Folding time

I lead a busy life in Jozitown. I'm not complaining, because I mostly get to do things I love, exciting things. But when I count hours spent in traffic, or driving to and from places, or grocery shopping or fiddling on facebook, I know that there are far better ways to spend time. To fool time, and creep into its folds.

And here are some of them:


Staring at turquoise. A completely restorative vibration, Prozac for the eyes. This is source turquoise, like it's actually made here, pouring out from under the sand.





Watching shadows creep. Ideally one should do this for about two hours a day, for maximum benefit.





Honouring the coming and going of the sun. When I think of how many sunsets, sunrises and moonrises I don't pay attention to...






Making nature sculptures. One of my favourite artists ever is Andy Goldsworthy, who collaborates with nature to make astounding installations that he then photographs - like sorting autumn leaves into colour categories and then arranging them in concentric bands around a tree. Or building ice columns all night, by dripping accumulative drops of water, drop by freezing drop and then photographing at dawn as his labour of love melts under the first rays of sun. I love his cairns, his sudden suprises on a cliff face. I could spend all day sorting pebbles and making Goldsworthy tribute installations.

aliens

Whew. Its gone. That shroud of a cloud that has been wrapping up my head and creeping into my bones and muscles and blood through nostrils ears pores. shudder. begone, mischievous wraith, begone.

Have checked all vital signs and I think I may still be human. though definitely, the aliens have been roosting in my body cavities for a couple of weeks now.

Other things that have been occupying my head (that echoing cavity) since the aliens left:

1. Will I like District 9? I mean aside from the fact that it represents a seriously exciting departure (arrival, rather) for South African film making. Aside from the numbers (profits, etc) and the thrill and the relief that we don't have to listen to bad attempts at soffeffrican eccents and so forth. and the fact that we get to watch bits of joburg blow up. does it manage to make comment about our treatment of 'the other' without actually otherising its own in the process? watch this space. (oh man. of course i'll like it. its going to be Fab).

2. Will audiences like Paydirt? we perform this fledging little play in two weeks time in its parent city, Jozi. eeeeemp.

3. How on earth will I get through all this marking before I go on honeymoon?

4. I'm going on honeymoon!!! five months after the fact. which is just bloody perfect.

5. the aliens are here. every where I look people are coughing wheezing dragging themselves around. the whole country is ill. they're everywhere i tell you. we just didn't expect them to be so small.

Hypochondriacs Anonymous

Secretly, I hoped it was swine flu. I did. Something big and real and scary sounding, so it would be ok that I am languishing in bed. So that it had a name, and I had a real excuse for feeling so lousy.

Oh dear. Some things are hard to grow out of.
See, we kids, we stayed in a place where there was no doctor. Mom even had a big book called Where There is No Doctor. Now that I have Google I am even more of a compulsive self-diagnoser than when I was ten. When I really wanted an illness with a scary name so that I could be the one that everyone felt sorry for.

But see there really were big scary diseases around us and so it was not cool to cry wolf. Not cool at all. 'Sides, Bonkar was from the 'if there's no blood don't cry' school of hard knocks (and we're talking buffalo-sized hard knocks here.) Being strong and stiff upper lip made you more likely to get points, especially if you really were sick with something horrible. So first prize was to be really sick with something horrible, but not complain at all, and then get the gratifying diagnosis -'she's so brave'.

Worst thing was to earn the title of 'hypochondriac'. My friend Patrick periodically had every kind of feel-sorry-for-me attention-getting injury you can imagine - he would look in a cobra's eyes to make sure it spit in his. Hypochondriac? Drama queen? Oh, you couldn't compete with Patrick. But it was a competition.

And what were our childish aches and pains compared to the stories all around us - the man who was found by the side of the road holding his intestines in his arms after a buffalo encounter? The man who lost his arm to a leopard? Even a very ow scorpion sting has to be endured with a bit of grit, you know?

Sister and I, when we came to the big smoke for the first time, we shopped with mom at a huuuuge wonderworld called the Hyperama. It was a supermarket. I had never seen one on that scale before. Somehow, this became the tag name for if one of us was feeling sorry for themselves with an illness of some kind. "Hiiii -purrrr -rama!" we would chant at each other when anyone complained about an ache or pain.

I'm glad that complaining wasn't tolerated in my culture. I understand where it all comes from - the British Army stoic grandad, the need to be tough. My poor mother, with hepatitus, malaria and all kinds of other lurking lurgies around us - it was best not to alarm her. Or false alarm her, should I say. (though I did take great delight in creating false gory injuries on my body when I got my first Kryolan make-up set).

But truly, what a mess it created in my childish mind. I am still so bad at taking time out when I need to rest - I overdo it time and time and time again, pushing on through with the mind over matter until my body won't let me anymore, and then its silly, coz the downtime is so much longer. Matter can really give Mind a revenge-klap when it gets its chance.

