A SEASON FOR DEATH

A SEASON FOR DEATH
Spring seems to be a bad time for old people. I had just come back from a wake for a resident of Evergreen that I was very fond of, to be confronted with an E-mail telling me of the death of another good friend, Livinia. I knew her well. I used to see her every Sunday when we picked up people from Capricorn to take to church. She had been unwell for a few weeks. I had visited her a few times and had intended to go to see her last week, but put it off.  I am inclined to do this. I don't think I am very good at visiting the sick. There is a group of volunteers at Evergreen who do this regularly and do I admire them. I find it a rather depressing chore, but now so many of my friends are frail and housebound I really ought to make more of an effort. I know it is appreciated. I have been told so often enough. Perhaps I should put aside a day every week for this purpose. Of course not a whole day, rather and hour or two in the morning or afternoon. It should be easy enough. My diary may be full of engagements of one sort or another, but almost none of them are urgent.

Evolution

After a very interesting talk by Mike Nicol about his latest crime novel Of Cops and Robbers, a small group of us  had a poetry study session led by Jim Phelps. The poem chosen (by Jim) was a poem by Seamus Heaney  I think it was called The Follower.  It was about the poet as a child following his father as he ploughed. a field. We were not told the name of the author until after the discussion. The idea was for each of us to say what the poem meant to us without being influenced by knowing anything about its provenance.  I enjoyed the discussion, but felt it went on a bit long. After all, the poem was short, its description of the ploughman and his work  quite clear and the message of the poem plainly stated.  Perhaps I am too impatient and too frivolous for discussions like this. I have often regretted not having studied literature more seriously and not taken tertiary level courses in literature, but perhaps if I am so easily bored, it was just as well I didn't.

At the end of the session, Pam said something about wanting to discuss Evolution. (Darwinian I presume) My immediate reaction was "count me out!" I didn't actually say so. Surely the conflict of religion and Darwin's theory has been done to death. I don't think I can bear listening to the tired old arguments again. Only the very "Bible Belt" type sects want to get rid of the learning and teaching of the theory.  At the way-out Christian School I taught at for a short time, Evolution (in the biological sense) was not mentioned and presumably was taboo in class. Luckily I did not have to teach Biology, but I was tackled by a pupil's mother(she was also on the staff) who didn't like me telling her daughter that the earth went round the sun or that the measurement of velocity was relative. She said it contradicted what was written in the Bible(I have still to discover what Bible verses she was referring to, but I take her word for it. Texts can always be found to corroborate the most strange of prejudices.) I was amazed. I never expected controversy over Newton's laws.  I thought that particular argument was confined to Galileo's time.

I see the idea of Natural Selection, not as a tenet of belief, but as a useful tool for studying the variation in plants and animals just as Newtonian physics is useful for the study of the motion of bodies. Mostly these theories work, but there are circumstances in which they don't.  I think it is ridiculous that anyone thinks that one has to choose between one's Faith and the way one studies Biology.  I also think that we have to accept that there is much in this wonderful Universe that we will never understand and it is arrogant of us to believe otherwise.
 As a post script, I have found quite a few nice poems about Evolution. particularly some by Thomas Hardy. I did write down links, but have mislaid the paper I wrote them on. I shall have to Google them again.

On being a writer
If I have the affrontery to call myself a writer, then I must do a lot more writing.  I have become very lazy about this. Just because I don't have anyone reading my writings, shouldn't mean that I should give up the practice. I deceive myself by  making the excuse that I am concentrating on poetry, but the truth is that most of the time I just go back to one or two poems and fiddle with them. I did actually finish the mystery story that gave me so much trouble. I might at some time or other end it off properly. In other words give it a more satisfactory ending. But I got so bored with the characters and as  I got to dislike them more and more they became less and less likeable. I feel sorry for them now. They deserved better. In the beginning they had so much promise. Their company gave me so much pleasure. It is my own fault that I fell out of love with them. I did not take enough trouble with them, did not delve enough into their pasts nor give them enough direction to make sufficient futures for themselves.  Now the summer holidays are just round the corner and there will be no dog training and no U3A activities, I must find another (hopefully) worthwhile project. Perhaps I could write about my life in Zambia. The family were quite interested in my memoir about growing up in Wellington. They might enjoy reading about camping in the bush. The prospect doesn't thrill me, but once I get started I might get more enthusiastic. 

Of course I should also be working on another collection of poems. There are just not quite enough  that are worth publishing. It is light verse that is required, but lately I have been feeling so depressed
that it is no wonder that my jokes are not funny and my verse falls as flat as the souffles I never was able to bake sucessfully.

