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?

Wisdom #22

Christmas '23 my Beloved gave me a tiny notebook, with a condition.

"This is not for poems," he warned (possibly thinking of the mess of scribbles that make up my notebooks),"it's only for wisdoms."

I've a nose for limitations that yield good quarry, hence I surrendered with gladness. Whenever I came across words that seemed worthy of copying out by hand, another page was filled in my little book. In all this time, I have gathered a total of 32 wisdoms. I haven't nearly half-filled the book. 

Then, last Thursday, he sent me a link to a YouTube clip, which I listened to while doing the dishes a moment ago. The clip makes for pretty worthy listening at this time in human history. It triggered my memory of a wisdom I'd written in one of my journals at the time (November '24) – my very own wisdom, born from my own experiences of a lifetime, which I decided to jot down in my little book. When I was done and had dried my hands, I went and found what I had written down. This:

Wisdom #22

I simply cannot think in groups. I can feel in and with groups, but think only as an individual.

– Silke Heiss, 9th November 2024

C'est tout. That is all. All-important, I'd say without a moment's hesitation, at this horrific time of historic mass psychosis (this link leads to the same YouTube video* as the one above). 

A wisdom based on pure experience. And: won from closely, but closely observing my own mind over the many decades.

*If you want the video in shorthand, please refer to Silke's Wisdom #22. Most importantly, please apply the wisdom as a daily practice. Earmark this blog. Think for and by yourself alone. Practise it. Stand firm. It's f***ing hard and completely vital for the survival of the human being. 

Note: being. Not species. The human being is far, far more important than the human species, who are, as we can clearly see, not important in the least.

Foam marrow

I reconnoitre a slightly different beach route for an upcoming Hiku Hike. The water is very loud and the pied kingfishers are unusually close and energetic, flitting almost like bats, uttering their high-pitched calls. 

Settling on some rocks, I grow absorbed in the bubbles of foam, which a few rather capricious swells are herding into the holds of the reef.

They are marrow cells and nuclei of foam, shuddering, spinning, exploding, reconsolidating, gaping, rotating. 

I feel myself becoming involved in their trembling existence. Can there be anything more insecure than foam?

The wind is stout and sharp as a small dagger, the sky's swathed in indecisive whites, partially obscuring a weak blueness, a blueness busy resting from having to be a hue.

Thus, the sea is largely colourless, a de-individuated expanse, retreating from language, from consciousness. 

That will be all for today. The softest parts of you are equally speechless. 

30th June 2024

When I zoomed into the snaps I'd taken, I saw that each bit of foam marrow had seen me too, replicated, with its compound eyes.

How dare I speak?

Raggèd rocks, weathered like the skin of my belovèd wrestling with himself,

rough and grooved and sharp with linear agonies borne over time

and no conclusion

Abiding like an outrage of completely opaque mirrors,

too shocked by the truth to reflect it, hiding

The rocks reveal the inner tissues of our bullet-riddled souls,

the marrow’s holes, where marrow sits now only as a polka of shadows,

cast by an aghast sun

How dare I speak for or against those who attack, those who defend,

when I don’t know the difference between those words, those actions?

When I’ve so much violence within myself?

Nor, if you kill me, will you rid yourself

or the world

of the virus

One way only can subdue it embrace it in yourself, bind it, befriend it,

show mercy to the beast that inhabits inhabits inhabits

wrestle befriend show your self unknown compassion

unknown compassion unknown

It takes practice more quiet

eventually it comes

Listen to no one,

cry

Thus I teach, reach

even myself

– Silke Heiss

All photos by the author. Graffitti on rock captured 18th October 2023

My Story of Pentecost. A simple woman’s testimony

Dedicated to those who have done the greatest damage

I am a simple woman on whom the gift of language might be said to be largely wasted, really, since I cannot speak of worldly affairs, nor influence men to cease doing harm.

However, I am well able to articulate personal experience, and I have the ability to see, and make, connections between corporeal and spiritual, between mysterious and rational dimensions. This can be useful to readers.

So, I want in this story to testify, describe an event that happened in my body, for you to make of what you will.

It happened the Sunday before last, on the 8^th of June, at the Pentecost Service. I was in Hogsback and attended with a dear friend.

