broken

Broken
Half a year after he stopped smoking he felt a sudden sadness. A sadness that persisted. It’s good he said to himself from time to time. It’s good to be sad, unhappy, melancholic and even depressed for a day or two. The false consumer happiness was his enemy anyway. But what did that have to do with consumers?
It was frustrating. Every hour or so he sagged onto his couch or bed and closed his eyes. This was tiresome. Where was his unbroken passion for life, his energy and yes: his enthusiasm for everything? The noisy optimist in him felt dusty.
None of his friends said a word. He just seemed to fade out of their expectations. He even felt boring and that was the last thing he wanted to be.
In his notes he found an expression that shocked him: Sea Of Sadness. He had written it himself and it sounded like drowning in a greenish lake full of leeches.
How could he shake of that yoke? That’s how it felt. Like an ox dragging along. Was it a gene from his Scandinavian forefathers and -mothers. The darkness of winter, a frozen soul? He had never lived there.
What really saddened him was that there was no reason for his ongoing sadness. It was like a dirty luxury. And he couldn’t stand sulkers anyway. And pictures of Tsunami victims. Or sorry orphans. Or the haunted of the war in Kongo. Just feeling for them, he thought, was ridiculous. We either help them or we leave it. That was his attitude. He never liked mourning. Too sensitive. Who wanted his tears? There were too many anyway.
And then one morning he had a sudden understanding. The sadness he felt was universal. Not unlike the weltschmerz of puberty but with no self pity. It was the sadness of a father as he was one. It was God who shared his sorrow with him.
He lifted his arms and felt the warmth of the morning sun in his face. And then compassion started to wash his broken heart.

Into the wild

The bushes gently sway in the wind behind the windows. The early morning sun is heating up the day. Kids from the school yell happily and I stare on the patchwork of the tarmac. Men in work gear pass by chatting and making jokes. Some with woolen beanies that show how early they get up. And how the wind gets into their shacks.
A dove on the rooftop gurrs, purrs and schnurrs, whatever doves do, and I feel at home at a place I did not use to like: my desk. I lean back, my fingers on the keypad, my eyes raised to the high clouds that seem to drift into space. Where am I and what am I doing?
My writing I remember now has never been about writing, never been about the written and then published book. The joy was always in the act and even more in the transformation of the world through me. Me the vessel of inspiration. It’s almost as if I am a part of a machinery but able to see with awe how the mysteries of life are created anew in art. I do not even have to write it down.
Every day there are stories and movies made in my conscience, all off them on the fly and never recorded. I paint with the wild and pungent smell of oil colours in my mind and the wind just takes the pictures away. What I write down and draw is only a glimpse of what is possible.
I am at home and I have to write something down like lighting a match and feeling the burst of ignition. The steady flame thereafter is what has been written and I do not want to diminish it. But I love this fire of transformation from life to art.
Life is greater then art I used to think. And it is not a wrong conclusion. I love my children more then anything ever written about them. And greater then any tableau was the life of those portrayed by Vermeer or Cranach. Art is a joy, life is a mystery.
But what fire must they have seen in the painters eyes. The excitement that life and meaning can be captured for a moment.
I cried when in Sean Penn’s film “Into the wild” the boy realizes that happiness has to be shared. He is starving in his magic bus, his search for truth led him far away into solitude. Now he knows that the awe for the greatness of live has to be shared. It’s to late for him to return, he will lose his life. But at least he can write it down. He is not alone.

Healed

It was April when I got healed. That was half a year ago and yet still I am not well. It was at the end of the South African summer when my agony from the eczema stopped and a clear and calm voice told me: “You are healed.”
What more to ask. I was unmistakingly cured, here and now and forever. My hands came free and the attack from darkness was stopped. I say darkness because every injury turned black from bacteria I would have only expected in a monsoon slum during a typhoid outbreak.
Maybe it was to have compassion with those who live in such desolation. Maybe it was to show me how precious health is,
to make me long for full restoration. Maybe I don’t see the full picture, so it remains a mystery.
There are days with pain and days with peace. And then there are days I look out for rocks of knowledge and feel the pebbles. I count the days of the aging summer I cannot do what I love, to swim.
“You are safe!” the Surfers shout to the swimmers who are being pulled out by the current. They are two strokes away from the sandbank but the fear keeps them struggling in the wrong direction.
How many times did I feel the same pull. The urge to fight the current that takes you out of the small half moon of Kammabaai and gently pushes you back into safety.
Your only danger is fear. And I still fear the current.

