A Parking Paystation

Having sat watching a late night flik, my wife and I punctured the envelope of the mall into the dark, tar-heavy, covered parking lot.

Before us stood Arthur C Clarke's HAL 9000 reincarnate, a parking paystation.

Intimidating, complex, expressionless, sharp and shiny, its monolithic steel form sits squat and heavy.  Mona-Lisa-like, it follows us with its beady LED lights, there is no escaping it for it is the gatekeeper to the light beyond this cavernous hollow.

The monochrome green screen bleats and blinks yanking us within range of its gravitational pull. Moving closer kicking and screaming, fumbling and shaking, I step up to The Death Star patting my body down, searching desperately for the parking ticket. I find it in my pen pocket sharply bent and mildly creased. I gulp hard and loud as the wad of gob slippy slides rapidly  down my gullet plummeting with a deep splash into my sparkling-water-filled belly.

Like a blindfolded kid at a pin-the-donkey party, I begin thrusting, shoving my piece of origami into each of the multitude horizontal slots seeking one, just one opening that'll accept the ticket. Is it the coin slot, card slot, ticket slot, paper cash slot,credit card slot, scratch block, kep pad, tariff thingy, or the gaping cash back slot?. My brain rotates on my spinal column like Jordan spinning a basketball atop his ET finger.

Meanwhile a dense thick snaking queue of fellow mall rats begins to swell behind me, my head pivots to see this swath of shaking, impatient bobble heads. I am under pressure trying to act Cool Hand Luke playing for time. It's a game of Whack-A-Mole. I want to cry as my hands clam up. And then finally the machine hoover's it up. 'Bingo', I shout.

Success, and after a moment of processing, Robocop indicates the amount, it's a perfect tenner.

Deep inside my ipod pocket, I find a rusty crumpled greenback.

Top slot, bottom slot,side slot, my stomach's in a knot. Again, which darn slot is it?

With my hands now in full flight swishing around like Yehudi Menuhin conducting New York's Philharmonic,I stuff the tenner into the top slot jamming the thing in as I would my forgotten swimming trunks into my carry-on luggage. 'Just. get. in', I growl under my breath. A tear squirts out my eye. I want to die right now. The machine rages, and rejects the green back. I pull it out, iron it with the back of my hand, straightening the corners. I crisp the tenner like I'm licking a rollie, aiming it again for the slot, it takes hold, I yodel 'yes', like I just holed out at Amen Corner at Augusta National.

My armpits drain every iota of hydration from my sapped body. Terminator 2's T-1000 ejects my parking ticket. I cleave to this ticket with hands upon knees. We exit.

Malcolm Gladwell's 10 000 hours does not apply to paying at parking machines, bamboozling me everytime. This User Experience is a game of Russian Roulette, thank goodness i spun the barrel right.

A Short Story about a Frog 2022.02.18

Dan and Lee spent a weekend in the bush. It was an hour's drive from their home.
Leaving behind concrete, tarnished tar, speeding selfish taxis, abusive Ubers, and city smog they were greeted by the scent of Body Shop lush brush, Mountain Dew clear skies and the rich earthly dust of dirt roads. Their eyes drank in the wide open skies and the liquid OJ of the setting sun. The massaging gentle wind breezed through their hair washing over them, cooling them to relax.

As the moon ballooned, they flicked on the lights and like positives to negatives, a humdrum of creepies from short bugs with big wings, tall skinny stick insects with bow legs, leathery lizards, alpha bravo geckos, furry moths, praying mantis and unsightly critters with many hairs, skittled and crawled out from each of their lairs.

Lee squeaked and squealed as the insects arrived on the scene moving in rhythm to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Each one bobbed and weaved in unison, nipping, biting, creeping, and crawling.

With this flurry of bugs there was no way of plugging this dike.

The weekend flashed. Sunday arrived.
Dan's alarm buzzed, he bounded out of bed, humming a Rolling Stones tune, grabbed a fluffy white towel, bee-lined to the shower, motioned to flip the mixer to warm, and there below his feet a small black blob, frightened, skedaddled along the skirting zipping beneath the ball and claw of the bath. Suppressing his screech by biting his clenched knuckles so Lee'd be unawares, he let black Frog be for keeping this little secret between 'you and me' would be their little triumph.

He then packed his shirts, her dress and jeans, both pairs,
and tossed the bags into the back of the Ecosport, bounced around on a game drive, then headed south to The Big Smoke.

Back in suburbia, Dan unpacked the luggage. Holding up each item he remarked, 'Clean, not so clean, clean, not so clean, folded, needs ironing'. Pulling out a ruffled towel, it was not alone. As a pilot ejecting from a shot down fighter jet, Black Frog burst itself from the bowels of the bag careening towards earth. Karma.

The echoes of 'Frog' sent Simba lurching into the room. Grabbing the little critter, he held it gently in his cupped hand and rushed for the door.

Once upon a time, Dan, Lee and family lived on the 4th floor of an apartment building.

Frog in hand, Simba hurtled down the corridor like a barefoot rugby player down the left wing when another kid approached. Eager for show and tell, Simba gooied anchors, ignored all instructions to keep his hands clasped, peeled them open, and Frog lurched out. Dropping to the floor, it scurried away seeking salvation beneath a door of a plumbing duct. Inspecting the duct, Dan witnessed Frog cleaving for its life like a stretched Fizzer- one foot on a drain pipe, and one foot dangling from death. Alex Honnold reincarnate.
Frog had no sure footing.


The End

The Amatola Trail, Eastern Cape 2022.03.18

 While I was a freshman in highschool, sat behind a wooden flip top desk  in English class, we were tasked to write an essay on whatever we desired, however it needed to be 'personal experience'. Now, at 13 years old I had had very little personal experience other than sunday ice cream outings to Carvel, and honestly, I didn't even know what  'personal experience' even meant. 

And so, excited like a fat boy eager to bury his head in a sugar dusted jelly donut,  I rushed home, reached for my yellow BIC pen and began scribing my opus. 

It would be the late 80's early 90's, I would be clothed in khaki pants with side pockets and a matching colour-coordinated button-down shirt with yellow Camel Trophy badges emblazoned on my shoulders. I'd be wearing military utility boots. I'd have hitched in my velcroed top pocket my Swiss army knife from before The War, a soft pack of Camel filter fags, a box of timber matches, a picture of my girl back home, a pack of elastoplast plasters for the unforseen tyre puncture and, I'd be buckled into the driver's seat of a mustard-yellow Land Rover Defender 110, revved up, and torqued down to navigate and usurp the densest, wettest, muddiest terrain in a tropical jungle in Borneo in the elite Camel Trophy Challenge.

