Butterfly effect in triplicate

A single person had expressed interest in the Hiku Hike on 29^th March 2025, and they were not in the area on that day. I decided to create a little momentum by reminding a friend to attend. She had always wanted to do a Hiku Hike, and I had offered one as a birthday gift to her last year, which circumstances had prevented her from taking advantage of. Now she was super excited!

Whether one, three or seven people sign up – I never judge it to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, because I trust completely that as many people do the practice as need my holding space and my attention on a particular day. The quality of the practice is first and foremost determined by my own respect for what I feel called and able to give.

I parked under one of the great trees at the Chintsa Beach parking lot and waited for Angie. Shortly before 9 a.m., I received a message from her, apologising for not arriving for the Hiku Hike. She said some good work had come up. Like me, she is self-employed and is obliged to seize opportunities as they arrive. I was happy for her, but oh! How disappointed I was for myself.

Still, one rule I live by is that when I have resolved to do something in service of the ‘Beauty Way’, then I am not permitted to cop out simply for lack of people support. The sand, the river, the rocks were waiting for my feet to touch them, my feet must connect, must pay homage to the beloved earth, I must give my time and my attention to the very morning. Furthermore, I had promised my sisters in faraway Germany that I would take them with me in spirit. How could I tell them that I had driven home like a dog with its tail between its legs?

So I traipsed across soft and hard, scalloped sand. Crossed the river tugging at my calves and ankles. A few people and one butterfly were about. I felt sorry for myself and had to admit that Angie’s unavoidable change of plans, and the general absence of interest this time (not the first time) in what I was offering, despite the usual advertising, had caused me to feel socially quite irrelevant and dispensable. A woman in the company of three dogs was walking further up the beach in the opposite direction as poor me. I considered approaching her with the offer to read her a poem. I remembered Patricia Schonstein-Pinnock often courageously standing and reading in public places as people passed by.

I made my way towards the woman.

“Hello,” I said, as she stopped in her tracks. I introduced myself and added, “I would like to ask you a favour.”

The woman inclined her head in a kindly manner and asked,

“Yes? What is the favour?”

“I ask for three minutes of your time,” I ventured, “to listen to a poem of mine.”

“You won’t believe it,” she replied, pointing to the rocks stretching out behind her, “I was just there with my head full of a poem by my daughter. Please read your poem.”

I gave her Angie’s copy and read it, told her its story: how it had come to me on a memorial bench in the Kwelera Botanical Garden, commemorating one of the young sons of Sunrise-on-Sea, who had been killed in a road accident. How much sympathy I felt for his mother, his family, and yet, how alive the message had come on the bench plaque: ‘You will never walk alone.’

“It’s beautiful. I will put this into my Bible,” the woman replied. “This was meant to happen.”

“Thank you for listening,” I answered, and then summoned the boldness to express my real interest she'd piqued: “Do you have your daughter’s poem in your head?”

“I think so. Can you understand Afrikaans?”

I nodded, and she recited words that drew me into an abysm of dark water, deeper than any darkness I have ever been able to describe, and when they had reached further than the deepest bottom, the words suddenly turned to let me see, touch a firmament of stars singing their own luminosity. I was dumbstruck. The emotional contrasts, the courage!

“She was raped during a farm murder,” the woman explained. “She was only 16.”

She fell into my arms which had opened of their own accord and we both wept.

She explained that the incident lay several years back, and the young woman who had been so grievously violated was now studying and achieving extremely high results. Our conversation took longer than three minutes and it is not necessary to divulge every detail thereof. One thing is certain, however: it was an unforgettable encounter for us both, a gift straight from the great Mystery, whence the inexplicable, unpredictable phenomena of life are born and unfold. I felt as if I had stepped through a portal from one world into another, more expansive dimension.

We said good-bye and I traipsed thoughtfully to ‘my’ sacred ‘stone-horse-person’ (a formation that is very special to me), greeting and examining her in the bright light of the warm autumn day, when my phone rang.

The 'stone-horse-person'. Photo: Silke Heiss

“Are you still at the beach?”

It was Angie. Her prospective client had cancelled after all, due to the glorious weather.

“I’ll walk back,” I told her, “and meet you across the river.”

