All images © 2008-2019 Cyril Souchon unless expressly noted otherwise (All rights reserved)

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Squirreling away


With Autumn upon us here at the Southern tip where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans merge, our Cape Town squirrels are busying themselves before the Cape's rainy Season sets in...

Summer shade
Winter cold
squirrels gather
 in Autumn Gold


is the romantic take on it . . .

this is where my thoughts go, though!

I met a little squirrel, all sat beside my hat
he spoke about the Wirral and I of this and that
my thoughts were on his middle, 

I cannot tell a lie!
me Nan's cast iron griddle, an Autumn squirrel pie


They're cheeky little buggers though.
Hard to catch too, and likely need a whole family to make that pie 🥘.
Put that way, maybe I'll just let them be this time😉




Image (c)2019 Cyril Souchon, All rights reserved.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Lipstick on the Pig: Street art in Jozi


Lipstick on a pig
and a jury that's rigged
a crisis you say? what crisis?

(covering the bleak walls of decaying buildings)
stirring words & slogans!
inspiring images of transformation and change!

(as the images decay and slip away
revealing unchanged beneath
cement and brick and fading mortar)

disguise
from our eyes
a State that's captured,
while taxes enrich the entitled



Imraan Christiaan does a lot of great work using his camera as a vehicle to further social change. So it makes a lot of sense to extend the reach of that work out into the wider community.

Putting them up, and then letting them wither and decay is, well ~ ironic at the very least. Grand ideas need grand actions, Grand actions need grand funding. If the best we can do is to send soundbites out to our community, and then let it all wither away, what does it say about our grand ideas?

Some say, put up or shut up.
I say, put up and keep up.
And then I say, put and build up.
It's in the doing that we build our nation, not in the speaking.
The doing and the spending.
We know the real intent of a Nation when we see how fairly it budgets it's income, and where it then spends the money.



Image (c) Author: Street art in Jozi, October 11, 2018

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

suddenly grown, endlessly growing



Summer days dazzle as he dips
into her well of youthful vigour
it's only till he's grown a bit she thinks.
Somewhere within she knows:
her youth has bloomed
her once upon a times are faded:
uncertain futures dawn his every day.

Image (c) Author: Aug 31,2019

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

A day in the life ~ Victoria Yards

 
Excuse moi? I'm trying to find my way to the ArtyBollocks! exhibition . . .

Take a badly depressed area seemingly with nowhere to go. Look around at it, and what are you likely to see? Nothing neat and clean like the little one up there showing me the way ~ More likely ruined pavements, yes almost certainly. Garbage piled up, overflowing into sewers and running across pavements. The primordial sight and smell of the homeless who have no access to sanitation and create nests and nooks in any space that provides a smidgeon of cover. The people who prey on them, and in the absence of policing, are now the landlords of whatever they seize. The few remnants of society who, through obstinacy or need have remained or migrated and are clinging on behind barriers of rusting barbed wire and burglar bars. Everywhere, overgrown grass, weeds and the remnants of abandoned gardens. That's what you'd expect.

What would it likely have going for it? Nowhere to go but up, for one. The prospect of inexpensive land with the potential of services that can be upgraded. The hope crime can be brought under control. The goodwill of the community to welcome it, if that can be gained. Maybe something can be seeded. Which is one reason why I’m travelling south to old haunts this Sunday morning. Besides, there's a touch of nostalgia.

So all of those thoughts, and more, were going through my mind as I dropped out of Hillbrow and travelled through Bertrams before swinging right down towards Lorentzville where a patch of the area near Ellis Park has been carved out for urban renewal and possible gentrification. I used to live in Bertrams when my folks first moved out of the ‘Brow to start a real home for our little family: Free Staters migrating to the big city to make a life.

The apartment block we used to inhabit is decayed, and as I drove past a mental feeling of what it was re-surfaced. Different now. Homies and their piles under the bridge, the garbage, broken sanitation and pavements, tough looking kids and the barriers their parents erect to keep crime at bay ~ all there. What else would I find? On that other side of the coin?

