Leisure Wheels Cover feature - Out Now!

My sister called me quite late last night, saying "Well done" etc etc. And I was like. Whoah-Kai. Slow down. She said she'd snatched up a copy of Leisure Wheels, and the cover feature is my article (well, Part 1).

So I doddled off to the nearest shop, nothing there, but found a copy at an Engen Quickshop. Well I must say leisure Wheels got a damn good deal. After sending them text and images, they asked for a 'package' so I quoted them R3500. They're certainly gotten value out of it - they've used like a dozen photographs (two full page spreads) and split the story down the middle to carry it over two issues. For me it's a measly R1750 per article, but hey, it's not a bad start in terms of exposure in these sort of magazines.

I would have preferred using this sort of thing for the cover:

The image below was used as a two page spread. Nice shot but blown up over two pages the bokkies distorted a bit. A 7 Megapix camera can only do so much.

Below is some of the gear we had on the trip.

Botswana: A diamond in the dark

Botswana’s neighbors cast cold dark shadows over Africa’s brightest hope

Botswana is Africa’s overachiever. It has the strongest currency on the continent, and up until now, the healthiest economy. Per capita the people of Botswana are Africa’s richest residents. Having said that, Botswana is a diamond rich but very sparsely populated country; in fact Botswana and its western neighbor Namibia are two of the world’s emptiest countries.

Botswana’s longest border is shared with South Africa, the powerhouse of the African continent. Botswana gets by far the majority of its power from this neighboring powerhouse, but South Africa has recently become a victim of its own success. Rapid growth and the failure to anticipate spiraling electricity demand has meant South Africa’s power utility (Eskom) must significantly reduce supply to Botswana in order to try to keep the lights on at home.

Botswana has only one power station, which produces a fraction of its own energy (around 110-120 MW). While South Africa has undertaken a contractually agreed staggered ‘stepping down of power supplied’, from about 400MW in 2008 to approximately a quarter of that value by 2010, Botswana and South Africa will together build a new coal-fired plant in eastern Botswana that will eventually address both countries power needs.

Blackouts in the interim

But if the impact of blackouts have damaged growth prospects in South Africa, and in particular curtailed South Africa’s mining industry (a major user), Botswana (the world’s largest producer of gem diamonds) will find itself entirely paralyzed at times.

I experienced this firsthand during a trip to South Western Botswana earlier this year when we entered the country at McCarthy’s Rest. Being one of the world’s emptiest countries (Botswana’s population ratio to South Africa is 1:20) we tried to fill up our fuel tanks immediately after crossing the border. We discovered the power was out, so fuel pumps didn’t work. We waited for hours, with the locals having no clue when power was likely to resume. The blackouts we experienced in January in Botswana appeared to be random, and lasted for a large proportion of the day.

Meanwhile, Botswana shares its eastern border with a country struggling through an altogether different power struggle. Zimbabwe’s woes by now are well known. While Botswana’s dry and empty deserts provide a buffer against Zimbabwe’s million-strong refugees (channeling them towards South Africa instead), Zimbabwe’s problems certainly do not promote trade; thus regional development is negligible between the two countries. And since South Africa also exports energy to Botswana’s other regional neighbors (Mozambique and Namibia) all Botswana’s other energy bets are off.

It is estimated that 80% of Botswana’s foreign exchange earnings are based on the sale of diamonds. Right now the reduced supply of gold and platinum due to electricity shortages at South African mines – and South Africa is the world’s leading supplier of both these vital minerals – in the same way we can expect an impact on Botswana’s mining industry.

Given the forced shut downs of mining activities in Botswana over the long term, it is likely that we will begin to see the price of diamonds begin to skyrocket. So if you’re intending to buy that engagement ring, do it now.

How Close Are You To Nature? (PHOTOGRAPHY)

NVDL: This is pretty darn close ;-)

NVDL: And er...so is this ;-)

The Best of Botswana (PHOTOGRAPHY)

So you think I'm a good photographer? These photographs were all taken by my father, and make my stuff look like fingerpaintings. It's good to have more Nature content now, as I feel 'Nature' is such an important resource for what is vital and good. Don't you get a sense of that just looking at these images?

