So here is a reminder so wondrous that it is impossible for me to describe…

You’re welcome.

Music by Ohdae-soo.

Rain, rain drops. Like cut-out tears glued to my eyes. Stuck here.

Obscuring vision. Frozen. Unseeing. Unable to move.

The invitation of the road is glimpsed. Open. Then closed. Reopened.

It’s slippery out there. Wet. Beyond the high gate of my mind’s eye.

Wet. Cold. Wet road. Cold hearts. Stainless steel dragonflies.

Flitting. Fey.

The silver highway slips and slides, slaloms into uncertainty.

Behind me, my well-worn dirt track, dusty and brown.

Sandy. Rocky. But warm to the feet of my understanding.

I’m leaving now. The rain won’t stop.

Dripping. Drops down my cheeks.

Slipping. Sliding. Clearing.

Shoop… shoop.

The windscreen to my memory, wiping.

Wiping. Wiped clean.

But it is still so painful

.

Words and pictures: Fred Hatman

I had to see this for myself. Cue a “Hatman and Lucille Roadtrip”. But we never got there. Actually, we did. Eventually. For a whole, wholly unpleasant 90 minutes. I really tried. I tried to find accommodation. But there was something that just didn’t work for me. What really didn’t work was when I was subjected to a tannie (elderly Afrikaans woman) behind reception at one of the joints slagging off the “country house” next-door and saying it was awful and that I should book into her place.

No. This wouldn’t do. I had just spent two days in the zow-wow zen gardens of a tranquil retreat in McGregor and this vrou was dissing her neighbours and harshing my Temenos mellow. I gave Mrs Reception a smile radiating with the karma of forgiveness, with only one corner of my mouth slightly curled in utter contempt, and gunned old Lucille back to McGregor.

Temenos gave me a huge happy-to-have-you-back hug. I swam, I meditated, I head-swam, I meditated in the swimming pool at golden hour, I watched David Attenborough slobber over chimps, I watched a peacock flirt-fan his ridiculous tail at female guests, I bought a delicious tart at the down-home Saturday morning market, I fell asleep on the Temore Chapel’s multi-coloured dreamfloor, I psychedelitated, I watched a warm-bodied German woman with oak-brown skin and impossibly perfect teeth build a labyrinth, I spent an almost impossible amount of time ruminating about life, mine and ours, and I drank seemingly impossible amounts of wine with an old journalist friend at Green Gables.

I still feel the warm, loving embrace of Temenos. And much gratitude.

Out of The Hat column, Stanford River Talk, May 2013.

I can see it now.

Queen Victoria Street, Saturday morning… people milling about at the morning market, Brydon’s lemon tart in one hand, Elsa’s mozzarella in the other, and complaining in a genteel and socially decorous manner about what happened to Tracy’s trees and the fact that the Municipality sat fatly by and did diddly-very-squat about it.

Then a hush falls over the small gathering. A lemon tart makes a ka-plop as it falls, lemony side-down of course, on cold, hard concrete. A Yorkshire Terrier squeaks as the weight of a Stanford Info leaflet drifts gently past its ear.

Many faces all turn sharply in one direction and reflect absolute horror. Well, OK, not horror… more a face-mash of wonder and consternation, lightly garnished with escalating anxiety.

Stanford’s children, practically all of them and from every corner of the village, are coming down Queen Victoria Street. And not just strolling, as they usually do in that somewhat directionless we’re-not-quite-sure-where-we’re-going-but-we-are sure-we’re going-to-have-fun way that Stanford’s children appear to have perfected. No. Not at all. Not today.

Some are on bikes, some on skateboards, and others on those J-things. One blond boy is trundling along, his bare feet powering a home-made cardboard tank hastily painted in camouflage colours. And the few that are walking have broken out in a warlike version of Gangnam-style. This is serious.

The kids mean business. The business of revolution.