On Sundays it’s easy to find the Yards. The lack of parking signposts it. The pavements are incongruously taken up with late model cars leaving a little walking strip for their occupants streaming down towards entrances. Everywhere parking jockeys with Hi-Viz vests. Hmm. Good thing I know the area. I can inch through and find a spot near the Old Synagogue while everyone else mills around the immediate side streets. Up the rise, swing left and into a lovely empty side road, and there it is, the Old Synagogue.

Deserted now, but not quite abandoned yet. An electric fence keeps the vandals out, the powder blue paint is faded and the magnificent wooden doors sun-bleached and in desperate need of varnishing. Commissioned in ’26, nearly a century ago, its race has run. This area used to have a thriving little Jewish community, now an enormous mosque dominates at the end of the same street. Where there’s a place of worship, that’s generally the roots for community. In its own way, that’s a good sign.

I lock the car and make my way down to the Yards, picking my way past piles of garbage and taking in the sights and sounds of Sunday community. There’s a little stream along whose banks we wild kids used to forage. It’s been fenced off in order to let the water flow freely and uncontaminated. That’s another good sign. From the window of a car the fencing looks forbidding.
Up close and looking through it’s a different story. It’s also the boundary of the Yards, so I know I’m close now.

I’m here to see the ArtyBollocks exhibition, which is a fun concept with a darker underbelly. It’s in one of the converted properties making up the Yards, and I’m also hoping to meet up with one of the artists whose work I enjoy and persuade her to take a coffee & chat about her entry and the that of the other artists, and how well the idea has been realised.

After that I’m intending to roam around and see how an abandoned industrial estate is being transformed into a budding site for entrepreneurs: Artists (of course, they are always the first!) printers, manufacturers of this and that, foodies, studios and so on and so forth.

An immediate win! The gallery is right there by the southern entrance! It’s mid-day though and most people have decamped to the Food quadrant leaving the space largely empty. This is great for gallery viewing, but sadly the hoped for chat isn’t going to happen.

Anyways, I could move about the space as though I owned it (and of course did!) It also gave me the time to pause and detach the 3rd paragraph of the bollocks (which went to "intent") and see how close the artists came to mirroring it back thematically (you see how easily we start talking that way!); & that was REALLY interesting. Some of the artists seem to have treated it ironically/playfully, and others had taken the challenge head-on ~ a much more difficult exercise. I had a half hour or so of uninterrupted viewing in which to reflect on the more (to me!) interesting works. I also enjoyed the curator's role, sometimes placing artists work tightly bound and others letting works from different artists interact.

Right! Time to explore a bit, a slow walk around the studios and buildings, lurking in the background and watching as people looked over wares and haggled. The studios are often both the workplace and the sales point. When it works this works really well, and for many of the smaller enterprises this is the norm. There are three different kinds of spaces: Large barns with that typical flea market feel, small studios, and somewhat larger more retaily type spaces that felt as if the owner(s) are already well established, or have capital behind them. This gave a nice eclectic feel to the Yards.

The passageways between the buildings have been designed with the visitor in mind, with enough space to allow for an up stream and a downstream, with the space between the walkways and buildings taken up by gardens.
Gardens. That's an abiding impression I took away. The shopping and browsing and studios are definitely the key reason why anyone would visit the Yards, but there are other rewards for exploring the space. The gardens that proliferate around the buildings are both decorative and functional. Mixtures of flowers, herbs and vegetables make a great show and some of those gardens really are good enough to eat!

For the next year or so this site is a work in progress. Which means lots of empty building shells to explore, many buildings that have been cleaned and so you have an appealing "raw" feeling both inside and outside. You can look up and see people circulating and chatting in what anywhere else would be a derelict building. It's often like moving about in a surreal noir movie, but where noir has Alice-like become the norm. Beware the rabbit hole! and watch what you eat ~ one bite could make you smaller, another make you tall. Unlike, as Grace Slick sang, the pills that mother gives you, which don't do anything at all . . . Ask Alice, when you're ten feet tall!

