Homecoming...

There's a great line in there where one girl comments (and it's rare a woman says anything significant so we should take notice) ..that what it comes down to is the following :

Do you want to live a quiet life or a significant life ?

I see it the same way. South Africa offers so much opportunity for a person to transcend the mundane meaningless toil that is life in the tranquilized west. There's so much opportunity for those who invest in it. Whether you want to give over your beautiful life to the shallow pursuit of material goods or are striving for something more........precious. Where better to live out "the foolish deeds of the day" ?

Personally I've traveled and seen much of what the world has to offer. Not just traveled but lived and immersed myself in various places and cultures. I've seen it all and have absorbed a sense of relativism that I think few will ever come to understand. I've lived in hyper safe first world countries and never could shake off the feeling of an old age home like waiting room for death. Much of what life seemed about could be likened to a insignificant game of bingo. A few winners with boasting rights and the rest rolling through with feigned enthusiasm.


South Africa offers so much more. A real chance to make a REAL difference. We exist on the fragile tight rope between heaven and hell. Few could dare argue that South Africa is not in clear view of both possibilities. A full spectrum of what life has to offer is compressed into this beautiful country ...each aspect made so much more vivid in juxtaposition to he rest. I could waste time to try and explain what i find so humbling and beautiful about this country....the vibrancy , the buzzing and the scurrying, the blobs of thick modern luxury poured over the hauntingly beautiful spiritual and at times suffering African soil. The mess of cultures and ethnic groups that crash and collide an sprinkle us all with their residual concoction of diversity. Te battle between old traditions and modern trends, between poverty and dignity , between nature and man , between life and death , between the ancestors wisdom and the self help religion sections at the bookstores....I could try and explain what's so achingly beautiful and alive about this country.....but I would waste my time. You already know.

And through it all , it's boundless gifts and perspectives and haunting beauty, it's opportunity to transcend all the gunk that has clogged up the spiritual viens of the western world...all south Africa asks in return is this :

You give a tiny little bit back.

And herein sleeps the god like balance of the universe. As any of us who've played the "pull a string" games at a fairground in our childhoods knows...The richer the pool you dip your line in , the more likekly you are to pull out something of significance. But those rich pools ....well they cost more.

And here's what South Africa costs for us : A tiny, relatively speaking , insignificantly escalated chance of getting murdered (about the same as living in Washington dc ....but less if you are middle classed)....and a few car radios. In return you get a beautiful country dripping in opportunity for greatness. A chance to stand up and make a meaningful nuisance of your few short years on this big lug of a rock...to fight off tangible and in your face demons and rise over their corpses with your sword raised and shout " I was here !!!"


All this ...the wonderful people , weather , thriving economy and lifestyle...without the modern western carrot to far up it's ass. And as a bonus a fat bag of absolution and redemption to boot.


So as a South African you've got a simple choice to make. Get involved ! Get tucked in ! Get your hands dirty and where you see a divot on what could be a beautiful fairway of a country...stomp that shit down !!!

Or F#ck off.

Take your whiny little cry baby self and just P!ss off somewhere else. Where your government can cusp and massage your fragile little tingly place where your balls used to be and pat your little bottom. Where you can sit in your 7 yard back "lawn" and over look the glory that is your cold , soulless, low class neighborhood in a country that gives less of a damn about you than the one you left. Where you can march off in the morning to your ever so important work of pressing a green button so you can one day realise the irony of the extent you've gone to in order to put a wall up between yourself and the world. That's right...just F#ck off ...do it quickly...do it quietly ! Please !!! P#ssies. And while you're at it give up drinking , smoking , eating fatty foods, riding roller coasters etc etc etc ..maybe you'll live forever ! .

(Twat)

Life is never without risks except my friends..to remove risk is to remove life itself and find yourself in a vacuum. That is the nature and reality of things. You can waste your life avoiding and tranquilizing yourself from this truth as it slowly eats at your flesh....or you can face it head it head on and enjoy the thrill of it all.

And here ends this mornings lesson.