Praise song to what we have not lost

I did not know him well by any means. But I did meet Bernard Levinson a few times, and found him jovial and wise. I remember him doing Tai Chi at Fish Hoek Beach near the lifesavers' block, decisively oblivious of all the people staring at him.

At the McGregor Poetry Festival in 2017 I heard him read from Weskoppies Asleep. Poems from the Dark Side of the Moon - an informally bound poetry collection he dedicated to Anne Sexton. It contains what I would consider to be deeply important, poignant poems and scissor collages by him. The poems brim with compassion and human understanding for the suffering, which the mentally ill went through in those days, ca. 1950s (I think), when treatment of mental illness was still in its infancy. 

He had been on my mind, and when, shortly after Easter, I happened, in a second-hand store, upon Mike Lipkin's book, Lost and Found, on Depression, I impulsively bought it, for Bernard's Foreword, in which he describes his failure as a psychiatrist to help a suicidal person, who falls in front of a train moments after seeing Dr. Levinson -

"Under the arc lamps and amid the frantic hubbub of the police and the ambulance men, I had a moment to reflect on the sad, inept magic of my prescription. I had not really heard him. He was talking a language I had never been taught to understand. Even more basic, I had not been taught to listen. We had missed each other completely. He was calling for help, and I was obsessed with pills."

These self-reflective words, and the poems in Weskoppies Asleep, which I am privileged to have in my possession, provide an in to what we have not lost, even though, sadly, the man himself is no longer among us: he died a few days ago at the age of 94, I believe.

Bernard was one of the first to grab the opportunity to buy a copy of Gripscapes, the recently launched book by Norman Morrissey, with its fabulous Introduction to his oeuvre, by John van Wyngaard. I would wish that Bernard still had time to savour at least a few of the poems in that book. 

For his review of Norman's Selected Works, Strandloop, please click Bernard Levinson's review of Strandloop

If you would like to know more about the man and his professional work, as reported in an obituary in the Sunday Times Live, please click Bernard Levinson obituary

The poems and images below give you a glimpse of his compassionate and also creative heart.

Towards breakfast, a flower

Oh, my dear God,
sweet Christ: who would believe

this estuary of us -

who is the river and who

the sound

of

the sea?

Longer than the count of years,

my life has been, and now

you lead me to this threshold -

saturated by peace, and crabs,

kingfishers, and fish,

and fishermen, and other birds.

Keep me here, my darling Lord,

thank you for bringing me through,

to talk with you, at this kind hour.

Before me now: two fishermen,

oaring musically

their small boat, stacked with rods,

towards breakfast.

Ah, this Flower,

singing

on the water!

- Silke Heiss

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. 

The value of the beholder

We were getting my disabled mother dressed, or changed and ready for bed - I no longer remember which.

It's an effort, for her, as much as for the carers; and when my dad does it, occasionally with my help (as used to be necessary over weekends and holidays), the effort multiplies all round.

Anyway. Eventually we get there and she's ready - for the day, or for the night.

"You are so beautiful!" my dad cries, having stood back to admire our achievement.

She slumps in the wheelchair, dejected by her helplessness.

"If only it helped," she retorts glumly, "the beauty".

"Oh," he fires back, "It helps me! Me it helps that you are beautiful!"

And so Beauty gets to smile again, and everybody can go on.

Valentinian reflections and some extreme declarations

From 2011 until 2019, Valentine's Days were quite a bit of work for me - during those years, I published books of love poems every Valentine's Day. All but two of those were co-authored by my late poet-husband, Norman Morrissey. We used to read antiphonally on each occasion, launching the books by way of a romantic event for poetry-loving fans - as per the images below.

