Blog 7 May 2014-05-07
Up early on this voting day, 4.30am, with winter’s darkness
already stealing back the early morning hours – now at 6am, still darkness, but
soon the sky will turn blue
One more day off work in this autumn holiday period, with
some friends planning their 2015 annual vacation for this season, with its
multiple public holidays, very disruptive to a working week – I don’t think the
civil servants mind – the way I remember it, the more time off work the better,
and it was always the best time to take a vacation, because a few days
vacation, sandwiched between many public holidays, always gave the longest
continuous leave periods, without eating away too badly at your annual leave
days allocation...
It’s been an interesting time for me, the past few weeks,
since theft of my cellphone on 16th April, and then the car accident
of 19th April, which left me without wheels – at the end of this
week on 10th May, it will be a full 3 weeks that I will have been
without my sturdy Isuzu bakkie, a car I have come to love – a 1995 doublecab
280LE , which should come out of this smash with a completely renewed front
suspension, and should be an even more comfortable ride than before – The R18k
that Santam pays oiut to me as ‘Third party’ insurance, should cover the
damage, although it looks like it will not be by much – it seems that insurance
companies are staffed by people who are very engagingly nice when they sell you
insurance, but who appear to be a bit inhuman when it comes to helping the
person who is an indirect beneficiary of an insurance policy – I will leave it
to the short-term insurance ombudsman/woman to arbitrate..
But finding myself suddenly without wheels, and also without
phone, has been an interesting experience – after the initial shock &
panic, and with our annual rainfall quota deciding to let loose from the sky in
exactly that week [late April 2014] I found myself confined to my plot, and
largely to my garden shed, which doubles up as an office, wardrobe &
kitchen, not to mention pantry & toolshed and general packing station – and
with the rain pouring down just outside the open builder’s ply door [which I
tied with stiff wire in a half-closed position, to stop the rain from wetting
the things just inside the door, allowing myself & my dog just enough space
to pass through] – Plus, I had a week of severe flu – I remember telling
somebody I felt like the biblical Job, many calamities one after another – by
the 4th day at home, I was down to foodstuffs that had to be cooked,
from my ‘survival cache’ – so I ended up eating no bread for a while, and
drinking coffee without milk – it also happened to be premium coffee, freshly
roasted beans brought back the week before from Natal, where I had gone to see
some old friends out from UK on their annual SA visit – I had also run out of
instant coffee, and the beans were all I had – ground up at high speed in my
smoothie maker. I also ran out of cigarettes, forcing me to dig out a pipe and
some emergency tobacco, very stale, but welcome.
And that week of living like Robinson Crusoe was actually
very sweet – bare basics, very little contact with the world, and a break from
my usual pattern of ‘being on the go’ – always driving to town, always a list
of things to do. A kind of full stop, without loss of limb or internal injury
[apart from the bronchial infection]
I think it brought me closer to nature, and was the catalyst
that sent me into a new growth phase – one of greater self-reliance, and
shifted me somehow into a sudden deeper process of individuation, which I felt
as it happened – a kind of watershed of personal development – it came as a
sudden feeling, that in my world was only really me, and my dog – for everybody
else I am very much just a passing shadow – and I made a decision then, that I
should take proper control of my ship – take myself more seriously – allow
myself to enjoy what nature has to offer me, and the freedom that I have
because I don’t have an 8-5 job, nor do I have dependents – all I must do, is
pay my accounts, and supervise my & my dog’s diets & nutrition, and
then in a spontaneous day-by-week way, do what I enjoy, which is basically
making art, in many forms, and trust that if I stick hard and honestly at it,
then there will be sufficient cash reward to pay the bills – what’s more, that
livelihood will open onto an increasing panorama of opportunity and beauty
& reward – travel, landscapes, nature...
So, according to Maslow [I think it was Abraham] the
now-surely-deceased American psychologist, I am well embarked on my curve of
individuation, leading to self-actualization – when I was younger, it was
always a puzzle to me, whether I would ever ‘self-actualize’ according to
Maslow’s famous continuum of development toward self-actualization – starting
with security needs, moving on & up to ‘belonging’ in a social group, then
to ‘love’ etc – I think I have jumped a few of the steps maybe...
And the lesson in all this, apart from my friend Steve’s
suggestion that it was perhaps a ‘zen’ directive from none other than the
Universe, to ‘zen out’, stop the cacophony of being so busy, on phone and
driving from place to place – an additional lesson to this, and not a new one
at all, is that I must accept whatever befalls me, and see where it leads –
that is what Deepak Chopra has been saying on facebook, and soon I hope to be
back on facebook and the internet, as soon as I can pay my cellphone account,
and get reconnected, umbilically, to the satellite stations that orbit our
Earth, and keep us all in contact, pushing us all in various waves of shared
consciousness, and a sharing of ideas and art, in a massive wave of ongoing
creation, toward the sublime & silent peak of individuation – which in the
end, is the summation of what we have become, which in turn, is the culmination
of every life experience we have had, into that space behind our eyes, which
can be called ‘soul’ or ‘intent’ or ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ – that 3rd
eye that sets us apart from the animals, and makes us into the
‘self-reflecting’ humans that we are, or are supposed to be... J
