Cat Gut Suture 17.10.2014

In Israel, fridges explode with wedding themed magnets, mullet hairdos are seen as high culture. Cut, stone-washed jeans are the epitome of power, tinted hair is bourgeois and ‘gangdam style’is only now receiving Youtube hits from this little sliver of democracy. Cliché and hummous drip heavily off the mouths of the inhabitants, but with the arrival of the Jewish festivals, their unique expression is abundant.Heading out the Old City, beyond the castellated walls dodging the slick light-rail, I stroll on up towards Mea’Sharim, the Charedi vein of The Holy City. The white-lettered blue street sign guiding me towards a shtetl-like past. Here the streets are gummy underfoot and their pin-hole width cause me claustrophobia.

Squeezing me, squeezing me, the oesophagus movement pulls me in. The glossless stores peddle utilitarian wares, but it’s the array of kippot, stringy, stripped garments, pewter-ed goblets and thumbed Torah books that are the treasures in this sheenless environment. Little snotty nosed kids with flailing cork-screw payors run helter skelter in their tiny whites. Hurtling, rimless cars force pedestrians to crabwalk along crowded narrow pavements. The area bristles, it is bustling. The narrow drag sprouts side winding roads that encourage cascading perspective. The suburb is bursting as an over-stuffed falafel. With it’s haphazard facade, a patchwork quilt of necessity. Beauty and harmony are stuffed in a back pocket. The organic evolution of the buildings, a creaking ship’s hull, it’s yawing grunt an expressive sound echoing beyond Jerusalem’s borders. The monotone dress and grey scale backgrounds place me in a 1940’s movie reel. Colour is left for high concentrate sodas.

This is an eye-contactless stroll.

The dark hues turn dramatically to softer greens as the stock-exchange-like Sukka-markets open to selling etrogs and lulavs. Palm leaves sprawl across the landscape softening the urban edge. The search for the perfect spear-like lulav and lemon-lime textured etrog fills the minds of many. Eye glasses, magnifying glasses, and a sense of the best ensure an intricate inspection. The air is scented by the sweetness of the 4 species tenderising the hearts of the anonymous throngs. As the night charges bull-like into the red day, spirits are high. Cutting a long diagonal swathe through the teen-heavy Ben Yehuda Street, the Cobb and I bounce through coarse Nachlaot, Jerusalem’s hipster central. The once-working class area is now home to hippy, sandal-wearing Jews. Quarters are close, and one can hear voices through walls. The temporary Sukkas abound, packed tightly, decorated in many an extraordinary kind of way each revealing its owner’s leanings. My eyes, the spies of my body, seeking , searching, oggling at the outdoor activity and the celebratory action the festival delivers. We alley-dock into Yomtov’s party.

With his huge fox-haired streimmel hovering as his halo, his white, silver embroidered kittel his regalia, and his curled-to-a slinky set of payors, Yomtov saunters confidently into his Sukka, his palace.

His guests, drawn to this heavenly body, gravitate towards his energetic pull, staring starry-eyed. Here he reigns. As he sits seated in his bear-clawed throne, he’s handed his acoustic. Plugging it deep into his Marshal, the amp hisses. From the palm-leafed covered Sukka drops his microphone. ‘I need someone on drinks’. I took the lead grabbing six bottles of wine. His nephew popping a red, presents the bottle to his uncle. Swirling the deep ruby in his giant glass goblet, the aroma tickling the flaring fancy of our host he takes a giant glug and commands us to dance. In the throes of excitement, I just stand, ponder my position, pull my lips as wide as they can stretch, feeling so out of character, and in total disbelief I glean a giggle.
As the night slipped deeper into another night, I returned to Mea’Sharim.
With my eyes open to their widest aperture, soaking up life’s sensitivities for an experience, I nervously joined Mea Sharim’s Simchas Beis Hashoeva parties. These Sukka parties abound in the most religious areas in Jerusalem.

 Entering this giant, swollen hall, pummelled black and blue by a robed throng, heaving Chassidic Jews link arms moving in a snake-like trail. We tear open the bind, grab hands, and are immediately drawn into the swirl. I have no control, no-one does. The tide pulls, it pushes. We try tread water but you’ve got to give in. In a foreign place, in an unusual setting , in a distant landscape, that gummy smile returns.