Our love poem combo show in 2011

Our first love poems in dialogue, 2012

Love poem book no.2, 2013

2014

2015

Love poems with a difference, 2016

The last book of love poems we published during Norman's lifetime. 2017

A dialogue of love poems published after Norman's death. 2018

2019

Last year on this day, I collected the print stock of Sweet Nothings (with Notebook) - my tribute of poems to High Riding, the property I had lived on and grown to love during my Hogsback years. My Beloved encouraged me to take this photo to commemorate the moment and how glad I am that he did so - 

Celebrating the collection of stock. 14th February 2020

Now, finally, it is time to reflect on all this Valentinian bustle. (Incidentally, the name 'Valentine' derives from the Roman word valens, meaning strong and healthy.)

The figure of a Beloved has always been a priority in my life. The relationship with a Beloved is the very sun, around which (at least for me) all other relations are constellated. It is the source and centre of warmth and light, without which my heart withers.

By no means do such extreme declarations diminish the love I feel for my son, my parents, sisters, extended family, circle of dear friends and fellows, teachers, pupils, readers, writers, and in general my kindred spirits, who light up the entire globe with their irreplaceable souls.

On the contrary. A Beloved allows for a bubble of peace that is beautifully broken, if not by bliss, then by the most valuable work there is: the work of consciously and fully getting to know an other and, therefore, one's own, expanded self. Speaking for myself, there is no greater possibility of migrating properly beyond the dreadful limits of selfhood than through the consummation of a relationship with a true Beloved.

Why is this? Could it be that here, as in friendships, I find equality, balance of power? As in parent-child relationships, I find nurturing, safekeeping, learning? As in teacher-pupil and work relationships, I find respect, patience, discipline? As in sibling relationships, I find play, laughter, forgiveness? 

Yes, the relationship with a Beloved lends all those possibilities. But also - and this is perhaps the ultimate card - I find utter vulnerability, both ways: a vulnerability that is inaccessible, but in the relationship with a Beloved.

The mutual vulnerability of true lovers in respect of one another has held (at least in my case) enormous potential for unlimited expansion into my best self. (Of course, there is constant and real risk of the opposite happening!)

I've built a 'career' of sorts with my poems and writing. But, under that 'career' is a foundation and that foundation is the beauty of the Beloved as it shines for me inside my heart. Maybe you could say my Beloved gets closest to the mercy and grace of Christ in my heart; thus, also, to my creative life force.

Neither my poems nor my love have gained me a sustainable income (at least, not directly so). But they have won me this humble platform, this provisional confidence and this uncompromising desire: to tell you what I've won.

May you, likewise, trust yourself to pursue that, which you love to do, according to the love relationships YOU are best wired to joy in.

My old elephant bod with my old peace rose, back in 2011. (They are both still alive and happy. The rose is busy on her 10th bud this season!)

 

   

You don't have a choice from where you aren't

That's the small print.

Choice is always only as wide, or narrow, as the radius you give yourself.

For example - what image do I choose to accompany this post? A photo of a fork in the road? A deliberating human head with their chin in their hand? A cartoon face with question marks over it?

No.

None of the above-mentioned images come naturally to me, as companions to my theme. I aren't there, so to speak.

This glass egg, however, was right under my nose on my desk. I could pick it up and snap it with my phone. It caught the light as I could never have predicted.

And so, a post, which began with but a solitary sentence, unfolded richly into its immediate surroundings to share with you.

Yes, there is now. But also - don't underestimate the power of right here: where YOU ARE.

 

Disappointment? Keep plodding, be a dandelion ...

The book stores will not stock my books, on the grounds that they are self-published.

So I decide to submit to publishers. I earmark a couple and conceive differing manuscripts - ones, which I hope will fit the feel and vision of the respective publishers.

The first open window period is with Uhlanga Press - an admirable little enterprise, some of whose ventures have already received awards. I create a longlist, then a shortlist, then make a final selection of 30 poems. I print a draft, read it aloud to my willing beloved. On his suggestion, I add a few more poems, inserting them where we feel they work best. The manuscript is almost ready - 38 poems, in a sequence that's fluent and pleasing. Who will be my editor? ... is the next question.