Boughs of pyrocanthus and red hot poker lilies leaned into the dressed stone walls on either side of the altar, and another cherished friend had created an arrangement of coaly roses which glowed over the food table in the vestibule.

Pastor Barry named all the instances of fire as they occur in the Bible, and his arms and words fanned the yellow, orange and red flames of that famous day when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples and all of us mortals on earth.

As I listened to him holding forth, both impassioned and humour-filled, I became aware of a fine, fierce, contrapuntal gust pushing itself up inside me, sitting at the end of a pew beside the scarlet carpet that runs down the middle of the little chapel’s nave. From the waters of my sacrum I could feel a slender, burning blueness ascending.

As he ended his sermon, the pastor encouraged us not immediately to chat outside with one another after the communion, but to be quiet for a bit and pay attention if God’s voice was wanting to come through to us. He emphasised that God has a unique way of reaching each one of us, tailored to each individual’s capacity and predilection.

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash  (photo cropped by the author)

When the three friends who were sitting beside me rose for communion, I was obliged to get up too, to let them through, and, despite the confusion inside my body, I was pressed from behind by the parishioners moving all together to the pulpit. It was not my first time attending an Anglican service in this non-denominational chapel, and I cupped my hands deferentially to receive Christ’s body, a weightless white disc, and stepped towards another friend in the community, Helen, who was holding the tray of tiny glasses brimming with vermilion liquid, the sacred symbol of the gory story.

At that moment, the blue fire blew abruptly through my heart, it was a torch in my conscience, and a whisper that found its way past my lips.
“I can’t! I can’t!” I breathed, staring at Helen.
“It’s grape juice,” she replied reassuringly, but I stared and repeated, “I can’t!”
I dropped the pale white disc into a tray of ice that just happened to be there, and stepped outside, feeling clean and light. I was aware of how icy the air had suddenly turned and how cleanly it entered my lungs.

I went around to the front of the chapel, where some people were huddling in spots of watery sun while others took shelter in the vestibule. Serenely I joined in the eating and talking. The pastor approached me, my sudden refusal of the holy communion had not escaped him. He asked whether I was a Roman Catholic and when I replied in the negative he invited me to come and see him sometime, adding that he would pray for me. I must have looked nonplussed, for he added benignly,
“But it’s okay.”
That made sense to me and I echoed, “Yes. I know it’s okay.”

We ate, talked, and then carried, washed, dried and packed away the cups and plates and tiny glasses. It was close to twelve when we said good-bye and I drove back home soon thereafter.

The next day (Whit Monday, which in some countries is a public holiday) I caught up with an unfinished, online creative group process I was part of, which involved drawing rainbow labyrinths while connecting specific colours with specific sounds. The colour the group had reached that Sunday happened to have been red, and the associated sound was ‘ê’ (as in red). I selected my red oil pastel and drew the outer paths of my labyrinths while chanting ‘ê’. Then, without any forewarning from my Self, I took a paintbrush, loaded it with acrylic paint labelled ‘Vermillion’ and pulled paths up and down and across between my labyrinths, going in all four directions, and, again, a wind animated my body and I knew: this is my blood.

I became excited, inspired, and squeezed thick red paint from the tube onto my finger and drew my blood thickly over the paths the brush had made. As I did so, I was inhabited increasingly by lightness and joy, as if I were purifying my own soul, my blood and my bloodline. My memories clarified as I sang and I felt the weightless Christ, my own liberated Self, and a joy my body could not have before this. Because I had never been able to stop thinking of Mary, feeling sick at heart all my life about what she had had to endure. Because, you know, Jesus too was covered in vernix at birth, and Mary had to brush her nipple on his cheek beside his mouth so it would open for him to suck her milk. He was born to live with friends and food and go on nice long walks and plant almond trees and trellis vines and give her and Joseph grandchildren, not be crucified by envious men and lies!

I felt that Ruach had broken through historic deeps in my body, she had breathed me, leaped me over a bridge higher than that gruesome consecrated murder on the red and speechless earth. Oh Mary, Mary, is it you or I who’s quite contrary?