With sweated arms, we leave being cooled by the breeze of the changing seasons. The streets still athrob for another 6 days of celebration.  After my mind had been rattled by excessive thoughts and wanderings, this festival brought me to a place I could smile once again.

Tearing away the carapace of frustration and growth that’s been still-born stunted, i’m slowly regaining my taste for experience, and being once again energised to place myself in obscure situations to gain obscure stories. My awareness continues to evolve, my thinking continues to be  sharpened and my place in the world is slowly being chiselled. This is a journey about a lad, a lad named Dan.

 

Brides Head Revisited 11.09.2014

This isn’t a journey slapping the streets of New York sniffing out sneakers, nor is it a journey trudging through Finnish snow to get a glimpse of the feted architect Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium, nor is this a journey about flipping through comic books in downtown Tokyo. This, this is a journey of understanding. It’s about understanding who I am, where I am, and where I’ve been.

After months seeking solutions to career fatigue and my tether frayed, it was by blessing that I got to see Sassoon’s movie on the late Rabbi Goldfein. With the pearls I saw produced by the Yeshiva Gadolah, I decided on my life’s next strategic move. Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Pulling the plug on a job that was good to me and leaving my azaleas, my Poppy and my dearest behind, I booked passage on the cheap-as-chips Ethiopian. Relaxing on 3 seats was a dream, and though the kosher grub went down like a lead Zeppelin, my good fortune saw me being bumped to business class on the home stretch.Dropping into Ben Gurion, I, a Litvak sweated a stream while my eyeballs fogged up at the humidity. My hands clammy, clutching the new shekel, I rode backseat  in a shirut as it heaved me from side to side as we criss-crossed the valleys and hills of rocky Jerusalem. Dropping off my fellow passengers, the taxi snaked across the lunar landscape sweeping past pockets of green and clusters of milkybar buildings set deep in the contours of this historical land. Staring outwards, the welding-light bright sunshine reflecting off of the Jerusalem stone forced my eyes to squint, hindering my ocular experience.

Rising out of the mall, the masons masterpiece, the pedestrian gates of the Old City, greet me. The Harp player caressing her strings creating memory through her song takes my mind off of the knobbly cobbles beneath my feet and the tourist trinket stores corrupting the treasured experience. Having breached the Old City, my time warp begins, my spirited journey is launched.

I stare with heavy penetrating eyes into the Wall, puncturing history. Working through the onion layers of my thoughts to find my emotion, tears turn me vulnerable. I need to think deeply with much introspection to understand my location in time, in space and in spirit. The ‘hair on the back of my neck’ moment doesn’t materialise, needing to be massaged over time.
For now I leave the Wall behind and rise up and out of this sanctuary heading towards the Yeshiva i’ll be attending for 3 months. Finding the Yeshiva with the help of a printed wall map, I knock, knock, knock on heaven’s door. I’m greeted by the madrich who leads me to the dorm rooms. And so I settle.
I wear no yarmy, no white shirt, and no black pants. But I know I’m in the right place. The seforim which clad the periphery of the Beis Midrash, await my imminent plunge. The structured form of the Gemorah, and the holy black text await the opportunity to become animated. This is G-d’s country, and I’m in it.

The learning frustrates me, it pains me, it’s traumatic, this isn’t fun, but I know this is where I ought to be. The sea is vast, but I’m slowly building a boat that’ll set me journeying through the liquid Torah. Through study I work on myself, building character, awareness. Through speaking to people I gain knowledge about me. Through this experience I hear my mind speak. It’s an extraordinary journey of movements of growth.
Three months might not be enough to resolve Dan, but slowly I’m skinning the apple, revealing, little by little, more of the core. I hope to garner tools with which i can fill my tool bag of life, to be able to negotiate the difficulties and the pleasantries of life’s marvellous musings. What a life. What a journey.  This is a story, about a lad named Dan.

I’d chosen to go to Yeshiva Bircas Hatorah in the Old City having met the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Tagger in the ‘burbs of Joburg, South Africa. With a hand shake and a smile by the salt-and-pepper bearded, charismatic Rosh, it was a done deal.

As I narrowed in on my destination, the aroma of coffee and Israeli chocolate-jammed pastries tugged at my nostrils delivering me to the entrance of Mamilla Mall, my approach to the Old City.  With its bougainvillea shading, sculpture-lined walkway and documented stones numbered and consecutively positioned, the city of old reflects the city of new.