Sunburn

We were talking about poverty and I got a sunburn. Standing at the beach with Steven the waves came in messy on this overcast and warm summer day. A few Boogie boarders were pushed around in the foamy swell I once couldn’t resist.
If it were smooth and clear I’d go in I thought hungry for the kick of a 3 foot wave. If. If I had more funds I’d build that house at our friends place that wasn’t meant to cost a thing anyway. If.
We stood there at the beach and got sunburnt happily, sharing the stories when we really had nothing, nothing at all. Two grown up men with kids, married and even slightly seasoned, but still boys at heart that wanted to jump in and swim against the strong current just because we wanted to.
We shared how we asked God why he let us slip into the brokeness so often. Why he let us be heartbroken, so broke, that our hearts cried out so unable we were to provide for our families and needs. And when we said nothing we meant nothing. No food on tomorrows table.
What a joy to just kick the school bag in your room, grab bread and milk and head of to the beach to fight the cold waves for some hours. I gave them a lift and went in with the boys almost every day in for two years. I loved to get wiped, pushed, thrown. I love the skin getting numb at feet and hands and the thrill of a wave that kills all sorrow. For a moment.
Looking back Steven and me we were thankful for being pushed around. We were thankful that we learnt to cope and not to rely on money alone. We were thankful for the pain the withdrawal of money can bring and the relief not to build a life on it.
We are crazy nut heads, all of us. Even a lifetime is sometimes to short to learn the obvious. So him and me we laughed. Relieved we made it that far. And when I met the boys coming out of the water they said it hasn’t been a good surf for a long while. But they were smiling. They were in the waves with a happy heart.

School Of Rock

Gerry is quite strict with the boys and girls. There is no maybe in an Afrikaans education. And so the kids are as naughty as he is just.
It’s a calling. He is the father of many, dark brown tanned from fixing pipes and roof tiles on the hostel, and simply by going fishing with his brother.
Gerry smokes an old-fashioned Dutch brand of cigarettes I like to smell. He lives it to the fullest, in the village, always good for a hoarse laugh. And often I see him tired. He doesn’t even have time to pray I guess. Till Saturday night when the lanterns start shining on the dirt roads and the dark sound of a bass guitar echoes in the school.
Forgotten are the long hours of the nights when the chicken pox hit the hostel. Forgotten is the Van that breaks down every time there is an outing. And even the pain is fading, the pain every man has who grows older.
I love Gerry and the kids. Even though they are poor and sometimes lonely, there is bond of roughness and care between them all. And once a week Gerry explodes and they shout out their lust for life. Gerry ploughs the Guitar, the pretty English girl from Grade 7 yells in the microphone, the shy and skinny drummer hits the snares and who ever plays with, they get unleashed and play the slightly out of tune the one hymn Gerry has been teaching for many many years: Boooooorn to be wihahahaaaaiild!
And when the hymn of the Seventies Bikers is played for the fifth and last time, the tall poplar trees shiver and far far away a rooster cries with satisfaction.

Africa

She needed money. She needed it now. But when I checked I had nothing myself.
I pictured her in her apartment in that beautiful old house with high ceilings, overlooking the wall that went through Berlin. I remember how she said what’s changed. Sometimes, she said, we would not have enough to go for a drink, now we sometimes skip a meal.
The wall is gone now, not trace left from those dark times of separation. From her window she overlooks peace. And beauty. I imagine her sighing, then switching the turntables on and preparing a new set of music. She hasn’t bought records for a year. But she is the last to complain. She is a bit too nice, like me. And she likes company. Like me. We easily forget our shortcomings then
In the morning I see the Hadidas birds pick worms with their immensely long beaks. They takes what’s there and walk slowly over the grass. When I sit in the garden and pray in tongues for the first time I see my sister clothed in light. Her t-shirt and baggy jeans vanish and without her being naked she wears light yet different to the light that surrounds her.
I think of how I love the sheer sound of languages and how my sister sung for years in a band with not single word making sense. There are sets of sounds she uses, rules of her fantastic tongue.
When I pray in tongues for the first time I sound like a Nepalese monk with a hoarse voice. And I feel how I am being filled. Filled with what makes no sense and is yet a hymn, babbling a language beyond my understanding
That’s what I always thought birthdays must be like. You are blessed beyond expectation. Instead of a new shirt you are clothed in light!
When I call her in the evening twelve thousand kilometres between us are gone. Our voices clear and crisp as if we are very close. We laugh, share news and she loves the idea of shining clothes.  I imagine her sitting in the window with her plastered arm, smoking the last tobacco. The huge tree whispering in the quiet evening hour. Nothing separates us. I am just across the road where once was another world, but now the wall is gone.