More.

Botswana (PHOTOGRAPHY)

Click here to view additional footage.

The Call of the Kalahari

The land with the fewest human beings is filled with life

Shakespeare, in Richard II:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demiparadise
This fortress built by nature for herself

It is no accident that one of the last refuges for wild animals on our planet happens to be the least inhabited by human beings. Botswana is one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries. It is half the size of countries like South Africa and South Korea, but less than 2 million people live in this Thirstland.

Botswana is situated in the centre of the African plateau, in line with the Tropic of Capricorn. It is landlocked; in the South by a 1800km border with South Africa, to the west by the equally arid and sparsely populated Namibia, and flanked on the East by troubled Zimbabwe. Botswana is Africa’s most successful democracy. It was once a Protectorate, known as Bechuanaland, under Britain for some years, as there were fears that South Africa’s Boers would take over the land. It was also the last domain of the world’s most endangered people, the hunter gathering Kalahari Bushmen.

Today, thanks to its diamond wealth – Botswana is home to the world’s largest and second largest diamond mines (Jwaneng and Orapa) – it has a currency stronger than South Africa’s. Beyond mining activities, there is not enough water for cattle or farming of virtually any sort. Hence the locals have left massive tracts of Thirstland unattended, unfenced, running wild.

The country is covered by a mantle of sand, the largest continuous mantle in the world. This is the heartland of the Kalahari.
The animals have adapted to the extreme conditions, and with sensory perception beyond our human faculties, are able to migrate to where it rains. These instincts, and man’s absence, have allowed wild animals to thrive in unusual abundance. Botswana, for example, has one of the world’s largest elephant herds. Interestingly, the Africa’s desert elephants are larger than their forest dwelling cousins, and are physically the largest terrestrial animals in the world.

Geologically the landscape is unusual, some would say it is an incredibly flat, featureless wasteland. But in the northeast is the massive desert oasis of the Okavango Delta, caused by a geological shift that has spun a river headed out to sea back into the desert. The result is crystal clear water and palm trees for thousands of square kilometers in what would otherwise be hot, dusty bushveld.
In the northeast are the world’s largest salt pans, the Makgadikgadi, visible from space. The Kalahari area was once submerged under large seas and lakes, hence the sandy beach residues and pans and the flatness that typifies the region.

What is unique about visiting the Kalahari is that the visitor is presented with a genuine wilderness experience. In order to reach the Transfrontier game parks in the south east – like the Mabuasahube (the name means ‘red sand’) – a grueling drive has to be undertaken on sandy roads. It is a 4x4 haven, but vehicles need to be rigged with extra fuel tanks, and ought to be stocked with plenty of food and water. Satellite phone is the only device to connect to the outside world. A breakdown in Botswana can be dangerous if one does not have a backup.

But the lack of human infrastructure, in fact an almost absolute absence in many parts, allows for a much closer connection to the animals. It is unique that in Botswana, wild animals such as lions, elephants and many other creatures, may visit humans at their campsites. Remember there are no fences. It is easy to become complacent, and to imagine, having been brought here by a powerful technology, that here man is also master of the universe. This deception is quickly corrected when one comes face to face with a lion. The look in the lion’s eye is a look of power. Although man is not the natural prey for lions, caution is advisable. If lions are seen during the day or night one should simply walk calmly to one’s vehicle and get inside.

It is a thrilling experience living on such terms with nature, looking over one’s shoulder, cautiously operating in the wilderness. It is a way of living that was once natural for us; it made us alert and mindful of our surroundings in every detail. The recent movie Into The Wild demonstrates to what extent joy and self discovery are part and parcel of the wilderness experience. This personal discovery of the natural world is what makes the Kalahari compelling.