Thoughts of adventure of leaving my suburban home and tackling the mangled forests of Borneo excited me to write. My brain was all consumed by the idea of getting dirty, of roughing it. My writing hand took its cue from my imagination and began gushing streams of consciousness across the lined foolscap sheet of white paper. Blue ink dripped with excitement, adventure and daring.
As a kid clutching a winning Willy Wonka ticket, I was Michael-Jackson-fan hysterical  to submit come Monday morning.

Having plonked my creativity onto the teachers wooden desk alongside a red apple, it was, after a week, returned to me... as a blood curdling failure.The teacher's red ink, splattered across the sheet like a Jack the Ripper crime scene, dripped off of the edges of the page weighing heavily on my submission. As I stood dead still, the world stopped, and silence blanketed the classroom. I was in a slasher scene of a friday the 13th horror movie but it was just a monday. It was a horror show, and I was being hatched with a blunt rusty meat cleaver.

Some 30 years later that rugged diesel powered hard edged mustard body of the Defender morphed into me, it's hard working BF Goodriches became my Hi-Tec boots, its halogen lights, my LED lightweight Pestl headlamp. It's iron-clad winch my erg-powered forearms, the modified suspension my rickety knees, and its roof rack, my 60litre Deuter backpack.

Though not in a Landy, it'd be my legs, my arms and my brain that'd get me through the most gruelling hike I'd ever endured. I was about to gain experience, personal experience.

The Amatola hike is a gruelling 6 day trek through rain forests covering 100plus kays with an elevation of 5000m. It is South Africa's toughest hike and it makes the Otter Trail a walk through the cheese section of Woolies. Cool, breezy, cheesy, creamy easy.

The Amatola hike is set in the Amatola mountains in the Eastern Cape inland. It begins and ends in Hogsback, a tiny little village that sits as a relaxed, tye-dyed, hippified, foot to the Amatola mountains. With its veins gushing with halucongenics, it's in stark contrast to the stress that awaits me embedded in the Amatola Trail. 

Immediately we are enveloped by the embrace of the forest. It's trees loom, it's vines dangling as Rapunzel's plaited locks reaching down to the forest floor, its shards of grass have us entangled as we puncture the bubble of this biome. A daylight darkness shrouds the interior. Shafts of sunlight pierce the canopy, striking the ground to light our path. The cracks of twigs under foot rifle through the silence, sending hares scurrying, and frogs leaping-the only other movements in this still womb.

In this moisture saturated environment, this greenhouse, mushrooms burst from the rich dark soils packaged in Dr Seussian colours, larger than your garden variety, and easy to pluck. Hallucinogens are in abundance. Radioactive-glowing-green moss carpets fallen trunks like the dash boards and steering wheels of drifting box-car BMW's softening edges and offering comfortable seats for moments of relax. 

The path we take each morning sees the detailed geometric webs of spiders strung precariously between mangled trees like slackliners tied tight across crevasses. Crayola colours splash across the backs of spiders.Red, black, and yellow specks like a Pollockian painting. These 8-legged arachnids sit still awaiting unsuspecting insects to come ploughing into their snare. As our troop marches forwards we machete our way through the swathe. 

The hike courses through fast and slippery downs, up slow, cog-turning steep rocky inclines. Slipping, bruising, cutting, oozing, the blood drains from us as our bodies are pierced by jagged rocks. Our lungs expand, soaking up the oxygen-heavy forest air.Punching through the forest walls the trail plateaus, from here we see the light of day, fluffy clouds and the expanse of the trail. From up here we scout the villages below, white rocky outcrops, mottled nguni cattle and babbling brookes.

Waterfalls careen down the ravines of the mountains, plummeting with rapturous ferocity into a series of pools that slink across the trail down the mountains edge. The pools of ice-cold water that pepper the hike give us the opportunity to refresh as we unbundle our gear and make the plunge revitalising our spirits to go forth and trek on. 

Rain on the trail slowly soaks our clothes, seeping towards our skin, catalysing goose bumps to prick up and ice bite. I see no joy in dancing in the rain. so i put my head down and pick up the pace towards the rudimentary,though dry, overnight hut. Foam mattresses sag on wooden frames await exhausted bodies.There is no stress, my mind is at rest for there is no thinking other than the number of rusks i'll be dunking at sunrise.

Towards the ends of the hike, we skirt the crown of the mountain, its rock face bears down heavily above us minimising us. Against the face of this wall of stone we are as minute little dwarves of Thorin's Company.

The trek took us way back to when life was simple and we had to work extra hard to achieve. No amount of tech could get us further, faster or higher. No amount of space saving weight reducing aluminium could assist us in gaining ground. Only the steel of our minds, the elasticity and strength of our muscles and the grit of our teeth would allow us to conquer the toughest hike in the country. Here we hiked dirty, we hiked raw. We hiked like it was the 1800's, a period of unchartered territory, a period of paving new paths, of cutting across swaths of overgrown brush, fallen trees, rocks littered haphazard as a kids fallen lego's.

The eastern Cape landscape from the air looks agrarian, peaceful, slick and clean, easily surmountable, easily caressed  and beautifully drawn. the patchwork of farms and forest glow emerald green and sparkling. Scrolling into the terrain of the Ciskei reveals itself as treacherous, and rugged as Mordor.

As I sat down outside the backpackers on a stone slate floor, my scuffed boots sidled alongside me caked in mud, sweat, rain and salty tears,my hiking shirt encrusted in 5 days of grime, my toenails reflecting a Hobbitt's curling over days of dirt, I sat hugging my knees, shell shocked, maybe crying, reeling from PTSD  from the experience i just endured.

as i shoot my hand up, seeking attention, i inquire, 'ma'am, may I resubmit my essay?'

A Short Story about a High-school Crush

Layla was the apple of my eye. Not only was she strawberry-sundae delicious, she was the hottest girl of our school in her age group and probably of every age group in the school. She had dark rich 85% cocoa chocolate colour hair curled in the style of Veronica Lodge, she tucked her white button down shirt into her blue school skirt, and rolled her socks down. 
She carried a tiny school pack, neat and square.

While I played in the Sunday League, she sat atop the Premier League. 