The Old City is mangled spaghetti. Weaving my way through the tight network of hooking streets, the passages, an arms-length in width, tinted in sandy Jerusalem stone, tower above me huddling me in the city’s grasp. The narrow streets, coursing like veins, pulsing with people, instances and nuances pulls me like a gushing pipeline, streaming down past yeshivas, and squares, past the Hurva, burgerias and pizzerias, plummeting towards the heart centre of the Jewish people, the Holy Kottel. Pooled at the Western Wall, Jews of all types collide. Typical, non-typical. Black hat, black yarmie, white yarmie, an army yarmy.  A streimel, and a ‘nah nach nachman’ wooly one, a baseball cap, a crochet and a bowler.  All one nation, unified, spilling their spirit of emotion, turning to jelly at the Walls sight.

The beauty the city holds in my mind is pummelled as I make the prerequisite erev shabbis journey to Machane Yehudah, the street market. Here i’m jolted back into reality. Naive as a pimply teen I head into the bowels of this food lovers emporium and like a pinball i’m ricocheted from one person to the next bouncing off aggressive bobbas and over tanned servicemen. My shins splintered, bruised by pram wielding mommas. Trying to seek a deal on hummus I find myself forking out more than Israel’s military budget. I’m traumatised, moving upstream against the clashing crowds, I burst into sunshine, into freedom, vowing never to repeat the journey again.

Smoking Cigarettes 20.06.2014

There are sweet wonders in this world of machinery. There are reliable machines. There are machines, simple, efficient, and steady. There are those that are built to last, those built rugged. There are those aggressive in stance. And there are those that are blistering in pace. There are those you’d want as a trusty friend, and those that you’d name. There are even machines fuelled by bottom- less tanks giving the cockpitted pilot unhindered journeys, unhindered experiences. There are those enigmas of machinery that make the cover of magazines. There is this machine perched in my garage. It’s the Toyota Tazz 1300, bleached white and stainless. I’ve pushed it to its limits and I know it has further to go. My white Toyota Tazz, huge underhood, Italian under foot.

Me, my Sugar and my Tazz rocked the east of Africa. Mozambique. The darkness. The journey was one in search of a product to return back to SA to make my Scrooge fortunes.

With a fuel tank larger than a Ukrainian powerlifter, the sipper sipped. Nelspruit, Komatipoort. Lebombo and after 5 hours we breached the border posts without interruption/corruption. The open road into Maputo is a drag. Our vehicle hovered above the darkened, heated tar racing past the tracer-bullet like divider lines.  All is a blur, nothing scenic, nothing for the eye. Every kilometre is destructive as the bugs splat face first against my windshield turning Tazz white into Jackson Pollak.

We sweep past Maputo, but the white shirts are out. The Tazz pulls purrs to the side and we blah blah blah to the officer, he gives us a check, an arrogant nod and some attitude, and we’re off with a grunt. After some 14 hours of road work we heave a sigh of relief. We’re in Xai Xai, a little one road town African in energy, European in structure. The street’s bursting like paw paw seeds. Dust hoverin

g at nostril level clogging my vision. We’re still ten kays short of a good time. The sun is double dipping and my legs are turning to sweaty liquorice.
We reach the beach, a sandy road and an arrow to our location. I’m thinking this ain’t all that bad and then I feel the car losing traction, the back wheels violently sidestepping like Joost on an All Back defence.
I’m not sure. I take my foot off the gas and well, now we’re done for. Stuck stiff like beaten mousse.
My hands crashing against the steering wheel in dismay.  I want to bawl my eyes out. The Tazz’s super fluorescent lights tearing through the liquid black of the African darkness , dust criss-crossing the beam playing chicken. A planetary interlude. Dead silence. 1 kilometer from anywhere. Upon hands and knees we shovel sand, the dust fine dune enveloping the tires still.
This wasn’t The Bear Hunter hunting alone, here he had his sugar by his side, and this scenario racked my nerves.
As we locked the car up, by the light of my head torch we walked leaving behind the disgruntled, stymied beast. She of chipper smile, and calm remedies tried desperately to sooth my angered nerves.
We reached lifesaver safety. Two mozambican locals smiled, walked us back to the car and with iron arms dug us out. Once they’d given me the all clear made like Tom Cruised and did a Days of Thunder. My eyes steely, my arms stiff, and my foot flat we ramped ditches, dongs, hillocks and humps. I nearly soiled my self but me, my car and my self were free.

