Long Live the Black Pimpernel



Nelson Mandela, center right, sings with supporters and the accused during the first treason trial outside the Drill Hall in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1956.- Picture fromTelegraph

What’s going to happen?

Now that the King of love

Is dead!

On the death of Martin Luther King, Nina Simone pens down this hallow cry, in a disconsolate melody. The messenger of Love and the keeper of peace was, in a violent moment silenced.  They took away from his people the chaperon of Love and hope. Weaved in between the celebrations of the life of Rolihlahla Mandela is the same tone of melancholy, who will shine the light of Love. For a moment please try not to romanticise the idea of Love. Rather think of it as the hallmark of existence, the grandeur of the human spirit and the celestial compassion and altruism for your fellows and the world around you. I have always believed Love to be the axis of life.  It carries with it grand ideals of truth, justice, freedom, equality and altruism. Throughout histories we are able to trace human beings who embody these ideals many who are written in history but many more who are not. The stand firm in the face of the most antagonising, violent and cruel human experiences and they with magnanimous strength still call everyone to the light.

The grand question of our time is; how do weave this magic into every fibre of society? How do we reform souls? Buphi na Ubuntu? 

These are there question the life of Mandela demands answerers to.

He reminds us that: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Hamba kahleMkhonto wesizwe, uenzile eyakho indima Dalibunga

Rest in Power.

Die Strandloper



Linda, Nolundi, Esethu, Lusanda, Sibulele

I spent a magical weekend in Cape Town with good friends of mine. We went down there for “The Franschhoek 'Magic of Bubbles' Cap Classique and Champagne Festival” because as my cousin put it ‘you’ve been colonised twice’. Living in France meant that I’ve adopted (destructive and expensive) French taste which generally is wine, cheese, champagne and more wine. We did really fun things all weekend and there was a lot of indulgence, en général.

One of the best things we did was have lunch at Die Strandlopper in Langebaan. It is a seafood dream right on the beach. Everything you eat is freshly made, from the bread to the Ten (I did say:Ten) courses of all kinds of fish.  The sun also came out its full glory perfecting the outdoor, seaside ambiance. A funny story… so all our phones switched off and there is no electricity at the restaurant. The heartbreak in everyone’s eyes when you see the thousands of pictures we could have taken. My dear friends who are avid Instagram-ers were most hurt, ‘how were we going to translate this greatness without pictures? #nofilter.

We were saved by the gorgeous Lisa, who was so gracious and took these Lovely pictures.

Student of Words.

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays Including Essays, First & Second Series, English Traits, Nature & Considerations by the Way

In moments of panic

In moments of panic:

i.
may you find love in the furthest reaches of your clandestine heart and un-celeste. you are a mighty fall, a swinging jeopardy. but even for you, there can be hope. there can be gravity.

ii.
may you uncover the lid you cemented over your own treasure. we remember it is because you did not know purpose could be so bright. so sweet. drink more of it.

iii.
may you allow another person inside your ruins. one who reminds you not of what was before but of the richness in what is left. build a new city with the old flesh, and command it to rise.

iv.
may you love long and hard until every one of your maps is browned from misuse. an adventure could never be according to plan, anyway. ensure you leave every day with your love well spent. rest.

v.
may you find solace in the prayers of God, in the peace and in the noise. i know the heat of a heart burdened to bleed. sometimes blood reminds us who we are.

vi.
may you find strength to laugh at yourself and pause to break by yourself. somewhere along the tangent of heartache you will realise that noone has ever mastered the trade of starting over.

vii.
may you find the outrage to be a revolution, naked in truth. with prize, or after a sunset. with man, or un-man.

viii.
may you walk with as much confidence as the weight of your tongue: snapped and flesh and surprising.

ix.
may you find yourself, despite everything.
-S.

Time

"We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas."


~Alan Watts

We are Star stuff

"There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing—for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins—their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens… The spectacular truth is—and this is something that your DNA has known all along—the very atoms of your body—the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on—were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up."

 

 

— Jerry Waxman,  was a professor of astronomy and environmental science at SRJC

The Fault in Our Stars

“I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars