Tea, Tea, Tea!

Maelstrom

For once, I haven’t wanted to look back. I haven’t wanted to write about it at all. How does one write about a season in which everything has changed; changed so much that the course of your entire life has altered? Why, in fact, do I bother to write at all anymore? After all, why does one blog? What’s the point of writing? I have realised – over the cycle of changing seasons – that this has been a process of self-analysis and of comfort; of discovery and self-defence. I write to understand rationally the way I react emotionally to the world, and to the things that happen to me. I write to try and understand intellectually the reasons why I choose to act viscerally.

I guess I write to make it all better. I write to explore the curious synergy between the weather patterns and the patterns in my life. I write because I simply can’t stop the words pouring onto the page …

But there are times when life simply sucks you away from contemplation; from your desk, your pen, your screen, your keyboard, and takes you down the thundering, roaring, terrifying waterfall of inevitability – into events you could never have planned for, never have foreseen, never have wished for, never have hoped for. And so it has been for me these last two months.

In all my nightmares, I could never have imagined a more terrible or sad Festive Season for my family than this last one. To have my nephew come so close to death, not once but twice - first shot and then his legs destroyed in a massive car crash, all in the space of 5 days over Christmas and New Year. To be a part of the terrible feeling of flailing, drowning and swirling in the aftermath – sleeplessness, hysteria, hospitals, and the journey back from loss and hopelessness to joy in the smallest victories that my sister, her husband, my second nephew and my parents have been subjected to, has been life-changing. (A life saved, a twitching toe, a bullet removed, successful surgery, a smile from a strong, resilient boy on the brink of manhood). We have all changed. Nothing – nothing at all – can reveal to you the intensity of love and fear for each other and how we run from the pain of sadness more than these things have done.

And then to visit the country of your birth and know with an overwhelming finality that you have found closure; that your time there truly has come to an end. To know that you will not return – not ever, really, for any extended period of time – and to know that you will die on a different continent. It may sound melodramatic, but there are people who know me and have understood the intense and tortured love affair I have had with South Africa, my home country – they know what I mean when I say how hard it is to say that final goodbye.

Part of that goodbye was the re-discovery after three lost years of my windsurfer and twelve years of my personal journals. How strange, how strange! To read all those words all over again and see only the repetitive patterns and corrosive loneliness. To travel the world again in the photos and mementoes and pictures. Quite frankly I’m still tempted to hurl them all in the fire and forget them; to begin again, clean and new …

And then to return to my adopted country; to my new friends and to my home. My home – whose name is Guy. On the night before I left for Africa, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes. Me, the one who was never going to marry anyone. Me, the one who would never settle for conventional happiness. Me, the free-spirited post-modern subversive revolutionary anarchist in continual rebellion against all the rules and norms of society. Sometimes you just have to laugh out loud at the folly of your own ways!

For me, right now, I don’t know if the folly was simply to assume a future always alone. Or if the folly is right now, in the silly giddy joy of love found at long last. Whatever it is, nothing is the same, everything is different. Everything is new. My life has changed completely.

Every year, I went back to South Africa, and saw some kind of animal that became a symbol of the journey in the year to come. In that first year, a snake – a sign of feminine renewal; in the second year – a whale dying in the Thames; to live, not merely survive. In the third year, a wild bird trapped in my sister’s kitchen. Trapped and caught and freed. This year, there was no such symbol. Perhaps it was all just apophenia. Or perhaps the sign is that there is none.

What we see
And what we seem
Is but a dream
A dream within a dream

Somehow this blog seems to be dying a natural death. It feels like time to leap into the maelstrom and start living.

High Points of the Holiday

Disaster, despair and sadness: Julian's terrible Christmas

Gun Crime

On Friday night, my nephew was shot.

For once in his life not causing any trouble, J was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, window open, elbow out, as his mate M drove them home. Picture the scene as J suddenly doubles over and yells "Aaaah! Something hit me!" M stops the car and turns to his friend who has both hands over his face. As the hands come away, blood pours out in a torrent from a small, perfectly cylindrical hole one inch above his right eye.

After much panic, phoning of friends, mothers and various people, they get him to hospital where the bleeding is finally stopped. During all of this time, J is conscious and in pain. The doctors tell my mother what they suspect ... "A bullet!?" she screams.

X-rays confirm (and I will post a photocopy of the pictures onto this site as soon as I have them; because they are so incredibly startling). It's a bullet from an airgun, and it has entered his forehead at an oblique angle just above his eye, pierced his skull and lodged there, like a plug. Any greater velocity and it would have punched directly through his skull into his brain, and killed him instantly. An inch lower, and it would have entered his eye socket, penetrated his skull and killed him.

As it is, it's now lodged in his skull and doctors are loathe to remove it. If they do they will have to remove an entire circular piece of skull around the bullet and replace it with a metal plate. If they don't, they will have to cut him open anyway and shave the bullet down to form a metal plug that will stay with him forever. Right now he has a small perfect hole - looking like a freckle - on the side of his forehead, and a lump where the bullet is clearly outlined.

Imagine the incredible randomness of this act of negligence and violence on the part of the shooter. He must have shot aiming for the car and by pure and awful luck, the bullet entered an open window and hit the one place where the most terrifying damage could be done. And by pure, unbelievable luck my nephew survived.

It's so bizarre, it beggars belief.

What is more insane is that we can't really do anything. The incident will be reported to the police, who could track the trajectory of the bullet and possibly find the house or the window or even the person. But they won't. It will never happen.

Welcome to South Africa.

Pluses and Minuses

It was minus six degrees (celsius) outside, at 7am this morning.

It was minus four degrees at 8am when I walked to the Tube. The Tube, of course, was in disarray.

Email from my boss today describes Heathrow as a heaving, brawling, crying mass of chaos.

I look forward to my 24-hour journey on the weekend (doing everything I can to avoid paying the £300 premium to travel through Heathrow), via St Pancras, Eurostar, Paris, Cairo and Johannesburg.

I look forward to 30 degrees of heat (celsius), sunny skies and my first outdoor swim in a year.

I can't wait to get out of this silly, dumb, damned city for a few weeks.

Even if it does mean leaving my lover behind :(

SEE YOU IN AFRICA SOON!

Our New Robin

Fearless, but fussy (doesn't like walnuts!)