Into The Wild Kalahari

My father has travelled to Botswana, the country that has by the far the longest boundary with ours, several times a year for the last twenty years. Each time he comes back with stories about lions and wild animals. This year, my sister and I went with him to see whether the Kalahari Wilderness is such a big deal.

Our road to Botswana is neither easy nor trouble free. The Landrover has a defective clutch. By Saturday, the Landrover has still not received any attention (after sitting in the shop since Tuesday). Saturday is the day we are scheduled to leave, and the first day of my annual leave. Work finally starts up at the dealership on Saturday morning. An attempt to drive to Kuruman on Saturday evening has to be aborted 36km outside Bloemfontein. Bookings have to be cancelled and rescheduled. By Monday morale is plumbing the depths and my annual leave is fast trickling down the holiday drain.

At last the Landrover is declared ‘repaired’, (it’s midday Monday, and R9000 in mechanic’s fees later). We head off down the long road that takes us into the sunset.

The road will take us west to Kuruman, through the border at McCarthy’s rest, up to Tsabong, and then into the pans of Mabuasehube. But just outside Kuruman, a final omen: after being on the road for over 400km, a fire in the engine burns what seems like our last hopes of getting into the wild. A blast from a compact red extinguisher we have on board quickly extinguishes it. What now? Anyone else, going anywhere else would have given up and gone home long ago. Not us.

It turns out that the fibre glass above the turbo caught alight. After a little tentative analysis we decide that we may be able to continue at 90km/h or less (without activating the turbo). True enough. But it is on the road sukkeling with the vehicle that I realize to what extent the buy in is on this trip. It’s HUGE. Even I am dismissive of OUR VEHICLE CATCHING FIRE, saying: ‘90km/h turns out to be just above the conventional maximum speed one would be travelling on dirt roads anyway.’

There is something mythical about travelling in a fully rigged Landrover over an increasingly desolate landscape; there’s something about it that whips up the Wanderlust. And even with its defects, it is still a smooth sail; it is still an incredible vehicle. My father says: ‘80% of all Landrovers are still on the road. The other 20% have reached their destinations.’

The Landrover is the classic outdoor vehicle. Ours is not unusual: it has a wooden platform for daytime game viewing, photography or sleeping safely out in the open. The raised platform on the roof also has a convenient flap down tent and is otherwise an entirely self-reliant unit for several days; it has a large 80 liter diesel fuel tank with a specially designed 60 liter spare tank, a space engineered refrigerator (using very low voltage), a tap under the spare wheel connected to a large drum of water, and plenty of resources designed into its sturdy infrastructure.

At Hotazel the clutch plate begins to slip again. R9000 has already been spent in Bloemfontein to repair this problem. Under the Hotazel sign, about 100km from Kuruman, my father says: “We have to make a decision now. We can turn back, or go on and possibly breakdown in the middle of nowhere.” Interestingly, no one offers a response.

The tar road gives up. Soon after cellphone signals are permanently gone. We just keep going through splashes of rain.
Road signs become scarce, we pass virtually no traffic. The surface becomes less gravelly and widens, and the landscape transforms into an almost featureless series of low bush covered dunes.

We notice Botswana’s border facilities are better than ours, and also, there is a tar road on the Botswana side.

Dogmatism seems to pay off in the Kalahari. At the small dustbowl settlement of Tshabong, 30km from the border, we find a mechanic. Rusty diagnoses the problem within seconds (the clutch being set too high), has an assistant make a few adjustments, and charges us nothing. A test drive confirms that the problem has been repaired (and for the rest of the trip, the clutch did not slip again, not a single time). Not long after that inbound electricity from South Africa was restored to Tshabong, and the garage was able to turn on the pumps and fill up our diesel tanks.

Tshabong is the last human settlement. We are now heading towards a system of pans at Mabuasehube (which means ‘red earth’). The ruts in the road grow so deep we are able to drive, even follow curves in the road, without touching the steering wheel. En route we pass two entirely burnt out 4x4’s. They catch alight, my father explains, because the exhaust gets extremely hot and long blades of grass break off and begin to wedge in the undercarriage. The sand in many places here is red, and I wonder, recalling the movie Blood Diamond – and since the land is so entirely devoid of human beings – how much Bushmen blood was spilled here.