Still paranoid about not being a wuss. If I complain about not feeling well theres a big tribal voice in my ear that says, 'Come on now, Stop dying and Get back on your horse.'

Of course now I also understand about somatising and how the body expresses emotional unfinished business. Oh lordy, and is my body communicative with me. I guess, what you resist persists. I am a hypochondriac. I do get very stuck in what Myss calls 'wound power'. And I've been hearing myself lately - full of complaints, negativity, blahblahness. Yuk. Hence the blogging silence. I just can't listen to that shit.

The truth? I need a lot more introspection time than I give myself. If I spend too long in the company of others, giving, giving out energy all day long, rushing from one thing to the next, I just end up getting sick.

Ok, well there's my navel-gazing confession of the day.

And I leave you with the story that a wise old therapist told me once: A man, wishing to become more holy and enlightened, went to the local holy man, and told him that he was going to survive on bread and water for as long as it took for him to get wise and holy. The response? "that is not a good idea. if you can survive on bread and water alone, you will expect those after you to survive on stones."

I love that story. To me this is the ultimate story for children of stoics.

Maybe I should form a support group?



PS its not swine flu. its acute sinusitus. owwwwwww.

today

i submitted two funding proposals, prepared another, was told by my therapist that i'm having a breakthrough, found wheat-free carrot cake, watched my first performance of Paydirt with an audience.

Decided that, perhaps I could,

after all











*the opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect on the publication as a whole.

legal tender

Every time I go to the Norwood Spar or the 'Tops' bottlestore, I get the best subliminal messaging of my week. I queue to ring up the groceries (loaf of bread, coffee - man do we get through coffee in this house - dishwash liquid, Tanglewood natural yoghurt) and she asks me if I need plastic bags (oh no! I forgot to bring them again!) and then as she totals it all up, and I tell her I'm paying with a debit card, and she swipes the debit card, and she asks me to punch in my code, I look up, and two words are flashing green on the little screen on her till - tender validation. Isn't that sweet? The same at the bottle store. Beer for the boys, a not-too-cheap bottle of red for me. And there it is - blinking green at me. Tender validation.

I'm usually in a grump at this moment, having wended my way through grindy traffic, or squeezing the shopping in between appointments that are Much More Important than bloody Grocery Shopping! Usually a little bit of a scowl lurking around my jowls. I'm not fond of grocery shops, supermarkets, places where I'm reminded that I'm not a hunter gatherer after all and the harvest from my kitchen garden is still not yielding packaged pizza dough. I grumble to myself, like the wolf who missed Red Riding Hood, until I see it. Tender validation.

And I always obey. I always tell myself something really nice, really tender. I do. I say - Tam you're so clever and nice and well done for getting through that traffic, and you're just the best, no-one knows what it takes to be you, but I do, and well done, I think you're great. Good choice of wine too.

Try it - a little bit of tender validation. It works a treat, it really does.

the root of all evil

I need you to all feel very very sorry for me. I do. Feel sorry for me. But that's not enough. The only way I will get through the next few days is if I have your collective sympathy. Please?

I went to the dentist on Friday. For a root canal treatment. I've been putting it off (yes, I know, that makes it worse. I know I know. Ok! I heard you!!) She filled the tooth two and a half months ago and said if it doesn't "settle down" she'll have to take the nerve out. It didn't. Settle down.

So on Friday I went and writhed around on her chair while she "took the nerve out". Which involved her opening up a hole in my tooth so that she could scrape out my sinuses with a rusty nail file. Or so it seemed. Actually it felt like she was succking my eyeball out though my gums. The injection may as well have been a placebo. It soothed the pain like rescue remedy soothes a psychotic fugue: Not at all.

Eventually she stopped, put a plug on the blood bath, gave me a prescription for antibiotics and myprodol and sent me on my wincing way. I spent the weekend in a myprodol blurr. I yelled "s t f up" to the hippy within who doesn't like taking antibiotics.

I went back today, for more. Because she said that waiting any longer would cause me pain - due to pressure build up as the tooth drained. Funny, the pain had just subsided. But five minutes with her and it was right up there again. Even a second of that *%%##*** drill made the richter scale in my mouth skyrocket.

Has dental science progressed at all since 1300? I mean, call me unrealistically optimistic. Tell me I have blind faith in modern science, but really, isn't there a better way to "drain a tooth" than shoving what feels like a serrated needle up there, and poking around til the patient screams?

"Its a very long canal" she says.
"Sorry" she says.
"I know its hurting" she says.
WELL WHY THE FUCK DO YOU KEEP DOING IT THEN? I roar silently.
When she removes her rubbery fingers I say, meekly, "why do you suppose it still hurts even after the nerve is removed?"
"I don't know" she says. And goes right back in there.