Wooah, what an experience?. With my heart throbbing inside my throat over whelming my apple this was an outer body experience. My Tazz, a beast of burden, punching above its weight was an overwhelming champion. And with my sugar on my side as a coolant we endured.

Matthew Broderick Mind Games 01.06.2014

Comrades 2014

For six months you give everything you got. You give your heart, your iron structure, your soul and your will. You compromise on the late nights, you limit the liquids, and you set aside the carbs. You turn your focus inward. You see illness as danger and injury as trauma. You see rest as weakness. You count the days backwards. You alter what you did last year, working harder this year. You see warm summer mornings invaded by icier winds and an over throw of winters hues. You see the sun’s  arc peak and drop. You see the green over-fed trees turn gnarly, nobbly at winter’s appearance. You beat the tread of 1200km together with your running partner. You scrawl each run down, each hour of sleep and each minute of mileage. Your guilt is your strength. You’re in it and, you’re committed.  Your sugar is on the sidelines watching and your brother is there as a spire. Big Al is there with his famous P and J zarms. It’s a giant of a day. This is the year. This is the year.

Me and Marty linked on the Saturday eve. We slept in single beds in Pietermaritzburg. We ate chicken breasts the night before.  We stood side by side in our pen. I sat behind my glasses. He behind new emotion, new experience and a new start.
And that was the last time we were together.
They say the race is 90 percent mental. And as my mind’s wanderings travelled beyond where I was, beyond the distance of Pietermaritzburg and Durban, it wasn’t the fitness of my body, but the malleability of my mind that was my unravelling.
My 2014 edition of the Comrades Marathon was my thoughts crusade.

My energy had bottomed out turning the day tough. I remained introverted, stuck behind my shades. My eyes and globular brain holding my misery, my pain, and my many wonderings of the years thoughts. The pains of my career traumatising my mind space, the years of tumult scarring my jellied tissue. Where am I going and what am I running towards?. Mumbling very little. Marty drove the pace, pushing us half way in 4hours 50.it was brilliant. But still I felt discomfort. Physically, I was steadfast.

At 55km I forced Marty to leave me to run our own races.
62, and with 28 to go, I sat down. Finished to the world. A half litre of water gushing down my gullet. Brushing aside the concerned comments, I stepped back onto the heated road, still my legs uneasy.  My body was deflated, my mind warped. My body double bent, a crowd member offering a hand. And then Carmy K gave me the 3^rd.
At the top of Fields and with a half marathon to go, I crushed a coke down my throat. As the power aid careened past my parched lips, coating my furry teeth, hastening down my gullet, gaining super electric energy, rushing past my stopped heart, the defibrillator-like effect on my spirit was galactic. From 0 on the speedometer to a hyperventilating 160, id been brought back from oblivion.
My lips turned from bull nose to a smile, a vessel pooled with excitement, spunk and power.
Fields Hill blessed me with rolling speed, and trundling energy. My pulsing pistons purging my sluggishness. My chatting chirping and yodelling driving the unwaivering crowd.

With 13 to go I bumped into Marty. Pinetown. Rooted to the ground he had nowhere to go. Marty’s muscles had left him stranded, splintered. I had to say goodbye, again.
With 5km to go, Elton, with the claws of a backactor scooped me up, and together we hurtled our punished bodies into Durban and onto the softened turf of Kingsmead Cricket Stadium getting us in under 10:30.
You never know this race, a chiselled body demands a chiselled mind.

White's on Rice 14.03.2014

Africanx

This was no bullsh*t facebook photo of you and your mates slotting a tequila at a party stiffer than a cadaver telling the world how rad your life is. This was no cheap selfie of your ‘amazing’ journey to Cambodia where really you had the runs, and were sharing a shower with 300 other inmates. This was no hugging your girlfriend while the sun set in the back ground, you clinking glasses and the waiter is trying for the fifth time to shoot the right shot. This was what we did every day for 3 days. 90 kays, 1000m rise in altitude, the hills the valleys, the mountains of the cape, of grabouw, of apple picking country. This was the African X, this was real, the pain, was real, the heat, was real. The dirt in your nostrils caking like a bat cave, the fyn bos licking your calves to bleed. The sun, it's angle of radiation hell bent on toasting you. That was all real.