Being in the B team of any sport I played, studying Latin, and having less than nimble fingers when it came to playing snake on my Nokia 6110, opened very few doors in me being boyfriend material. But still harbouring the confidence and exaltation of three years prior as I walked off that cricket field in my black blazer, I decided I'd throw any caution, and any reputation i had to the wind, and ask Layla to accompany me to the Matric dance. 

Munching my triangulated snackwedge and watching Britney and Justin star in Mickey Mouse Club after school I grabbed with two greasy hands the tomb-like White pages. I thumbed through the G's, punched the phone number with my index finger I thought was 'it', scratched a heart shape in red koki around the number, and set the following Monday to make the call.

The whole week waiting in fear, but in anticipation, from science to Latin class, I etched 'DC 4 LG' encircled by a heart cementing my love, on every wooden desk I sat at with my red Swiss Army pen knife. Finally Monday eve arrived and with the hairline cracks in the irises of my eyes oozing blood, and my palms dipped-in-water wet, I dialed her digits. As the ringer rang, with heaps of anxiety, I drew imaginary circles with my toes turning the shaggy rug to a heap of knots.And then she answered. 'uhh uhhh', my voice pitched high, 'Layla, hi, hello, is that you?'

Across the wires, with a little delay, a little silence, 'Oh no, I'm afraid not, it's her aunt, here, let me give you her number'. Panicked to scrawl the number down, I thanked her and with that the slow puncture of relief relaxed me. Having achieved very little regarding my goal, I'd wait a full week to try again.

That following week I agonised. With the feeling of having Bruce Lee do repeated roundhouse kicks inside my stomach, squealing every time he did a full 360, my stomach churned for a full week before I made the call again. The waiting strained me, strained my gut. I barely ate, I barely slept. I barely had control of myself.The next Monday my heart racing Monte Carlo, I dialled in. 

Now Layla's brother was ranked like number 1 in jock status at school. His crowd, they were built like mine-craft characters-square jaws, square muscles, square fists, with six packs harder than the fender of a Ford pick-up. They ate tuna and rice every day, and pumped iron till their veins popped, and their hands calloused. They commanded such respect that they had the First-Years polish their rugby boots till the glint of their Aquafresh smiles reflected in their leather uppers. These bruisers 'owned' the stairs by the quadrangle, it was their lair. No one could sit on the quadrangle stairs. And no one could pass through unless you offered up your tuckshop sarmie as collateral. On trying to gain access, the pasty kid would extend out his arm clawing the polony roll, turning his face in fear, he'd shy away trying to hold back from blubbering in public. There they'd grab it, biting, tearing off three-quarters of the sandwich like Ozzy biting the head off of a bat, leaving the sweet kid with a tomato-sauce drenched stubby stump of a roll. The teeth marked polony, a remnant of its former whole, clung to the carbohydrate like Alex Honoldt cleaving for dear life to a creaking overhang on El Capitan. Though the bun was slobbered in gob, the kid would cringingly swallow the remainder. But access to the stairs was his.Though he'd go hungry. He'd appeased the big cheese.

Now I loved number 1's sister. and no matter what, I was gonna call her.

'Hello, hi, is that Number 1, it's me, Dan Chaity?', 'Chaity?,Whadda you want?'Can I chat to your sister?' Borderline stunned, he says, 'hold on', and sets the phone down. 

I hear ruffling, I hear voices, I hear footsteps. clop clop clop.'Bud, she's busy. She asks, 'whadda you want?'.'Uhm, I'd like to take her to the Matric dance'.Again he sets the phone down, and in moments returns."Chaity, Sean the Love Machine has asked her to the dance.''oh oh okay', i croaked, 'no problem, see you at rugby practice tomorrow.'

Plunging the off-white receiver into its cradle, my back drenched, I slump back into the wicker chair, grabbing the ice cold coke before me, I drain its contents in one gulp,and let out a huge... sigh. Just as I conquered the can, I felt I'd conquered the call.

I didn't win, but I inflated that limp ego like Chucky the Clown blowing up a balloon noodle.

Short Story-A School Boy Cricket Match

 Back then when summer days were spread thick across the loaf of life, Wednesday's smell of freshly mowed cricket fields, the ripe scent of fresh cut orange quarters and syrupy lecol juice, joyously flared my nostrils.

On half-day Wednesdays, as the school brass bell rung the end of the day, we shouted, 'Match day!'and on that day, we played cricket against KES.  

Having lost the toss, King David was sent in to bat.

The KES bowling attack was furiously ferocious. and before the opening bat could doff his cap and say 'centre, please sir', his middle stump was doing Simone Biles flik-flaks across the village green.

The sound of rattling wickets echoed, and the holler of 'howsat?' reverberated against the hallowed halls of the KES Res disrupting square meals and latin conjugations.

Amidst the devastating fall out, I padded up, and made my way to the crease. Blocking, cutting, charging, I smacked the shine off the red Kookaburra leaving it pasted to my linseed-oiled rapier. I caressed that little red cherry to all corners of the ballpark making bolognaise sauce of their front line seamers. 

Thinking i was a cat, I lobbed a delivery down the gullet of a boundary fielder. Tucking my bat under my armpit, I strolled back to the hut, punching myself in the ribs. 

At the change, I was top scorer for King David. 8

Fielding next, we had no chance defending the paltry 40. Off the first delivery they made our fielding placements look like a leaky reusable nappy.

Standing at the Jonty Rhodes position, nervous and shaken as a Bond martini, a ball was rifled at me. Hurtling at me at a rate of knots, I stuck my hands out at the ready. The earth stopped spinning, silence settled across the field, and only the sound of the seam, and my hard swallow could be heard in the surrounding Houghton and Hillbrow areas.  (mainly Houghton, cos Hillbrow was partay-ying). The ball bladdy well stuck.

That Wednesday I was a headline even on mainstream media news reels. 

We grabbed our flings and apple juice cartons and went home to Sunny Side road to celebrate.

Tossing my grass-stained kit in the washing machine, and inspecting my bludgeoned bat, my day of glory had ended. 

The Fish River Canyon 08.08.2021

Zip, tear, tighten, press, push, squeeze. Undies past your knobbly hairy knees, socks over toes, pants past your bones. Belt buckled, zipper up, button-down shirt thrown over your back. Buttons and holes lined up, collar popped. Boots on, laces tied bunny ears. backpack bulging slung over your shoulders. Hip support locked in. The slack is tacked. Peering over the edge, the earth plummets. Final photos. We drop off the precipice deep into the yawing canyon, leaving behind a sky blue as the iris' of an icelandic's eyes.