The beach had filled with what could easily have been 100 children of all ages in surf suits with boards. While waiting, I recalled some of my own childhood days in what was then the ‘homeland’ Transkei, when my exploring immigrant parents had remarked with interest that the indigenous people along this coast did not seem to go into the ocean for simple, childish refreshment as we did. I remembered a weekend away in my early twenties, with pupils from Soweto Township, who had implored me to teach them to swim in the pool that we had had access to, their eyes hungry to fulfil mermaid and swimming champions’ dreams. I now revelled in the shiny water babies around me, splashing, running, trusting. Trusting the tide, the current, the wildness of their own dolphin delight. Numerous butterflies of different kinds had also come down to the ocean to join the solitary one I’d seen earlier, and were all dancing in the air.

I spotted Angie on the other side of the river and waded across.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” she exclaimed as we hugged.

I explained the process of the Hiku Hike to her and we walked in perfect silence. We passed the stone-horse-person rock, and other rocks of various shapes and colours, toed through smelly, scrunched-up clumps of kelp, and climbed a flight of wooden steps into a dune forest. As we entered the caravan site on the other side (I had been given permission to do so), Angie apologised for becoming distracted, saying that she was ‘freaked’.

“I dreamed of this,” she said. “It was exactly, exactly like this! The moment we walked through here, I had déjà vu!”

“What do you make of that?” I asked her.

Through the dune forest. Photo: Silke Heiss

“That I am in the right place, where I am meant to be,” she replied, “but it’s still freaky!” She smiled.

A highly intuitive and experienced fairy card reader, she had brought her book with her and now offered me cheery Ffaff the Ffooter’s simple wisdom that, in order to receive intuitive guidance about that which we must do in our lives, our feet must be on terra firma and the head well-connected to the rest of one’s body.

As we trundled back and passed the stone-horse-person rock, Angie sat down. She opened her Faerie Book and said,

“The Fairy of Alchemy, Nelys, wants to say something to you.”

Moments before Angie handed me Nelys' message. Photo: Silke Heiss

I had not heard of Nelys before. I tried to say her name, Angie pronounced it 'Nels'. I studied Brian Froud's painting of her for a long time, intentionally losing the last vestiges of judgment of such images, which my mother's harsh condemnation had inculcated in me long ago, and I absorbed myself in the teaching. I was patient with myself, allowing the words about the fairy to reach me in the right places. I felt grateful that I no longer needed to waste energy rebelling against my mother's opinions in order to appreciate the gift that Angie was offering, but was there and then disentangling myself from the last sticky strands of ancestral webs of fearful ignorance.

The next day, Angie wrote me a message, which she kindly gave me permission to share:

The minute I saw that green door and went through it, I could feel myself stepping out of my old self and stepping into my AUTHENTIC SELF. The Age of Aquarius is a time of inner transformation of our true selves. Not what we have been told and taught to be. It encourages us to believe in ourselves.

For Angie, I opened a door and helped her to step through it, bringing an ending and entering a new way of being, seeing and doing. And I, too, had no less been brought to such a door twice over that morning and the whole world had changed. What a story I had to tell my sisters over the equator. Were the experiences of three women on the beach that day a butterfly effect in triplicate?

Hiku Hike promotional pic from March 2023

 

* * *

Haiku and plastic - where do we place our gaze?

On Saturday, 21st September, I had scheduled another Hiku Hike. It was to be with a difference, as I sought to impart some of the principles of the Haiku form and to facilitate a little elementary practice of that form during the two-and-a-half hour workshop.

There were a couple of people who apologised for being unable to make it and, for the first time this year, nobody attended this Hiku Hike. I took this as a twofold opportunity. Firstly, it gave me a break from holding space for much-valued others and offered a chance to do that for myself for a change. Secondly, I thought, I could probably assimilate the principles of Haiku more thoroughly, before trying to impart them to others. Thus, I spent the first part of my solitary workshop reading aloud to myself Raphael D'Abdon's comprehensive list of essential principles of Haiku, on p.4 of his article on African and South African Haiku. Thereupon I meandered and jotted and finally tried to compose a few Haiku poems.

One of the Haiku that came to me, which I was - at least provisionally - satisfied with, reads as follows:

 

First rains,

fresh otter tracks,

shreds of plastic hug rocks.

  

S.O.S.! Respect for the soul at work

About two and a half weeks ago, my friend, Tony, from the days when we both still lived in Hogsback, called out of the blue.

Out of that day's unclouded sky, Tony brought renewed focus into my mind's unexpecting eye.

He asked me to clarify Table Love. He said he is busy writing about Table Love, because he feels it's important for people, for the world.

In that moment, he did something important for me: he took me back to a ritual, which my late husband, the poet Norman Morrissey, and I began for the first time on the 3rd of July 2010. It was really simple. We sat down together at his big oak table and absorbed ourselves into a companionable solitariness. Each listened to what came to him or her out of the silence. When something arrived that was more or less pleasing, true, satisfying, playful or significant, we wrote it down. In silence.

