Survival of the slowest....

Blog Thurs 25 July 2013

It’s 6.20am, all quiet outside apart from my recently acquired Whirpool washer spewing out water it doesn’t want or need ,  it sounds like a cow in the veld when it unleashes a torrent – and then the sound of its various clicks and turnings on & off – I like the machine a lot, especially since I got it so cheap – that reminds me of a friend who lives across the river – he recently got himself a new pup, to replace his current dog who has cancer and will surely be going to dog heaven one of these years if not months – it’s a beautiful little tan thing – most pups are beautiful – but it had a severe case of the runs last week, which cost him R6.2k in vet bills, I remember because he repeated that figure a number of times, like a mantra – I tried to tell him that if he had been unable to scrape together that amount of money, he might have been forced to try the old boere cure for acute pup tummy run, which I was forced to try about 3.5 years ago, and which worked, on my own pup – thank my stars he survived – and I’m sure I fed him mealie meal porridge – apparently it kind of cements up the intestines?

Beware all you mealie meal porridge eaters, even though it remains one of my favourite breakfasts, when there is time to make it, and even better, somebody to share it with. That reminds me of something else, the most wonderful food in the whole World, is millet – apparently it comes from sorghum, a grain plant – must grow like the wheat plant? It is one of the very few totally alkaline bulk foods you can eat – I have found it makes a superb breakfast, when I use the leftovers from the night before, and mix with amasi & honey.

Back to my friend & his adorable pup – along with the pup’s bowel discomfort, plus then having various anti-biotic pills forced past it’s tongue, it then found itself suddenly banished from the house, to live outside with its older and cancerous brother dog  – and maybe worst of all, my friend  had got a steely look in his eye, and threat in his manner & tone, that if the pup did not now survive, after costing him so much, he was going to let nature take it’s course – he had already gone to the breeder sites on the ‘net, and convinced himself that his erstwhile beautiful pup was not really the breed he had been sold – that’s how much the Dollar weighs in our decisions and emotions and alliances

That reminds me of one of the most beautiful & engaging women I’ve ever met, about 6 weeks ago at a supermarket in this otherwise unexciting town – she came with me to my car [a very unwashed & old bakkie] which I realised with hindsight was a terrible mistake on my part, and she promised to send me that very afternoon her phone number after I handed her my last business card – she never did send it – and some days later when I told this story to another friend of mine [who could take on any of the top actresses in our World for pure loveliness] –this beautiful friend of mine told me that the supermarket demi-goddess who had devastated me, dated only young dashing men with very recent model cars, usually of German design...

It’s still a jungle out there, it seems, of survival of the prettiest

So where was I?   Just last night again, at a  local live music venue, where some weeks ago I heard  the young  Stuart Reece playing his guitar and singing – I’d never heard of him before – and he is very good, and very enjoyable to listen to – a kind of young cowboy, tall & very thin, wearing black clothing & a small black hat – maybe our own Bob Dylan – except he doesn’t whine – he just plays these very pleasant folk/blues/rock songs about things he has lived & seen – I find him a very polished, mature, unpretentious, effortless, and enjoyable musician – and he has his very own style of strumming his guitar – crisp and minimal and good.................but  last night there was another music act on the low wooden stage – this duo were not effortless, and not so nice on my ear & eyes – what was more than nice, on my eyes, was another of god’s maidens, sent to that out-of-the-way meeting place of music & beer lovers, just to remind me that there is a seemingly endless courtege’ of passing lovelies, each one of which could break your heart, if it wasn’t already broken so many times, that it had somehow healed into a big lump of scar tissue, now almost impervious to any further breakings or rippings –  maybe something like the one that pounds away in the chest of the Incredible Hulk – anyway, she was ultra-lovely, and my only direct question to her, for her ears only, was to ask her if she was a happily married young woman – I’d seen the flash of a ring – she replied immediately and in bright spirits that she was, and she was not unkind as she replied, smiling all the while, and asking/telling me that I had just needed to check that bit of info – I nodded, there was nothing more to say, and  walked away, after I had stoked up the fire in the fireplace near their table

Now 7.05am, my washing machine still emptying its large bladder in spurts & torrents – and the reason it sounds like a cow in the veld, is because the water pouring from the overflow pipe falls straight onto the ground , and it then flows downhill & waters my struggling indigenous lawn, and half of it goes down the driveway, to deposit more of my topsoil in the cul de sac, for other motorists to trample beneath their tyres

 I think I was saying earlier that it’s a vicious world out there, of survival & speed & apparent accumulation of cash reserves in your bank account/s – I have found also, that it is a world in which a modicum of suffering can teach you the best lessons you will learn in your earthly sojourn, and once you have come to terms with your own little bit of suffering, as promised to you that you will have here on Earth [in the christain bible] – once you are able to look back on that suffering, with a sense of humour, and some  equanimity, you realize maybe that it is that very suffering which will give you a few stories to tell around a campfire, if ever you are lucky enough to go camping, and also remember to take with some firewood, and don’t get rushed away to the nearest Trauma Unit for standing too close when you throw on the petrol [it makes an amazing & powerful whoosh & bang, the whole air around you seems to explode in that moment when the petrol hits the struggling flames] – and if you haven’t fallen asleep with your boots in the embers, after becoming incoherent from drinking Old Brown straight from the brown bottle, or taking some other forbidden substance of which there are many, most of them a lot of fun

That brings me to another, and perhaps my last thought on this quiet morning – how our brains are wired and neurotransmittered  to allow us a glimpse of the entire puzzle/picture, apparently in technicolour sometimes, and also in 4D, of our Universe – that within our very own molecules, of which we have billions residing under & in our skins – we have DNA and an  ancestral archive of pictures & various bits of long-encoded information, which if we manage to lift ‘the veil’ will allow us to travel across time & space, to connect with our original soul source, as a recent friend/acquaintance was telling me she had managed to do, over the past few years, aided by about ten years of huge stress & suffering, plus an inquiring and open mindset – she had achieved her connecting-to-source while sweeping the floor of her simple & dusty & lovely home – all alone, and going into some kind of meditational state – brought about by doing something repetitive – sweeping - and just not thinking about anything – apparently that’s the big Trick – to stop the washing machine of your mind, or for some [as I once experienced] – the automatic clothes tumbler, that spins around at a great speed – that state of mind is not conducive to happiness nor peacefulness, and will lead to illness and an untimely death by cancer or suicide or high blood pressure or heart attack, or getting involved in a bar fight just because you were very angry and didn’t know just how angry you were – anyway, she managed to practice this method, while sweeping her various floors, of zoning out & in, and she made various visits to distant planets & stars, and I believed her when she told me all this, and still believe her – and I think she is a richer human being for all that – although I still see her struggling against her demons

Aldous Huxley wrote, maybe in his book The Doors of Perception, that drugs are the fast track to the zone that the old men in the Himalayas reside in after many years of disciplined practice of mindlessness, of thought-stopping, and of a frugal diet – the Trick, again, apparently, is to get into the synaptic cleft – that space between thoughts & neuronal firings – and to expand that space – it’s our doorway into Eternity – and if you ever slow down enough, like when things get very slow-mo after/during a car accident – then you can witness the slowing down of time, and apparently go to some very interesting & instructive  and also powerful and life-changing places

Maybe, taking a longer view, its survival of the slowest, in the real race, the joyride to happiness & bliss?