Maybe in both cases I am not following the recipe properly. Perhaps I should heed the advice of experts i.e. Read more, write more and go for long, long walks. On the other hand in my present state of mind it might be better to forget about light verse and try to write about pain and grief. There is certainly enough of it about at the moment. Spring seems to be a bad time for old people. Many of my friends have been taken ill, others are losing their minds. In Evergreen two residents have died recently. Saddest of all, my dear friend Helen died suddenly last week.  I quite like gloom in poems, but unfortunately I am not known for gloom. Gloom is not what is expected of me. 

It might be a good idea to abandon poetry for a while or two or even altogether.  Next year I shall be eighty, a good time to retire.
a good age to retire

WEST COAST PARK

Last Friday I went with a group from Evergreen to the West Coast Nature Reserve. the weather was not ideal. There was too much cloud. But all the same it was very worthwhile. There were lots of flowers. I took dozens of photos. Melanie had asked me to let her have some. Unfortunately what I took were not what she wanted. There were only three of people.  It turns out that she didn't want pictures of the park that we visited or the flowers that we went to see, but pictures of Evergreen residents visiting the park and looking at the flowers. I should have known better because I realised during the course of the trip, that no one else on the bus was really interested in wild flowers. What they wanted to do on the outing, was admire the scenery ( which they expected to include some brightly coloured fields of daisies) from a distance and have lunch at a good restaurant.  There was some annoyance when it was discovered that this last had not been arranged.

The trip was well worthwhile for me in spite of the weather and I think the others on the bus enjoyed it too. We were a jolly crowd and those who had not brought sandwiches, didn't complain that the stall in the reserve only sold hot dogs and hamburgers. The bonus for all of us was the wildlife.  We saw wildebees, springbok, eland and zebra in the park, some of them quite close to the road. The wildebees were leaping about and chasing one another, (affected by the joys of Spring). I tried to catch them on camera but they were all too quick for me, except for one old one, standing by himself, too staid to indulge in such youthful behaviour.  On the way home, we passed a private game park and were surprised to see two giraffe. One came and posed at the fence.

OPEN BOOK

Having become a literary groupie in my old age, I am a great fan of this modern phenomenon, the Literary Festival. Festivals of all sorts, Wine festivals,  Arts festivals etc. have been with us for a long time, but book festivals are comparatively new.  The Cape Town Book Fair, once the highlight of the literary year, has been overtaken by several much more interesting events like the Franchhoek Literary festival. I think this is still my favourite, though the McGregor Poetry Festival, one I don't think I would have attended if I had not been invited, was excellent - a full and varied programme and most efficiently run. If they hold it again next year I shall definitely be going there.

Yesterday I attended two events at the Open Book Festival. The opening event featured three famous South African Authors.(Brink, Magona and Serote) All three are practised public speakers. They all had important things to say about concerns dear to their hearts and were able to communicate these in an engaging way and hold our attention throughout the allotted time. They gave us plenty of food for thought and I found the session very worthwhile. However, I would have liked more interaction. It was like having three speakers, giving three addresses, one after the other. It would have been more entertaining to have had a discussion between the three, especially if they were to disagree. I think an argument would have been more fun.

The second event was Finding Your Voice and dealt with the question of the teaching of creative writing particularly with regard to the writing of poetry.  This event was very well chaired by Karin Schimke.  She managed to draw out the other three panellists and get them to talk freely and we had varied opinions about the value of University courses. They agreed that writing ability is inborn, but to write well is an art that has to be learnt. They also agreed that teaching this art presents problems. One of the problems is the tendency to be too much influenced towards copying a certain style. They also discussed the problem of steering a course between offering help and stifling inspiration. They had all come across aspirant poets who were devastated by any criticism of their work.
(Personally, though I can understand that it can hurt, I feel that if you offer your work for evaluation you should accept criticism with a good grace. You have done so in order that you can learn how to improve it after all, haven't you?)
Their advice to aspirant poets: -
Aspirant poets need to:
read more, write more, go for long, long walks,
accept rejection with a smile and
never show their newly written work to
family or lovers.