The colour palette of earthy brown hues, goose greys and charcoal blacks, rusts and reds, we leave behind a world of shiny, glossy, swipey metallic.

Once we leave the height of the canyon, our swashbuckling journey begins as we lay eyes on the whipping Fish River. Still as Evian, we catch the river in its eerily quiet wintery months. These are the remnants of the gushing summer. The River swings and swoops back and forth along the canyon's floor as Indiana's bullwhip. We keep it close to us, never straying too far from this life blood.

The sedate River responds to movement by reflecting the hiker's daily march, the lapping lips and tongues of wild horses, the swoop and dive of ravenous raptors, the flitting fish that never made it downstream and the swimming Namibia guy, his belly a barrel, his bulky legs pistons, and his skin tanned coffee by the countless hours of daylight exposure.

The landscape on which we tread is forever changing. The dirtied rim of the subsiding river, as the blazing sun sips, is revealed as concentric circles on rounded pebbles. The now exposed rocks form fields we need to hop, balancing like pirouetting ballerina's.

The crunch of boot tread on the course gravely terrain, scrape, clink as an aluminium pole pierces a crevice.   

We hurdle rising rock formations, graze our knees on sharp outcrops, we cut across swathes of sinking river sand so soft its arms tear at our legs pulling us downwards,as we find ourselves immersed in a battle between the moon's gravitational pull and the doughy dirt. The heavy heave as lungs expand and contract as we lunge, drop, squat and pivot.

Regardless of the immense physicality of the hike, the silence, the peace, the freshness is serenity. It allows for mindless contemplation, stressless thinking, soulful reflection ...until...

Bang! it's popped like a grass blade to a balloon by the bouncing crew that we meet en route. Their flower power outfits and leisurely laissez faire attitude abound. Where we're kitted for survival, they're kitted for lounging lazily around campfires smoking kilograms of mary jane and singing REM songs. We share little but passing 'Hi's' and then they're off, oddly, like mountain goats.

The dampened sounds of our chatter are soaked by the serrations of the towering Manhattan-like walls of the cavernous Canyon. We are aware of the sun tracking across the sky. As it peers from behind the Canyon walls, googling at us, we rise. Rising, no thing protects us from the streaming scorching sun beams during the long day, and as we pitch our tents at day's end and the sun crash lands, the lengthy shadows drawn turn icey. 

After 5 days chasing the mileage, we returned with beaten bodies, a feeling of achievement andbody odour so rancid it could strip paint. As we recovered in the post-hike hot springs, that was time for our bodies to experience some euphoria.

  

Mr Wolf taught me Latin, taught me Life

 I recall as a fresh primary school leaver visiting King David High School on a Sunday, Mr Wolf got up to the lectern and began speaking glowingly of Latin.  He told us that should we choose Latin we would be considered elite. What he didn’t tell us was the abuse we’d be subjected to, the ridicule and the insults.
I chose art.
But soon enough yearning to be like my brother I chucked the charcoal, punched a hole in the palette and joined the Latin class. Being elite trumped abuse.
There in that class, I made sure I sat front centre, conjugating, doing declensions and sipping the suds of Mr Wolf's far-from lugubrious Latin lessons. I didn’t care much for any other subject but for this most archaic of languages. I went on to do Latin for matric and I got a ‘B’ for Blah!

But more than letter’s, Mr Wolf, through his passion as a teacher, through his caring demeanor and love for the language of Latin he helped to open my eyes to a new, different type of world beyond the walls of suburbia. His teachings exposed me to architecture through learning about the Coliseum, Roman baths and ova’s; personalities, through his translations of Caesar; poetry through Homer’s Iliad; endurance, stamina and hard work, through Hannibal’s marches; and political structure through the senate, and the people of Rome.

I managed to pass school after Mr Wolf bludgeoned me with fierce words, jolting me into ‘picking up my socks’. Since then, I hadn’t seen Mr Wolf.

Until some twenty years later…Scouring through the dairy section of the local Pick n Pay, trying to find myself the densest thickest fullest creamiest cream I could find, suffering chilblains from everything I touched and seeing my extremities turn blue from the icy coolness of the refrigeration, my attention now diverted, I caught glimpse of ay Mr Wolf. With a bright luminescent light reflecting off the linoleum, skewing my vision, I couldn’t make out whether it was Jeffrey or Elliot. But I didn’t care, cos I ‘knew’ it was my Mr Wolf. Like two gunslingers, he, at the bottom of the aisle in the yoghurt section, and me, at the top end in the cream section, we stood stuck.

Gaining composure, my excitement grew like a fat boy’s seeing a sticky sausage. Dragging my tongue across the store, racing towards him, I caught the Wolf’s attention. ‘Mr Wolf, Mr Wolf’, I yoddled.  Stopping me dead like a harpooned whale, he responded, “It’s Jeffrey’, you’re looking for Elliot’.

I needn’t have seen my Mr Wolf in the 20 odd years I’ve left school, but his impact on me and the memories I harbor are branded onto my cerebellum, never to be erased.  I recall him as though it was just yesterday that I sat in that science lab conjugating verbs.

His lankiness and his length, he towered physically, he towered emotionally. What a giant of a man.

My Theatre Story

Way back when, when my long grey socks touched my knees and my stiff grey shorts had a seam down the front, my straight-jacket like black Bata shoes were tougher than the skin on Willie Nelson's neck never softening to allow my feet to bend, and I bawled my eyes out every time my dad dropped me at the creaking gates of school, i was chosen, albeit as part of a desk top study, to be in the foreground of the primary school play.

During this period of my life my hobbies included gardening, alone; playing mechano, alone; baking crumpets, alone, and gaming 'single player' tv games, ofcourse, alone.

With a gaping hole where my 2 front teeth used to park, and long helmet-like shaggy-rug hair akin to David Bowie in Starman, I was no 'looker', and to add injury to insult, I had the confidence of a deflated whoopee cushion, but for some strange reason, there i was row 1 column A on the teacher's Excel spreadsheet. 

Rehearsal took place in the school hall, on stage, beneath a giant spot light. 

We were geared in blue jeans and red tee's, and our hair was greased up in hair gel stiffening it like a debutant rodeo rider. 

I was part of the scene where about eight of us did a dance to Bananarama's, 'I'm your Venus'.  In this scene, we'd have a comb in our sock and we'd brush our hair like Elvis. We'd be the glistening stars of the show. But for the life of me I couldn't co-ordinate the actions with the lyrics.