Whoever finished first, waited quietly, for as long as it took the other to complete 'their thing' - thought-string, piece, or poem. When both pens had been re-capped, we read our 'things' out to one another. Invariably we hummed and gave our sense, our understanding of what the other had done. Sometimes we commented, made suggestions, and sometimes we praised one another's creations. So there was a natural flow from companionable, silent solitude to sharing, responding and communicating.

There is nothing quite like sharing an absorbed, creative silence with another or, indeed, with others.

It occurred to me, after talking to my friend, that the Hiku Hikes are really extensions of Table Love, with the added benefit of being outdoors and susceptible to all the fresh air and stimuli offered there. In the Hiku Hikes, too, we move from silence to sharing, to further silent work, to further subsequent sharing. It's dynamic, peaceful and stimulating, nourishing both individual and communal needs.

The single most crucial aspect of both Table Love and the Hiku Hikes, I would say, is respect for the space of another human soul at work. The soul works in the dimension of what is sometimes known as 'the dreamwork', that is to say, in a dimension that is temporarily independent of pressing or immediate worries and concerns, a dimension whose concern is a lucid state of consciousness, whereby time and space are inhabited simultaneously without undue friction, and without the body necessarily being in action.

When you are truly engaged on a creative level, you cannot think yourself into another space, nor another time, than the one you are inhabiting at that moment. In other words, a kind of unification takes place between body, mind, heart and spirit. I venture that it is that unification, or unity, which we call soul. It is frequently felt as deep concentration - the choice of the word 'concentration' for this state of being-doing is not accidental. All parts of us are brought to a common centre or fulcrum. 

When a person has had no opportunity for and no experience of this, they cannot understand this process. A person who keeps their dreams away from the everyday, indeed, away from themselves, who is unaware of the needs of their soul, will automatically suffer impatience, there is a restlessness that prevents them from giving themselves or the other person silence and proper solitude. With this inbuilt lack of generosity and lack of respect for Time and Space, our industrialised, digitalised modern culture has been, to quite a large extent, dangerous to the dreamwork, if not lethal to the soul.

The peculiar need to throw stones into the still ponderings of others is motivated by mischievous jealousy and greed, not for anything material, but for the substance of their souls. It connects to a need to own the other person's time and space and to command it. It consumes what the other has, because oneself does not have it. Many people are anxious to prevent others from having what they themselves do not have. And many more compulsively inflict injury on others to avenge injuries they themselves have borne and have not tended to, let alone healed.

Human beings everywhere are doing what we can to remedy the situation in numerous ways, we are, many of us, occupied with the vital question of how to save our souls. The open secret, of course, is that it is for each of us to save our own, hence the emergence of healing modalities, such as soul retrieval, somatic trauma release, mindfulness workshops; bringing in fresh concepts and vocabulary to assist understanding, such as 'enneagram' and 'ecopsychology'; along with truly mindboggling advances globally in overall emotional and psychological literacy for everyman and -woman, for everygirl and -boy.

To paraphrase Pearl S. Buck, where the human soul used to be the most underdeveloped terrain on earth, it has become a hotspot of attention for the very good reason that reason alone has proved to be not enough!

It is a question of protecting the creative self, of preserving the creative flame, for it alone is the carrier of human souls forward. That, and the freedom of laughter, playfulness. Such insight comes not in garrulous, excited, or fretful company, but murmurs in the unruffled privacy of ponderings.

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter

by Silke Heiss, published in Greater Matter.
The playful layout is thanks to Flow Wellington of Poetree Publications. 

The book is coming along nicely ... while the journal holds my hand

9th June 2024

I have been thinking repeatedly about bringing out a book about the Hiku Hikes, in which I discuss the origin, history & process of the activity, with examples of what people have produced. I may even have captured some first original creations in our [Norman Morrissey's and my Give Your Writing The Edge] newsletters.

10th June

I have messaged some of my previous Hiku Hikers and have thus far received very positive feedback, have created a folder for the book, and am gathering everyone's creations.

12th June

I reconnoitred a possible new route today and took some lovely pictures, but decided that it is not suitable for the next Hiku Hike. L's feedback has made me realise that I need to differentiate between different clients. Writers, experienced or budding, and non-writers. There is so much potential. It makes me happy if I can work under an open sky, deal with weather & nature as they come.

13th June

Of course, nature includes humans and their natures, as well as my own.