The Sherminator and i teamed up for an adventure we’d read about in a Jules Verne novel.
With 6 months of training staring dauntingly at me, the screws needed to be turned, I needed to deviate from the luminous throngs of freshly inspired runners. I needed something new, where the masses weren’t. I needed to mix the bag of nuts up. I needed new adventure.
And as I flipped through the Discovery magazine looking at the pictures. The only article catching my eye read, ‘do something different’. AfricanX.
And so I threw a hook by way of the Sherminator and well he bit. Houwhoek, the Elgin valley, this is apple pie province.  Here the cider house rules. John Deere’s, harvesters, no Tobey McGuire but Batman and Robin.

We geared up, the Sherminator and I. Trail shoes, our ones n twos, hydration packs, gums and gu’s. Rain jackets and reflector packets. But we were Born to Run weren’t we?  So we took two heaped teaspoons of ‘kicka*s’, dumped the lumo crowd, joined the ‘Trail mix’, stirred it up and ran AfricanX.

Leaving Cape Town airport we turned our backs on pouty-lipped sea point, and dropped the stilleto’ed shmodels  hanging around coffee bars and fast cars and guys in toupees  and headed for the Cape van Riebeek could understand. The scented fyn bos, the yellows and the reds of blooming bush, the red dirt and rough rocks. The crystalline lakes, vineyards and apple ‘chards, the guttural Grabouw, it seems to have given itself a name. If it ain’t apple pie its Cape Epic territory, it’s AfricanX territory.

Day one and we sucked up the air we could, for up there there’s more to breathe. Our Transvaal lungs nourished by a high dose of oxygen. We had fast kick backs and switch backs, our toothy grins left dust dirty. The tree covered paths cool to the touch. Over bridges and past trails named Skaapsteke. ‘Have we run to Australia?, I enquired. The crunchy gravel crunching under the treads of our NB’s. No terrain like this exists on the Highveld.  33kays. And the day was done. A plunge pool our respite. as i peeled my nipple tap off squealing an echo off the mountains facade, a chocolate mik calmed me, rebuilt my muscles, for day 2 was up next.

Day 2 and we felt the landscape reach out and touch the sky. The mountainous profile puncturing the blue. The start from the bottom of Sir Lowry’s at Ongegund, a 5 star resort in a 3^rd world settlement. The run gun triggered and we were off mounting ascents, the competitors snaking the hills slowly. Luminous shirts, a safety feature not a fashion trend surely, splattered the terrain as exploded paintballs. The race took us up steep tractor paths and deep into vineyard country. The glutes pulsed and the quads felt it. This day was devastating. 35 kays of arduous trailing. The suns beam blistering.  Snaking  train tracks across the landscape like braces on a pimply teen. The chopper up above, cutting the thick oxygenated air, banking and hovering, capturing real moments, of real time action. Our feet dug in, this aint the beach, but the sand’s the same, engaging diff lock, we gain traction. The dew off the apples reflecting our hard work. Hands on thighs we climbed. Squirting gu’s at the tops of ascents, our lips stuck, no words. This day was gruelling, demanding. Without leg strength you’re running on legs like liquorice rope.  
 

Day 3, 21kays, a blanket of fog tucked us in, at 8am we peeled it away, the sun dried it up. The start gun dissipating. Tracing our fingers along the profile saw us run run, no walking. Ten kays of running. And then more climbing, clambering, then she passed us, nimble as a mountain goat. Hurtling. The rock loose, the decent fast. I sounded, ‘sweet gsus’. The vistas were a beauty, she was too. I chooned the lad. ‘No walking booi’. We took her on the straight.  We could hear the PA system, but the thread, we’d pulled it, stringing stringing we still had mileage to get through. Dropping down into Houwhook was fast like gushing water, crossing the final bridge, your smiles edges flicking the lobes of your ears. This day was like finding a tenner in your pair of jeans. It cemented the AfricanX in orbit. Ground control, we have touch-down. We’ll return.

The journey was dusted. Trail running, it’s a liberation. It’s running cos we can, it’s running to feel the landscape, to get a better understanding of it, it’s running for the sake of our pliable iron muscles, its running for the views and for the travels, its about shedding the threads of competition. It’s running cos We were Born to Run.