Seeing as i was co-ordinated as Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot, i was gently slowly replaced moved towards the blurry edges of the background into deep dark deserted theatre anonymity. My star receded, dissolving like a dunked disprin, eventually becoming an inanimate extra in a scene from an Italian restaurant, never to step foot on a stage ever, ever again, ever. 

206 and Dave Matthews 28.06.2021

 The first time i ever saw a credit card being used for an alternative purpose other than paying for Woollies veggies was one late Tuesday eve while sucking hard on a Black Label brown-bottled beer. I was settled in the more relaxed room where sat a pool table and billows of smoke bubbled around bobbing heads. The background beats being spun by the disc jockey were sweet, slow and seamless. I scoured the room to find a seat, pulled the stool, sat down and let the bar lean on me. With my hands clutching the ale, I watched all that played out before me. There, sat a bit away, was a long-haired kid. With his chequered Vans, ripped Diesel jeans and parachute material track top, he fit right in like cream stains at a strip joint. As a mad scientist, he meticulously, cut up a heavy heap of powdery blow into short sharp lines readying it to be sniffed deep into his cerebellum.

206 was a bar club perched on the snaking Louis Botha avenue in Johannesburg in the mid to late 90’s. Louis Botha was no desirous place to hang out yet it harboured this contrarian locale far away from the polished hoods of BMW’s, ice cold Absolute and 3 tiered collars.

206 spawned a counter culture giving air and space to alternative sounds, hipster attire and a left-of-centre crowd seeking paths, thoughts and substances less beaten. 

Garth, his handle bar ‘stouche bent just right for ding dong donuts on a two stroke, his plaid shirts fitted right for lumber jacking in south Dakota and his gravelly voice suited to scaring the bejesus out of under-age drinkers, sat bouncer, opened the front door to usher me in. I waded through the densely packed bar clustered in tables and chairs set haphazard like lily pads in Paris. A band plays, and her howling sends me scuttling through the rabbits warren of rooms and themes eventually spitting me out into the open air courtyard where a sweet scent lingered like a zeppelin in the air as the corduroy-clad crew puffed the magic dragon. Set in the corner, a haphazard hole in the wall, sat the bar. And there at the bar sat Dave Matthews.

In ‘95 or so, my older brother introduced me to music. From that year, I’d spend hours listening to cd’s he’d suggested, hours working tables in an Italian restaurant to buy cd’s he’d suggested, and hours scouring CD Warehouse for new cd’s he would suggest and then one fine day he came to my room spinning a cd on his index finger like Michael Jordan would a leathery basket ball. Leaning on the door post, he said, ‘Listen to this, boet.’ It was his copy of the Dave Matthews Band’s debut album, ‘Under the Table and Dreaming’.

I went over to the pc, double clicked on Solitaire, de-pressed the eject button, dropped the disc on the opened tray, pushed gently to close the tray like a tech beast would, and then hit play on Microsoft’s media player. As I flipped the first card, a 3 of spades, popped the black ear buds into my ear, I became inebriated.

The following Tuesday, I threw on my newly acquired surplus army pants and a general’s jacket, grooved my hair to the side, grabbed the well worn Under the Table and Dreaming album, a fat koki pen and revved that Mazda hard till I arrived at 206. This, all in the hope that i’d bump Dave.

Greeting Garth, he rubber stamped me and I bee-lined it for the outside courtyard. 

Ploughing through the dense sticky smoke like Indiana, slashing my hands, pushing aside the detritus, there was a clearing, and there in the clearing sat Dave. I stood still.

Naive as Tusser’s cheese, I approached him, I greeted him. 

Bumbling, he was liquidated but I didn’t care. ‘Please, Dave, sign my album’.

Clutching at my cd cover, he grabbed hold of the fat tip and scrawled, ‘Dan’. Then he drew a peace symbol, and continued with ‘Dave Matthews’.

As a fat kid licking an ice cream sundae with a dipped flake I reclaimed the album, tucked it deep into my jacket pocket and haven’t let it out of my sight since. 

Big City Dreamin'-28.08.2019

It’s August and the city sweats, poring from the street’s manholes. The sun’s rays cut swathes down the deep corridors of Manhatten. The trees burst with green foliage. Shorts are tight and skirts are high. The soft hand-cropped grass tickles the feet of picnickers and Frisbee tossers on the rolling greens of Central Park.  The ice cubes of an iced coffee clang against the plastic cup, rustling, jingling our thoughts to dipping our toes in the city’s lakes. The cooling clouds swirled above, bashing into one another like go carts releasing rapid relieving rains.

Dry cover comes from the tropical Trader Joe’s, a supermarket brimful with busty buxom oranges beaming sunshine and happiness, tomatoes red ripe and chocolate bars stacked like Lego. The staff adorned in the colours of Hawaii operate like sunflowers tracking the sun as patrons paddle their hands. The background music the mix tape of my life turns our lips to beam apple wedges. With a packed paper bag, we rise up the escalator to be cast back onto Amsterdam Avenue.

Flicking lights, and bleating cabs, they stop and start, collect and deliver. A card swipe and a hailed uber. The driver pulls in, and pulls out shuttling cardboard cutouts. 

The cyclists and their leather shoulder bags slung tightly across chests. They’re coming and going, they’re zipping by, cutting swathes through parks, peddling single speeds flicking the ringer as a walker steps the curb.  

As the time struck 1900. We descend the stairs, the rushing sound of a tinny train heaves bellows of heated air gushing past us, sending skirts to bellow and hair to flail. We swipe our metro card, flik past the turnstiles and await our time on the platform, toes curled over the edge, anticipating. 

Airpods in and the Rolling Stones roll, soft cover novels thumbed and bent, ready for the metro ride back here and back there. It’s a game of pong. The underground snakes and shuttles, burrowing its way beneath the earth. Activity happens above and activity happens below. This night, above ground and many storeys up, it was at Madison Square Gardens. We got out. 

Out of the top pocket of my plaid shirt sat two tickets. Rising storeys high at the mercurial MSG, we sat in the nose bleeds for a desirous date with the effervescent Billy Joel. He and his ebony and his Ivory. From the records sitting on the platter in Johannesburg, to the live sounds in Manhatten. What a journey. 

The neon lights glow, beating the dark away. The wet sidewalk casts a glare of what’s going on anyway. The side walk cafe sees emptied pints and limp fags. The pool of vomit is a story of a debauched night past. The reflection in the rear view mirror flips past like an ipod shuffle. Memories. 

Dropping the dented coin into the slot, the lights bleat activity.

