO IS WRITE…

Family matters?

Yesterday, with mind silenced by fragrant words from the flower that brightens the garden of my imperfections, I walked my township streets; morning slippers celebrating the freedom of traveling wherever by picking up layers of dust as mementos; heart beating compositions heard from the realm that exists beyond love.  Every now and the dodging taxis, carrying the tired unappreciated workforce of the white owned town, driven wildly by young black men attempting to escape their present; ears enchanted by the choir of loud voices abusing the air, as if announcing their significance to maps that reduced their existence to a mere dot on a colored paper.

 

Then voices from the owners of the township streets knocked me off-balance and the silent mind was no more.  I observed a group of young girls, grade four or five, spewing malicious words that flew from the streets to invade households, their faces glowing with delight as they told the world who their next victim would be.  Onwards I looked as they ran towards their victim, just as them she looked like a young girl with fragile hands easily bruised by holding pens at school.  I turned away from them, not wanting to adorn their ceremony with my energy and walked on wandering what had changed.

 

My troubled spirit turned teacher posed this question to a class of thoughts and only one stood proudly up to answer:

          Thought: ‘It should be noted that every culture has a very fragile balance maintained by their practices.  With the introduction of rights of children and banishment of corporal punishment, most black parents’ hands were tide.  This is not to say corporal punishment is right, but to say that it was a tool used in the maintenance of the balance.  When it was removed the balance was compromised and disorder reigned.  The error was that in the removal of this tool, the users of the tool were never taught how to use another tool and so the imbalance persists.’

 

Beyond all I still find instilled in me that even when I step out of my home and into the streets, that those elder than me are still my parents and should be respected as such.  Then again it is said that times have changed, so I ask: ‘In these days where parents’ work demands that they leave their children behind to be raised by TV; days when children raise children; when alleged child on child rape accusations arise from school premises only later to be found to be consensual sexual intercourse between minors on school premises; when children pornographic materials are found in the possession of primary teachers’ hands and when alcohol is the preferred beverage among primary school children.  Are all these indicators of men’s evolution, or times that have changed and if so, does family still matter or are all these just family matters?  

Life through the eyes of a South African writer: Create and live; sell to survive? YOU CHOOSE!

Life through the eyes of a South African writer: Create and live; sell to survive? YOU CHOOSE!: "Everyday bits of this rich soil enriched by the blood of ancestors and a magic that once flowed from our way of life are auctioned off to th..."

Create and live; sell to survive? YOU CHOOSE!

Everyday bits of this rich soil enriched by the blood of ancestors and a magic that once flowed from our way of life are auctioned off to the highest bidders so as to create jobs and alleviate poverty.  Traditional healers are labeled as evil-my father was one might I add- African knowledge systems are referred to as primitive and too regressive for this tumultuous era of ‘evolution’.  Though language policies have been put in place so as to ‘preserve’ our mother tongues, institutions that teach these languages are marred by lack of resources, stigmas attached to public sector service delivery, while schools that teach in the dominant languages, English and Afrikaans, with always defined as skilled white teachers are revered as the institutions that offer quality education to children and are backed by private enterprises in many of their endeavors.

 

I remember the day when the flower that brightens the garden of my imperfections spoke of such matters.  For two hours we left reality to discuss if, as if we were gossip stars that chose the sky as the safest place where our whispers about earth could not be heard.  Car windows fogged as our spirits were galvanized; rain fell softly to curtain us from the outside.

  She argued that the state of Africa, South Africa to be specific, is one that lacks opportunities of development especially for people in my field, art that is.  She stated that there is a culture in South Africa that promotes that which is recognized overseas-deathbeds of many sons and daughters stolen for slavery- and to look down upon what is from South Africa.  She stared at me with her eyes that shamed even the proudest stars and sternly said that that is the reality of our state, one has to first be revered internationally before being acknowledged in South Africa.

 

Teary eyed and eyelids swollen from my brutal encounter with reality, I told her that only we can change that.  Living in and environment adorned with pearls of paradoxes and high paid painters that paint over these paradoxes with their tongues, I have watched performing artists protesting in a country-that claims to promote proudly South African products- for a chance to exhibit their local talent on an African world cup stage; I have seen producers of local content aired by the national broadcaster protest against the possibility of being cut off while more international content is being imported; I have seen black sales persons-clad in Steven Bantu Biko t-shirts- helping black customers with disgust on their faces and then turn around and help white customers with a smile and a face possessed by inferiority-I don’t blame them their Jesus is said to be white-; I have seen leaders in black expensive German cars drive on pothole infested roads past shacks with offerings of promises for a better life for all.

 

A question then arises in my insane mind: ‘Shall we ever be ready to create oR do we have to keep selling Africa to survive?’

 

Create and live; sell to survive?  YOU CHOOSE!

 

 

Life through the eyes of a South African writer: brought back to life by flowers

Life through the eyes of a South African writer: brought back to life by flowers: "Some days are harder than some.             I awaken light-headed as if I had been one with clouds, unbounded and foreign to limits and fea..."

brought back to life by flowers

Some days are harder than some.

            I awaken light-headed as if I had been one with clouds, unbounded and foreign to limits and fears of soaring with no wings beyond all touched by the stained hands of reality.  Then I suffocate in the heavy air adorned in garments of energy left by my fluid dreams; walls looking gruesome, stained in spurts of blood from wounds inflicted by the sharp edge of reality's light upon the backs of my dreams(coward!).  Heavy thoughts playing musical chairs upon my head, games they play to earn the right to reign over the kingdom of my spirit; blankets whispering stories of how they have helped many imprisoned like me to escape life.

 

With newly-borne limbs I would grapple with the heavy air; shifting it laboriously just so that minute spaces friendly to movement may be found.   Eyes turning into wells bearing ‘holy’ water to sanctify the air and quench the thirst of the unseen; I would reach the window, a warrior against time with dust particles as trophies of days defeated, and I would open it as if crying to the world to save me from my dreams, or for the warrior to anoint me with a dust particle that would lure me to once a good day.

            Sure enough the world would enter just after sucking the heavy air out, conquering my dreams and ‘saving’ me.  Energy shifts; paradigm displaces thoughts and the world being the tyrant it is my room would be colonized; screams from beings enslaved to push the cogs of the clock-like world so it can go around would torment my frail spirit.

            Out the room I would run, eyes tightly closed so as to avoid the sight of islands I had vacationed in, islands held by the comforting hands of shelves; hurriedly past my aging mother with a face that reality paints with elusive colors of disappointment inspired by hopes, ambition and success.

            Feverishly I would trip upon the broken pieces of my heart, being mended by a love beyond, into an untrimmed rose bush with thirsty thorns.  Dead I would lie only to be brought back to life by clouds of rose petals bearing a scent that speaks words from the ancients: ‘Certainty is an illusion, doubts are the sharp spearheads of reality that steer you to certainty.  Lie silently and allow death to embrace you.  Only through death can we again live.  Only in the dark can we see the light.  When the world morphs into tornado, stand still and smell the flowers.’

 

You that read this blog, or attend poetry sessions to listen to me; you that loves the wretch that I am, and you that have learnt to silence the world as you mother me, are my flowers.

 

BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE BY FLOWERS!

Son of forgotten gods.