And, as we have all suspected for some time now, the revolution will be WhatsApped. And BBMd. Flicking frenetically on their smartphones, Facebook updates and tweets globalling, the YouTube video viralling as this community coup unfolds, the children are heading purposefully towards the Municipality building.

In the market quad, one biddy says to another: “Good Lord, do you think we should call the constabulary?”

John Williams roars from the depths of Mokoro Garage: “Ye gods, what on earth is going on?” When told, he immediately abandons his post, orders loads of sugary drinks and NikNaks from the Spar and joins in the march, hoisting Tank Boy aloft on his shoulders.

Biddy 2 turns to Biddy 1 and says: “I telephoned the constable on duty and told him what was going on. He asked if they had any perlemoen on them and when I said that it didn’t appear to be the case, I heard him begin to snore and then the phone fell to the floor. We’re on our own with this one, Doris.” A spinach and feta quiche plummeted to the pavement, the sound of which was drowned out by the children chanting “We don’t need no adult committees, we don’t need no skateboard control… hey ADULTS, leave us kids alone!”

The doors of the Municipality have been reached but, of course, nobody is working. The door is locked. Curtains are drawn firmly across the windows. There is a half-brick lying seductively nearby.

But these are Stanford children rioting in the streets. Tank Boy asks Tallulah Twinkle-Star for her hairpin and within seconds the door is open. Forty-three children storm the boardroom. Some Fanta Grape is spilled on the table so somebody goes to look for a damp rag.

John Williams is told to “keep chips” at the door while the children, without forming any committees and electing chairchildren of any sort, democratically and almost effortlessly agree on an agenda.

1. We must be allowed to ride our bikes, skate on our boards and, for that matter dance Gangnam-style, wherever we want, and on any road, without hindrance, threat of arrest and without fear of cars travelling over 30 km/hr knocking us over.

2.  Loads and loads of trees must be planted throughout the village and never cut, “trimmed”, chopped down or harmed in any way. Because we like climbing them. And because they look pretty. And because they attract birds and bees and other wildlife to our village.

3. And because, actually, when we grow up, we’d like there to be some trees in our village for OUR children to climb.

4. You adults are just messing it up. You are all herewith relieved of any powers and decision-making, leaving you with even more time to drink wine.

First meeting over, the Children Of Stanford Want Action group (COSWA) cleaned up after themselves, for they have been well brought-up, locked the door and appointed the first adult they saw cowering behind the electricity box (where a tree once stood) to be their Swimming Safety Monitor and headed down to the river for a nice goof. Stanford-style.

Fred Hatman

redhatmann@gmail.com

I made this rainbow at home.

And, the more I think about it…

I think… I think I understand

that our Rainbow Nation…

will be created in our homes,

and in the revealing of

home-made rainbows

in our hearts…

and minds.

Rainbow Elation (Fred Hatman, 2013)

“When the white eagle of the North is flying overhead
The browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter, dead.
Remember then, that summer birds with wings of fire flaying
Came to witness spring’s new hope, born of leaves decaying.
Just as new life will come from death, love will come at leisure.
Love of love, love of life and giving without measure
Gives in return a wonderous yearning of a promise almost seen.
Live hand-in-hand and together we’ll stand on the threshold of a dream.”

Yes, the Moody Blues, taking me right back to my teenagehood. Thanks to Tim O’Hagan for the wondrous reminder…

“The White Eagle”, by Fred Hatman (Van Brakel’s Stoor, 2013)

She tried to rise again on her own, without telling anyone of her distress or of her mess. Until she just had to reach out for love and support. Which duly came. In many forms and from many sources and with great abundance. She is not alone. And she is not alone in this. And she was not alone in getting it wrong. She is getting help. And she will be fine.

I never thought I would tell her this but, when we spoke this morning, I told her of the six weeks I spent in my London flat many years ago, six weeks spent almost entirely in bed. Unable to get up. Unable to rise again. Unable to ask for help. Until I did. I embraced change. And the learning. Learning to be kind to oneself. Learning to be one’s self.