My bib looked like a prop for a Tarantino movie.

"There's a lot of stuff coming out of here," she says.

And then finally.

"Well, we're just going to have to wait for the antibiotics to work." There's a big pulpy cyst around the root of my tooth, according to the x-ray. It seems I have been sporting this abcessy thing for some weeks now. Which would explain the low energy, foul moods and over reliance on soup and whisky for my nutritional intake.
"It's not in the sinus though," she says, cheerily. Meaning, she didn't actually puncture through to the nasal cavity.

Sorry to be so graphic. I really just need you to feel my pain.

To think she's going to invoice me.

Multiple career disorder

When I was a little girl, quite a little girl, I wanted to be a child pyschologist. I remember it clearly - some kindly grown-up asked me, so what d'you want to be when you are big, Tammy? We were standing outside the creosote-coated wooden structure that I called home.
"A child psychologist" I answered, without missing a beat. Then wondered, why the chuckle?

I'm not sure where I got this from - or what I thought it meant. Was there someone who was that and I admired them? Did I read it in a book? Who knows.

The other thing I wanted to be, apart from a vet, a biologist and a motorbike racer, was a writer. This from as early as I remember.

Someone else asking me that ol question and I remember saying,
"I'm going to be a writer." Made sense. Granny had written books. So had Grandfather.
"Ah, said the person (one of many visitors that came and went through our lives)
"What kind of writer? Like a sign writer? Or a calligrapher?"
No stupid. A writer. The kind that writes books with stories in them. I wonder if I gave her a withering look. Patronising sort, she was.

The words and the bees
Back to the biologist part - actually more of an entomologist. I loved insects. Words and insects. At eight I knew the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist. Duh. I was quite convinced that I would discover a new species of moth, termite, or glow in the dark mosquito. I studied harvester ant nests and intimately understood their social structures and movement patterns. Perhaps I was Eugene Marais in a previous life. I remember being quite shocked when I pulled a copy of Soul of the White Ant off my mother's bookshelf and realised that someone else had been there, done that which I had fervently planned. This was before I went to Proper School, and discovered there was a weird separation between arts and science and apparently you couldn't be a poet-biologist.

The last bullet was plugged into that hope at high school. I adored my biology teacher (Mr Sherry, wherever you are, you rocked). But Chemistry? The teacher was a perv who liked looking down the girls' school blouses. Physics? A cold war that started when he walked into class and caught me drawing a devastatingly accurate caricature of him on the overhead projector.

Without Physics and Chem, Biology A-level wasn't going to happen and by 16 I was firmly on an arts course, for better or worse. The fact that I grew up around bottles of turpentine and pigment can't have helped. Two hippy artist parents? I didn't stand a chance.

A cunning plan
Then I went to Varsity - headlong into more confusion. I started off with that chrystalline logic you have when you are 19. I would major in English Literature, obviously. And I would do Drama for two years only. To learn about character from the inside, you see. And then I would choose Philosophy or something clever so that I would be able to write books that answered all the really important questions about the outer frontiers of reality and consciousness (what can I say - I'm Sag/Scorpio). I think that was the plan, anyway.

Something to fall back on?
At the back of all this, the persistent ring of my grandfather's voice - "you can't make money from this artsy fartsy stuff. You need something to fall back on. A secretarial course. For God's sake don't become a safari guide."

Was drama my thing to fall back on? Or just into, the way one falls into a rich chocolaty mudpatch, sliding stiff-kneed at first (oh no, I don't wanna get my clothes dirty) and then gleefully (wheee! this is fuuun!) and then you sling your first mudball at someone and you're done for, hooked, wallowing forevermore. Inadvertantly calling everyone dahling and using words like emoting. And projecting.

But still, I have career A.D.D.
Let's see. I have been a perfume spritzer, jewellery seller, a costume and set designer, a drama teacher, a waitress, a potter, a proof reader (I suck at that), an industrial theatre scriptwriter-actress-director, a fundraiser (I suck at that too), a proposal writer (I'm good at that), a facilitator and a radio operations communications control officer (aka ROCCO. I'm really good at that). And every now and then, someone pays me to write a play.

No wonder I'm exhausted.

Its eclipse season, and its time to shed some dead wood. Its time to bloody well focus. I "twist and turn like a -- twisty turny thing", to quote Blackadder. Or was it Baldrick. Yep, even this post is making me yawn and squirm and stare out the window.

Really though, it should have been obvious a long time ago. Writing, making plays, whatever. Living in the deadly serious world of what if - that's the place where you can be any damn thing you want. Even - (duh! It should have been obvious!) Even (of course) - a child psychologist.