Lots of nooks and crannies, interesting views, people popping in and out of corridors and stairwells, light cascading and fading. If you're an artist or photographer, a short lived opportunity. If you're an explorer, you can let your inner child run free. Take it all in before it becomes settled. It's like Maboneng, before it all congealed into solid spaces with defined boundaries and borders.




And the hope? what about that? The community? any clues there? Just this one, as I was exiting for the day and heading off to the Radium Beer Hall in OG. A little spaza shop selling everything from clothes to sweets and ciggies. And 2 games machines solidly taken over by the youf of the day. If we'd had them back in my day, Id've been found doing something similar.



But since I'm not, it was down to the Radium for Beer, Burger and solid Sunday Jazz.
I like the Radium, its got no airs or graces and is tolerant to all sorts. Its the kind of place that I'd take my mate Piotr to. He has Asbergers, a sort of high functioning Autism. The Radium's the kind of place where difference doesn't matter that much and mostly they leave you to get by.
Just don't mess with the Jazz . . . .



Images all (c) Author (all rights reserved) Apr 07, 2019

Friday, April 5, 2019

A day in the life ~ Navigating the Mad Giant


It hadn't started that well.

Saturday coming up for one-ish and we think we'll drop into 1 Fox in downtown jozi and poke our noses about, pick up a pint & pizza and that'd be a nice way to set up the rest of the weekend.

We'd circled around in the drizzly wet heading for a parking spot I knew which was good on busy weekdays and offered free parking if you drink at the Mad Giant.

Only no-one had said anything to the parking jockey and he nicked a twenty off me which annoyed her because CLEARLY there were empty bays outside the lot. And a misty off-on drizzly which didn't improve the mood as we walked past the empty bays down to the entrance. A girl doesn't like her hair getting frizzy before the weekend has kicked off.

So you can't blame Mrs T-Potts because she offered a moment's pause from the wet and if there're two things herself loves its books and flowers. Even if the books were leaning over a bit. It wasn't the books or the flowers that delayed us though ~ Tea pots, Tea sets. and teas, teas, teas everywhere. A quick moment to catch breath and warm fingers and toes and plunge on became a drifty "oh that's nice", "what about this" "I really can't afford ..." (~ wistfully, that one!) and it was a good 20 minutes before we stepped out to head to the Mad Giant and his inhouse brews and tables.

Looking up bits of sky were visible and the light much brighter, even though the clouds had deepened to black and steel. That was a warning sign, should've taken note!

Now, I really like the Mad Giant. Fridays the team'd trail down from the offices and fill the bar and tables with chatter and work-related stories, slag off the bosses and wipe the foam from the mouth as the brew sipped down. By the time we dispersed the stress of the working week'd be dissipated and its all become good.

You don't notice in that atmosphere that really, this is a fine dining place, with fine dining waitrons (hate that word!) and menus. Something that's glaringly obvious when the place is mostly empty and the fine waitrons are amusing themselves ~ well somewhere. Still and all it's a nice place to look at, the high ceiling, the copper vats and pipes, wooden counters and benches contrasting with the fine dining tables.

So by the time we'd done that, and decided the food hall across the way was the answer, those black clouds had closed off the sky and the light outside had dimmed.

The sound of hail on a tin roof is very distinctive! and we knew as we stepped out under the afdak that we'd waited just a little too long.
So here we stand under that same afdak and think . . . "just a measly 3 meters or so from the warmth, the smells, the happy chatter in the food hall. Beers & Pizza! just 3 thundering meters away . . . " and then we lean back up against the wall.

Soggy underwear and squelchy shoes? somehow just don't go that well with beer & pizza. The gods will be kind. We'll get there soon enough.
and so they were.
and so we did.

And as we sipped the beer and piled into the pizza the thought was also that here's something quite fine about standing under a sturdy tin roof with the hail clattering down, waiting for that moment when you can duck across skipping puddles and torrents and into that warm waiting space. There's nothing quite like beer & pizza to restore the blood-sugar level, is there? Time enough for a little Scientific Research!


