Holy expansion

Holy expansion

 

Twice five k's on the beach

from Butterfly Blu to Buffalo Bay

and back again -

no one but you,

a couple of oystercatchers,

one little heron,

mussels on rock,

and the mad tide with its foam.

This is the sea our mother and father

taught us: strip, and run into,

to be bathed and renewed,

always they sought the isolated places

for their essences of bliss.

An excellent religion,

this womb of truth,

the dispassionate aggression

of the waves, attacking one another, joying

in complete trust that they cannot be tamed,

nor hurt themselves.

We'd return from the holidays

humbled and imbued -

they were holy expansions,

preparing us to wash each upcoming, 

difficult day.

- Silke Heiss

 

 

Free to be bitter

The season's grapefruits have brought much rapture. Whilst cutting them, they spray me, I am obliged to slurp the overflow before I can dare to prise segments of the flesh out with my fingers or a spoon. They have given the phrase 'to hold water' a whole new meaning!

My mother used to entice little me to eat grapefruit by disguising their bitter taste under a hilly topography of sugar, which immediately became wet and translucent as the crystals sank into the embrace of the juice.

My adult tongue, however, scorns such deceptions. Neither sugar nor milk in my coffee, please. I ward off colds and flu (including covid, by the way) with infusions of African wormwood, known also under the Afrikaans names Wilde els, or Bitterels. And oh, it is bitter - you just know it's good for you, equally as that legendary cleanser and healer, the bitter aloe.

Of course, the buds dispersed over your tongue, which hold your ability to taste bitterness, have an emotional and mental equivalent.

Bitter is the absence of God, of hope, of love and faith. This absence was felt even by Christ on the cross momentarily and is thus, surely, an emblem for the vital part it plays in human experience. 

Bitter it is to turn your eyes away from Christ on His cross, because you then immediately become aware of your own. Bitter purges me of sweetness as a disguise, it forces me to face the fact that, suddenly and inexplicably, my prayers ring hollow and my heart feels like a scar. Neither milk nor sugar please: my husband died, my mother is paralysed, my father has dementia, I've no stable income nor home, etc.etc.

Such a moment of darkness, if it extends, easily deteriorates into depression or resentment and so loses its medicine. (An excess of Bitterels will also make you sick and too much citrus gives you the runs.)

But if I treat the absence of God, the loss of connection with Beneficence (however you conceptualise it), as a living season of juicy grapefruit, the bitterness on my tongue reveals itself as a pearl and my heart-scar starts shimmering again! I can share the dawn with my beloved, and even with you, my reader!

Bitterness is a fast, a purge from safety and security, from harmony and confidence and trust. It frees you up, vaults you on. Just don't turn it into home, but see it as a spa. And let that metaphor hold water.

Happy to be sad

I had become wary of building my writerly career online, because of a sense of the ephemerality of the online world - load shedding in South Africa is a reminder of the tenuousness of electrical power; during the 'dark hours' (which can happen at any time during the day) one is obliged to turn to the tangible world for activities, duties and amusement, and there is much reassurance to be derived from going for a walk or taking a rest, because there is simply nothing else to do at a particular moment. Of course, there are always dishes; and perhaps one browses through a forgotten book and finds phrases and fragrances beyond the reach of the internet.

The second, more complex, reason I sidelined the supposed career, which I was building in my imagination, is that my elderly parents became increasingly needy, and I simultaneously said yes to a new love relationship. I was thus obliged to choose between paying attention to my 'career' or to real human beings and it seemed unethical to prioritise the former, as it is a vanity, while my parents, and my beloved, are irrefutable.

And so I neglected my online writerly presence and productivity. The decision to do so has lost me much energy, as there is little that refuels my soul as effectively as when I release my poetry and feminine philosophy into the unknown currents that run the worldwide web. It turns out that supervising my parents' combined wilting as compassionately as possible saps my life force in the extreme. Not infrequently, I have felt the need to die in advance of them, in order to show the way - a mood, which it would shock them to know I experience, if they had the presence of mind to know it, which is a presence they do not, fortunately however, have. 

I have been in shock, though, for the past three years - ever since leaving Hogsback, arriving on the Garden Route and covid lockdown slamming the brakes on any forward movement. I have, I realise, lived in a state of shame about the unutterable sadness of my life. A shame, which, on learning that I am once more forced to move house - the third move in three years - has suddenly left me, and lifted me up, this spring, to the joys of complaining unrestrainedly. I am pushed beyond endurance! Praise be to complaint! And praise be to my beloved, who endures it, and you, my reader, if you are here. I need no comfort other than to utter what saps and uses my loving, giving heart beyond her limits.

So it could be that complaining may yet help me to prevail. Thus, this blogpost is a preliminary blub and my online writerly presence resumes in a spirit of watery melancholy. 

In short, I am happy to be sad.