It’s six in the morning. I’m unable to work. My mind refuses to concentrate. Instead it keeps wondering to the song that’s playing on the radio; Ain’t No Way To Treat A Lady by Leta Mbuli. Ain’t No Way To Treat A Guy, I guess in my case, because it has distended some unpleasant memories of my last romantic affair where I came out badly singed.
The tongue always goes for the rotten cavity around the teeth.
To understand, or rather put in proper perspective the pain; I must begin about a decade ago. I’m seating at a vantage point where Fort Frederick stands in Port Elizabeth. I liked going there when I wanted to clarify things in my mind. The splendid view of Baankens River collapsing to the sea near harbour calmed my nerves. I don’t know whether it is because the first river mouth I’ve ever seen was Umzimvubu, at Port St Johns, where the river water becomes violent as they try to resist the fate of being consumed by the sea, but I always found it strange that Baakens River is so acquiescent to its fate, like a sheep being led to slaughter. I suppose Umzimvubu is a goat among rivers.
It was never far from me to wonder what could have been the reaction of the first Quena or Kung, whom history has grudgingly calls Hottentots and Bushman respectively, or the first Xhosa, as they watched the first ship deck at what later became know as Algoa Bay. What a strange phenomena indeed it must have been, a house floating on water, coming from it, white people with flowing hair like maize hair, whose “ears lighted” when hit by the sun.
I was wondering about such things when my cell phone rung in rather cold windy May afternoon in 1998. My sister was on the other side informing me that our father had just died.
I had not lived with my father since I was about ten years old, when my parents divorced. So the heavy impact of the message came to me as a strange order of things. He died from perforated peptic ulcer.
I had lately then been feeling a compelling need to know my identity and the identity of my nation. His death intensified that feeling. I had been living in the city of Port Elizabeth, if truth must be told, more in retreat from my failures and trying to find a new direction for my life.
The kind of tourism I prefer is that suggested by Nietzsche, whereby we learn how our societies and identities were formed by the past, to form a new sense of continuity and belonging.
The Baakens water went calmly to their fate as if nothing had happened between the thirty seconds I averted my eyes from it to learn of my father’s death and my dropping of the phone. Rivers do what they do best, flow to their destinies.
Deep calls unto deep.
Deep called unto deep. My father’s life to mine.
Rivers are instructive and fascinating to watch. In a river stream there’re levels of flow. Where there are inhibitions swirls occur. A swirl creates noise but does not run deep. If it tries to take short cuts it often eddies, spins off and die, due to lack of depth, or scatter into a swamp. If the eddy is lucky it gets caught up again in the deeper current of the river to become part of the wider, silent stream again.
No stream runs higher than its source.
Parents are natural channels for the run of their children's lives. Without banks channels become swamps that breed infectious diseases. Channels that are too deep become chocking dungeons where children can’t breath, or take a better view of the world. Channels of proper depth and right direction, like a river, carry their children as tributaries to the fertile depths of the ocean, where life gestates life.
There’s a harsh finality about death that changes one’s angle of looking at things. When death invades memories crowd. Neat words and phrases run dead on wounded hearts. My father’s death left me with a strong sense of incompleteness. It is folly to expect to express a lifetime of emotions overnight with a throbbing heart. The best we can hope for is to reclaim what we’ve experienced, and perhaps, if we’re lucky, disperse the ambiguity of our memory.
My father had a patient disposition and weary compassion; kind to the hilt. People easily warmed up to him. He was a man of withdrawing silences. He spent most of his time in his rural areas where he now lies buried.
There’s something insincere about the tenderness I feel for my father since he died. Due to my neglect, I had no inclination to access and express my love for him when he was alive. It is hypocrisy and an attempt to flatter vanity to do so in his absence. What’s the use of sayings things to the dead we couldn’t say to them when they were alive. Why must our heroes always lie in graves? What was this unexpected grief I was feeling? These were the thoughts that run through my mind.
We’re all driven by instincts that transcend our own volition and understanding; by an all-encompassing Reality that shapes our rough-hewn desires.
My life is driven by tragedies (Tupac).
Algoa Bay, is now the Nelson Mandela Bay. Testimony to the winds of change. I don’t like change; but things that remain the same irritate me more.
At he banks of Baakens river I felt as if I was standing at the shore of immensity. The daunting task of it all; having to collapse to the all consuming sea; to disappear in the depth of the deep blue sea.
II
The time has come for me to say what my heart believes for my mind to prove it. If I fail, at least I’ll have a consolation of having tried to let the runnels and streams interfere with my deserts. The future is too distant, the past too deep, and my heart is diseased. “Diseased”? That’s a strong word for a broken heart.
The rivers will neither harm nor assist you.
That’s thing isn’t it. We get no help from the elements. What is the use of philosophy if it does not banish pain? If even an enlightened mind feels the pain when it collides with its heart?
Bendiba uthondo lwethu lolwanaphakade
Shiya, ndishiye sithandwa, ndidanile!
I thought our love was going to last forever
Leave me, leave me darling, I’m disappointed. (Leta Mbuli)
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