Images all (c) Author (all rights reserved) Oct 20, 2018

Monday, April 1, 2019

1992: midpoint of a crisis

Anton Karstel ~ Untitled (1992) - oil on canvas

1992.

It's 2 years since the referendum in which White South Africans voted  by a massive 80%+ to embrace universal franchise and consign (formal) apartheid to History's dustbin. They have voluntarily placed themselves in the hands of those they oppressed: the alternative of a spiralling police state had momentarily brought everyone to their senses. In 2 years’ time the first all-inclusive elections are slated to be held. Talks, negotiations, call them what you will - they are ongoing. A new constitution is seeding, but it's all terribly fragile.

We are at the midpoint in the changing of a nation. Those whose inclinations are towards Fear and uncertainty are frightened and uncertain. Those who have a natural optimism expect something better. Those with hatred stoke it. Those who seek power manipulate and manoeuvre. Those with things to hide desperately try to bury the past: everyone prays for Truth, Reconciliation, and a peaceful reboot. Those with the money and the lack of scruples take it and run, mostly to Commonwealth countries, the UK, Australia and New Zealand especially welcome the money and ignore the institutionalised colonial racism they are seeding into their own communities. Some parts of the country burn, others maintain their outward appearances: luck is a factor for the individual and his community.

It's 1992, and Anton Karstel paints this image of a person which perfectly captures the mood of all those I've mentioned, and many more I haven't. Does it matter that the person looks somewhat like a woman? No: it makes a perfect sense. Women in this patriarchical country have suffered under every regime. She becomes androgynous here.

One face rages or cries out as it stares at the abyss. Another gazes up and calls for help or searches for answers. Its one person, and we are all that person. It was a terrible time, a precarious balancing point with collapse on either side a terrible long fall into a nightmare future. What difference does it make if you fall into this side or that of a chasm? Blood does not care if it sprays to the left or to the right. Blood does not suffer: only people do, the dead do not suffer**.

We were all this image, yet somehow we made it through.
These days, things seem dark and troubled too, what with corrupt politicians, entitled free loaders and a whole new way to express prejudice. When it feels all too much, I pull up this image from my digital archive and revisit it. I'm reminded that nothing will ever be as bad as what we sidestepped, together, all those years ago.

** Robert Green Ingersoll (1883)
Photograph (c) the author: taken at the Pretoria Art Museum Oct 28, 2018; artwork
(c) the owner.

Separation anxiety

~ Separation Anxiety ~

flowered from a genesis is birthed a role
drifting away
fault lines now hold sway



Image (c) Author: Cape Town Waterfront Aug 28, 2018

Saturday, March 30, 2019

a day in the life ~ Saturday morning at the Pantry Market


After a deeply thought provoking walkabout hosted by the artist Robert Slingsby at the neighbouring Circa, I wandered over into the Keyes Pantry Market to give it the once over, it being new there and all. Lots of lovely little stalls, all in a carefully coded corporate livery and not at all like the usual little market stall places.

The people manning the stalls are lovely though, and the goods yummy and worth the trouble and expense. Frequented by the kind of people whose 4x4's traverse the urban landscape, climbing pavements for parking on the weekends and shuttling hockey sticks, cricket bats and footballs during the week. The clean middle to upper classes, if you know what I mean.

This place really works for them, and curiously I very much liked it too. Space enough to gather and chat to the stallholder, try some of the wares and not feel jostled and forgotten. The stall holders like it too, they can go to the loo and not worry that their goods will be stolen or mishandled. Sometimes less definitely is better! Especially if the less has enough to satisfy the need. And I picked up a really nice pesto for a friend whose cooking talents are legend. A win all round.

And that's how it was for most of the stalls, excepting one joyous little corner in the bottom section, run by Bilkees who is Creative director at KolorKids in Parkhurst. If you go to the Who we Are section on their website you will see the very image of a director gazing professionally back at you ~ "How can we be of Service, Sir or Madam?" But here, Oh here she was simply beaming from ear to ear as she stepped away from the weekday business to just have fun with the kids coming by.

