Booby Traps

Is one of the symptoms of intelligence that one is more prone to illusions (loose translation - flights of fancy causing acts of stupidity?)
Or do illusions stem from a sort of emotional instability. And is this instability rooted in a rootless existence, a life of inconsistency. I wonder.

I've taken the step of sending Dylan Muhlenberg at GQ a link to Supertramps (renamed Blood and Dust) on this blog. I haven't heard from him since March, and I emailed him before I went on the Fietstoer. I've just emailed him a basic message asking him why I haven't heard from him in 3 weeks. I'll obviously approach Africa Traveller if GQ turns out to stand for Rude Boys. Disappointing.

My suspicion that I might win R1000 in the reporter.co.za competition also proved to be false. Thus I am a lot less motivated to provide material, and why not, I am extremely sleep deprived and so far this week haven't even had time to train. Meanwhile my original offer (of employment by the school governing body) has been rescinded, or replaced by a Departmental offer. That means more money. Yummy.

Brebner is another example of shattered illusions. Well, not totally. We had hall today and it is so full (to overflowing) that the 42 or so staff members stand in the aisles, or outside. They've swung around the whole building, so that students fill up the bowels of the stage, and the back end is where the headmaster creeps in behind a small podium squashed against the wall. The podium is small, and behind it is a giant wooden cross - presumably to bolster whatever message emanates from the podium. I thought Mr Taylor spoke fairly and elegantly and bravely, but the back end of the message was loaded with...well, talk of retribution, expulsion, and general weariness of bad behaviour.

That's pretty much how my day went. Started strong, this time in the Economics class. But by midday sleep deprivation started clawing at my eyelids and my engine was barely turning in the final few minutes.

Meanwhile, no one is more disappointed than me to see oil inching towards $73. I would have liked to have been proved fantastically incorrect, that my arguments for peak oil somehow had a single but crucial flaw. But so far, it seems we are headed for austerity. I mean, the American driving season (which provides its own cyclical fluctuation - upwards - to the fuel price) isn't even upon us. Neither is hurricane season. Lord knows where the price of a barrel will be by the end of the year. Seems painfully far away.

Work is lousy. For most people, work is an unpleasant reality. Work is not fun. Work = Depression. The trick is, I guess, to find a way to make work as unlousy as possible. Find things to inspire you at work, find ways to thrive - like a cactus in a desert, or a seagull floating over endless ocean.

I am feeling the strain of speakling so much English and then Afrikaans. I am really tired of it. I'd like to just be speaking English... I think I am just tired.

Recently I've had some interesting flashbacks of fietstoer, including some retrospectives from some of the people on it. It's interesting looking at the photos (and experience) of some of the girls (oh, boys too). Everyone had a very different experience. I think why I enjoyed it so much is based largely on the cycling element, and the competitive element. In terms of the social aspect, I thought I had a good time, but I guess when it comes to the laws of attraction, people are not always reasonable. Words and behaviour do not always add up - even in a milieu of Christian love and kindness, and apparently integrity, and at a minimum the laws of attraction have the semblance of being impractical, and at maximum, of being spiteful.

I wonder how much growing up to do I still have? And how much of it is dealing with people who aren't grown up at all (and might never be).

How can I be more specific. How can I provide details without naming names and appearing indiscrete. It's at times like this that I wish this blog had a more private audience. Perhaps it does.

I suppose that long haul period with Samantha, where I know I was used - because I had a car, because I had some money, because I had passion and a plan, because I had cool friends - and she was just young and pretty...it feels like that period of sacrifice, or waste...feels like I went there again. Just quickly. I think that period with Sam was really one sided for a very long time. I don't think it's any accident that I am so reluctant to commit, after being so committed once upon a time and seeing how wonderful and then terrible it can turn out. I'm not crying about unfairness - just that life does not always reward work, people don't always reward or respond to loyalty or other virtues. Often their attention is being directed by illusions, or worse, appetites...

It must be really difficult to be an unattractive girl. People must appear fantastically shallow.
I suppose I have seen the folly in second guessing one's intuition. When you get a glimpse of someone, in a moment of something they say or do, dwell on it for a moment extra. And if it happens again, beware. Beware how you invest your time. Invest it wisely, but don't wish you hadn't once you have - then it is a double waste of time, and a useless waste of present moment happiness. Rather spend that brooding time swimming, or playing computer games. But don't waste time going over other periods of wasted time, and life.

I remember when I was regularly dating 21 year olds, realising how dangerous I found them. Why? Indecisive. Unable to make up their minds. Certain, then uncertain. Unable even to explain to themselves their own feelings. Very whacky. Very shaky. Who wants to be used as a stepping stone, a crutch, a measuring shoe, a sock in a shoe shop, a ladder? The beauty and cruelty, and stupidity, of youth. So easily swayed. So powerfully passionate. So intransigent. So flippant. So fickle. So fine. And so easily trapped by the webs they weave for others.

I've made the mistake of making some comparisons - I guess in the touchy feely aspect of the Fietstoer - and it stings that some people are obviously more popular (aka attractive...physically beautiful) than others. Some other things too, but I'm not going to be specific.

I have to turn my mind back to what was meaningful to me. It was the roads. The landscapes. The sun on us. I found God, in two little birds, in one sweeping shot when I was alone in the hills. That was the best moment for me. And yes, the many young faces, the silliness, the magnanimous smiles.
If only our intentions could be pure. If only our lives could really be as honest as the grass on the fields. Life is an adventure, and if we were all pure, we'd all be clones, and there'd be nothing left to untangle, no tragedies to write, no romance, no heroism. Life is as good as it is, and to resist that reality, is always gonna be painful.

Now I have much to be grateful for.
I have a job, and since my writing career has recently hit a long and empty road, not a moment too soon.
I've got accomodation, and Fransa's family rose up like a army, attaching curtains, making the bed, they're even sending the maid tomorrow.
I'd made plenty of new friends. That has been a source of ongoing delight.

I think I need to sit down by myself, on some high place, or some dark place, or some quiet space, and just be quietly grateful. And happy. And unconcerned with the dark alleys and people sitting awake in them, whoever they are and whatever the reasons behind them being there...

Finally, I think about the next few months and in a global sense, I become aware of a growing austerity. Having been on this Fietstoer, I have a strange fear. I believe we will soon see the Great Saviour - religion - rising like a phoenix to save us in an increasingly grim domain. God is going to come back in full force again - God as the hero. God as the only solution. It's going to be a time when we most need to cast away our illusions. Religion, of course, is full of them. We're going to need to be spiritually strong, and our faith needs to be directed to the real God. That will depend on to what extent we lose our illusions about him, and about ourselves, I suppose.

I believe Bloemfontein is a place on Earth where the community is small enough to hold together, and isolated enough, to be left out of the tensions and flux in the world - I mean, when it is at an intense level.

Vomitty burp. Looking at the above paragraph one could swear I'm on a powerful course of antidepressents. I think I just need to get some sleep, and get out on the road and train.

Tomorrow is civvie and beanie day at school. Will get some pictures and probaby wear my resurrected Chamonix headgear. I need to rest. I hope when I return - having slept and perhaps dreamed - I will also have recovered a sense that most people are basically good, and basically decent. Not so sure at the moment.