The animals, herds of them, including some of Africa’s largest elephant populations, survive here because animals understand the trickery of erratic rainfall in the Kalahari Thirstland. They smell and migrate across the fenceless landscapes towards the rain. The only humans who learnt this superhuman skill disappeared when the giant diamond mining companies moved in, and animals have had the run of the place – most of it – ever since.

Botswana, along with Australia and Namibia, are in the top three most sparsely populated countries in the world. Less than two million people in a country half the size of South Africa, means vasts areas are entirely without humans, and human contrivances like roads, fences, telephones or power lines. . Man, who pretends to be the master of the universe, is almost entirely absent throughout Botswana. As such, the sterile conditions that man procures are also absent. Instead, landscapes are revealed that are comparatively untouched by the hand of man. Life flourishes, even in these extreme and sandy circumstances. Our first night is a chorus of barking gecko's and the demonic screetch of a barn owl whose shelter we have annexed for the night.

The setting for our first night is Lesholoago Pan – a name meaning ‘Death’. We’re greeted when we arrive by a chorus of barking geckoes and the demonic screech of a barn owl whose shelter we have annexed for the night. We’re told to keep our eyes peeled for lions, and if we see them, we’re all expected to walk calmly to the Landrover, get in, and sit tight. The joke is that whoever is dumb enough to walk ought to be guzzled by a lion.

‘Death Pan’ ironically is the site of my father and his sidekick’s worst ever encounter with a young group of lions, who terrorized them for hours, during the course of which my father’s friend made several promises which he continues to honor to this day (including going to church every consecutive Sunday and religiously paying his taxes). Gautengers, used to crime and rolling blackouts, ought to be particularly comfortable sitting in the dark and looking over their shoulders all night in Botswana.

The pans have a subtle, hypnotic beauty. They formed during the latter part of the Quaternary Age, as a result of massive climate change. They may well be waiting for us in the distant future (if we live to survive that long).

At Mabuasahube Pan, the only pinkish Pan in Botswana (and rumored to be the top of a kimberlite pipe) we make friends with an entire community of ground squirrels, a jackal (we call him Jacque Kallis , who also visits us in the day), and a very dedicated hornbill, who ferries the occasional nut to squawking chicks holed up in a nearby dead tree trunk. My father calls it the ‘Kalahari chicken’; and the hornbill is an oddity. For such a cheeky looking bird it makes an incredibly soft and modest clucking noise.

The game we encounter in the sub elliptical depressions of the pans appear to be in excellent nick. Gemsbok, with the markings of tropical khaki fish, gleam in the sun. They are uniquely endowed with a collection of capillaries in their snouts, enabling their brains to endure slightly cooler conditions and giving them the resilience to withstand hellish external conditions. We find a small herd of Springbuck with plenty of little bokkies, and then a male sprints off effortlessly, bok springing as he goes, and is soon a distant speck. I am awed by this simple display of raw and effortless speed energy.

On the eve of an incredibly fierce storm, with lightning so continuous it seems as if we are sitting under an very erratic fluorescent light, we encounter the deadliest scorpion in Southern Africa. It is capable, we find out later, of spitting its venom into its victims eyes. Centipedes here are a foot long.

Our last night is spent at Mpaathutlwa Pan, which means ‘Giraffe’s stomach’. The pan is silver from plenty of rain. We see Blesbok, and a murder of crows. Many moths – who seem immune to our torchlights – converge on open cans of lemonade and Hunter’s Dry. We eat a delicious stew enjoying the firelight and the shadowy presence of another jackal.

We encounter many creatures besides, communal spiders, acrobatic birds, termite eating mice, the world’s largest flying bird but no lions. In the wilderness of Botswana, campers naturally run the risk of close encounters with the big five. We do not see any lions, but hear from rangers that they are around. We are half relieved, half disappointed about the lions and deeply imbued with the freedom and tranquility of a desert filled with so much nature.