boys

The boys get naked and jump. There is no more shouts like on Easter when the murky water of the Kleinrivier was still cold from the winter. The boys smile, their heads float like balloons a breeze pushes around.
I love the river here at the end of the village I say to he boys. From the water we can see the huge palm trees, the sturdy church tower with the clock always on ten to eight. And as if big vessels of the sea had not to miss it the bold red and white stripes of the old ironclad Telkom tower that linked the farms with nearby town.
Let’s swim down to he sea I say with nobody really listening. They yell and brag about if Petrus the 15 year old can really swim or is just pretending. And when they mention the girls at the hostel they just grin and scream and show off the blue marks and make no sense at all.
Age of all the possibilities. Not even men und already so powerful. Foaming with strength thinking it will only increase. How to grasp the difference. How to share almost 30 years of life?
Kneel and pray and give always thanks for what you have got. Millions of small and big decisions lay ahead of them. It’s true. Life is a patchwork of almost endless decisions, an impressionist painting which blurs if you look to close.
Like vibrating atoms the boys run, spin, somersault, bond to atoms and split again to be alone for an orbit.
The one difference we have. They are bold and bold. I am bold and stunned. How fragile we are, life, body, spirit. And yet we seem to be held together, put into place like land and sea and all life by the sheer attraction of the earth. We only are by higher meaning.
Boys your life has a purpose! I shout and they just giggle. Only now I count them. But I know nobody drowned. I know.

Hot Rock

A cool breeze, an early summer sun warming me up while I am sitting in the garden. The tall young birches spin their leaves and I feel thwarted back into my youth. If there was a magic moment in those Swedish summers besides catching pike or eating smultron – miniature strawberries from the woods – it was warming up on the rocks after a swim. The waters in Sweden are always cold, even in summer and in the enclosed Eastern Sea towards Finnland. Cold as the Atlantic with its livegiving 13 degrees. How much happiness is there in reaching the hot wooden jetty after diving between the rowing boats chasing shoals of fish. And how much more is heaven to get on to the smooth granite boulders to warm up. The constant breeze from the sea chilling the skin. And me an my girlfriend pressing our bodies flat against the rock to escape the wind, panting, and feeling the deep warmth from the sun that slowly soaks down to our cores. And all we do is to holding our cold hands. Sitting in the garden this morning, feeling the sun warming me up in the chill of the wind that blows from the sea, the young day reveals to me my own heart. The heart of things. The warm rocks, the playful wind, the strong but pale sun. They determine my longing, my love, my pain. I long for the beauty of the moment, holding cold hands on a warm rock. These moments of inexplicable happiness show us a glimpse o what we are made for. They are like holes in an otherwise solid sky as the orbit was believed to be in medieval times. A punch through the material of the world. And it is wrong to believe this joy is only short and its beauty a mere contrast to greater suffering. We could lay on these rocks forever till we got to hot and the sun consumed us.

Two Teeth

It was still light when the car hit him from the back. The Odometer was stuck at 180 km/h. He slowed his pick-up down to turn right when the Rugby players smashed into his tail. All were on their way home but he doesn’t remember the accident.
The driver of the fast car died, my friend got out and collapsed in the high summer grass where he was found. He woke up more then a week later. The first thing he was asking for was a coke.
I like how he shuffles through the hair of the hostel boys we meet every Wednesday. We tower over them while they munch their cookies. We ask them what was up in their lives and then we pray. Some cling to us, others just play cool. But they all listen to my friend’s grunts in Afrikaans. This father of four boys has all authority in his taal, the way words emanate from under his thick moustache. They do not listen to me, to my English. Language of an unknown world further on, beyond Africa.
A week ago he couldn’t remember the word bacon. Maybe because it is English. He asked his wife to prepare him the stripy things again he liked in the morning.
There seem to be bits and pieces missing, but after the coma, the pain, lostness and the doubts of the doctors he is just missing two teeth. And he didn’t shuffle the boys hair when I brought them along.
They were worried when we sat in the afternoon breeze in front of his farm house. Inside they served coffee and carrot cake, outside there was family and kids. He leaned tired on his crutches. For once the strong man did not have to father all. Even I felt less childish. More like a friend.
As we sat and felt the early chill of the night I saw his youth. There was not only life, a whole new universe was in our hands.

beyond reason

Not up to much today. Maybe because of the perfect summer day with a blazing sun, birds chirping and dogs panting.
Woke up my head filled with the noisy tin of the most profane things. I haven’t laughed crazily for days. Me and Elke, we don’t kiss enough. To be low has reasons beyond reasons.
The banana tree in front of my window, heavily laden with young fruit. The arrangement of books and cups on my table. A red tablecloth to protect me against the shameless morning sun. Even Cornelius the old man digging the flower beds seems to be a bouquet of blue and pink.
I feel in between. But there is no in between. This life to the fullest and I am blind to it till I see my son and my daughter walking down the street. I raise, open the door wide. I call them, I hug them. This is joy beyond reason.