I am the proverbial clown but I am also the tiger, back arching ready to attack my prey if my domain is encroached upon. The sun is setting in this coastal town in Gqeberha and I think of all my angels while I listen to Jacqueline du Pre’s ex-husband Daniel Barenboim conduct an orchestra. We will all die. That is the only certainty that we as individuals, as humans live with. I remember you, the man who was so briefly in my life, but you are part and parcel of a distant past that is no longer quite as bright as it once was to me. My country, my heartland, South Africa they say, (those in the proverbial know) is teetering on the brink of collapse with an ANC-led government but I think this is not true. It most certainly is not the case. They are in the majority and I have found that fortune has always favoured the brave majority.
These days there is a specific drive towards sustainability in the marketplace concerning resources, trade and economic trends and development. I think of the personal as I watch France 24, the digital marketing persona, my digital marketing persona. How there was no internet when I was growing up. I remember Iraq vaguely but I don’t know how old I was when that happened. The spoils of that war were weapons of mass destruction which by now we all know those particular weapons were non-existent. I think of the cause and effect of war, children and women in war, unprotected against the elements, all the dimensions, the stranglehold, the bricks and mortar of war.
These days I work to be conscious and I have found this power within me to be a seeker and to continue seeking. I am drawn to writing, research, reading, reading historical documents and consulting religious books. I remember this character trait within me as a young person. I had long wished to be adored and admired by the opposite sex and wasn’t. I was unpopular in high school and lacked social skills. I was bullied by teachers, by boys and girls, utterly humiliated by them. I began to withdraw and keep to myself. I wrote sad love poems to my beloved country about my sense of self, my guilt trip about being born middle class (my parents came from the working classes). The more conscious “they” are, people are and these days the more I particularly look to my tribal family, the more the internet persona falls away.
The old me used to always remember the other person’s fault, and hold the other person accountable. I would live in the past but now that I know better, I do better. I have also realised that it is a form of insanity to live in the past. I see the internet personality. I see frequency in the internet personality, the dance, the meaning to be found within interpersonal relationships, the awareness of human and animal instinct, the botanical instinct, family patterns and patterns in the economic growth of South Africa and business, the solopreneurs and entrepreneurial spotlight trend and pattern.
I bust the myth of family in my stories. Dysfunction is rooted in my characters probably because it is mostly rooted in myself. Later, much later, whenever incidents of psychosis were rooted in my mind, and robbed me of time and achievement and I would spend hours on a hospital bed I rediscovered and found joy and place in faith and grace, discipline and will in eating habits and focus and concentration in portion sizes. In the hospital everything was regulated.
I think of the man. How I no longer follow him on social media, how he has fallen in love with someone much more suitable. I think that she, the woman, who is younger, far younger than me, is perhaps shallow and not as decisive in her thinking as I am. I think to myself perhaps she is impulsive and takes his presence for granted as I did, as I did.
I think of Robert Berold and his wife Mindy Stafford safely ensconced on their farm just outside Makhanda, within arm’s length of the university. I remember the baboons on that farm and comfortable rooms, comfortable chairs, the tuna fish salad I made that I ate with soft buttered brown bread. I remember long walks in the warm afternoon light, solitary walks. I never ventured far from my room. The bed, the food, the company, the other poets who worked alongside me on poetry, or drawings, or books, Mxolisi Neyezwa, Siza Nkosi, Alan Finlay and Joan Metelerkamp spoke to me, spoke to my work and informed me my work. In the evenings in my cold room, (farm life is always inextricably cold) I would work on my laptop but in a few hours I couldn’t feel my toes or hands and my fingers were numb. How I enjoyed that week, how alive I felt, how much meaning it brought to the order and routine of the days I spent there.
Online there are no physical body cues. Sometimes there are neutral messages that I react to. In the stillness of the night I remember the men who were in my life in my twenties and their sweetness, their kindness and now all I remember are their marrying ways and how to all intents and purposes they are sweet and kind to their progeny now. I remember them well and I will, I suppose, remember them for all of my life.
I text my sister.
“Maybe I can heal myself. I have been to so many clinical psychologists and professionals. I can try. Writing helps me a great deal. I haven’t researched trauma in depth. I read Oprah’s book on adverse childhood experiences. It was helpful. The more I write nonfiction, especially on the mind body spirit/spiritual experience the more I feel I am healing. Everyday I am getting stronger. I am finding my tribe and communicating with an autodidact in Germany. He sends me links. A variety of them on different subject matter. Aunty Laura is also helpful. Her feedback and advice. I think for me it is physiological. It is the chronic inflammation in my body. I just know these things. Whether my illness is based on semantics, whether it is chronic or psychosomatic and whether it is an immunopsychiatric problem/disorder I don’t know at this stage. I am leaning towards the latter and chronic inflammation. You must also take something for inflammation or otherwise it is your raging hormones talking to me about trauma-related this and that. But I hope you forgive me. I have already forgiven you which is a step in the right direction. The old Abigail would have internalized everything. I am learning to let go, surrender and not sweat the small stuff. Your friends are hot. I have a hard time accepting how you don’t have any kind of dating life. All those cute outfits. God or the universe since you’re atheistic in your outlook now is preparing you for the man of your dreams. When he eventually arrives you will both be ready for each other I believe.”