Botswana is the place to listen to your loneliness. A great space to probe one’s inner space. It is the perfect venue for those seeking a true ‘wilderness experience’. As I write this, Rusty is sitting somewhere in Tsabong drinking from a bottle of whiskey we gave him on our way out, while a firing squad is en route to a certain Landrover dealership in Bloemfontein.

Botswana (PHOTOGRAPHY)

E is for Argus

My starting time is at 7am, and I'm in Group E. Last year I was in Group C, and I have to admit, they were too strong for me. I'm very happy with E, although I have some work to do still to earn that place. Several visits to Northcliff are definitely on the cards.

I was very aware that spending 5 days in Botswana was not going to help my training (for the Ironman and the Argus), particularly the beer swilling and constant braaiing and biltong gnawing. So I was surprised after my 2km swim last night to find my weight still below 85kg.

I went to gym first thing this morning with Alex. It was quite funny. We started with 10 pullups, I did my usual 10, buit he could barely manage 4 or 6. But he got me back. We did dips in the very last exercise, and he did 6 or 8. Don't think I could manage 1.

Um..can I ask a question?

How can this country hope to stage the soccer world cup 2 years from now when we can't power up our own cities for the next 7 years?

There is also a project underway right now called The Housing Project. The idea is to provide tens of thousands of houses, adding up to millions of homes over a period of years. These houses are naturally connected to an electricity network.

I was in Botswana last week and power supplied from South Africa was 'intermittent'. For example, in the middle of the day we stopped to fuel up our landrover, and couldn't, because the garage had no electricity to pump fuel. Crazy!

En route back, on the radio, Eskom announced plans to no longer supply neighboring countries like Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe with power. These countries receive just 5% of Eskom's capacity. Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique will continue to get power.

Here He Is

Following The Sun

There he is, walking under a white hot Kalahari sun. He is me, and I am not used to this role of laconic explorer. The sizzling white burns my ears, makes the blood gush through the folds like air roaring through a shell on a Zanzibar beach. Immediately – seeing the speck of life that represents me on the massive ochre Petri-dish – immediately you get a sense of proportion. I am dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of this place. The distances to food, water and shelter in these parts of Africa are staggering. The temperatures are life threatening. The vistas are full of the dry yellow grass, and crystal sky heartbreakingly blue. Is this where the life will thaw from my bones, like water from ice?

None of these thoughts occurred to me that first day, when my helicopter fell out of the sky, and landed hard on a red sand dune in the Kalahari Desert, at least a hundred kilometers west of my destination – Orapa – the world’s largest diamond mine. Yes, that guy walking in the Kalahari was me. But a different me to the one sitting here writing. I was worried. Strictly speaking, I had contravened, and could lose my job. Not only had I flown the Mi18 without it’s full crew, I had crashed it. Instead of being paid for the work I was doing, I might find myself in debt to Debswana*, maybe in jail. I was trying to not think about that. Meanwhile, the simple reality was I was a man with a lot of frozen yoghurt in an expensive stainless steel refrigerator in an upmarket townhouse complex in High Cape, above Cape Town’s harbor. That was me. Not a flea-bitten hitchhiker, needing water, stumbling over hot sand, searching for a ride out of the desert. I was a pilot, and I was used to sitting above the world in air conditioned comfort. This jobless, wanderer routine didn’t suit me at all.

The sun burned into my skin. I touched the tip of my nose. A red blister was beginning to form. I rolled down my white shirt sleeves to protect my arms from the sun. I could feel the heat of the sand through the soles of my shoes. But more than anything, deafening, drowning out everything else, swallowing even my half thoughts about contraventions and defenses, was the silence. It wasn’t even a silence exactly. It was a yawning silence, like a wave stretching open, a mouth gaping over a tiny morsel. Yes, the sky. My playground now swelled giant blue above me and its king, the sun, wheeled slowly, wheeling as tires do when they race across a road – making a thin jet like roar. I swear I could hear the sun shining at me.

