Walking in Cape Millay, Part One

okay.

For those reading, the distance between me and my home has been extended greatly for the next several months. A sea-distance away from three sisters kingdom.

I am falling in love with South Africa.
Cape Millay is a community on the west side of Capetown. It is tucked away past the Museum Mile, past the wild nights of Long Street, and past Queen Victoria's Botanical Gardens. A few sky scrapers rise from the pavement, but do not dwarf Table Mountain which holds court over the city. The mountain does seem to watch over everything - people refer to Capetown as the Mother City because from a distance the rocky skyline adopts the figure of a reclining woman, cradling the city. It is comforting. What a figure to take shape over a place that has also doubled as the boiling pot for a violent clash of politics, history, and humanity.
Cape Millay is about a ten minute walk from The Backpack - the hostel where I am staying. Row after row of two story cement houses nestle against cobble stone streets that push up against the side of the mountain. (Aproximately the mother's neck.) Each house is painted a bright pastel color that compliments the whole neighborhood ascetic. When I say pastel, do not imagine kitchsy easter-egg adds from Fred Meyer. Instead, these colors adopt a stoic dignity when carefully painted throughout the neighborhood. You can feel the care and time put in to each house. They have stood here for ages, but the pain is as fresh as yesterday. Pinkgreenturquoisepinktanyellowgreen. "This wouldn't work if one house was by itself," Tyler says next to me. "But together, this creates something beautiful." He is right, and we walk further in - entranced by the colors, the linen strung between windows to dry, the dog sleeping in the shady doorway. In the distance the call to prayer is heard from the top of a mint-green mosque.

By the Way, I'm In South Africa.

It is raining. Thick and heavy drops fall as if previously held in some giant's hands. Maybe Gods. We; 16 students, two adults, and a seven year old, run up the stone stairs of the Cape Town art museum. We've escaped the torrential downpour for now.




"Ja, there can be four seasons in one day in South Africa," We are warned by a tour guide.



June means winter for the residents of Capetown, but that doesn't keep the parks from being full of bright, juicy flowers and big game ducks with bright yellow eyes. The interior of the art museum echos the colors of the park outside, except for one exhibit. This section of the museum is dedicated to the black and white photography of Ranjith Kelly, an 85 year old artist from Durban.



In the last 85 years, Kelly has held a lens to the extreme climates of social, political, and economic change in South Africa. One picture in particular caught my attention. It depicted a man and woman, emerging from a public building. You can easily tell they are a couple - frozen in their walk; they lean towards each other. The man is Colored, the woman is White. The implications of this relationship are spelled out in the caption underneath; A couple exiting jailhouse after breaking Immorality Act: 1960.



Immorality act. When I was young, I was taught that being immoral meant stealing, or maybe hiding my little sister's barbies under her bed. As far as I could tell, these two individuals had commited neither attrocities. Wikipedia had the definition: "The Immorality Act (1950–1985) was one of the first apartheid laws in South Africa. It attempted to forbid all sexual relations between whites and non-whites."



In the museum, I sit down on the bench accross from the photograph. "What is morality?' I wonder. The word itself is an abstraction. Purity. an abstraction. There seems to be a strong link drawn between these two words in apartheid days. To be moral is to be pure, and vica versa. Intrinsicly woven together, these terms slip into the political rhetoric of world leaders seeking justify their ethnic cleansing or segregation policies.



Well, what are the consequences when these abstractions are projected onto people? The "Pure" are celebrated and justified. The "Impure" are de-humanized and repressed.



There is an obvious problem with this catagorizing. Human beings can never be fully contained by legislation. It's like trying to hold the whole ocean in your fist; eventually the moon calls it home. The tide ebbs out and over the crevaces, spilling out below. The whole process is impossible and unretainable.



But through the lens of powerful Purity, this is "defilement." Mixing seen as evil. New creations seen as evil. Reconcilliation seen as evil. These absolutists, these purticans, they are blind to the true implications of Imago Dei; In the image of God, Man was created.



Man; a word that isn't an abstraction. The word man is earth, love, hate, and as coloured as the flowers growing in the gardens of Capetown. What a blending of life! Thus South Africa is seeking to reconcile this human combination. However, they are not revenging the violence put upon the coloureds or the blacks through war or more violence. They are not creating a new enemy abroad. The opposite of an evil king is not a different king. It is an entirely different governance altogether; maybe one we have never heard of.



Maybe soon so much of the ocean will leak out of that blind fist. And when nothing is left for it to hold on to, what will happen? Outside of the fist lovers are reunited, families restored under one roof; A father kneels in the dust and holds his daugther again.

A Coffee Heart, and the Plentitude of God

 Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

                               Pied Beauty

    Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: 

                                                Práise hím.

Poetry is a Stubborn Art

The following is a quote from an Edward Hirsch essay. I love the way he teases meaning and connects dots, without forgetting a sense of empirical humaness. His interpretation and explanation of poetry is as clear as William Hazlitt. Mmm A True Critic; every century needs one. 

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"We live in a superficial, media-driven culture that often seems uncomfortable with true depths of feeling. Indeed, it seems as if our culture has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and deep remorse which may be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away. We want to divide it into recognizable stages so that grief can be labeled, tamed, and put behind us. But poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions. To grieve is to lament, to mourn, to let sorrow inhabit one's very being.