Rainbow labyrinths, process art by the author

 

So there you are. This is my Pentecostal record, personal, simple, a single simple woman’s tiny crystal of truth, dictating nothing, prescribing nothing. I will say this, though: we women don’t give birth so you can kill bodies, hopes, trust, dreams, aspirations, natural complexities, and simple, ordinary joys. If you want blood, serve wombs and birth, become a midwife. If you want redemption, then grow the balls to serve the Mysteries of Life.

I thank my friends; Pastor Barry Wittstock and the St Patrick’s Chapel community in Hogsback; and Chantell Dysel, each for your part in this story.

– Silke Heiss, June 2025

  

From a province of rivers, another April

April was the longest month. It seemed to last forever, each day was open, elastic, filled with unexpected encounters, whence bubbled conversations resonant with possibility.

The sky was filled with clouds in all colours, shapes and sizes, freely embracing one another, texturing the airy canopy with endless dimensions. Vapour proffered fluffy lips coming together to kiss day after day.

Autumn sky over the Chintsa river. Photo by the author.

Ink flowed from the fountain pen and rains greened the hills. Sun warmed our backs and our bodies stocked up on the rays, as the mornings and evenings became chillier, energising us after the heavy heat of summer.

Then came the downpours, cackling into the potholes, mashing up farm tracks with wet abandon. And still the month was not done.

Butterfly with smiling wings,
sharing a rock shelter on the beach with me on 20th April 2025.
Photo by the author.

,

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

 

* * *

Four Feathers - Variations

1.

The wind is wild, the roses are beset by rust, the potholes are treacherously overflowing with water.

What is calling my heart? My mother's four bluejay feathers, carefully labelled, in a tiny plastic container?

Yes, it must be the bluejay feathers, which I extract, to place them onto my hand-carved stone eagle, together with the kingfisher feather Ed found in the garden.

2.

It is in such minutiae that many women find comfort, private rituals occupying a waking dreamscape, unconscious processes that flow through the embodied world. Processes that, in some ways, make, build and hold together the embodied world, which everyday life often seems to destroy or ignore.

The wind is wild, the roses are blooming despite the rust, most drivers steer carefully, pay attention to one another, swerve gracefully as baby rhino, pause, guess at the depth of the nothingness under the mass of small and large dots of water in the tar.

3.

Bluejays, I read, are a part of the crow family, intelligent, vocal, social, resilient and threatened. Who or what is threatening them is not said. It is understood without having to say it.

My mother conscientiously labelled the container in which she kept the feathers. A walk. Place, date, who she was with.

The wind is pausing. Resumes, with a bellow.

4.

Barbara gave me the stone eagle. She said it was from New Mexico, and that the carver's name was Peter. Little stripes of news, patterns of information, more than decorative. The limbic brain takes note, stores the stuff, as if these things were fragrances.

I suppose these lines follow the bluejay's feathers, compose themselves into a variation on them.

The rods of the bamboo chime add their opaque song.

Photo by the author

'Never just routine' The story of Tigger's euthanasia

The story below was shared with me informally via WhatsApp message by artist Cheryl Flowers, a friend from Hogsback, who took it upon herself to look after the venerable old tabby, Tigger, in his last years, including taking him from Hogsback to Makhanda with her, when she moved there. I thank her for allowing me to use it as the centrepiece for this article.

Throughout my time in Hogsback, Tigger was generally known as ‘The Edge’s cat’ – which he was! My late husband, Norman, had known him as a kitten and he was sure the dignified, independent creature was already around 30 by the time I moved to the mountain, because Norman had been there for that amount of time!