You really do see people as they truly are when catch them engaged in what they love to do, don't you? If they weren't so old & ugly I'd have my kidz there too! (well, maybe the grandkids, one day. They, of course, are perfect!)

Friday, March 29, 2019

Do Vampires Fear Aids?



Aids is only an existential threat to Vampires

Vampires
feeding on blood in the divided dark
dark shadows of a bloody night

Vampires feed and the body bleaches
cold and pale in still moonlight
withering and dying in day made night

For all the shadows of darkness
the fear inducing night
mothers must as mothers do
bring calming light
to nightmarish flight

Aids thrives only in darkness
in the shadows of fear we hide
Bring sunlight to your fears!

Sunlight on mental darkness
Sunlight on a great divide

The cure for HIV-AIDS begins in the community. It starts with those who are healthy, not those who are sick. We who are healthy should not - must not - no, must never drive the sick into the darkness of fear and retribution.
That is the beginning of a Great Divide. Sick people are not vampires to be sent back into the Dark. Let them come out into the sunlight, for sunlight on a problem is the first step towards remediation, and the most important one. Anti-retrovirals are the tools, the community is the framework within which it can operate best.

 If you have it, or suspect you do, or know someone who might ~ remind them, remind yourself: there's help, & hope and a life waiting to be lived. Bring it out into the sunlight and away from Dracula's shadow.

the image© is a detail from Blessing Ngobeni's 2018 acrylic and collage on canvas "Everyone is a VIP" ~ an apposite title for this theme.

Monday, March 25, 2019

The Fates: What lessons do the Ancient Greek Sisters have for us today?


The sisters ponder on and weave the tapestry of a life *1
Read from ...

Lachesis
Chlotho
Atropos
Conclusion
The Ancients believed the three Fates had roles at the start and ending point of their lives, and at the various crisis points. They were the mistresses of the mother thread in the life everyone, both gods and humans. Is there something to learn from it today? That's the topic of this blog post. Let's kick off with a brief summary of who they were. Looking at the image, we see
  • Lachesis (the assigner, sitting at the back) she decided how long you would live for;
  • Clotho (the spinner on the right, that's the thread of your life she's pulling on), Clotho spun the story of your life and intervened at critical moments in it; and
  • Atropos ( on the left - the 'unturnable', preparing for the moment when she will cut off the thread) she also ensured that you never deviated from your fate.
Each of these women acted independently from the others, i.e. they could not influence each other's actions. No doubt, being women they likely gossiped about our foibles, but at the key points they acted on their own volition. No court of arbitration. No appeals. Dice rolled, wheel of fortune spun, now get on with it. You wish our leaders could act with that sort of firmness and decisiveness!
How might this work then? and what value did people get from the process? Why were they so accepting of it? Let's do a plain language, somewhat allegorical deep dive into it.

Lachesis

She had a rod which she used to calculate the length of your life. Your life would be spun on a spindle, so her measuring rod was used to determine how much thread is allocated to you. Think of it this way ~ every heartbeat is a stitch, and when all the thread is used up, your time has come.
Freedom from the fear of death
You might say that there doesn't seem to be much value in that! Not so. The ancients were very pre-occupied with the reality of death. Life was uncertain, and death or misfortune could strike at any time, from anywhere, without warning or mercy. Much like today, in fact ~ only we put it to the back of our minds. Modern life insulates us from death until it strikes those around us, and then we are overwhelmed by it. Thereafter it haunts us, a silent breathe on the nape of the neck.
Lachesis takes this most primal of fears away: this fear of dying. Since our days have been numbered, down to the last second, they were able to live life fully and without fear. You're going to die when you're going to die, whether you act with cowardice or courage, with honour or deceit, so you're free to live your life to its allotted span. At the end of your days you will be remembered for how you lived, and for nothing else. Your legacy is in your own hands. This is the promise of Religion expressed in a different way: both view death as a portal rather than as an ending. Both offer a means to immortality.
Having done her work she plays no more part in our lives: Easy job. Some goddesses have all the luck! Look at her up there with her chin in her hands, chatting about this or that while the other girls do the hard yards.