Robert Frost liked to distinguish between grievances (complaints) and griefs (sorrows). He even suggested that grievances, which are propagandistic, should be restricted to prose, "leaving poetry free to go its way in tears." Implicit in poetry is the notion that we are deepened by heartbreaks, that we are not so much diminished as enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish--to let others vanish--without leaving a verbal record. Poetry is a stubborn art. The poet is one who Will not be reconciled, who is determined to leave a trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art."

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Tyler Mccabe, what do you think? 

Anyways, I'm sitting here in the library with two essays hanging over my shoulders. I hope and pray I will be able to summon the creativity needed to string a few words together in logical order. logic. My Greatest Struggle. Otherwise I will be packing up and moving out soon. This episode of Seattle is about to end. Up next is South Africa and Other Travels, if you didn't know. But what a year, am I right? My plants on my dresser are dead; I forgot to water them. But my mind is not. My heart is not. I am alive! I am alive with unsounded depths! 

Oh the power of an exclamation. 

The library is closing, they are flickering the lights, we've got to get out of here. 

I Squint to See Love

Snow happens softly in Oregon. 

We finally know what the cold rain looks like

when the white appears.

Solid.

But so soluble. 

It is a comfort to see the falling of the snow. 

Like so many desires

waking up and finding themselves suddenly tangible. 

Bleary-eyed but here;

present. 

A voice asking you to go on. 

Or the touch of a dreamed-up lover.

When I walk out in the snow

I am among the presence

of fully realized dreams. 

Squinting,

creasing my eyes; 

the only way to look up and see it all.

I am reminded of photographs in the family attic.

Within them all is a small child; a daughter.

In one she is sleeping; her head rests on the belly of a house cat.

In another she pouts with her arms crossed in mock adult-hood.

You get the picture. 

The daughter is the picture

until you squint your eyes.

Only then can you notice a constant companion, 

always a bow in her hair.

Colors combed in with exact precision.

Intentional softness.  

I am reminded of snow when I see her bows;

tangible evidence from the dreams of 

another.

Let the Rhythm of the Snoring Carry You Away

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There are surprising positive consequences inherent in being the eldest sister.

For example, I always get the place I want to sleep in the hotel room. Not counting the master bed if the parental units are present, of course. But a pull out trundle? Right side, two pillows. Only a couch? I'll take that. In a family of three sisters one girl is always ousted to the floor, and it is my job to make sure that she is never me. Call me cruel, but I don't need no treaty of Westphalia to practice sovereignty, yo.

Actually don't call me cruel. I've had rough day - insults are not desired here. Another philosophy in how to obtain the best sleeping arrangements is to have a reputation for being the "best sleeper." In other words, I do not kick, bite, steal covers, and/or snore.* Bailey, on the other hand, is violent. If she ever wants to be a pacifist, she will first have to confront her sleep-self. Don't be fooled by the cute button nose - underneath the facade is a dreaming round-house kick to your sleeping face. Coincidentally, she is sleeping next to me right now. Tonight does not promise to be too crazy, but do pray for me. Never let your guard down. Let the rhythm of her snores serve as your reminder. I think I will build a pillow wall for safety.

Maddie, luckily, is not a threat tonight. She was bumped to the couch. At this point a collective sigh of relief is released everywhere. You see, Maddie is a sort of "viscous koala sleeper." It's a real thing. First she takes your covers. Than she wraps her arms and legs around you. Then she sleep talks in your face the rest of the night. This may sound cute to you, but rest assured that I know better. A Posteriori.

Thus, maybe out of pity they allow me to sleep where I want. They are self-aware. They know their powers. Oh the collective force of sisterhood.

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In other news, my day has not been rough. That was simply rhetoric I used earlier to illicit pity from my readership. Forgive me for showing you the man behind the curtain, but I wanted to enlighten you a little on my weekend.

I'll make it short and sweet:

Beach.
Sun.
Oregon.
Family.
Coffee.

Notice that essay-composing is not among the list of features present during the weekend. Um. I'll fix that, I promise.

Good thing blog posts like this exist in 198 miles, or people might start to suspect that I have literary intentions.
... But you and I know better.

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* comparative to others in my life; They kick, bite, steal covers, and/or snore worse than I do.

Like a Landslide

How do we learn to recognize?

My eyes work over the lines of your face and I immediately know I've seen the grooves of it before. Memory must live in the grooves of life.

Grooves of all sorts; ditches and dimples, cracks and corrugations. 

This weekend I drove over the pass of I-90 into eastern Washington. To a little town of Quincy, if you are familiar with the area. There is a canyon filled with the Columbia river winding its way past the town. It was good to behold so much space in a single landscape. I'm always too tucked away into my corner of Seattle. 

In a poem written from the point of view of a mirror, the great and terribly parlous poet Sylvia writes; 

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

I find that many people are mirrors. And many people are continually frustrated by opposing forces in their attempts to reach out and touch something. In that frustrated distance, however, exists a reflection. Pitching itself and folding in, our parts reflect a landscape. Always. 

As a teenager I would drive a specific route to high school every morning. Many early mornings would see me putting a fleetwood mac tape into my cassette deck and rolling over the Mollala River bridge to Canby High. Every clear morning would reveal Mt. Hood - a white peak set against the rose-tinted clouds of 7 am. 

It was a sort of liturgy for me. I would clear the little hill and immediately the visage of the mountain would be beside me. And in my head, I would repeat; "I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. I have looked at it

so long

I think it is a part of my heart."

Until it was. It is. 

Whose visage are you seeking, my friend?

Of whom is the reflection in your heart?