Posts tagged words
Posts tagged words
Having a huge admiration boner for someone’s artistic and/or creative endeavours.
This has been a report from Bizarro World.
Her eyes were luminous and slightly panicked with the effort she was making to get the words out. Her hands fidgeted: plucked at the strap of her bag, twirled a strand of hair, tried desperately to stay in pockets, to no avail.
She was awkward, beautifully so; and you sensed that what she was trying to say to you would change everything.
“See, the thing is,” she said, “the thing is, I, um … (Subscription required.)
She was going to her hometown for the weekend; and seeing some of her childhood friends; both of which were not unusual occurrences. There was, however, an odd feeling of hesitation in the air. Perhaps it was the long week at work; perhaps it was her customary reluctance to spend a precious 48 hours somewhere she no longer had any real connection with. Either way, when the plane touched down at 10pm on Friday, she walked into and out of the airport with hunched shoulders and a heavy heart.
The next day, and the day after, dawned sunny and warm. It was always sunny and warm in Durban, and even if it wasn’t, you didn’t really notice because the weather rarely stayed anything other than sunny and warm for too long. She had very few plans, and the rental car had a full tank; and so she spent most of her weekend exploring the city that she’d never seen as anything other than a passenger. Two things surprised her: One, her ability to get around without a map or GPS despite over a decade’s absence, as if the streets had been burned into her subconscious; and two, how little had changed.
Except for one thing.
Taken by a fit of nostalgia, she drove around the suburb she grew up in. Past her primary school, past the park she learned to ride a bike in, and finally, past her childhood home. If not for the fact that it was easy to place — bang in the middle of a T-junction of roads, where a bus driver had once famously confused his brake and accelerator pedals, and driven up the vertical line of the T and into her erstwhile garden — she would have driven right past it. Gone was the thick green bush that served as a perimeter wall. Gone was the wrought-iron gate into the once lush garden. Peering through the stern stainless steel bars that were there now, she could see that most of what she’d cherished was no longer there. The jasmine plant right next to her bedroom window, that filled summer nights with its heady perfume. The patio, where she’d had her picture taken on her first day of school (and thrown up from nerves moments later). The picture window in the kitchen, where she’d curl up in a corner while her parents cooked. The massive orange trumpet flower vine lining the driveway.
All of those were gone, replaced by sullen grass and dismal concrete.
She backed away, surprised, and more than a little put out, although she realised that she had no real right to be.
When she flew back, early on Monday morning, she slept fitfully on the plane, and picked at an obese muffin. Something was wrong. There was no real way to verbalise or qualify it, though; so she never did.
But somewhere, in some small recess of her brain, she would always remember the scent of jasmine.
I went to visit Dylan yesterday, and got the full story of the accident. To clarify; he’s an extremely experienced skydiver — his accident wasn’t the result of a rookie mistake; it was due to a completely random and unforeseen malfunction.
Turns out, he got thrown around pretty bad: sideswiped the tail of the plane, and got slammed against the wing at chest height. (Interesting sidebar: he hit both with such force that he pretty much destroyed the rear of the plane and the one wing, to the point where they had to make an emergency landing at Cape Town airport. I’ve seen photos, and I can only imagine how hard the impact must have been for a human body to do that to a plane.)
This happened at 11 000 feet. He passed out from the pain, and woke up a few times during the descent: at 10 000 feet, he managed to get his hands into the grips to control his parachute; at 7000, he oriented himself towards the dropzone; at 2000, he managed to stay awake long enough to execute a perfect landing.
Perfect.
With ten bones broken or fractured; including ribs, vertebrae, sternum and collarbone.
He has no injury to his spine whatsoever.
His internal organs are absolutely fine.
Bar being bedridden and/or in a brace for a couple of months while his bones knit back together, he will have escaped from this without so much as a scratch. (And I mean that literally — aside from some pretty severe bruising, he had no external injuries at all.) He is, without putting too fine a point on it, lucky to be alive.