Clotho

She has skeins of twine with which to weave your life's story around the mortal thread. Not forgetting a spindle and a needle to do the weaving with.
Imagine it this way. You're living your life, and unbeknownst it's been recorded on a tapestry which can be seen by those who have sight of it - not mortal people, of course! but by those who'll judge you one day and call you to account. We have come to a Big Moment waiting on a Big Decision. Maybe your relationship with your partner has soured. Maybe chance has brought someone new into view, and temptation beckons. What to do? Well, let's see …. hmmmm. Divorce, that's an option. Murder. An Affair (sounds exciting!) Couples Therapy? Maybe do nothing (because doing nothing is a choice with consequences!)
Knowing you (as Clotho does, she's been weaving your life's story since birth!) she knows what you would do in the event of each decision, and so she weaves a different path for each choice: one that you will be fated to follow once you've made up your mind. Beware! The law of unintended consequences always applies. Clotho is also the Goddess of Chance. She (metaphorically speaking) spins a wheel of fortune and let's that influence her weaving. And so Murphy's Law was born . . . . .
Let's think about this for a moment. Your life now comes down to a cycle of issues and events that lead up to a decision point. It's your decision, no one else's. You could get someone else to decide for you, but again that's what you chose. Having made your choice you're committed to follow whatever transpires. Once begun Divorce follows its path. You can't undead your partner once the murder is done (or attempted.) There's a process waiting, with police, judges, jails and who knows what else. The affair, well that could go anywhere! And not all of it to your liking either. Doing nothing will most likely lead to a deepening of a poisonous relationship steadily souring two lives. More if there are children or other dependents in the equation. Maybe couples therapy would've been a good choice after all . . . committed couples therapy, that is.
You live your life, you're confronted with choices, make them and then you're on an irreversible path. Nothing much has changed in 5000 years, has it? To live well you must choose wisely. But wisdom is not given us, it is acquired through our life's choices and reflections: we are iron hoping to be forged into steel in the furnace of life.

Atropos

Atropos has a pair of shears, probably better to think of them as scissors, these days. They never had modern manufacturing plants. The modern Atropos probably dresses like a Goth and has a range of really cool scissors in her hand bag. And hates her parents & siblings (careful dears, those scissors have purpose!)
So what's her role then? Keeping the end in mind, once the length of your thread has run out, she makes sure to cut off any that might somehow have remained. She cuts off the thread and so ends your life's tapestry simultaneously drawing an end to your life.
She has other duties during your life. After her sister has woven the possibilities, Clotho steps away. Atropos waits until you choose and then cuts off the ends of the lives you chose against. These are your ghost lives, shadowy possibilities of might-have-beens irrevocably pruned and composted.
There is no value in the moment of cutting, the value comes later in self-reflection and awareness, if you choose to make it so. 
Wisdom begins here, because as we reflect on the lessons of our choices, and ponder our ghosted lives, so we start on our journey towards it. We come to understand that the Wisdom of our mentors and influencers are their stories partially realised in ours: the contexts of our own lives might differ, but human emotion, honour, morality and ethics and their opposites are eternal. To become wise we take the wisdom of the past and adapt it for the present, and then hand it on to the future.

So what is there to conclude?

That the process the Fates followed are a mirror of our own lives maybe?

How will your tapestry look, laid out at the end of days?
All your struggles and choices laid bare:
a legacy built from the ugliest clay in a life well lived,
or one torn down from a golden plinth?
We know and understand so much more, yet still our lives are woven under the influence of random chance and in the midst of mindless chaos, and here's the only difference between then and now: The Ancients had an external force to blame for how their lives unfolded. We can own our lives.
*1: Public domain image sourced from Wikimedia Commons