big wheel

"Big wheel keeps on turnin
On a simple line
Day by day"
- Massive Attack

Happy two thousand and nine everybody. Two thousand and fine. Two thousand and shine. Anything except two thousand and whine. Okay? No more a that.


As I sat in the Lusaka International Airport departure lounge, waiting for a delayed flight to Joburg and listening to Al Jazeera report on Gaza, and slowly bringing my consciousness back to this world, a world that seems to turn on different wheels than that valley world where I spent an all too brief ten days, I fantasized about the stories I would write here.

I felt fattened up on stories. Burping with details of Christmas silly games and creepy crawlies under the mozzie net. I wanted to tell you -

how strange it feels to come back to a place that is so familiar that you hear the sound of your own breath sighing, from 20 years ago. Still wisping down that footpath, still bored and disaffected.

how we saw wild dogs, pert eared under bushes.

how the river was up, and my uncle took me and the cousins on the boat, to our grandfather's memorial stone, and we planted trichelia seeds there.

how i didn't sit at a computer screen, (though blogs bloomed in my head) and how good that is for one.

how the elephants were all around, and the whole valley is steamy and green and writhing with life, life! crawling, biting, hatching, breathing, killing, sleeping, munching, breeding...

about how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same.

I wanted to. And I will.

When we got off the plane, though, I slid the SA simcard back into the phone, and turned it on. We were on the bus, that liminal space between landing and passport control. The voicemail was from a friend of a friend. I had to listen to the voicemail several times. Horror sinking into my belly. The kind of news that cannot, should not be true. But is.

My partner B has a dear friend, who used to be married to a favourite cousin of his. Six years ago that cousin was killed, while collecting pottery in northern Natal. I only met him once, (marveling at how perfectly like mine his bookshelf was - archeology, anthropology, museums, culture). In the grieving period after his death, we became close to his dear, beautiful poetess widow. B helped her through that time. And then in October we went to her wedding. She has found a huge-hearted, grounded man to be her new partner, to be a father to her gorgeous teenage children. It was such a moving ceremony - simple, small. The way they included the kids into the ceremony, vowing to make it work as a family. It made me cry, I loved it.
And on the day after Christmas, her 16 year old son died in a random accident. A jet ski. A wave. Doing ordinary things on an ordinary beach with the family. It doesn't bear thinking about. Her grief. The utter randomness of it. The fact that this beautiful shy child doesn't have life anymore. And his mother must face this second immense loss.

When I went to Durban for their wedding, I wanted to blog about that sweet marriage ceremony, describe in detail how it moved me. Somehow, I didnt. I wrote about my mother-in-law's ducks instead. Time moved, swept me along with other issues, other posts found their way here instead. Its not right that I should be writing this, now. But it also doesn't feel right to blog about Christmas merriment, when there is this immoveable fact just sitting here, making everything else so relative.


Make this year count, people. Its such a precious fact that we are here at all.


"Hymn of the Big Wheel"

[Horace Andy]

The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes

There's a hole in my soul like a cavity
Seems like the world is out to gather just by gravity
The wheel keeps turning the sky's rearranging
Look my son the weather is changing

I'd like to feel that you could be free
Look up at the blue skies beneath a new tree
Sometime again
You'll turn green and the sea turns red
My son I said the power of axis over my head
The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes

We sang about the sun and danced among the trees
And we listened to the whisper of the city on the breeze
Will you cry in the most in a lead-free zone
Down within the shadows where the factories drone
On the surface of the wheel they build another town
And so the green come tumbling down
Yes close your eyes and hold me tight
And i'll show you sunset sometime again

The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes
As a child's silent prayer my hope hides in disguise
While satellites and cameras watch from the skies
An acid drop of rain recycled from the sea
It washed away my shadow burnt a hole in me
And all the king's men cannot put it back again
But the ghetto sun will nurture life
And mend my soul sometime again

The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes