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“Please don’t mow the lawn near us from 2pm to 4pm. Our Cefani siesta tradition is 60 years old.”
This is what I “texted” to Lindsay Cairns’ grandsons who continue in his steps keeping this hearthstone rest and recreation collection of wizened little thatched rondavel cottages going.
There are cracks and bats and wonky tables, the triangular shaped pots which fit in a circle are still here 64 years later, and were probably put in as shiny, new marvels of 1950s or ’60s post-war industrial domestic expansion.
Thing is, these cottages, built in 1941 by Italian prisoners of war — as the lore goes — have stood the test of time and terror.
We arrive on a Tuesday afternoon, and in another ancient tradition, we hustle, bustle, grumble and groan, until the nest is stuffed and fluffed, and we set ourselves down with an echoing existential sigh.
We shuffle off to the beach, and whoa! There it is — the reason for being! The Cefani river mouth is open and the tide is pushing in waves. It’s not extreme, but rather fullsome.
The sea waters rush into a bottleneck, bulge up on a sandbar, and release a perfect swell which breaks and barrels, shiny and translucent edges catching the low flame of rich yellow sunset streaming down the Cefani estuary, coloured with the Windsor-green scarp forests that hold fast against the inhumane onslaught of “drill baby, drill”.
There is this type of lighting, and there is gaslighting.
Donald Trump trumpeting, JD Vance squawking with those weirdly darkened eyes, alpha males in the human zoo, yelling on about “do you want to cause a third world war!”
And we all watch in horror and dismay as the sartorially elegant Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, tries to defend himself from the world-mediated ambush by the crass new global schoolyard bullies.
As an aside, Zelensky has a great voice — so Lee Marvin gravelly. I hope one of those hip producer-type Deejays turns it into a dark-electronic pop song sensation with Taylor Swift on vocals.
If not, there’s always our very own “eating the cats and dogs” sensation, David Scott aka the Kiffness. You heard it here first.
We find ourselves in this backward-stepping phase of devolution, with the innate fascism of discombobulated, tech-bro dysfunctionality surging through society.
It can feel like the lifeblood of our human culture is being devoured by the never-sleeping algorithms unleashed upon us by the bros. But there is always an alternative: we can just switch them off.
You should not take your phone to the beach. Nor any place where you want to find timeless, ancient peace and quiet.
Now I am dreaming. For who does not have a cellphone bolted to their ear as they jump a red traffic light in East London?
Traffic lights, as we know, have been reassigned by lawless brigand society, as neither stop nor yield signs, but optional roadside attractions.
And yet there can be no dodging the BCM traffic department highwaymen when they too, set an ambush, to menace and shake us down for our bucks.
We should carry road marking paint with us and insist they take it as payment for these random fines and get on with the job of keeping motorists safe.
To be fair, it’s election time soon and there has been a concerted effort to get those contractors out there and patching.
It is alarming how we have moved from cowboy cow pat repairs to large squares of road being dug up and resurfaced.
And where did that huge hole come from in the brand new stretch of R72 in Currie Street close to poor Audio Max?
I paid a fine at court this week. I will never take part in the highway robbery. I waited until the court date and then paid.
It took me a while to realise that the letters ADHD displayed in a circle on the shirt gifted to me by china Kretz stood for attention deficit hyper activity disorder. So there is procrastination, then crazy wild determination.
That kind of belligerence is inherited. I recall with pride how my father was being exhorted by a charismatic pastor to give his life (and tithe) to the Lord.
In front of a full crowd, in a packed, raked auditorium, with the zealot’s finger and words — “And what about you!” — directed straight at him, my ballie said loudly and bluntly: “No!”
He was, it turned out, spiritual at the end. And who are we to judge?
What do we do in this moment of geopolitical teetering, with Trump leading the charge for unchecked mining and extraction and Vance, being ridden by scary right-winger Peter Thiel in the background?
Even more frightening is blogger Curtis Yarvin, with whom Vance appears to have some kind of affiliation.
Yarvin is punting a kooky anti-democratic pro-monarchist economic system where corporate CEOs rule like royals.
All very dystopian and we should pray that it gets stopped by public protest.
Or not. These tyrants seem to relish their mission. Truth and rationality do not factor.
This is raw, chest-beating, naked power lust.
But I don’t want to get used to it, or over it or whatever.
Being your brave, barely anonymous columnist-for-one, I have decided to run away!
So here I am, perched on the stoep, looking out, through leaning pillars, on the last estuary ... no wait, apparently there are more estuaries in great health on these east and wild coasts than anywhere else in SA.
Trump and his weird band are not here. Our phantoms are more about the interests of China and their fans in the SA government.
We already have one enormous bridge being built over the Mtentu gorge on the new N2 by China which must be paid for at the tolls.
When big industry arrives we will face a Faustian bargain — we will be forced to choose from the present scenario of dreadful roads, unruly robbers, dodgy and corrupt cops, and heavy industry — oil, gas, agri-industry, permit-allowed trawling. Extraction upon extraction.
Can we run away from this? Will the Wild Coast be sold and pillaged for a few silver coins?
Like the Zelensky’s of the world, it seems it will take plenty of courage and contemplation before we get our heads around this realpolitik.
But all I really want to do is get out onto that beach and enjoy the satin-black red-billed oyster catchers, the perfectly poised herons, and the skeins of sea mist drifting in off the cold sea and hanging on the estuary.
I also don’t have an issue with the pastiche of my past here today.
We had lives, flawed by privilege and apartheid for sure, but there were also sublime, untainted moments, simple etchings, that we can cherish, that keep us whole and grounded.
We are in grave danger, all of us, of having our memories alt-deleted by scoundrels, vicious ideologues and brutes.
I am fighting for my right to remember and forget.
And I choose to remember these times of good nature.
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