Looking Inside

I will be the first to admit that I mostly live in my head. In the year and a half before my attempt at the Comrades, I wanted to look inside myself and answer the question, “Am I a runner?”. I did love sport growing up, and I threw myself into various things. Even though I wasn’t great, each year my body changed enough to ask the question, “maybe I am now?”. 

When I started working, I did neglect my body more than I should have for a few years. Getting swallowed by the time at my desk. In 2009 I moved near to a Yoga Centre, and gradually stopped treating my body as a “transport device for my head”. I was attempting a few “100 hour projects”... like piano and capoeira (8-week course). Seeing how fluidly some people’s bodies or fingers move... with rhythm that is inspirational. Planting a seed for my later interest in “Five Rhythms” (a form of moving meditation) and movement culture more generally. 

When you are not on a specific path (e.g. when you are a child), you can be more flexible and playful. Trying things. Holding back your “self-definition” in those first hundred hours. Less about whether or not I was a runner, and more just about running. 

The best advice I have been given on how to become a writer, is “write”.

Digging Deep

Self-Sacrifice and Self-Reliance

The irony of growing up in Apartheid where a privileged minority received various advantages, is that that is not part of the deep soaked self-identity. 

Reach further back and the scars are of tough-love and self-reliance. “No one owes you anything” and “Life is hard. Make a plan”. That perspective is a positive-optimistic-negative view of the world. A Ja-Nee view that got baked into the stories of Racheltjie De Beer and Wolraad Woltemade. 

My great-great-(forget how many)-grandfather was Jacobus De Beer, who was a signatory at the peace of Vereeniging (the treaty that ended the second Anglo-Boer War). I had ancestors on both sides. The story of Racheltjie is of her saving the life of her brother by sacrificing her own. She removed her clothes to cover him in a snowstorm. 

There are repeated stories of self-sacrifice, but also self-reliance. A willingness to give to others, but not rely on or expect from others. A cultural sense of loneliness. A sense of fleeing others. 

I don’t have a full handle on how I ended up here. My Maiden name is Black. A surname given to expelled sheep thieves in the Scottish borderlands. All sorts of dodgy people, explorers, refugees, and randoms found their way away and down south. Unpacking stories is complicated.

Bloemfontein Concentration Camp

Barriers that don't Serve

There is irony in one of the existential questions of being South African. Wherever you earn a living or sleep, there is a should I stay/go/return question that hovers. I think this is ironic (don’t you think?) because SA is also the country that gave the legal name to Apartheid. Apartness. Separate development. Self (and separate) determination. I did not leave South African as a big statement in 2008. I went to London to explore, make some money, and connect beyond my container. I do not support the idea that your opportunities and community should be determined by a random lottery of birth. When I came back to SA at the end of last year, the reasons were complicated too. It is also not a big statement. Your story is yours. The world is connected. I believe in the four freedoms (capital, goods, services, labour). You should be able to sleep/work where it supports your path. Your money should be able to do the same. Our goods should be made locally or globally depending on what works best. Let’s chip away at barriers that don’t serve us. 

Barriers that don't Serve