The Unbearable lightness of being

Warning – this is too bloody depressing to read, but I had to write it.  There is no pain, no tears, just this big quiet slow motion explosion in my head.

One particularly cold and dark morning we’ve decided to head away from the river for our early morning walk.  There were ice on the grass and the two previous icy mornings my socks were soaked and my toes frozen when we returned – my boots clearly need some Dubbin. We found a path leading off into the remnants of a forest.  We walked in silence as the rays of the new day’s sun sparkled off the still closed wild flowers around us.  I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I saw graves in the misty tendrils of the morning. Forgotten graves make me sad.  They make beautiful photos but the gravestones are markers for a life once lead, someone once loved – but now, no longer remembered.  The graves were overgrown with wildflowers.  I remember thinking that no florist’s bouquet can come close to this, and that if I had to choose how my forgotten grave would look, it would be like this, hidden among the wild reeds and covered in wild flowers.

The wonder turned to confusion when, as I walked amongst the graves, looking at the names and dates, I realized that the graves are not old.  The dates are fairly recent; 1990s and the family names I saw are of families still prominent in town today.  Later that same morning Lizana came around and I asked her if she knows about the “forgotten” graveyard.  She did, and asked me if I noticed that they are busy cleaning it up.  It is one of the many things the community forum has taken on as a task. 

The community forum is one of Lizana and Ulrich’s many “brain children,” conceived on the thinking chairs.  They have started the community forum and opened it to every person in Hopefield.  The only prerequisite was that you had to come in a positive spirit.  The aim of the forum is to take responsibility for our town - I say our, because this is my Hopefield too.  In South Africa we have municipalities which are responsible for more than one town or city.  This unfortunately allows little towns like Hopefield to disappear amongst the cracks. 

At the first meeting of the Community Forum the whole evening was spent giving everyone a chance to name things they think can be changed for the better.  Lizana listed each and every issue on a whiteboard.  These were then organized into groups and “task forces” were formed.  And now things are happening.  The shift in the energy around Hopefield is obvious and change is sweeping through our village like a happy hurricane, leaving smiling people and splashes of colour all over the sandveld.  The embodiment of being the change you want to see.  This started literally as we were about to leave.  I think the first community forum meeting was held the day after Tinus and I flew to Dubai the first time in May.  Would I have been part of this if we were still here?  It seems obvious that I would, but in that dark place in my mind, where I’m too scared to go, I wonder. 

The last month’s rates and taxes accounts just arrived.  On it is a newly added monthly charge of R200.00 for having a prepaid electricity box installed in your house.  A number of years ago, the government encouraged everyone to have one of these installed – free of charge (I think,) I bought the house with it already installed.  It works exactly like pre-paid airtime, which I don’t have, because I know I will run out of airtime in the middle of the Kalahari while being attacked by a monstrous snake after my car broke down.  It happens with my electricity - normally on a Sunday afternoon, once when I’ve had a cake in the oven for about ten minutes.  This is hugely uncomfortable for me, but I would have to pay R1700.00 if I want to have the box removed.  Now if you decide not to pay your rates and taxes account, every time you go to buy pre-paid electricity, half of the money you tender to buy electricity will be used to cover your outstanding rates and taxes bill.  Incidentally at the moment we cannot speak to anyone to complain or learn more about this charge – all the municipal workers are on strike. 

The other night we had one of those intense wine-infused discussions over the boxes.  No, that’s not true, it wasn't really the boxes, it was about everything of which the boxes were just something you could point to on a bill.  Things like Community Police Forum meetings closed to the community, the helpless frustration of a young reporter intimidated by Johanna-Ma-Baker-Stoffels and her Head-of-Hopefield-Police-henchman, someone saying someone said all whites in the country should take a pay cut in goodwill, being taxed for being successful and then not being allowed to have a say in what is done with your tax money.   Of unions forcing people to go on strike, and giving them nothing in return.  Forty percent unemployment in a country, where the things that should be done are not done because there are not enough people employed to do it. 

The story of the chicken and the pig looking at the farmer having breakfast:  The chicken saying: “It feels good to know that I’m contributing to the farmer’s happiness.”  The pig saying: “It’s all good and well for you to say, you’re only making a contribution … I have to get involved.”

In the story of my life I am the pig.  I do not have the capacity to contribute without getting involved.  And so I don’t, I am flippant, uncaring –deliberately so.  As the wine and words were flowing around me I cast myself in the role of the uncaring rich bitch while in the dark depths of my mind I remembered the pain of a family whose son was murdered on a farm, unsolved, a friend raped on her way to meeting me, unsolved, two pensioners robbed of everything they owned and the insurance company refusing to compensate them, of young conscripted men maimed for being involved in a war on behalf of a government for which they were too young to vote for.  I remembered warm tears as I held a little dying boy, who was born with AIDS. I remembered the look of defeat in the eyes of the father of a friend whose family farm was repossessed.  I thought of our country and her people and their potential, of us humans and our potential, and how close we are to loosing that, of spinning out of control, of becoming empty, and I wanted to scream in rage and desperation.  “… en binne my is twee, die een is gek, die ander ek, dit is hy wat kerm en gil … maar ek is bang en stil… ”  And I remembered Roza saying: “We all live lives of quiet desperation.”

In my fourty four years I have hurt too much, lost too much of myself by getting involved in fights I didn’t start.  In one of these passionate arguments one has when one is young, Tinus once said he finds it impossible to deal with my ‘lightness of being.’  There are many things my dear husband says which I just don’t understand.  For as long as I were able to make New Year’s resolutions in the thirty years before I smoked, my New Year’s resolution was always just this:  to lighten up.  I take life and myself too seriously.  Life is heavy, maybe that is why, in self defense, I live light.  In Shantaram the author wrote: “… all smokers have one thing in common, they want to die almost as much as they want to live.”  On my packet of cigarettes is a message printed in large friendly blue letters: “SMOKING CAN KILL YOU” - not a promise, just a possibility, not ‘will’ kill you, but ‘can’ kill you.  In that dark place in my mind I wonder if I should be diagnosed with cancer, would I have it removed?  Once life heaped upon life didn’t seem enough, but someone killed the fire, dreams all end in tears and I live life light.

A foolish word, bygone?
How so then, gone?
Gone to sheer nothing,
Past with null made one.
What matters creative endless toil,
when at a snatch oblivion ends the coil?
It is bygone – how shall this riddle be run?
As good as if things never had begun.
Yet circle back, existence to possess:
I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness.

Faust  


Postscript:  Deep big apologies, I know we all get there, here where I am now, and then we move on.  I promise, tomorrow I will be better, the sun will rise as it does every day, I will get up and life will go on, here in fields of hope among the wildflowers.