Pulling back on the spring loaded handle, the weighted metallic goon rolls back passively waiting to be propelled lifewards. 

Creak creak. The spring is squeezed. The spring is coiled.The hand is released. 

The spring unfurls, rapidly flinging the mirrored sphere into the playing field. Game on New York City.

3 Peaks Challenge-Johannesburg-26.07.2020

Me and Sherman run cos we were born to run.

Post lockdown regs, having maintained strength doing leg presses under the weight of the leadwood table, and chopping trees, we were chiselled like Michaelangelo’s David and ready for the At-Altitude-3-Peaks Challenge. 

Sherman had this idea to run the 3 highest peaks in Johannesburg. We hadn’t surveyed the peaks, but having trained hill repeats up Linksfield Ridge, the hard-o-meter determined it high, and having run the Easter 48, determined Northcliff Ridge as blood curdling high and having trudged the stairs with a backpack full of tuna cans, our glutes determined Westcliff, preparing-for-life high.

We ran them in no order of height, but in sequence of completion. 

We launched our journey from the ‘centre’ of the northern suburbs heading west rising up to Oxford road, before plummeting towards the base of the Northcliff Ridge. From there we scaled the ridge. 

At the pinnacle seeing the Sherman as the polkadot-jersey wearer we headed towards Westcliff Ridge but in the while we would integrate the Melville Koppies for some urban trail, great views and a shared Gu.

Making our way back to the ‘centre’, we then made an assault up the Westcliff Ridge as it was wrapped in skeletal jacaranda’s and careening seed pods. Here we took another opportunity to document our feat by asking a passerby for a photo. Click.click.Clickety click.

Once we’d regained our steel, like tumble weeds, bounced and bobbed through Forest Town, Saxonwold, Killarney and ofcourse doffed our hats, said ‘good morning and asked for ‘centre’ please sir’, as we rose up the back side of Munroe Drive past KES and St Johns. Racing to the bottom of Munroe, the sheltered tree-lined streets were grand relief from the heat of the mid morning winter sun.

No doubt tired, but amped to fulfil the dream, we beat our spurs to get us going, running eastwards towards the mighty and steep Alp ‘d huez of Jo’burg, Linksfield Ridge. I can’t give you a percentage for this climb since I wasn’t great at trig, but this ridge slow punctured me. 

We hadn’t calculated route nor distance, we simply threw on our treads and blazed a trail, and with it, establishing an FKT for an At-Altitude-3-Peaks assault...we think 

45km. 4hours 34 minutes. What an adventure, and what a way to say 'cheers' to a great mate.

Golf Balls, Entrepreneurship, Failure

We lived in an area called Birnam in a street called Sunnyside Road.  Birnam ain’t what it used to be having  been obliterated by new age neighbourhoods and hideous car showrooms.

Then, we lived like it was an 80’s Spielberg movie. I rocked corduroys, and shirts with coloured edge-trim. Days were longer and my hair too. I moonwalked through life in north stars with Velcro straps and/or a pair of pocked pumas. I had a skateboard with gummy wheels and an all-legit hand-me-down bmx. We set up Centre court between house 16 and 18, and we skate boarded like tony hawk. We trawled the burbs waving at store owners and friendly neighbours like jayzee in harlem. We were proper neighbourhood kids. Life was good.

Birnam was a suburb of maybe two streets and we knew everyone in that duo. If we didn’t see other kids on the grassy pavements we’d see them at one of the many stores that offered coin op arcade games. And if a new kid moved into the area, or grew up to be old enough to walk the streets on his own, we’d be sure to meet their acquaintance at those same arcade-offering venues.
A 20 cent coin would get you one game. 20 cent coins were a major trading commodity. Back in those days, if you had a roll of twenties you were down-right minted. Any spare cash after the 20’s made neat piles five coins high was spent on hot chips or spicey samoosas at the local burger joint. It wasn’t always so easy coming about hard glinting currency. Birthdays were always a year away. We didn’t get much for channuka other than latkes, begging from your folks wasn’t so glamorous, and your bar mitzvah stash was probably locked up in futures or bonds.  so we needed to go about getting tom in our own very way like washing cars or ‘keep the change’ when you’ve just bought rolls at the Bakehouse for Sunday lunch.

So we had to find other means.
Our drifting radius extended as far as Wanderers Cricket Stadium to the west and to the Waverley squash courts to the east across Corlett drive.
Our primary school, Fairways Primary was well positioned for one of our many adventures.

The school sat hard up against the Wanderers golf course. By a combination of proximity and terrible golfing, stray balls would often come missiling onto our sports field like badly aimed rockets from Gaza. ‘fooooore’ would echo from the links vibrating off of the ‘protective’ eucalyptus trees forcing kids to drop hard up against the ground in that airplane brace manoeuvre. Me, I was just thinking, ‘that ball is mine’, and there i’d be running like some under-attack soldier, hands on head along the beaches of Normandy as the Germans pelted the allies.
During cricket matches while posted on the fence, or while playing gainers during break time i’d too come across these mini meteors. And so I began hoovering them up.
 I began to understand on what particular days playing was most popular by the volume of balls that went astray. Saturdays and Sundays were helluva buoyant.

And so on weekends I’d trek up Corlett Drive, sneak into the primary school and head into the no-go-zone, the Kashmir, between the school and the golf course. I used to spend hours combing the area, scouring the long grass for balls. On a good day I could come home with ten or so goons. I became familiar with the branding- which balls garnered a hefty price, and which ball’s were termed ‘water balls’-those balls that you weren’t precious about and so were happy to see them fly out of bounds .  

I endeavoured to keep my golf ball spelunking  to myself, to keep it as much of a secret as possible. I did though let my boet in on my Indiana Jonesian escapades. Once he knew, the game changed. We needed now to increase the bounty.
And with that we became brazen. At the end of a weekend’s days play we would leopard crawl into ‘Kashmir’, hack our way to the giant sluice running along the edge of the fairway of hole 11, climb into the sluice and out the sluice via steel rungs embedded in the concrete walls, mount the diamond meshed fence, flinging ourselves over to land softly on the fresh cut grass of the Wanderers golf course. Using the giant eucalyptus as cover, we skitted from one to the next, eventually scuttling across the fairway like crabs across a deserted shoreline to land at the par three water hole. We had arrived, undetected. Welcome to the pay load.

