Requiem 1994: deconstructing joy.

As headlines around the world make mention of my country in combination with words like "anarchy" and "chaos", I spend an inordinate amount of time searching through musty cobwebby boxes of old photographs which, in 2002, accidentally found their way to the new world. In a battered colonial era tin trunk. In an epic journey via Port Elizabeth and Belgium to Seattle. Old albums in the hold of a ship.

I am looking for a picture of a beaded transistor radio created in the Mandela Magic years of the nineties. Celebratory creation was all the rage. We possessed the secret of joy. There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air, people dancing in the streets. Formerly forbidden couples, fresh from exile in neighbouring states, dared even to dance cheek to cheek. In the streets. We kissed sweet liberation a tangible taste on the tongue and made up a whole brand new rainbow coloured future!

The photograph evades me but not the memory of briefly having lived a life chronicled by Bob Dylan. Of having had reason to celebrate.... But that was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead.

Thus on this day of primal wrath, the light mottled by flickering shadows, suggestion of the judgement of revenge heavy in the air, I will have to settle for the Bathurst cemetery stone angel instead. Same era. Ah! the Eldorado years. Robert do you still have my muntu art stashed somewhere in Little Nigeria daar by die baai?

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla

Perspective

Yes, I know I recent posts have been weighted inordinately towards kayaking, pictures of water and coastline. What can I say: the last drops of sunshine of the brief Northwest summer season command my attention. I have no choice. I MUST be on the water every opportunity. The golden stillness of early autumn is precarious and precious in these parts.

One of the reasons I love kayaking is for the perspective it gives. Even in the small inland sea of the Puget Sound. Yesterday's explorations around Foul Weather Bluff took us to a coastline dominated by 70 ft Red Alders, Red Cedars, Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir: some of the tallest trees in the world. On a rare cloudless day out on the Puget Sound, the sky can rival Montana for bigness, stretching from here to eternity.
Compared to my featherlight little 13 ft Merlin, the Fav Tribal Elder paddles a huge kayak. His Wind Dancer is affectionately known in kayaking circles as "The Barge" for its size and weight. This image from yesterday's paddle to the Foul Weather Bluff preserve says it all for me: the place of humanity in the grand scheme of things, presidential elections notwithstanding.

We are so small against the sky.

As an aside, could it have been that the FTE got wind of my solo escape Sunday? He turned up first light Monday morning at Haleikeokekai, the little cabin on the rez , his kayak on the car, all bustle and intent. "We are going kayaking! Come on, come now.You don't need to wear all the gear. We will stick to the coastline. I need to recover from the wedding. Where's my tea? Where are we going? I have been everywhere here...."

Then, muttering under his breath about what a terrible paddle it was, he taught me to read the water for signs of wind squalls. Do I detect the Silverback Syndrome at play here?

I will always be grateful for this whimsical apprenticeship I have stumbled into.

Out of the heart: a flock of white doves released

This summer my kayak paddles have been dominated by the Fav Tribal Elder. Don't get me wrong: I really appreciate his superior experience, wisdom and expertise. I realize he has a lot to teach a wild goat such as myself. Then too, all summer long there has been the small matter of the slipway at the end of my road being closed for the construction of the Suquamish tribe Community House. This meant that I really appreciated having another set of strong arms, tie downs and sturdy Volvo roof racks to transport my kayak.

But this morning I escaped for a solitary dawn paddle. Without my spray skirt. Without my life vest. Without the Fav Tribal Elder - who has been somewhat scarce of late anyway. That is another story but in brief: he spent much of last week under his neighbour's vehicle trading a drive shaft and brakes service for a marriage service. The barter economy is in robust health. FTE's son, rather his wife's son from another marriage, needed to get married. Several good men of the cloth refused to do this as son and son's intended share a house and various children. Thus FTE stepped in and arranged things. The wedding was at his house yesterday. No I did not attend. I wear a magic cloak of invisibility in certain quarters.
But back to kayaking. Because I have been apprenticed to the FTE this summer, I have been missing out on my early morning local paddles. FTE is a conquistador. A been there done that notches on the belt kind of man. Repeatedly this summer, when discussing where to paddle, he will reject a suggestion with "I have paddled that. I KNOW that water."

I, on the other hand was taught by another esteemed elder, on a myriad Cradock Road evening walks a decade or more ago, to love the beauty born of repetition. Thus I relish the opportunity to sneak out in my kayak at dawn. Without the FTE. Without the gear and safety equipment. Living dangerously with my kayak perhaps precarious, slightly unstable upon the flatbed of my truck and a torn piece of rag for a flag to alert to the seven foot or more overhang of the tailgate......oooh I can just see the frown on the forehead.