That was my first moment. That was the first of many awakenings. I squinted up at the sun. Yes, looked directly at it for a fraction of a second, and was blinded by the white hot glare flashing full on my liquid squirming onion eyes. Colors swam, and bounced back to normal.
I was in a mess, and I couldn’t see how to do anything about it.

A wise bank robber, when his bag of cash rips open, leaves it, and walks away. I wasn’t walking in that sort of clarity yet, but I was beginning to withdraw from my life. The helicopter, which seemed, I decided later, to symbolize my innocence, was badly damaged. Am I to be punished for making this brave effort to get their shipment to them a little ahead of schedule? This did not seem like justice. And the helicopter, lying as it was, stricken in the dust – it made me feel ill. I wanted to get away from it. I wanted to move.
That’s why I walked away. I walked towards the sun because I knew in a desert, when the afternoon slips away, it gets cold. It doesn’t really seem logical when you really think about it, but I suppose the sun was some sort of companion, or some sort of revealer of the truth, and I wanted it on my face. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Maybe that’s just how it seemed to me. But that’s the best I can come up with. It was so dark for me, and the harsh glare seemed to be a light that illuminated the walls of the dark gallows where I found myself. For it was not just the crash that made my way a valley of darkness. I was jolted out of my illusions; the impact on my constitution was enough to tear open container loads of lost and buried pain. The crash had unearthed these frozen fossils, and here, in the stillness, the consistent heat, the aloneness, the icy seals locked deep within my chest, were beginning to melt. There was no running away. Just more and more facing up to me being in the world – to the reality of that. Like ice hewn into rock, breaking the mountain, but also holding it, I felt the ice that held me together, held me rigid, was turning to mush, and releasing the poisons of the past to haunt the Now. And my entire constitution was beginning to rumble. Would I explode or collapse, like Ngorongoro or Mount St Helens? Long dead ghosts from Cape Town Christmases past and recent funerals drifted across the stony chasms before me. Memories of the dead surfaced and danced in the heat. I saw my mother. I saw white Acacia thorns dancing. It was a gradual process, in retrospect, but the reality in the desert was that it all crept up on me, like an ice age creeping over a world addicted to reality shows that have less and less to do with reality.
Here the desert whittles the world down to sun and sky, and sand and dune. And you plod your way through, hoping for nothing more than survival, some shade, something to quench the thirst or feed upon. These are the bare essentials, however complicated the world may seem, I think. There is no greed, no fussing about appearance, just everyday, but essential living. Though the day was still crisp and bright, I walked, facing the sun, and with my back to the huge black glinting machine lying shipwrecked behind me.