Wearing my tightest speedo which would be my ball carrier, I slipped into the water. The floor of the pond, algae slimy slippery. Walking slowly, covering ground, my feet my eyes, i’d eventually stand on one. ‘Ooh, got one’, i’d shout, the adrenalin rushing harder than the high of a raver tripping on lsd. Curling my dextrous toes around the dimpled goon, like ball and claw, I’d clench hard raising the ball up to my knees so my hands could snatch it. ‘what is it, what is it?’, i’d hear from the side lines. Titleist, Pinnacle, Ping or some scuffed up drek.

With the sun close to dipped, the water turning dark and the pond mined, i’d heave myself out the oily water, jump into dry clothes and together we’d walk our way back home, excited by our haul. Back home we’d jump into the warm bath with our new pay load, cleaning each ball till it shined. In jammies we’d inspect each ball, evaluate it, set it aside, count them and recount them. The golden jewel, the balatas, the softest ball of the day was the king pin.

My parents owned a clothing factory, my mom designed and my dad did the sales. Their factory was in Corlett Drive just a flight of stairs up from the Mi Vami take out. Frequenting the area a lot, we came to befriend the big fat dudes who managed the store. One day we walked past the store on our way to my parents with a brimful bag of our day’s catch.

‘boys, let me see what you got’. Showing him our balls (no innuendo intended), he asked if we had more. Sure we did, numbering in the 200’s.

Doing one of the worst deals of our lives, we sold our supply of balls to this guy for a paltry R40. That deal subsequently left me gutted. And i’ve never forgotten.
Had we been taken for a ride, was it bad business?.
The new owners were going to pelt those hard earned balls into the sea on their summer vacation. The balls and our start-up. Lost forever.

Namibian Border 17.08.2018

Scratching days off of my calendar from February, I’d finally put the last scrawl through August. It was hike time.
Bundled tight as a pack mule, and trained hard as a mountain goat, I was ever ready to beat a path through 5 days of the Fish River Canyon.
Buckled tight in the S3, the red brake callipers released, the needle flicking close to illegal, we crossed country, riding west into a setting sun.
The journey to Namibia was broke up in two with day one bookended in gravely icey Upington.

Gins and tonics, billies, beer and bbq. My neck, shoulder and back muscles released their hold. We began to ease.
Sun down. Sun Up. I arose like a lion. Goooood mooorning, Upppington.
Saddled in, we returned to tar, leaving behind some civility the ‘scape turned lunar.
The swath cut by the liquorice rope long drag heading towards the Namibian border became rockier, craggier and drier as we drove towards wilder west.
The flat-lined landscape broken by the alien like solar tower a beacon in the landscape.

2 hours and we were stopped parked at the South African border. Jumping out of the car we entered the buck teeth ugly orange face brick border buildings. The heavily treaded darker than death parquet floors lead me to the immigration officer.

Handing over my heavily thumbed passport,the immigration officer handled it deftly manipulating the pages as a card dealer in a kasbah avoiding the paper cut.

'You have a problem', he served.

Pivoting my neck to the left and to the right, then jabbing my index finger into my sternum, I returned serve straight at him, 'Who, me’?

Behind the riot-protection glass barrier, the officer smashed my shot with a flat forehand cross court, 'your passport expires tomorrow'.

Whipping it back with top spin, my eyes bulging in disbelief, and my mouth shifted far left, grinning, 'no, no, that can't be'.

Running to net for the volley placing the passport spatchcock-open against the glass he responded, 'but it is', pointing with his inked index digit at the next day’s expiry date, 'see'.

Running, lunging to retrieve the volley, I slid across the clay, coming up just short as the ball double bounced. First Set to the South African Immigration Officer.
Head in hands in disbelief , I ‘believed’ it’d all blow over.
'Please, please just stamp it', I pleaded.
Reluctantly, the South African officer stamped it. *bam bam*, 'I must warn you-the Namibians will not allow you through'.

5km later, shaking as an aging Muhammed Ali, I stood before a stern Namibian immigration officer.
Noticing I was an architect, he flashed me a tooth-filled smile. His bored demeanour turned to excitement. ‘so you can draw’?
‘i Sure can’. The guy while scanning the passport barcode was levitating with a marijuana filled joy. and then......
Then as dark clouds move vociferously to blank out a bright sun, the officer’s mood plummeted to deep anger on seeing the South Africans had led me this far.

Needing to document me, his eyes turned to rocket propelled grenades piercing skewering me stuck to the back wall, a camera firing me, my signature paving my way back to South Africa. With that all in place, I raised the question, ‘howsaaat?’ Responding, he raised his right arm parallel to the ground, looked left, then right, then finally dead at me, extending his index finger in my direction, he shouted, ‘youuuure out!!!!!'.

Game Set and Match

Deflated as a limp lung, I stepped out of the immigration building.
Yossi flagged down a pecan boer. Throwing my bag in the back, I jumped into his bakkie, his toebroodjies separating us on the long front seat. For two hours I lamented.

I hated life.
I booked a R3100 flight from upington to Johannesburg
Paid another R1000 for a 2 night stay at the BnB
and my rowing machine fund flew straight out the window.

The next day while all the okes were in the Canyon viewing the sequened Milkyway, or sipping handfuls of crystal clear stream water, and breathing fresh Namibain air, The Russian Bear Hunter was in aisle 6 of Pick ‘n Pay feeling the firmness of avocadoes.

blah 

Rishikesh, India 31.12.2017

On arrival on the last day of December, the hillside retreat burst at the seams as a vein-ey overly ripe grenadilla. I thought, ‘grief this must be a bankie of tree-hugging hippies readying themselves for a New Years do’. but as the sun set, *poof* the crowds dissipated. Lonely Planet informed me it was the fire lantern ceremony that attracted attention. And I missed it. Meh.

Sifting through the

deck of directional signage boards, following the red arrow to the Swiss Hill Top hotel, I arrived at my elevated residence. My room sat perched high with a scintillating view of the Ganga River and its cavernous banks. The night sky sparkled as the figure- hugging sequinned cocktail dress of the striking Liz Hurley. The icey biting cold of northern hemisphere December draped the town, pinching my cheeks red, and scouring my hands dry. The moment was surely sublime.
Familiarising myself with the town I walked a small distance, treated myself to fruity juicey naartjies and bent bananas, went back to my room, sat on the swing on the wooded deck, and with a twist of the bottle cap, sucked on my bev, and stared outwards as New Year’s eve tolled.

With the weather stiffening my toes, I headed inside. There a shaggy furry duvet lay. Having seen a lot in my short time, I knew that duvet had too. Fearing an STD if I touched its stiff hairs, I lay down on the bed’s edge as a cadaver in riga mortis with my beach towel covering me, barely. Keeping my hands close to my body and my eyes fixated on the glowing filament above, the long hour sent me to sleep.
If hotel duvets could talk.