The star photo of Tigger that still hangs in a frame at The Edge. Photo: Simon Pamphilon

* * *

The relationship between people and pets is a subject all its own. What I find fascinating about it is that, as in any close relationship between humans, the unique individuality of each being finds totally specific resonance with the unique individuality of the other. I have never been your typical ‘animal or pet-crazy person’. Certainly I find it impossible to “love” all cats and dogs, as some people are apparently able to do. Many pets resemble their owners so closely that I often feel quite bored by their nondescript presences, so tame and unsurprising have they become. Far worse are those pets who act out all their owners’ aggression, arrogance or unruliness, often much to their owners’ delight. However, I have known highly unique, independent-minded and self-respecting furred beings, who know their own strengths and weaknesses and whose souls my heart simply carries on carrying – one of them being my son’s cat, with whom I could literally communicate via telepathy at a time when I was still quite sceptical about matters like that (it actually happened by accident, after which I paid a little more attention). These days I swear his gorgeous, humorous, lithe little spirit still sometimes approaches me now and then, eight years after he died. We – my son, his father, his father’s partner and myself – had all been in attention the day Charlie died. I kept a wake over his corpse that night and the following day we buried him in a little, simple and light ceremony, as befitted his spirit. I do believe that the presence of our love, and the rituals we spontaneously performed, sealed living bonds between him and ourselves. 

Charlie in his 'shroud' - a childhood t-shirt from my son. So, when Cheryl shared the story of her trauma about having Tigger put down I asked her permission to publish it here. The story shares the conflict between her personal beliefs and what she submitted to on the advice of her perfectly well-meaning vet. I feel purposed to honour both Tigger and Cheryl by publishing her words – not because I want to push any particular belief or practice down my reader’s throat, or to suggest that any wrong was done. No, there is absolutely no accusation to be read into any of this post, please. My intention is simply to encourage you to examine your own feelings about the matter of euthanasia and to remember to take each moment for the gift it is. There are questions that do not admit of ‘principles’, questions that have their utterly unique answer, depending on all the complexities of a particular context – and one of those questions concerns how one dies, closely related to the question of how a being one loves dies. Very often, somebody else’s manner of dying is altogether beyond one’s own as well as their control. What happens, if that is the case? That is the question I would like to leave you with.    * * *  “Tigger passed away on 26th January this year from old age (he was 24 and a half years when he died). The last four months of his life were hard for him, because he grew more frail by the day, with heart-breaking symptoms of kidney failure. Even though he was still happy, he walked very slowly and lost a lot of weight and wobbled when he walked. I allowed the natural process to take place as I didn’t want to end his life – I personally believe that is murder. We had a close bond and I kept him comfortable and warm and took him to the vet often for checks and drips, etc. Only when he started to die, then Nicola said to me: "It’s time now, Cheryl.” What still gives me daily nightmares, though, is the memory of the emotions in his very expressive eyes just before he died. I was holding him and he felt the gradual shutoff coming on too quickly for him to understand. I felt terrible when I witnessed, first confusion, then total terror and panic in his eyes. I could read Tigger emotionally very well, like no other person could, not even the vet, because our souls were connected. Tigger's eyes after the first injection (a large sedative dose) were panicky and my heart went out to him, but there was nothing I could do. He had been an emotionally independent little fellow. His awareness shut down before Nicola administered her second injection (this was the one to gradually and completely stop his heart). But with the first one, I felt totally helpless to comfort him. It was very hard for both of us straight after the first injection. Poor Tigger looked absolutely desperate to know what was happening to him. I could see that in his eyes. I was heartbroken to lose him and it broke my heart more to read that expression in his eyes. It took me three months to mourn him and I still miss him terribly. He was a very special cat, little Tigger.” – Cheryl Flowers, December 2024

"My last moments with Tigger just after his little heart stopped beating. This was when I said a prayer for Tigger to commend his spirit to God."– Cheryl Flowers The panic Cheryl describes is something I take seriously as a ‘not ideal’ situation in relation to inevitable death. Could it be that the imposition of a human will that is acting ‘routinely’ is a problem for Life? Possibly, if Cheryl had been given a day, or even only an hour, to talk to Tigger, to explain to him what was going to take place, the panic may not have been there? I have no doubt that the cat knew his end was near, as did Cheryl of course. She says the shutoff came “on too quickly”. Does that not signal that anything ‘routine’, even ‘routine mercy’, is something to approach with alert caution, even with fear? Because, like birth, nobody’s, nobody’s death is ever just routine. That is the thought I believe Cheryl and Tigger’s shared experience is destined to spread amongst readers everywhere.  * * * – Silke Heiss, 15th December 2024

Me at The Edge with Tigger, 2019

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 orange bicycle of shame: A psycho-logical song of signs

The piano piece was in an orange book and I am sure it was called 'The Bicycle Song', or 'On my Bicycle'. Something like that anyway.