17th June

Eons have passed since I wrote the above. I had forgotten there was no rehearsal on that day [the 13th], but I had the pamphlets and posters printed at half price in Beacon Bay and left some pamphlets at E's practice. Friday I hung the last poster at Tea in the Trees.  

18th June

I pray I shall be led according to the best way forward. I came to Kwelera to catch up with myself and it is most vital that I walk and write each day. It be fitting that I write the book on the beach, in the forest - oh yes! That is what I must and wish to do!

Not bound to my desk, but to the beloved trees, the sky, the cormorants & kingfishers.
Precious, unostentatious rocks, tumbled assemblies of stone, foamy breakers - so exuberantly obedient to the forces of wind and centrifugal laws, delicious freedom, let my heart burst its human banks & consort, completely at one, with these wild and safely tethered powers, beyond the narrow range of human wilfulness, its vast illusions, let me be liberated into the cormorant, looping her neck down into untired pools, fresh and curious, and finding food.

21st June 2024

Today a wild berg wind is blowing & it is likely to remain gusty - let's see how that impacts the Hiku Hikers.

What is this wild wind, this warm day, at the winter solstice? An unnerving, dust-laden messenger that all must endure. And as a truck arrives with tons of further sand to unload at the building site, cattle graze within not unlush grass on their farmland, dust clouding the air and probably coating their tongues, insisting they imbibe extra minerals.

A freshness there is not, yet it beckons & tomorrow, coolth is forecast. In the ragged turbulence of this time, the strelitzia sheafs, long-bearded, with a crackling of ancient, grey leaves, slap and rustle in the boisterous air, shedding the stuff of human neurosis, human madness, unsapient, back to nakedness and, maybe, wonder.

23rd June

And we changed the route & it was sublime.

And the afternoon workshop was enriching.

24th June

Woman is a thought-adventurer.

26th June

A poem.

Not quite exactly

Rats' feet in the ceiling -
my only companions, at this hour,
when quiet is a philosopher's dream!

27th June 2024

I shall spend the rest of my days making sure that my writing sees the light of day, so to show its worth, its testament to love & life & art & a woman's self.

29th June

At long last. Fidelity to my soul: I am on the blue rocks again, a prodigal daughter.

Here is my place of work,

here is my desk: my lap; 

my seat, a granite boulder,

peppered with periwinkles, poking their miniature noses

into my flesh. I don't mind, the day is young,

laziness can come

after a little creative labour.

30th June

I am reconnoitring the route for the 20th of July, a very short beach walk. The water is very loud today and the pied kingfisher very close and energetic. Almost like a bat.

3rd July 2024

I have taken myself, or have been taken by the urge in my body, to the beach, a wash-up of stones on this less familiar side has stopped me in my stride & I am seated on a high-rock edifice, with a hearty, incoming tide rushing in semi-opaque greens over purples, greeting from below, purple-seaweed-brocaded rocks, and the foam is laughing over the stirred surfaces, and a hah-di-dah is laughing overhead. 

I am aware of anxiety in my heart, beneath my skin ...

I become still in a dimness of not knowing what I understand.

A man with a backpack walks by in boots over the stones, looks back & waves, I wave in turn.

Blessed am I to sit here, to try to catch the news that comes with these strong, fearless waves: that labour of the delivery, the labour of the water's cold, green, foamy truths, which have no opposite, just as life has no opposite. And B's homage, & my tears.

I know this, but only in the stillness.

Writing, writing, writing the anxiety down into these thin fibres of ink, serenity in the movement, natural, unstoppable, divine. Surrender. Surrender takes courage that ...

...

...

...

... that what?

What?

My womb. This wind. My partaking of the elements of which I am constituted. Wind from the west, from the north-west, harassing my bare neck, my shoulder.

Never stop.

Never stop.

Never shall the ocean,

never shall the wind,

never shall the rocks,

the light of fire,

nor the song from the womb,

stop, nor the blood-fed tissues, swollen

with longing for expression, sharing

their hour

with all

this.

An ecstasy, then, a letting go, surrender to the perfect patterns, the immeasurable and curvaceous geometry, the chemistry of sheer surprise, that is the gift of love.

Deeper & deeper the waters advance, higher & higher the splashings, empty now the cartridge of my pen.

6th July

The Hiku Hikes - A practice to evolve a healthier relationship with earth and language.

7th July

The book is coming along nicely.

At my desk. Which makes it possible to use a laptop, to type, to cut unwanted lines easily, to upload and to send stuff off into the human yonder.

HIKU HIKE interview 2nd June 2023

Silke: So just … let me know, please, how the experience was for you on this Hiku Hike?