Thus did I escape his strict tutelage this morning to paddle the same stretch of water I have paddled umpteen times before. To put myself in the changing light of transition from dawn to day, Port Madison to Miller bay.I was rewarded. Otters. Seagulls. A conference of crows and herons. A loon or two. Magnificent mirrored reflections. And then the piece de resistance, even for me, accustomed as I am become to this magical realist life lived on these enchanted waters. Paddling by the half built community house, on my way back to Old Man House Park where I had launched: a flock of turtle doves filling the air with a flutter and sigh of wing, settled on the shore then rose five, seven times more.

The rewards of living dangerously, gift of my invisibility: turtle doves from the heart.
Suquamish Community house under construction as seen from the water: September 2008. More details here

Seven years sacrament

It has been seven years now since that Jefferies Bay fisherman, his old fashioned Afrikaner cordiality tempered by urgency, leaned into my compartment on the Port Elizabeth Johannesburg train.

"Ekuus mevrou, jammer om te pla, maar het u 'n radio? Hulle het....They have blown up New York"

I didn't have a radio but we bonded that night in an insomniac search for news, the fisherman fiddling with his cell phone, dialing friends to tell us the latest, me getting off the train at each little milk stop siding searching for televisions, radios, any source of news......eventually in early morning we found newspapers with pictures of towers crumbling. Proof.

The rest, as they say, is history. My aunt Mary met me at the Johannesburg station to take me, through the morning confusion of commuter traffic, to her house where CNN, besides bringing us the same images of smoke, towers and airplanes repeatedly, gave me a number to call. US embassies were closed worldwide. When they did reopen September 13 to grant a visa, it was a sacrament of white lilies and burning candles on a rainy September morning.

Now white lilies bloom in a garden with a crazy path unfinished. I have glimpsed the fleeting secrets of a fellow few stranded too in this unbrave new world. Precariously beached, awaiting the next tide to separate us, we invite the vanishing point.

Let me lead you up the garden path

In the absence of red earth and pouring rain, this my consolation prize: a strict, almost abstract oasis of leaf, rock, wood. Concrete. A pathway to reclaimation of essence.

Your mother had no bonds with mine
your father and mine were not kin
yet, though we knew nothing of each other,
like red earth and pouring rain
our hearts have mingled, in love

Getting back on the (crazy) horse that threw you: deer can you walk on water for me?

In good homeopathic terms I got to antidote the water torture of the past few weeks with a magnificent bit of water medicine. Kayaking a piece of the Puget Sound.

Summer's gone. Autumn's chill sharpens the air. A month ago bad weather pulled us from the water at Norwegian Point on Day 1 of Paddle Kitsap 2008. The Fav Tribal Elder and I went back alone today, put the kayaks in at Forbes Landing, Norwegian Point, Hansville, took a slow and easy paddle back to Skunk Bay, a place of beauty difficult to describe.

Kayaking that enchanted piece of water is like a prayer, a meditation, something sets it apart. Last time there I was battling wind and wave conditions way beyond my novice kayaking capacity, yet even then I heard the still small voice which commands calm in the face of storm. I might just have found my karoo in the the Northwest. The place of vision where surprising things happen and mermaids become concrete.

Today the water was a mirror in parts, painting reflections impressive. Kelp tubes made bold exclamation marks flowing declamatory in the current, streaming fronds of designer elegance below the surface. All was other-world layered images and reflections, who cares which way up: a play of light with no boundaries. Lacy jelly fish drifted above swirls of fish in seaweed tangles between cloud reflections mimicking the conventions of Coast Salish people's art

A curious sleek seal played alongside me awhile, coming up first one side of my kayak then the other: considering the situation from all sides, perhaps, before diving in a smooth swirl of bubbles. A trickster was about. My camera battery ran out after only a few shots. I swear I saw a stag, magnificent rack of antlers spreading proud, dancing way out upon the shimmering where water meets sky.

Of course I have no pictures to prove my dances on water deer (damn! that battery). Fav Tribal Elder is adamant that it was just a loon shaking salt water diamonds from its wings after a dive. And that I am loon too....well that may be the truth, but a little later trickster got him for the joke. He tried to surf some freighter wake breakers. Took a magnificent tumbling capsize making down up and up down just as the light had warned a little earlier. Teach him to tell me my proud dancing stag is a loon from crazy mind. Just to prove my point, and give some perspective and scale in this geography of legend and fable, this geography of enchantment, there's a shot of Fav Tribal Elder and kayak in one of the images below.