Then I discover that the publisher - Nick Mulgrew - has posted a public letter on his website: his open window period is cancelled, due to lack of funds and iffy health. I write back with understanding and good wishes.

I realise that my lovely manuscript would not exist, if it weren't for Uhlanga.

Before I gathered and selected my poems, I had looked up the meaning of 'uhlanga'. Google told me that it is Zulu for the reed marsh out of which our ancestors emerged. It appears to be a more geographically (mythically?) rooted word than ubuntu, but, too, carries the meaning, as far as I can tell, of 'humanity'.

I guess I'm back in the primal mudscape.

What next?

I create the contents page anyway. I paste in the poems that still need to be added. Each poem is on a separate page. None is longer than a page, it's a gorgeously compact manuscript.

I'll ask the prospective editor for his favours anyway - I need this thing edited, whatever happens.

And I'll keep plodding with my bare feet through the reeds in the mudbed. Poems don't need to be published to exist - I've known that for a lifetime! They don't need book stores to give them the nod. One way or another, I'll get them to the readers that need and want them - and if I stand in the wind like a dandelion and let them blow where they will. That's kind-of my contract with God anyway, with Life ... or however you conceive of the Mystery that inspires a human bean to emerge as she does, no matter what.

Work in progress

Photo: Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Left hand lead

Those of you who follow my social media posts may have picked up a recent one, in which I share that I had been encouraged by a soul healer to allow my left hand to show me a way forward.

I tried writing with my left hand and found it a very interesting exercise. I have continued and it has led me to a fascinating creature - the chameleon. (If you have the patience to read the handwritten words in the accompanying image, you may be quite entertained to see how exactly my left hand led me.) 

Credo Mutwa, whose book, Isilwane, could be said to play the role of a kind of left-hand somebody (as distinct from a right-hand man) in my idiosyncratic questings, composed a beautiful praise song to the chameleon.

Praise Song to the Chameleon (extracts)

You, of whom warriors of old were afraid

And you, of whom the men today are also afraid

Little chameleon, what is the secret of your magic?

Why do the children of Africa hold you in such dread?

Even the bravest will quail at your touch

Even the mightiest will shrink from handling you

Only little children, secure in their innocence, dare to hold you in their hands

What is your story, chameleon?

[...]

Chameleom, the slow one, unwabu!

Chameleon, the beautiful one who changes his colours

Chameleon, the symbol of the sanusis, keepers of the hidden wisdom

They taught us in the great huts of grass

They taught us in the caves and in the holes in the ground

They taught us that we should be like chameleons, invisible to our enemies

They taught us to seek the knowledge of long ago and to see both into the future and into the past

To see both into the visible world and into the invisible world

Just as you swing your eyes, one looking forward and one looking backward

So we are taught to be like you

[...]

Anne Keating, in her wonderful book, Wild Voices, writes:

You have been taking a good look in the mirror recently and seeing a few of the masks you have been using to camouflage yourself. You realise what a burden they are becoming and are asking yourself WHAT FOR? Why am I keeping up this exhausting camouflage? 

When you are drawn to Chameleon it is a very positive and strong sign that you are now determined to face any self-delusion and remove your masks for good.

And this goes even further.

You will show little tolerance for deception in others in any situation. [...] You are looking for the REAL world [...]

 

Keating, furthermore, gives the key word for chameleon as PRECISION. The focused, carefully deliberated aim, with which chameleon's tongue is able to target and seize its prey, is a reminder not to rush and to allow pure intention to be the leader of your actions.

Left-handed journal entry, 17th January 2021 

Detail from the illustration for chameleon in Isilwane by Bowen Boshier.

Photo: Silke Heiss

Stretching himself to reach another branch. Photo: Silke Heiss

 

 

 

Lost, or: The chrysocolla and the butcherbird. A blogpost in two chapters.

I've lost.

Lost you: my thinking, feeling reader.

Lost me: your writer, um, your thinker-feeler.

