What the terrain had to tell me

The lily pads on the little dam felt like delicate embodiments of the human children of all ages for whom the world is at this moment grieving. In wintry colours of flesh, rust and olive they seemed to be finely-sliced cross-sections of brains, floating here now, defying all explanation, delivered to this sanctuary, being breathed by wind, which was sharp and insistent, and combing his patterns persistently towards me. And I wondered whether "the beautiful" really does "change in such kind ways" (Richard Wilbur), and whether there really is a "mercy of wild things" as Barbara Fairhead has written. And whether I was transgressing something by seeing the lily pads in such an unexpected way? There was no contrivance, but it is true that my heart was unable to hear in the clatter of the bendy reeds anything other than a hoarse, multiplicitous grief. The Afrikaans word 'snik' came to mind to describe the sound they made - a perfect onomatopoeiac word to denote the spine-wracking gasps that often accompany intense sobs.

Despite my melancholy state, the communion of lily leaves and wind and water with my bemusement left me feeling no worse. A little clearer, anyway, about the depth of grief mantling our world. As if such a ‘living cemetery' in the sun, whence new blooms will soon spring, is the only way I am given to see the spirits of these many, once-warm beings?

A dynamic state of peace

It is pouring loudly with rain. The clouds are united in a pure, white sky that has neither definition nor limits. Trees, bushes and pot plants are swaying, shaking and drooping, though the arum lily stands undaunted. The strings of rain are close together, there is unity, harmony in this hard, persistent dance. 

My mind's inner eye is occupied (literally). It is claimed by an image observed yesterday, outside my head, just like the rain today. It is an image of a family of Egyptian geese, led by the male, with Mom as the rearguard. 

Eight or nine goslings paddled for what they were worth through the windblown ripples of their home lake, keeping in perfect single file and so imprinting their live bodies into the 'duck(ling)s in a row', which now inhabit my head.

Once the parents had got them all safely to shore and, famished from their strenuous outing, they immediately began foraging in the grass, Dad raised himself to his full height, stretched and shook his splendid wings, pushing out his chest with its dark brown medal in a momentary posture of proud glory.

Mom had meanwhile flown to perch upon a railing to groom herself in private, as it were, taking some time out from the family.

* * *

In the aftermath of a sorrowful division between dear friends and fellows of mine (a situation which remains painfully raw and as yet unresolved), the undemarcated sky and rain, the disciplined little goslings and their steady parents offer an objective correlative to my inner state: I have taken a stance that is aligned with my heart, mind, body and soul. My friends know where I stand and, most importantly, I know where I stand.

Balance is a dynamic state of peace. I wish this for each individual member of my great and varied human family.

Photo: thanks to Ken Barris

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.

Wild life is a tangible dream

Just before lockdown last year, my beloved and I moved from the mountain hamlet of Hogsback to a house on a coastal dune, where kikuyu grass had been planted without thriving.

Behind the house is farmland, where wilde els, afrikaners, arums, metalasia, vygies, felicias and dune daisies, christmas berry (chironia baccifera), bulbinella, buchu, salvia, podalyria, varieties of restios and other fynbos species make a life for themselves between invasive acacias and reeds (which the farmer clears occasionally). To our joy, we discovered that a healthy number of species of wild birds, tortoise, mongoose, porcupine, duiker, possibly even Cape grysbok, share this area.

Amid the wild sub-alpine grasses in Hogsback, I had grown accustomed to the close company of birds, bees, beetles, skinks and shongololos; it made sense to create similar meadow conditions now, once more inviting the small creatures near. Wild life keeps me sane.

To begin with, we let the wild grasses and bushes completely take over - you could say that we deliberately neglected the ground. Small felicias appeared in spring and clovers blossomed merrily. Then, between them, we planted an array of lavender bushes and butterfly-bush (gaura) from a nursery. We left all the weeds and scraggly grasses to continue to do their bit between the molerat hills, trusting that over time, a natural balance would even things out.  

Our neighbours on one side, who are only seldom in their house, employ a garden company, which regularly, noisily razes their sun-scorched 'lawn' further down to sand, no matter the white-flowering succulents that try, despite everything, to survive in the barren ground. Recently we noticed candelabra flowers (brunsvigia) popping speary red shoots out on their property. Luckily, the neighbours came for a visit just then and we could get their very glad permission to move these glamorous plants, before they be decapitated by the machine-minded company.

No sooner had the candelabra flowers been transplanted than three greater double-collared sunbirds - two females and a male - came to feast on the nectar. They were completely unafraid of our proximity, showing us that our dream is perfectly tangible.

Our dune stands out in the suburb by looking 'untidy', 'wild', 'neglected', even. Yet no: it is cared for and loved, for being at one with the dry season coming, now, to its natural end. Nor is the space unnecessarily howled upon by that terrible suburban neurosis, the leaf blower. 

We hope that our tiny farmland-type garden might, over time, set a trend. Reeling your dreams in, bringing them home to where you actually stand and walk, gives simple happiness a chance. 

More than

Across the summer grasses' fattened heads,
the wild herbs' yellow blooms -
two pigeons at the bird-bath,
sipping in turn.

They spot me pretending
not to be watching. I can see
they don't totally mistrust, nor do they trust me.

It's a healthy state of being
for pigeons and humans - that state
of being neither one
nor the other, but between,
between two poles of feeling.

Are we the only species on two legs -
obliged to hold those poles
in balance? It could be.

It could be some humans
are birds more than mammals,
and Darwin and Linnaeus' wondrous achievements
perhaps need updating.

Anyway. So across the big-headed grasses and blooms
I sit, noting the segments of cloud
in the sky, and how they resemble
an insect's belly. Remember Foucault
and his 'Age of Similitude'.
Is my thinking that archaic?

For those of you suckling babes,
or welding gates, or taking bookings
from holidaymakers - the Age of Similitude
refers to the Renaissance, when people found
resemblances, connections between things.

Whereas Darwin-and-them thought
in categories, you know - like lists,
and generally linear systems.

It's all of it useful
to us, more or less.

Anyway, the fat-headed grasses.
The birds so full of summer
they can't stop twittering.
All that
is so much older
than the baby humanity -
Nature's most recent invention,
God's last contribution.

Suddenly a pigeon hurtles
gurglingly out of the Dogwoods
and, like a flustered arrow,
shoots by at the level of my ear,

soon followed by his partner,
equally absurd: a metre off the ground,
wings spread, chest out -

as if she were some joke
on Virgin Mary
finally beyond the blues.

I cannot help but laugh.
I laugh as if I were
in company, with fellows
of my ilk.

And I am that: yellow flowers,
seed-plump stalks; the Robin practising.

Nature talks more than I can say
in one poem
at the end
of a day.

- Silke Heiss, 16th November 2018

Real Days and a duiker

Been suffering crashings of confidence when I came upon this poem of Norman's from three years ago and was visited by a duiker. The saving graces of poetry, of nature - realities for me to live by.

A Table Love poem from years back - our "actual breath" in so many ways. 

He or she stared at me a good while on the other side of my window. Only yesterday I'd instructed the gardener NOT to repair the hole in the fence, I suspected the duiker was using it as a thoroughfare; she'd passed my studio while I was working there earlier in the week.