Time on my Mind

More and more, I feel that time is playing tricks on me. What I've previously considered synchronicity, seems to me now a wake up call to the reality that time unfurls in all directions, rather than the neat Past, Present and Future that we are habituated to. 

Apparently seeing these "coincidences" is a warning sign of schizophrenia, which begs the question -- is schizophrenia actually being awake to the full spectrum of time? There are many voices, we just filter them out for our "sanity." I'm not trying to glamourise mental illness...although I constantly question who or what is deemed "ill" & "well." 

This new Charlie Kaufman film, he who brought us that brilliant thought experiment on time, identity and memory Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, seems to capture my internal zietgeist: 

"Time passes through us."

My Great Granny Daisy could read the tea leaves with uncanny accuracy and I always seem to know what's happening to everyone I feel attached to. Call it psychic or empathic, neither of which I particularly adhere to, as in my mind they infer taking advantage of people who find themselves in desperate situations. Or at least robbing them of self-actualization. I've certainly never capitalised on this 'ability'. Mostly I've tried to manage my feelings/forebodings, which I know full well are not mine alone. 

My Great Granny Daisy holding my little mom's hand and with my Gran Edwina, the cat-loving mermaid

Just look up and look within. We know. 

Every living thing now, then and that will be, lives in us now. 

I am quite certain of it. The illusion is separation and it is the cause of our suffering. As we step into our skin and Know, we know that we are one. Absolutely. Irrefutably. This is not New Agey, pseudo-science, false positivity. This is simply how it is. 

If we think we are alone, which is very often the case in this journey of living, we are sorely mistaken. We are digging our own graves when we deserve to fly free -- as much a bird, as the sky itself. 

As I drove my children home yesterday from a trip up the Garden Route to see my parents, a bird was blasted against our windscreen with a thud. My heart broke open. When we were en route there, a bird we associate with my brother, the Jason Bird, flew beside us. Life after life. The ever present dead. As present as those now living, who too will be amongst the dead. Or have already been so, since I'm questioning the one-track notion of Time marching in only one direction.

We got stuck behind a huge yellow double decker truck overcrowded with sheep going to the slaughter. Tears fell and my heart reached out to them in their fear and confusion, questioning as always how anyone can eat meat with a clear conscience. On either side of us bright yellow fields of canola flowers beneath lowering skies reached out to the blue mountains. Lambs frolicked and stumbled over their quivering new legs in the fierce Cape of Storms.

A dead Bryde's Whale washed up on our shores in Kommetjie, as my daughter spotted a whale frolicking off shore in the Baia Formosa -- rightly named Beautiful by a Portuguese navigator in the 15th Century, before a Dutch governor claimed it for the VOC and named it after himself in 1778. The caves at the Robberg Nature Reserve were inhabited for at least 100 000 years prior to all this vexatious White Privilege. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDoeg2fJYB3/

We went to Monkeyland on the exact same day we'd last played with monkeys at World of Birds (thank you Facebook Memories for the daily reminder that what goes around comes around, and so often on the same date years apart. The spiral way.). 

My parents spent their honeymoon in the Beacon Island hotel where we enjoyed several childhood holidays and now they enter their retirement and another season of their long partnership in Plett.

Is it all random? Does the mind keep tricking us into Meaning? 

Today's Memories...years ago, years apart, then and now, always and forever, prompting the writing of this blogpost that's been brewing for some time ;)

 

We were listening to Terry Pratchett's last of 41 Discworld novels, "The Shepherd's Crown," on our roadtrip. When I read him as a teen I didn't take him seriously. I thought of his books as a bit of fluff in between my "Serious Reading" of the Classics. But truly his work is a beautiful meditation on Death and the Magic of Life. With plenty of wit to help the medicine go down.

On Women's Day, the day after my Great Granny Daisy's birthday, I collaged using the technique of simply pulling pictures from magazines without any forethought or planning and seeing what unfolds. Always a remarkable mirror and tool for self-knowledge and healing.

What came of it was a portrait of my unfolding as a woman. The Virgin, upright and judgmental. Oh so holy. The Good Girl trying ever so hard, bless her. The Lover finally unlocking the pleasures of being embodied after all that programming, guilt and shame. Discovering the power of flirtation and passion. The Mother with the thousand yard stare, so depleted and at sea, yet so connected to all women who have ever laboured. And now my transcendent Crone rising above it all. Laughing her head off. Bless her. We stand on the shoulders of all the selves we've been and are becoming. 

 

I had a dream that my Granny Lola, now in her 90s, went sailing in a small boat overnight and hadn't returned.  I went out searching for her and found her contentedly becalmed. I phoned her when I woke up and she quipped, "Just so long as it wasn't the River Styx my girl." I told her of my newfound passion for sourdough baking which triggered memories of her Granny Aletta baking sourdough bread in apricot jam tins. The delicious smell and taste of that bread. I have a picture of her, my Great Great Granny Aletta, but never knew her name, let alone her stories. She is in me, as I knead the dough, as I chew my daily bread. I give thanks for that. 

My Great Gran Jackie, Gran Lola & Great Great Gran Aletta

I've been relishing the TV series, Call the Midwife, based on the memoirs of  Jennifer Worth. It reminds me so much of my resilient Gran who also lived in London for a time after World War II. Her stories of that sojourn fuelled some of my earliest excursions into short story writing. This one I wrote when I was in my teens and it's based on an anecdote Granny Lola told me one evening when I used to stay with her to get some concerted studying done in the quiet of her home on Caley Lane. I entitled it "Bananas." 

