Serendipity

Dusk falls on a little dorpie called Belfast

Serendipity: The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

The past 2 weeks have shot by like a pair of shooting stars across a brilliant night's sky. Have you ever seen shooting stars? If you blink, you'll miss them. Even if you don't, you might wonder if what you saw was real.

I feel a bit like that. I've had a lot of fun today after being stuck for hours yesterday with a crashing Windows Movie Maker. I finally found and terminated a conflicting codec. Being sleep deprived for much of Fietstoer (Cycle Tour) meant that it does sometimes feel like a dream. Fortunately there is a decent amount of photographic material, and even video to disprove that. I'm on Day 5 of the DVD I've called Lig/Light. Video brings a satisfying intimacy, a much greater immediacy to images...It's the combination of sounds, and moving images, that add the final, all important flourishes.

I wish I could lock myself in a room and play Spielberg for at least a week. Unfortunately, I have only one day left, and in it I have to squeeze in a lot.
This week I start teaching Economics and Business Studies to Std 8's at Brebner High School. My mom's side of the family were in Bloem recently to attend Brebner's 100th anniversary. My mom was Headgirl at a very different school. It's going to be weird teaching there after Korea, and after going to school at Grey. But, I think, also an interesting and positive experience.

Discipline is a factor at Brebner, I'm already well aware of that. I think they chose me because I'm a male teacher and because I toughed it out in Korea for 4 years. It's probably obvious that I have good mental endurance. Justus told me that his mom suggested being very tough with the kids for the first 2 weeks. And then being a little more friendly. Will do.

Emotionally it's been a real rollercoaster the last few weeks. So many new faces have come into my life, and also blasts from the past. Fransa and I have been through a rocky period, but we've come through so far with a much better understanding of each other and ourselves. So far she's rededicated herself to stop smoking. Tammy also made an appearance, and today I took her for a spin in the Megane. She showed me some pictures and we spoke quite seriously about where our lives were going. It's strange and bewildering to see her again at 23...when I last knew her, and lived with her, as a cheeky sister, a dark haired little girl. I also met some lovely people on the Tour...like Ize Marie, Lizaan, Porter, PJ...too many really to mention. I'll try though, to post a diary of the 12 days over the course of the next 2-3 weeks.

I have quite a few ideas on how to apply my energies to the Brebner work experience. There's The Bugle, Brebner's newspaper, that I'd like to develop. I'd like to really educate the kids on how to use computers and the internet, especially in terms of researching homework. I'd like the Asian kids (I guess all of them) to correspond with other kids in Taiwan and/or Korea, and possibly work together on similar issues. Will speak to the teachers I know in those countries. I'd also like to make a DVD for the school, for each semester.
With enough practise (in film) I might use the next school vacation to do a road trip and interview guys like Colin McClelland and other guys at Eskom and Sasol and do a sort of Michael Moore cheapie/documentary on the Energy Situation in South Africa. And then write a book on it.

The GQ story is in stasis at the moment. Just don't have time to focus all my energies on it. Will have to email what I've already done, or block out a weekend and become a hermit so I can finish it.
Also bought WEG and GETAWAY with a view to sending them a pitch for Sendingfietstoer. I also think it will be wise to get the abbreviated Fietstoer story in the next issue of Heartland, because 6 months from now I am not sure if people will really care that much.

But first it's work at Brebner, moving out of 108 and into the hostel, and figuring out how to be a teacher and a student at the same time. On top of that I need to balance sport, and coaching, and try to maintain the guise of a - GASP - writer. My primary functionaility, as I see it, is to write. To communicate on the urgent matters - matters really of crisis - that we are faced with. I'm sure there's some good I can do as a teacher (but masquerading as a crusading journalist).

Many of the vital issues have become so cliched that people are unable to actually think about them. In the same way that the word God is an almost useless term (Being is better, in terms of being actually meaningful), so too, have the implications behind the empty banners of Climate Change, Peak Oil and H5N1 become decolorised and seemingly unimportant. In terms of Climate Change, I read a report indicating that there were 400 tornadoes in some or other American state...unusal both because of the number and for them being unseasonal. The tornadoes are only supposed to be due later this year. 400!

I worry that within weeks, the world we know will be forever changed. But disease, or war, or simply that the carrying capacity - which has already been far exceeded - starts to unravel. It really seems that we are in a multiple catastrophe (AIDS etc) and yet our behaviour is modulated by TV, easy motoring, the mall and sports. We ought, I sometimes imagine, to all run down the streets in unadulterated panic...knowing where we are in the world and what is about to be unleashed.

But I am happy that we can still celebrate life in the meantime. And I do, and I want to encourage others to do the same. Celebrate with your body. Run, swim, cycle, laugh, and dance. For tomorrow we may be dead.

And then there is the issue of buying a car. I'm thinking a Panda, for just under R100 000. But realistically, if I took the advice of Mr Kunstler, I ought to buy a beat up second hand mobile for less than R10 000. The emphasis should possibly not be on fuel efficiency, but on a car you almost never drive. The Panda purchase does not fit in with my views of consumption, or of congruency. The last thing we need, is another car on the road. And if anyone is aware of that, it's me. So what to do? I will buy a Raleigh Hybrid for the interim, and make up my mind further into the week about how committed I want to be to being another daily consumer of fossil fuels once more. Buying second hand seems a better bet too...

It's possible the world will ticker along for two or three more years before nature bites back in ways that we notice (lost pounds of flesh, bite wounds etc). It may be less, three or four months, or weeks. Gold clearly shows that the world is facing an imminent crisis.

Wisdom, as I see it, is to learn to begin to live lives congruent with reality. Living in sustainable ways.

The message of Easter is one of renewal. Rebirth. Revival. Let's turn towards the road ahead of us with happy hearts, and steely resolve. The road is long, but it doesn't need to be more difficult than it will be.