Learning that our perception of the expectation of others is not our truth. Learning to be true to our self. To be ourselves. To be nobody else but ourself. To honour our own needs, our own wishes, our own dreams. Our own bodies. Our own minds. Our love for self. I am still learning this.

I read somewhere recently that “no matter what value we put on ourselves, there ain’t nobody else who is going to come along and raise that amount”… or words to that effect. We are all worth far more than the value we dare put on ourselves, our lives, our love.

So, what I am saying to you, my darling sister is… that, although we only seem now to speak in times of trouble (and I know you will probably never read this)… is that, in my mind, you are still the little girl I used as one of my goalposts when I practised my penalty kicks in the back garden…

I love you…

And I put this golden circle of protection around you during your healing…

Picture: Fred Hatman

“Looking Out To Sea”, Koppie Alleen (2013)

When I was young, my father would often pack us all into the Ford Cortina (with round rear lights and tailfins) on a Sunday. And we would head for the ocean. Nobody had picked up on my astigmatism then and I would lie like a descaled and reddened crocodile in rock pools, with my begoggled eyes slightly submerged and, sight magnified by the refraction of sunlight on the water’s surface, watch the tiny fish flit about and the crabs beady-eye me from their shadowed nooks. Boy in a bubble. I wear glasses now. But no roadtrip in Lucille is complete without a snuffle around South Africa’s magnificent coastline. To submerge myself in the sights and sounds and sand and salt. And, while seagulls skirl overhead, to lie meditatively in rock pools. On my back. Like a seal. And drift off… and be washed away. And washed.

Picture: FRED HATMAN

These girls, my “Gargoyles”, and I went to Platbos Forest the other day so that I could take some photographs of them for a project I’m working on. I want to produce a set of three images for a conceptual artwork which might illustrate the spiritual path of children.

R & S have walked a very difficult path without their father. I imagine it has been both heartbreaking and strange. And the strangeness was there when we entered Platbos Forest for the photo-shoot.

I had been snapping away at cows on the dirt road running past Bodhi Khaya on our way to the southernmost indigenous forest in Africa. I showed them to the girls and we admired the patterns and texture of the cows’ hide on the LCD of my camera. The pictures were sharp, as I would expect them to be… then we entered the forest on our way to the most ancient milkwood, over 1,000 years old.

I took this…

Fine. Normal. Nice. Two lovely girls entering a beautiful forest. Four seconds later, living in a camera lens as I do, I snapped another…

Oh, what is this? Weird. My camera appears to be playing up. I took a few more… with the same result.

I stopped the girls, eagerly forging ahead, to show them. As I did, my left eye went weirdly wonky, waves of distorted lines disturbing my vision. I blinked. I screwed my eye tightly shut and opened it again. Same strange lines tracing across my sight. Was this the beginning of a stroke, I wondered to myself. I left R to fiddle with my malfunctioning camera and walked a little way away. I breathed deeply, relaxed. I spoke quietly with myself. I said something about not adjusting the set, that normal service would shortly be resumed. I gently closed my eye and reopened it. It had returned to normal. We continued, me shaking the camera and rueing my luck on the day I wanted to take the last set of photographs for my artwork. As we made our way to the old milkwood, the girls chattering excitedly, I felt a strange energy in the forest… brooding… intense… closing in.

I felt a little jittery, unnerved. But I asked the girls to hug, play… dance… be free. And I started taking pictures… it wasn’t working. My camera continued to behave strangely.

This is what was manifested…

I’m no camera technophile. I find a setting that works for what I want and I simply frame-compose images that instinctively please me. This result should not have pleased me. It certainly wasn’t what I was seeking as the third and final image of my “spiritual growth” triptych.

But it did. This photograph is phenomenal. The distorted lines which hold the girls together in a protective layer (an aura?) was reassuring. In fact, it was beautiful.

It was him.

Pictures: FRED HATMAN

Location: Platbos Forest