The obvious ruminations on fate and mortality aside; this is one of those things that makes you realise more than ever, that you have absolutely no control over what’s going to happen at any time. That anything and everything can change; and that the best-laid plans of mice and men are for the birds.
So, tell someone you love them today. Maybe you tell them all the time, or maybe you haven’t done it in a while, or maybe you think they already know, or maybe you’ve never worked up the courage to do it before. No matter. Do it today.
Do it today.
About two and a half years ago, a company gifted several people in my erstwhile workplace oak saplings. They were tiny, frail things, not more than 7 or 8 centimetres high. A few of the recipients, due to less-than-green thumbs or simply disinterest, were going to bin theirs — I intervened, and took two home. Although I was not a gardener at all, that day, something made me want to keep those trees alive. I found them a spot in the back yard where they would get morning sun, and set about taking care of them as best I knew how. For the next 30 months, I watered them regularly, kept their pots clear of weeds, spoke to them (despite my housemates’ sly insistence that it would likely kill them), tethered them to chopsticks to promote straight growth, repotted them when I suspected their root system was outgrowing the pot. Those trees saw me move house, change jobs, fall in love, get my heart broken, mourn my father, rebuild my life. They saw birthday parties and hangovers, midnight chats and early morning runs, they heard secrets and confessions, good news and bad.
Then, this week, the gardener came; and to an untrained eye, two young deciduous trees in the middle of winter must look mighty like a couple of dead sticks in pots. They were, therefore, summarily tossed out.
I cried. It may sound absurd, but I was genuinely fond of those little guys. One of them technically ‘belonged’ to my now ex-boyfriend, which I suppose was an added incentive to keep at least one alive; but my affection for both trees far outlasted the relationship. They became a pleasant constant, and a gentle reminder that whatever might have gone wrong during the day, I had at least accomplished this: I had taken two wretched twigs and helped them become sturdy (albeit small), real trees. Now that they were a few years old, I had intended on sneaking them into Kirstenbosch (our botanical garden); to plant them someplace where they would hopefully go unnoticed long enough to flourish and blend in, and eventually become a part of the garden itself. I liked the idea of that permanence, of leaving a slightly cheeky legacy. I had spent so much time, so much energy on maintaining and encouraging those trees that I was genuinely upset to have them taken from me. So yes, I cried.
It was that feeling you got as a child when someone accidentally stumbled onto a sandcastle you had spent an age building. It’s not What you lost, or How you lost it. It’s the fact that you were invested in something; and that in turn you created something worth investing in. What you made may have been inconsequential in the grand scheme of things; but it was still a little piece of you, a little piece of your heart.
I’m going to the nursery tomorrow morning. I probably won’t get oak trees; but I’ll be damned if Kirstenbosch thinks it’ll get off that easily.
You arrive in Manhattan quite certain that your heart belongs to San Francisco. You also arrive in Manhattan late, hot, and hence, irritable; and the combination of these factors makes you feel secure in your conviction that you won’t fall for NYC’s charms, as so many believe you will.
Warning
When I am a young woman I shall wear purple
Without a thought as to whether or not it suits me.
And I shall spend my days with open arms and open mind
And open heart, and celebrate our differences.
I shall remember that not everyone has easy
And hope I can make at least some small difference
And show solidarity
And appreciate the privilege of my youth.
I shall remember that the only way things change is if we do
And remind everyone of this
And relearn these facts:
You can be gay, straight, bi, transgender, whatever
And live however you want to
Or marry whoever you want to
And no one should be allowed to tell you any different.
So now we must have strength in our convictions
And offer what support we can, in any way we can
And set a good example for the children.
We must have faith, and hope, and stand together.
I am pledging to do this now
So do not be too shocked and surprised
Because I am young; and I choose to wear purple.
(Reference.
Get involved.)
Amply forewarned and thus heavily forearmed, we set off expecting a culture shock, and found a comfort zone instead.
There’s a line from “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” an old Dylan song (Yes, Bob Dylan. Who else would it be? Get off my lawn.), that says, in reference to New Orleans: “They tell me everything is gonna be alright / but I don’t know what alright even means.”