MY ILLUSTRIOUS ALTHLETIC CAREER On the top of my bookcase, is a little silver figure of a woman running. This trophy, entitled Grootmeester Padhardloop 1997 dates back to the time when, I was living in George and in an effort to get fit and lose some weight, I joined the outfit called Run/Walk for Life. Three times a week we would gather on a school sports field and either run or walk around it, monitoring our speed and our heart rate at each circuit. This doesn’t sound very exciting and it wasn’t, not at first, but when we had attended the requisite number of sessions and completed the requisite number of circuits, we graduated onto the road and this was much more interesting. We used various routes, most of them along shady avenues in pleasant leafy suburbs. Walking alongside someone for five or six kilometres gives plenty of time for conversation and I came to know all the others in our group and made many good friends. From being a dreaded chore, the exercise session became something to look forward to. Our enthusiastic leader, once a Comrades runner himself, encouraged us to enter road races. Most fun runs are open to walkers as well as runners, and some longer events have categories for walkers, who usually have to start after the runners, so as not to get in their way. When I started entering as a walker, I found that walkers were not always welcome, because they were slower and made the event go on too long, but when a Marathon and a half-Marathon are run at the same time, the organisers don’t mind having walkers in the half-marathon, because water points have to be kept going until all the Marathon runners are home anyway. The first half-marathon I entered was exhausting. I thought I would never finish, but after a while I learnt to pace myself and once I had mastered the technique of the race-walkers wiggle, 21 km became, if not exactly a breeze, much easier. After doing a few of these, we walkers began to set our sights on the 37km Big Walk. In the end I was to do this race three times. But what about the trophy? Well, it came about, that a few of us had entered the Saasveld Half- Marathon. This was a rather tough race, but with a delightfully scenic course, through fields, plantations and indigenous forest. When I entered I didn’t know that it wasn’t just another road race, but the Southern Cape Road Running Championship. For Road Running, the age categories are: Junior, Senior, Master and Grandmaster. (Grand master in those days was sixty and over). The winner in each category would be that year’s champ. Our running vests were marked with the appropriate letter. At the start I noticed that there were only two other G’s in the line-up. For most of the race they were both so far ahead that I couldn’t see them. I slogged on at the rear, enjoying the balmy Spring weather, the gurgle of the mountain streams, and the sweet scent of the pine trees along the route. I passed one of the Gs a little way after the half-way mark. Having set out too fast, she was now sitting by the side of the road puffing and panting and suffering from cramping in the calves. I made a perfunctory inquiry as to whether she needed assistance, but she grimly waved me on. About two kilometres before the finish, I came across the other Grandmaster lady, another Walk-for-lifer, and a faster walker than I was. She had found a clump of edible mushrooms by the side of the road and was picking them and stuffing them in her small backpack. “You go on ahead,” she told me. “I don’t mind being second for once.” She was a bit taken aback when she discovered that I was to be crowned Southern Cape Lady Grandmaster Half-marathon Champion, but took it with good grace. I think she won the next year, but after that, the age for Grandmaster was dropped to fifty-five and the competition was much too tough for either of us. Now that my walking is reduced to a slow perambulation round the park, I have the trophy displayed prominently in my sitting-room to impress visitors. I don’t tell them that there were only three of us in the race and that one dropped out and the other stopped to pick mushrooms.

Choosing a Writing Project
I haven't ben using this blog for quite a while. I have been trying to finish the story I started more than a year ago.  I seem to have finally resolved the problems and sorted out a satisfactory ending. Satisfactory, did I say. No, not entirely satisfactory, but good enough to complete the exercise. That is what this piece of writing has been, an exercise, a learning process.  I have written several short stories some of them have even been published.(in litnet and Itch) but anything longer has been much more difficult for me. I started a crime novel, but had to abandon it.  Then when I was attending Paul Mason's group he gave us a "tryptich" of stories to read and suggested we try to produce something similar. (If I remember there were three stories linked by one particular character. The first described an incident in this character's childhood and was written in his voice. The second, an incident in his youth narrated by the same character's wife and the third, a later incident related by the character's daughter. The stories put together were about as long as a short novel.  I chose the theme of Betrayal. I set the first in the seventies in the central character's early adolescence.(verkrampt childhood)  The second would be narrated by a friend and comrade at university and would be set in the eighties (student unrest) and the third narrated by a lover. (struggle)
I never got beyond the first story, which could possibly have stood on its own.Although I was pleased with the beginning, I was less pleased with the ending which was very weak and definitely needed re-writing, but I couldn't think how to improve it.  I abandoned it also.  I did finish a short novel for children. I was fairly satisfied with it, but it got lost when I acquired a new computer. Somehow it hadn't been properly backed up. Now recent technology has caused it to be out of date.  I still have fragments and might reconstruct it.  A fourth story which had a promising beginning was about a teenager with an alcoholic parent. (I had become aware of the fact that publishers like 'Youth Literature' to be full of misery and angst.) This also did not get beyond Chapter 3. 

Perhaps I may return to one or other of these, when I finish the present project, encouraged by the knowledge that I am actually able to  complete a piece of writing longer than 2000 words.
On the other hand I might do as my daughters suggest and write some more chapters of my Memoir. At least I will be sure of an audience even if the readership is confined to my family.