I walked in silence for a few hours, something I had not done in years, and what’s more, had been alone – without distraction.
The longer I walked, the more I wondered what were my own thoughts, my original thoughts, and what were those foisted on me, second hand, by all manner of media, and the masses of people that surround us who are swept up in second hand information. I began to see that very few of us have firsthand experience. Those of us, who do have firsthand experience, quickly convert it into secondhand experience. I am doing that right now, by writing about it. Thus I am distorting the original. And if you tell someone about what I have written, you will distort it some more, getting further and further away from the original. And this was what I was wondering. How far have I gone from my own firsthand experience, my own original spirit? What are all the areas in my life without original experience? I realized there was a lot. My feet shuffled over the hot sand, and with each step, I saw the sharp light shine on the sand.
Reading newspapers, I realized, hearing people talk, watching television, movies – all these things are second hand or worse experiences. And with that came a sickening realization. That not only are television and movies secondhand, but they are contrived, acted, false and thus essentially useless. Entertainment – is entertainment useless? Entertainment literally means amusement, diversion, or distraction. If you want to be entertained it means you want to escape from the reality of your life. The more you want to be entertained the more you are purposefully doing that. That is not healthy. I was starting to see that. I already saw that after two or three hours on my own, walking vicariously through the Kalahari thirst land. I still wasn’t really there, but I was starting to learn.
Is entertainment useless? It’s useful to give you a sense of pleasure in the loss of your self and your ability to live your life. If that is useful then it is. It is a useful way to make some people very wealthy. People who pretend the world is a certain way, when it isn’t. Beautiful people who pretend to be heartbroken or lonely and then find other beautiful people who are also alone, or struggling in some way. Obviously, the reality of the people who pretend for the cameras is very very different. They are concerned more about how much they are earning, and whether their appearance is still noteworthy, and what image they are projecting.
Every time we pay our money to see, to vote for, to adore, to worship, to acquiesce, to expose, to support, to defer to, to admire, to escape, to be entertained, we forfeit our money, our time spent earning the money, and the time spent during that entertainment. We come out ‘entertained’. What does that mean? It means we have a feeling. A feeling has been rubbed up that was latent before the time. Is it a feeling of satisfaction? Do we really know how to live with the hours that lie before us? Are we able to stand, or sit simply, and observe the walls, the grains on the floor, the hairs on our arms, the way a leaf is rolling along the sidewalk?
I have seen more in 3 hours walking in the desert, than in years walking through the city. I have seen ants – termites to be sure, racing around with strawy husks in their beaks. I have already noticed some of their towering mounds. I have seen lots of snakes, and spiders, and wasps. I have seen birds circling in the sky, but not above me. Perhaps they can see something that I can’t. They seem to know I am not about to die.

When the sun is quite low, I am joyful and excited, and a little delirious. A rebellious, addictive part of me wonders, analyses me. Wonders whether I hit my head and am behaving out of character. Am I being reckless, leaving my charge like that?
I am tending to my spirit, I argue.
Stop this craziness!
I’m not crazy. I’m finally seeing myself in this world I have helped create. I see I can help uncreate some of the parts I see I don’t believe.
Do your job. Go back and stop acting crazy.
I’ll never go back. Not after what I’ve seen.
You don’t know what you are saying. Once you start to suffer, once you get really lost and uncomfortable, you’ll come running back. Just you wait.
I’m sure you’re right.
Well make it easier for yourself. Turn back sooner rather than later.
I’m sure you’re right that I’m going to suffer, and feel lost. But that’s okay, because at least I am waking up to a true state of affairs. Now shut up!

It is as the sun sinks, and the sky darkens that my internal dialogue fades and I begin to slowly be drawn towards the Original Spirit. I mean the spirit that is in all things. The First Light. The deepest parts of space shine over me, and the desert suddenly seems wet with stars. I stand and stare for I don’t know how long. I don’t know how long it was since I looked at the stars like this? When I was a small boy? It is all just a mystery. But it is real. And what magic is this? How can this be, where every prick of light is a giant ball of fire that is many times the size of this Earth, but infinitesimally far away? All that power, doing a delicate and beautiful dance through our own light and breathable heavens. How is it that we can not be overwhelmed by the perfection of our own world, our own creation? How is it that people watch boxes and screens instead of the stars, and the faces of those they love? Why do they use time, and banks, and products for other products we don’t need? Where did it all go wrong?

Was it because we looked up one day in fear? We thought of those pinpricks as harboring hell, even though we were staring up at the heavens? Was it because some of us decided they didn’t want to share, and they were clever enough to trick us, to make fools of us, and that greed, that cruelty was their enduring strength? They made us buy things we didn’t need, and vote for things that would help them get their way, not ours.

Streaks of light bounced and left fairy dust trailing in thin lines and quickly dissolving. Then more sparks as space rocks bounced against the airy plumage guarding our planet. I swear I heard the crayon scrawl of the air tearing the rocks to vapor. I swear I can hear it all the time, a dull seaside roar, of space debris being shorn as the Earth flies through it and it through the earth. How much of this desert, is Space dust?
It seems whimsical, the shower of sparks and it seems proper to invent a fairy tale around it – to make a wish upon that falling the star. But the original is far more compelling. An object from the deep roar of the universe, frozen and dead, feels the warm tug of Earth, and is pulled out of its giant ellipse, diving into the vault, and turning blue white as oxygen bites heat into the frozen chunks, dismembering it into powder. Why would you want to make a wish when you have such a sight to behold?