Now what?

Chapter 1

Got in touch with my late husband, desperately. He 'told' me to buy a fancy bottle of wine. A minute or two later, still standing in the supermarket aisle among the wines (before the latest lockdown), a dear, late friend of mine 'told' me to buy another, fairly fancy bottle of wine.

I meekly obeyed both of them. Opened the red on Christmas day and toasted my late husband vocally in the presence of my parents. Has ever a wine had a more soothing, centring, balancing effect on me? Never.

The next day, Family day, I opened the white and toasted my late friend in everyone's presence and, again, the afternoon turned golden.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

Need to put that in bold.

My obedience to my heart and her loves is simply the right thing.

But still, I was lost: in the tyranny of daughtering. When my father came into the kitchen the next day, where I was, as usual, cooking, and said, "You are SO kind!" I replied morosely, "Yes. It's awful."

He said he would help if he could, and so he polished the blackened silver cake forks, while my poor, paralysed mother audibly lamented her helplessness.

Unkindly, on the phone to my Beloved later, I ranted beyond reasonable about the curse of being kind. I guess I was balancing (cancelling?) my kind deeds with highly ungracious words revealing pretty septic resentment.

But then.

I confronted the disturbance in my heart, the ungraciousness.

Chapter 2

I'd made my parents a calendar for Christmas, as usual, and for the month of May, which is my birthday month, I used a photo of myself, looking at a bird. Underneath the picture I'd pasted the words: 

 Listen to the song in your heart, whether the sun shines or it snows.

The bird is a butcherbird and although the photo (taken by my Beloved) is stunning, and the quote does speak how I have by and large lived my life, the vicious reputation of the bird bothered me.

However, Google (butcherbird) told me, with exquisite immediacy:

The fearless butcherbird reminds us to protect our territory. If it has shown up, you may be at risk of being undermined or of losing a thing of value.

 

That same day, my mother, ill-advisedly or wisely (which is it?) tippling once again from early on in the afternoon to assuage "the bitter taste in my mouth," said, 

"I keep trying to think of the name of a stone, but can't get away from croissant."
"Chrysoprase!" I said.
Her eyes widened. "Chrysocolla," she retorted. "How did you ... ?"
"It's obvious," I retorted in turn.

The daughter is not that for nothing.

She sent me to fetch her big box of various pieces, designed and cut and polished and smithied by her, and gave me a necklace with a Chrysocolla pendant. The cabochon and every link is fashioned by her. In better times, of course. (was fashioned = simple past: upon a time)

I danced! How it suits everything I am and wear! (am, wear = simple present: true forever)

"I have never seen it," I said.

"I never wore it," she replied, "I made it thinking of you. I wanted to give it to you."

Google (chrysocolla healing and chrysocolla sound) supplied more than enough for me to begin to be able to dissolve the septic resentment and ungraciousness that had been holding my soul hostage.

By means of words.

To myself.

To you.

Truth is not straightforward.

Chapter 3

Please forgive the photo of the pendant, the evening was getting on.

Appendix Note

You can still see the pendant and necklace enough to get a sufficient sense of things.

Butcherbird and me (passing though Hermanus). Photo: my Beloved.

Chrysocolla pendant with handmade silver necklace, by Sigi Heiss. Bad photo: Silke Heiss

 

 

The leopard is a person

We took ourselves to the Cederberg for the first time as parents ... it must have been 2003 ... our son was 5 years old at the time. The camps were in transition, the old Parks Board was giving way to the new SAN Parks, and it was possible, in that administrative gap, to snatch incredible opportunities of empty, unattended campsites, costing next to nothing to stay in.

There was one other occupied camping spot, besides ours, and the people there said they'd seen leopard tracks and scat, and that if we left early, for our hike planned the next morning, we might be so lucky as to spot a royal mother and her young one.  