I had an orange bicycle. It had been given me while my family and I were still living in Germany and it had been loaded with the rest of our household onto a passenger liner, the Galileo Galilei, and shipped all the way to South Africa, where my folks were heading for a couple of years. (The couple of years turned into the rest of their lives, but that's another story.)

The first time I cycled to school on my, by South African standards in those days unusually brightly coloured bicycle, and rolled through the open gate, my peers starting jeering and calling, "Nazi! Nazi!" Back home, I asked my mother, "What is a Nazi?" I was all of 9 years old and that ignorant. I soon discovered that it was de rigueur for my English-speaking peers to use exclamations, such as "Jawohl!" and "Schweinehund", whenever I was present. It was tiresome and inescapable, nor has it, in 50 years, ceased in all quarters. One close family member, who worked for some years, up until 2011, for British Waterways in London, also suffered the daily "harmless fun" of this widely accepted racial harassment.

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When South Africa, in 1994, finally moved from being an oppressive racist state to becoming a fledgling democracy, my black-skinned compatriots could triumph in their collective achievement of having resisted abusive denigration and having successfully taken a step forward in honour of their human dignity and rights. To follow the example of anti-racist activism, during the 1970s and on, as a solitary German-mother-tongue child in an Anglophone context, would have meant standing up for myself alone to face my classmates. As was the case with the family member at British Waterways - there was no collective to help or sympathise with us. We learned to endure the mockery, as our innocent tormentors mimicked figures from movies I, for one, had never seen, and we took the insults as we knew we had no choice, because we'd been born in a shamed country, with a divided capital, containing the deliberately forever unrepaired Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church.

Photo by Gregor Samimi on Unsplash

Sometime in the first decade of the new millenium I did, however, finally challenge one dear friend in the Cape Town poetry circles. I asked him whether he was aware of how enervating his mockery was. He was genuinely shocked and said that he had grown up learning that it was obligatory to make fun of Germans, to the extent that it had become completely automatic. He suddenly realised the mindlessness of it, and the one-sidedness, never having thought to imagine being on the receiving end of this ingrained custom, and he was glad to be able to apologise and stop the habit. The shame of the Germans after their hideous transgressions under Hitler has a very long tail indeed.

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It was the same orange bicycle upon which I pedalled every week, in the company of my sister, to our piano teacher in Voortrekkerhoogte, taking the shortcut on the dust track beneath bluegums past the military camp. The teacher decided to host a performance evening, giving her pupils the opportunity to play in front of each other and their parents. I was her star pupil and one of the oldest, so she chose me to start the evening off. I got up and seated myself at the piano, opened the slim, orange book and faced the notes of 'On my Bicycle'. I lifted my hands up to the keyboard, but before my fingers made any sound, I burst into a tragedy of tears, leaped from the stool and straight into my mother's lap. 

My mother was mortified. The evening proceeded, I suppose, with everyone performing, but I cannot remember whether I played my piece or not. What I do remember is that my mother asked me to pass her a record sleeve of some music, which the teacher had put on after the children had played. It was lying on the table in front of us and for some reason I tried to indicate to her that it was not permissible for us to move this record sleeve from its position. My mother thereupon asked my sister to bring it to her, but my sister followed my example and refused. Another mother, seeing our strange reluctance, instructed her daughter to take the record sleeve to my mother and the child obliged without a murmur. My mother was now triply mortified. Back home, it was her turn to burst into tears. She lamented how ashamed she was of us and how painfully we had embarrassed her, me with my collapse from stage fright and both of us with our inexplicable refusal to do her a simple favour, such that another mother's daughter had had to step in.

My poor mother. She had her own loads of shame and insecurity to carry. She had not mastered the English language by a long shot, her Afrikaans was non-existent, and she lived in virtual isolation, cooking and cleaning for us in her European hippie gear, in a suburb that was dominated by the crimplene wives of permanent force members. In her own youth, she'd been her rather famous piano teacher's best pupil. Now, here she was, in a strange country among strangers, trying to enjoy a rare social event, only to be humiliated by a cowardly, obstreperous daughter and her incomprehensible sister.