All night I watched the stars. I had no fire. Man has had that technology for millennia, but I was incapable of making. I was a man who could not make fire. I looked for sticks, and I worked feverishly, but intermittently, until the nuclear fire burned under the horizon and heralded the dawn of a new day.
As the first rays speared over the blood red dunes, my stomach growled with hunger. My brow was wet, and cold with the perspiration of rocking and rubbing sticks together.

If I was in my white walled world in Cape Town, with Table Bay glinting blue and full of ships under my kitchen window – I would be filling an orange bowl with All Bran Flakes. Have you noticed how expensive cereal is becoming? We pay a lot for what is little more than sugar flavored popcorn. What is the difference between popcorn and cocoa puffs? The biggest difference that I can see – I am no dietician – is that you can buy popcorn seeds in transparent plastic packets, whereas with cereal you buy the big rectangular box, with it’s almost cinematic colors, and movie poster cum magazine appearance. Title, with articles/actors. You pay for the box and when you look inside there is a half filled bag. Why can they not sell us just the half filled bag? The box is something we buy that we don’t need. It is one of those instantly disposable purchases we don’t think about. Another one is toothpaste. If you really think about it, it’s not the toothpaste that we use that prevents tooth decay; it’s the food we are eating that causes it. The sugars in coffee, in candy, in sodas. How did the cavemen cope for hundreds of thousands of years without toothpaste? How come dogs and cats, sharks and rats, seem to get along without it? If we ate what we were supposed to – fruit, and vegetables, and a few morsels of meat, we wouldn’t have yellow grime growing in our teeth all the time.

As I grow hungrier, and thirstier, I seem to see my life more clearly. It seems absurd and ridiculous, and I feel a faint sense of tragedy – because I have realized this so late, and maybe I will die here. And what will happen to me. What happens to my corpus when I die? Is that it? I came here, into this world, tossing and throwing like grass in the wind, only to know, before the fire swept over the field, that I was part of the field, and the earth and it was never my destiny to be a golf course, but simply to grow and flourish and feel the sun.

There is always the sun. Always I come back to the sun, which blasts the simple but brilliant light, and heat, and radiance, at me. I walk. I stumble. I see some rocks on the sand. Some rises in the lie of the land are small hills. I am curious; I am drawn to the hills. This is what I do on this last day of my life. I go and look at some hills.

And it is while I make my way to the hills that the land begins to speak to me for the first time. It is not much. It is barely a whisper. But that it is speaking to me at all, and that I am listening, this is a powerful realization. I feel my power swell. And I feel the size of the land, I feel its scars, I feel its coffee soils, and milk powder sands. There are the hot percolating rivers, the silver arteries, slicing down the mountainsides. And within those muscles of magma, inside these striations is the stress. I can feel its pain. It hits me in a magnetic, metallic wave of dizziness. My brain throbs with the vague yet steady drumbeat of destruction. It rings with the eerie clashing of cymbals. The land says that even out here, it is not real. It has been changed. I am doubtful of this, but I say nothing, I listen. The breeze lifts again over the land. It is a trick of the light, but for a second an alluvial dune beside a thirsty riverbed fills with stars. A veil of dust covers them, and the lights, like diamonds, are gone.

I begin to see that once the lands on this world had diamonds in all its great rivers, and gold, laid bare for feet to walk on. Those days are gone. Now the ground is stripped and lackluster. The Original Spirit has gone. Even in a desert, the natural is gone. Its absence leaves one lonely and morbid and suffering from the onset of sudden, unquenchable thirst.

The hills that seemed to be beckoning to me, come no closer, despite another thousand footfalls. Instead they seem to be floating away.