The morning shed a bright light on all I couldn’t see the previous night. I wanted to see the Ganga.
The Ganga flows a deep dipped cerulean blue, cutting wide the ascendant Rishikesh in two halves, knotted together by two rickety swaying suspension bridges, their steel ropes tied taut as an angel’s harp strumming the hum of a gentle breeze. The organic grain of the river runs rapidly wide whispering its tranquil riverine composition.
The fine edge of the wandering sprawling river are hemmed in by the terraced ghats activated by the pious, the contemplater’s, the utilitarian, by the drifting cows, the westerner love birds.

Rishikesh is a hive of ashrams. The Beatles came, I think the Stones too. There they called The Maharishi their guru, practiced transcendental meditation and wrote albums, became their best thems.
I’m no Beatle, no song writer, but some seven years ago I practiced TM. I’m still trying to be my best me.

Chandigarh, India 28.12.2017

I’ve never forgotten what Chris Leung said to me one day in 2006 in YRM’s office in Kings Cross in London. “be aware dan, that the architecture of Italy, of Rome will  highlight your inadequacies. The greatness of the buildings will demonstrate to you the many years you have before you come in to your own.’ I had no idea what his ramblings meant. So I hitched on my backpack, slipped into my stove pipe jeans, popped my collar, and flew for 18 quid to Rome. Veni Vidi Vici. That year, I came I, saw, got drunk in a hostel on cheap Italian beer, and chowed gelato.

Fast forward 12 years.I arrived in Chandigarh, the modern-ist, and one of a select example of pre planned cities in all of India, if not the world. Chandigarh designed by Le Corbusier the French master architect  was constructed at the time of partition between India and Pakistan in the 1950’s. The then Capital city of the Punjab, Lahore was incorporated into Pakistan. The Punjab required now a new city in India. Chandigarh was to be their new home. The city was to be a modern Indian city Barry Peppered with works by the hands of Le Corb, and his assistants, Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.
It was for this reason I was in India.

Dropping into 5^th gear, the engine roared as we began leaving the mountainous region of Dharamshala. We’d begun our descent. With the altitudic plummet, the air sloshing around my lungs began to thicken up like whisked egg yolk. Cells sucked on life giving oxygen staving off cerebral aedema and my brain activity reverted to some sense of functionality. Staring into the rear view mirror the mountains shrunk behind me and all of a sudden I thought, ‘wow, I could climb those’.

We arrived in this northern city and on first greeting, its grided-ness offered some sense of orderly-ness.  Its orthogonal structure read as a balanced balance sheet.  The one two tree lined boulevards were meticulous, turning circles were round , and the traffic lights communicated red means stop, green means go and yellow means slow.

The hotel I unpacked in, sat inside a night club. That night, the clocked tolled 10, as I lay my head peacefully upon the white firm pillow eager for renewal, the heaving bass of the downstairs night club slowly began seeping, percolating through the concrete walls of my room getting louder and louder as the dj turned the dial from off to high. As the night darkened the thick heavy grooves and grinds got louder. The clinks of vodka-filled glasses and the rockin rollin of whiskey tumblers penetrated the feathered buffer of my cushion. The Indian Banghra was banging on inside my room. With my pillow crushed tightly against my head and cotton wool jammed stuck in my ears, serving no purpose, I tried to cry. Sleep was a distance away. As 7am struck, the sun came hurtling crashing through my hotel window like a fiery space shuttle breaching earth’s atmosphere, I could finally sleep…..and then my alarm clock kicked in, doo doo do doo doodo.

Wakey wakey.

I didn’t come to India to seek self, or to dig deep into bunny chow. I didn’t come to meet the love guru or lose myself. I didn’t come to drop the suspension on my car, or install a LED halo beneath my car’s chassis. Flicking the furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror, I shouted, ‘let’s do this. I didn’t travel this far to ride shot gun’, amping myself, this pilgrimage had begun.

The only way to view Le Corb’s Government Complex, is via a two hour guided tour.
Ready Player One.

Beginning the walk through the tightly tree lined path way towards the access gates into the complex, our tour group  burst through the brush into the open piazza on which 4 iconic edifices  rest. With the sun bouncing off the concrete plaza my eyes squinted. Disorientated, stumbling as a pummelled heavy weight brawler, catching myself, righting myself, i came to stood stiff in front of a most recognisable of Le Corbusier’s buildings, the High Court. Stood before this I’ve-seen-this-before-in-countless-books building, my eyes came crashed closed sending a tsunamic ripple across the pool of tears harboured in an indent of my skull, causing a wake of salty swell to gather heavily, gathering enough weight to come hurtling down my face.
Here i was before the greatest. I cried and I cried and I cried.

The High Court and the Legislative Assembly building are set upon a vast table cloth of concrete a very far distance apart. Facing each other.  She at one end and he at the other.  When you’re an architectural god, and space isn’t a constraint, you have the opportunity to write your own Genesis. With concrete the DNA of his magnus opus, Le Corb in his round black rimmed glasses makes the heavy material that is concrete moulding melding in to what is now iconic.
The High Court is presented as a large portal, a gate way. It sits in isolation, on a pedestal.  It’s the way the architecture god wishes us all to see and experience it. It’s presented as one dimensional.
The building with its definitive trio of powerful giant coloured walls jumps forth towards you forcing necks to crane, asserting authority. Their monolith is played in contrast to the adjacent human-scaled egg crate brise soleil pocked in De Stijl red, yellow and blue softening the brutal concrete, keeping the eyes flicking, dancing, breaking the suns harsh light.

Herded border-collie-like to The Open Hand Monument, we ran up and down stairs into the sunken amphitheatre shooting the giant Hand wind vane silhouetted against the bottle-water blue sky. Shooting, sketching, running. With time short it was a feeding frenzy. Piranha’s tearing at hunks of meat.
Moonwalking along the super flat surface we arrived at The Legislative Assembly. Heavy set, a point of authority. It dwarfs us humans, only the front door, designed and painted by Le Corbusier softens its handshake. It’s giant heavy roof sitting on narrow ‘columns’. A gargantuan cone bursts from the roof, a definitive beacon on the landscape-a skylight experienced only from within the legislative chamber.

As the day set to end I took in my first breath. My emotions spilled, shattered on the floor. Humbled. 12 years after Chris’ comments, I ‘got him’.