Ed: It’s a lovely experience. What I found is that it makes you aware of the quietness, and that the quietness has, basically, words in it – and they will come to you if you’re prepared to go quiet and to listen. And then … then also to use those words, to write them down. Because normally it will just pass right over you and you lose it. But to write them down, to capture those thoughts, those words that came to you is something that you’ve got, tangible, to look back on. And then the editing of those words, to use those words to actually create a poem. A writing of the experience, of that – it’s beautiful, it’s opening up your mind to a whole new world.

Silke: And you said earlier that you usually go to the beach and you are looking –

Ed: Ja, you know I love collecting stones and shells and stuff, I’m always going down to the beach looking for stuff, you’re like quite busy looking for shells and looking: where’s the next shell? And that’s it. [Laughs] … come back and you’ve got nothing. You might have a few shells, physical things, ja, but now – going down to the beach I can now look for shells, and also I can – if I’ve got a notepad and pen with me – I can also capture words that are going to come to me, or sentences … and I can use those, so it gives you more. It gives you, like – you can go to the beach, for example, and you can collect shells, but you can also collect words and thoughts and images and, like I said, it opens up a whole new world.

Silke: And you can come back with things that didn’t exist before. Things that you created.

Ed: Ja, that’s true. So I can find things that are material on the beach, sure, driftwood and shells and stuff, but I can also create things out of the nothing. Ja.

Silke: And did the creative, you know, when you jotted your different impressions and then chose to work on particular lines and words – how did you find that choice in the editing process? You know, where you actually sift through your impressions and choose certain ones – can you say a bit more about how that was for you?

Ed: Well, I realised I’m having to create a poem, so then I sifted through what all I’d written and then I had to choose one, because there were actually many poems that I discovered that I could use and write on – different poems, but I had to actually, like, wow, okay, I have to actually choose one here in this Hiku Hike that you wanted me to write down, I had to actually choose one of them, which I did, but I realised it also takes a bit of time – you know, I’ve got to spend more time on it. I can improve my poem that I’ve already written down, but there are also other poems there that I can work on if I choose to and that’s great. I think it gives you so much more, it takes away that noise in your head, it makes you go to the quiet, you know, use the quiet.

Silke: And take what comes to you seriously, rather than dismissing it because you’ve got other things to do.

Ed: Ja, it’s a great experience and I think everybody will benefit by doing something like this, it’s like I said: it opens up a whole new world.

Silke: Did it help you in any way specifically with your writing? Because you said to me you don’t write, people don’t write.

Ed: Yes, it has helped, because you tell me to write something – it is a bit foreboding, like, gee, what am I going to write about? But just to jot down little simple thoughts, that’s easy, anybody can do it –

Silke: Yes.

Ed: And it’s great and I actually need to carry a pen and a notebook with me, and just keep on doing that and capture those thoughts, because I realised they’re coming out of the world, they’re coming from God or they’re coming from wherever –

Silke: To you.

Ed: Ja. It’s important. Whereas before you don’t realise it – you’re just missing them, you’re missing out!

Silke: Missing your own thoughts.

Ed: Ja. [Laughs] It’s crazy hey!

Silke: [Laughs]

Ed: It sounds crazy, but ja, if you do the Hiku Hike … everybody should do it, then they’ll know what I’m talking about! [Laughs] Ja, this Hiku Hike I found it kind of gives you the tools, but there are no tools, it’s no physical tool, but it gives you the tools to plug in to more of life.

Silke: Mental tools.

Ed: Mental tools. It gives you those tools, exactly.

Silke: Language tools.

Ed: Like I say it’s crazy when you think about it. If I look in the future at what I’ve written down I’m going to think wow! where did these words come from? But they do, they come to you and it’s an amazing revelation to … to know that things will come to you and you will be directed.

Silke: If you put yourself deliberately into a relationship with your surroundings.

Ed: Ja. And you can do it all the time, with everything, wherever you go . It’s like trusting your intuition and just looking for the signs. And it’ll help you. They’re there.

Silke: And they’re the ones for you. You know, different people on the same walk will obviously be receptive to completely different things, depending on where they are at in themselves, in their lives. And that’s what’s so beautiful is that each one is given what they need.

Ed: Mm. And I think this Hiku Hike actually helps a person to plug into that world, to plug into that reality that’s there, but because of our busy minds we’re not aware of it. But it’s there.    

/END

Thank you, Ed Low, for trying out a Hiku Hike, so we could have this chat :-)

Rocks on Sunrise-on-Sea beach, Amathole Coastal Resorts