Everything bad is not new but it still smells queer

Jonny Steinberg writes in his opinion piece in Business Day.

"Why is it important to remind ourselves of these continuities? Because if yesterday’s illusion was that everything bad would vanish, today’s illusion is that everything bad is new. So many of the black, working-class people I have interviewed recently express nostalgia, insisting that life was more stable in the old days. Their amnesia is destructive. It robs them of the capacity to measure what has changed and what hasn’t, how far we have come, and how little we have moved. Without that perspective, we have no ground beneath our feet; we risk driving ourselves insane."

Please bear this mind my dear ladies and gentlemen who at every turn and around every braai fire are exhibiting renewed and anxious ambitions of packing for Perth. Perspective is a long term game. Hang in there with me.

There seems to be a current buzzing mindset that the book of the South African Dream began with the 1995 rugby world cup win as the opening chapter (the release of Nelson Mandela as a prologue) and has just reached it's finale with the 2007 spoils marking the final chapter and the end of a flirting golden era.I disagree - if anything these events are minor parentheses on a single chapter of the story of this land.

It's complicated living here but I'm a firm believer in the mantra of "The more things change the more they stay the same."

But one has to bear in mind that it is the nature of the place - the country has its own Jungian consciuosness - it cannot be changed to fit in with our own normative view of just what it means to be part of (this) civilisation.

As Carl Jung himself noted on arriving in Africa :
"I kept thinking that the land smelled queer. It was the smell of blood, as though the soil was soaked with blood."

Hello There

Where have I been?

– a most unproductive day in office today as I sit barefoot and sockless in support of Jake White and his prodigies. May the force be with them tomorrow. ....So let me venture back into the netherworld of blogging with a newsy bit of diary writing to assure all that I’m still alive, kicking and slowly pickling my liver.

Still sailing my sinking ship at work, dodging icebergs and the like. Seems a bit rough though in that I think my principals are losing patience and are likely to pull the plug or sell the family silver from under my feet. I am not sure that I blame them – but it’s a bugger to think that a year’s worth of 70 hour weeks may have been in vain.

The industry still runs on diesel and nicotine and has an official language of bad English but it’s been a good ride. And my clients are still full of shit. But as Johan Rupert always said – don’t diss your customer – “The customer is king – he pays your salary”. Now on that case – how come he (Rupert) gets the inside track on the Rugby World Cup – flying in and out of France – hobnobbing with players etc. & Ernie too. Seems that if you’ve got serious cash then you getto watch good rugby.

On the home front been renovating my old place with it’s wooden floors and lekker back stoep, and the wlaking distance to office. Now gone are the passages and poky fin de siecle bedrooms – having made way for large airy open plan living space. One word of advice though – don’t try and actually live in a place while knocking down almost every internal wall in the place, relocating bathrooms and demolishing kitchens. Must admit that pots & pans scrub up very well in the bathtub. Oh hindsight is such a perfect science is it not?

To end a brief paragraph from Bryan Magee’s “Confessions of a Philosopher”, a paragraph which – if I was half as bright as him I would have written about myself.

“All my life I have been brimming over with an almost uncontainably powerful desire to live. I feel it as an ever-present drive, thirst, lust, of which I have been inescapably aware since childhood. This drive would have to be somehow broken before I could calmly accept my own demise, which until then will mean accepting the unacceptable. I should not, however, misrepresent myself—it is not only with my personal survival that I am concerned: I have also a greedy, sharp-edged curiosity about how things are, a clamant need to understand, that will not let me relax; and about this there is something impersonal and objective. I believe I would still have it if I were indestructible.”

Peachy day in PE today. Love and happiness to all of you.