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Notwithstanding these ignoble beginnings, I have sort of kept up, more off than on, with the piano playing, for the last 50 years and was approached last year by retired professional soprano and singing teacher, Gwyneth Lloyd of Starways Arts Centre, whether I'd be willing to accompany her newly-formed ensemble. I agreed and found myself learning "popular" and "well-known" songs, which I have somehow been shielded from all my life. In other words, much to the disbelief of the singers, many of these songs are not at all well-known to me and I have painstakingly to learn them, thus slowly repairing my cultural ignorance. We have performed a few times to sympathetic and grateful audiences and I have been humbled, losing perfectionism and uptightness.

For the most recent performance, last weekend, the dress rehearsal went very well, which, as anybody involved in theatre knows, is not a good sign. True as bob, the next day, as we gathered half an hour before the performance, the plug for the keyboard was suddenly dead. We were each of us required discreetly to subdue rising consternation and, indeed, in my case, panic. Fortunately, the organiser of the event found a replacement plug and the keyboard could once more produce sound.

The performance began with a couple of exquisitely rendered A capella numbers with five voices, then it was my turn to introduce 'It Don't Mean a Thing' by Duke Ellington and Irving Mills. For no reason at all, I missed the notes in the last chord of this introduction, my fingers simply landed on keys beside the correct ones. This can happen. It is called nerves. I tried my best to keep going and made my way through the pieces, despite the fact that my heart was jackhammering in my chest, my fingers played imprecisely over and again, and I kept seeing an orange bicycle like a mirage in the distance of the rather hot venue. At one point I actually played a musical introduction over, telling the audience that I was doing so, as I kept on missing the right notes. Mostly, this was thankfully not noticeable either to the singers or to the audience, but in the middle of 'Poor Wand'ring One', when a gust of wind blew the score from the music stand, I was certain that I would collapse from sheer stress. Dear Norma, who was singing tenor, but whose voice was not part of that song, rushed to my side to rescue the situation, and Gwyneth, Estie and Stephanie held their parts bravely, while I miraculously stayed seated upright and, don't ask me how, picked up the thread of the music to resume my accompaniment, as the mirage of the orange bicycle slowly receded.

After the show, warm words of gratitude and gentle praise were poured over the singers from the audience. To me, Gwyneth said matter-of-factly, "We all made mistakes," and Norma joined in, "Nobody focused on the mistakes. They just flowed away." Her husband, who had come for support, declared, "The most important thing is that the audience enjoyed it - and they did!" When I told another friend, who'd not been able to attend, what happened, she said, "You did your best, carrying on while you were going through all that inner stress!" And my companion, Ed, messaged in response to my sobering report-back, "mistakes make it more real (human)." Indeed! But the light-heartedness, and the loving words of comfort all round, brought what continues to feel like lasting medicine to my soul.

When I returned home the next day, I remembered and felt urged to find a particular poem - a poem, which Ed had uttered casually, more by way of a self-ironic joke, two years back - which I'd enjoyed so much that I'd written it down. We'd had pizzas at Café Mario in Knysna at the time and Ed had seen an orange bicycle leaning against the fence outside the window. He thought that it made a very beautiful composition and had run outside to capture it. It had been raining and he slipped and by the time he gathered his balance, the bicycle was gone. Here is his poem as I captured it.

Slipping on mud

while chasing the lady

with the orange bicycle 

- all my camera caught

were the black-eyed Susans

opening their hearts to me,

while she disappeared 

around a corner.

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The web of these incidents and memories, the strands of colour, the bicycle, the feelings of shame both personal and collective, mistakes both great and trivial, the open hearts of friends and fellows, the living witnesses of flowers - all of these aspects thread together a crazy coherence, a zigzag psycho-logic of signs and signals through the decades.  

One of my late husband's favourite English idioms was: "I've turned a corner". I would like to think that this applies to me at this point. And I am, hopefully, again "on my bicycle" - only this time I'm no longer a target of shaming. Orange can once more be the beautiful colour of creativity and black-eyed Susans can laugh out loud in continuing abundance.

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