They had been married one year today. How far they had come. Lola squinted against the penetrating wind, it was flecked with icy bits that stung at her innocent cheeks. She had only known the lash of sun, the wicked searing of an African heat. She pulled the inadequate coat tighter and lunged through London's dismal streets. It was 1950 and the place looked thoroughly disheartened, not much celebrating of peace on a winter's day. She looked forward to the Spring bulbs. Stan had even suggested a trip to Kew Gardens and she kept the prospect of it like a hot water bottle against her heart. Five months, four remaining. How keen she had been to embark on this expression of their dependence on one another and no one else, leaving all things familiar far behind. Now she caught herself crossing the days off like an inmate chiseling away the countdown to freedom. Stan was busy and she had busied herself with the wonderful assortment of museums until she dreaded their hollow mustiness. The grim streets lined with remnants of an Empire were unaccountably comforting.

Today was their anniversary. She hardly expected Stan to remember. His training was so rigorous, an accelerated course in engineering. He was bright and ambitious, she knew and was glad of it. It was his red hair that had first caught her eye. An office friend had cajoled her into trying ballroom dance classes. He was a fine dancer, clean in his movements, neat. She had thought: this is a man who knows where he's going and how to get there. That was important. So she fell in love with him. Lola sent her mother a letter, inviting her to be present at the court, but was not surprised when she didn't show. Lola had been too strong-willed for her mother's liking. They had never been comfortable with one another and when her mother sent her to live with relatives on her fourteenth birthday, she had not minded much. She did mind living on charity though, and was relieved when she finished school and could start earning her keep. Only then did life become her own.

Money had always been scarce, but now it was extinct. She and Stan cautiously allotted the ration book stamps as though they were priceless philatelist collectibles. They could afford one bath a week and a basin of hot water a night (it cost a shilling). Stan granted her the luxury of bathing her numb feet in that fleeting warmth. It was bliss. She'd close her eyes and conjure the sounds of her childhood farm, Piet-My-Vrous and Loeries competing in the bird filled shade. She'd feel the late afternoon sun tickle her toes while she lay in the long grass beside her beloved father. He would lazily whisper of fantastic tales. His experiences were vast and she was quite sure of his immortality. Until he died and then she guessed that only horrible things would survive this world.

She was beginning to pain from the cold and took refuge in a restaurant. She felt awkward because there was nothing on the menu that she could afford, but the cold was a worse threat than embarrassment. The food in London was dreadful. The place that they stayed at provided suppers--boiled meat and brussel sprouts. It smelt rancid and tasted bland while being too salty. How she longed for the fruits of home; the fresh, whole, food. Alive to give sustenance to life. This gray mush was of no use, it left her feeling mildly nauseous and further depleted. But these thoughts were no good. Four months yet. And Kew Gardens soon. She watched the scurrying figures through the frosted window and wondered that Spring could ever come to such bleakness. This sitting allowed too much melancholy. She braced herself, shoulders hunched tightly, muscles spasming in anticipation of the merciless wind. She was relieved that no one had bothered her. The problem of not ordering anything and the suspicion of her accent had been averted. Everyone would rather stick to their own.

The cold had intensified or perhaps it was only the contrast. She hesitated. Why was she walking when she could be warm, reading a book? It was their anniversary. She realized now what she had been unwilling to acknowledge before, she wanted to give him something. Her mouth laughed, straining against the cold taught skin. A man frowned at her for this unwarranted outburst. She frowned back. How could she get him anything when they had no money? She chastised herself for such romantic foolishness and headed towards the boarding house. A hardness settled on her face, a shield against the unfriendly skies and Londoners. 

Had anybody been watching they would have noticed an angry young woman stop in mid stride as though struck. She was rapidly passing a fruiterer's front window when a blaze of yellow startled her to standstill. A bunch of bananas. She stood there, impervious to sleet and prying passers by. The bananas seemed the most beautiful thing she had seen in weeks. They were bravely exuding a yellow glow into the premature dusk. That glow kindled a response in her eyes, she was young and there was love here. She smiled and this time her numb face dared not resist.

No one was in the store, which seemed right. This was her shrine, a place of refuge against the despair in the streets. Here her hunger would be met and filled at last. She solemnly walked to the window display and humbly chose two of the bunch. One for her and one for Stan. She held them tenderly and pushed down welling emotion as she thought of them tasting home that night. It would make amends for the cold that had crept between them. It would nourish their love in the way that they could not.

The fruiterer smiled and her smile met his readily, magnified it. She laid them out, side by side on the wooden counter and handed the rosy man her ration book. He thumbed through it and turned a puzzled look on her. "You don't have children?" She shook her head. He frowned now and her hope snagged on the furrows of his brow. "You're not from around here?" She spoke and her voice was a weak thing, "No." Something in the frailty of it must have touched him for the man's frown slipped away. "Well luv, bananas are only for children."

In the darkness of that street Lola rolled the thought on her tongue -- bananas for the children. It was a wonderful thing really. A national treasury of bananas for their children. Their children. Yes, the children would need...something. She walked back to Stan, hardly aware of the bitter cold.

My Gran Lola & Grandpa Stan who died in an airplane crash over Namibia where they are photographed (centre) when my dad (pictured top right) was a teen

 

Thanks be to the women who made me, so fierce and full of magic. And I in turn made them, because the Future is merely the past that we don't always remember as well. 

Thanks to my husband for these apt Literary Witches Oracle cards, a welcome home surprise. They remind me of who I was, am and will be. An eternal work-in-progress...unfurling in all directions.

“A Witch is a person who has honestly explored their light and has evolved to celebrate their darkness.”
― Dacha Avelin

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