Our son made sure we were up before dawn. He just about sprinted up, ahead of us on the extremely steep incline. Once on top, we lost the path. We traversed five mountains that day, ever on the lookout for a path we never found. Our son was finally asleep on his legs, walking with his eyes closed as I pushed him gently onward, and my poor then-husband sprained his ankle at the eleventh hour. Only with difficulty did we get back to the tent, and to the miracle of a woman with ice wraps, as it happened, unbelievably. She had been sent there to take the little money we owed.

This poem - written as an Italian sonnet - developed out of that day.

The leopard is a person

The leopard is a person who conceals

herself, but likes to loer to see where you

might keep yourself and what you do. She reveals

no pawprints, though occasionally a youngster's poo

provides a possible track for you to follow,

past rocks with eyes, in heat and fearful hollow:

where who knows what may lurk, and watch, and wait,

with centuries to spare, while you meet fate.

Sit down there, eat your lunch and breathe her home

of purple lava, rippled down in curves,

jump frog-sung ditches, turned to stone -

and feel the flitches of your human nerves.

The leopard is a person so alone.

Could be she is the one who made this poem.

- Silke Heiss, October 2006

loer = Afrikaans, integrated into South African English, meaning to spy on, to look secretively or furtively

According to Anne Keating, in Wild Voices Messages from the Soul of Africa, Leopard cautions you "to be alert to the signs and omens on your path [...] You feel the need to cut the extraneous out of your life and hone in on what is really important." 

There is further caution, which the energy of this shy, highly adaptive survivor of a creature brings:

"For you to win, no one must lose."

Leopard travels alone: 

"You will not compromise what you are learning merely to fit into the expectations of others." 

Photographs of the Cederberg, and of the Agama Atra, by Silke Heiss

Leopard photo by Uriel Soberanes

Totally quiet crows

The crows

Four of them have been cawing

for days now. I don't know

why the word is 'cawing',

because they craah.

I've never heard a crow do anything other than craah -

on different pitches,

at different lengths

and alternating tempos;

but 'caw' is a human invention that can be dropped, when it comes to crows.

All that is neither here nor there, really. But

the pied crows and their craahs

have been dominating 

air space as well as

air waves.

I tell my mother on the phone

that they remind me of her

(she's forever complaining

about her croaky voice)

and she bursts out laughing

and says, "Please greet the crows

from me."

Well, they sit on the roof,

grooming themselves

- I notice they are very curious

about each other's underwings -

 

and they poop generously,

rudely onto the tiles

from their vantage

on the wifi dish.

It's two big, shaggy ones

and two sleek, younger-looking ones -

are they a family,

invading this suburb

of sunbirds, white-eyes, weavers, mousebirds,

hoopoes, robins, thrushes, bulbuls, gulls,

sacred ibis, hadidah, flycatchers, wagtails, 

nightjars, herons, plovers, doves,

gymnogene and guinea fowl?

Or are they rival pairs

- ragged oldies against a shiny new generation -

craahing, gliding, hopping, hooping,

hoping to talk things through?

One of them does

fly a close hoop over

the older-looking pair,

who turn their necks up with interest,

but do not jump.

Their expressive beaks

and measuring eyes,

their confident shoulders

and charming white bibs,

leave a person guessing.

Since I've beeen writing this,

they are totally

quiet.

- Silke Heiss, 5th December 2020 

Crow is the totem animal of Sacred Law

"If you look deeply into Crow's eye, you will have found the gateway to the supernatural. Crow knows the unknowable mysteries of creation and is the keeper of all sacred law."

"The law which states that 'all things are born of women' is signified by Crow."

"Human law is not the same as Sacred Law. More so than any other medicine, Crow sees that the physical world and even the spiritual world, as humanity interprets them, are an illusion. There are billions of worlds. There is an infinitude of creatures. Great Spirit is within all."

- from 'Medicine Cards' by Jamie Sams and David Carson, New York: St Martin's Press, 1988, 1999.

Photo: Charles J Sharp