AFTER ONE MONTH, SOME THOUGHTS

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AFTER ONE MONTH, SOME THOUGHTS

WINE AND GUILT. At my initial wine tasting experience here in South Africa, or for that matter anywhere, I was reminded of those moments in Amsterdam years ago when I stood outside of a “Coffee Shop” for the first time. Despite the fact that I knew it was perfectly legal to walk in there and order up a gram of Afghani hashish or some marijuana that was called “Jimmy Hendrix,” I stood out in the street paralyzed. It actually took me a few days before I had the courage to sit down at the lovely bar, order a mint tea, and peruse the menu. Yes, there was actually a little laminated menu from which you could choose from five different types of hashish and from four different types of marijuana, depending upon what you had to do after you left the place. What a civilized country. It was a bright and neat café, with a view out into a plaza where bicycles whizzed by and men and women strolled. There was nothing hush-hush about it at all; in fact the Netherlands has hundreds of “Coffee Shops” all over the country. But I still recall that guilty and anxious feeling, and the wonder that followed it.

“They can’t mean that I can go in there, can they?”

I had a similar feeling here in South Africa, at my first wine tasting. First of all, the wine was free. Not having been to Napa Valley, the concept held me in my tracks, much the way I was held in my tracks, by ignorance and guilt, on those streets of Amsterdam. Let me define “free.” It cost $1.50 to get in, and then you had to buy a glass for about seventy-five cents. That’s free in my book. One carries the glass to all the tables, like some derelict, wino, freeloader, bum, jobless, good-for-nothing.

“You mean I can drink any of the wines I want? Me? Just go up there and ask for a taste of the Cabernet?”

“Yes. But you should start with the whites, and then move to the reds, and end with the sweet desert wines.”

“OK. Sure. OK. That sounds logical. I think.”

I didn’t take me too long to warm up, but still I was bashful and reticent. An Irish-Catholic leftover? Maybe. But there was one thing that assuaged the guilt, oddly enough, and that was you could pour out your wine. Yes, you could take one sip and then, with the casualness of someone dumping water into a sink, just tilt your glass of perfectly good Pinotage out into a great big copper spittoon.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

But, oh my god, this was fantastic. By following this system you could drink and not drink at the same time. Drink and still drive. What a concept. And they even had little pitchers of water at every winery’s table where you could rinse out your glass, lest the last Chardonnay blemish the next Shiraz.

Being a man, like many, who is recovering from childhood guilt and feelings of worthlessness, this to begin to grind on my conscience. I mean, really, what decadence, pouring good wine into spittoons. But also being a man of great resilience, I recovered quickly, much the way I did on those streets of Amsterdam years ago.

Now when we buy a bottle, open it, and fill the glass, we don’t spit any of it out. And we usually finish what we’ve started. There are no spittoons in our little apartment, you might be glad to hear.

NELSON MANDELA AND FENWAY PARK. There are other thoughts that have been flying about in my mind like gnats, or mosquitoes. I can’t seem to catch them and sometimes they sting. These are thoughts that rise up when I see black (African) and colored (mixed race, Indian, Asian)people walking the roads, working, or I see the sprawl of a Township. And they rise up when I see white people sipping lattes (me) and driving BMW’s (not me). Now, I’ve only been here for one month, and have not yet been in urban areas, so my perception and impressions are certainly cursory. I almost hesitate to open my mouth.

My thoughts have been thus: The color line here seems clear and definable. I have not seen any white laborers. All labor seems to be done by blacks. Less laborious tasks by coloreds. But I have seen many black and colored office workers and heard many interviews with black politicians. Almost no people of color sit in restaurants. They are in the kitchens and waiting on tables, or eating in the fast food restaurants. South Africa is only fifteen years or so post apartheid. The gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is remarkable. Electricity only came to the Townships after Mandela came to power. Many little black kids, I am told, have never seen a book. White folks came here to settle in the early 1600’s. When a black man addresses you as “Yes, baas,” you get a sense of the overhanging history.

It’s a dangerous place, everyone knows it, but everyone also goes about his or her business casually and openly. But as they say far north of here, “Trust in Allah, but always tie your camel.”

Now, the gnat again buzzes in my ear, and I remember: When I was in Fenway Park just a month ago I saw maybe four black folks in the crowd of 36,000. If it weren’t for my job I would have no contact with black people. I live in the whitest place known to man. Even Lewiston Maine is more racially diverse than where I live. In the good old U. S. of A. we don’t see any indigenous people because we wiped them off the face of the earth. Our nation’s great wealth comes in a large part from the fact that we enslaved African people and made them work for zip for 300 years.

So, I’m not throwing any stones while I am here, just passively observing.

INSIDE LOOKS. And lordy, am I grateful for the work that I do with the VNA in Boston. Talk about getting an inside look, getting to appreciate how the other half lives, understanding other cultures from behind their doors, realizing how we are all just the same, or could be, if the scales were balanced and the system just.

Somehow, I hope to get an inside look while I am here. Just a glimpse would be enough. But if it doesn’t happen I will understand. The fact that this country has been able to move ahead, post apartheid, without a violent political collapse is a testimony to the strength of its people. I think that the initiation of the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was an unparalleled historical moment. If I were to meet Nelson Mandela I might weep.

RAINBOW NATION. Moving on…this place, what I have seen of it so far, is one of the most dramatic and beautiful places imaginable. The coast, the mountains, the flowers, the fragrances, the sky, it is all drop dead, jaw hangingly, breathtakingly gorgeous. It’s been called the “Rainbow Nation,” and it seems truly so. The variety of people here, landscape, language, skin shading, flowers, animals, is way beyond the word “remarkable.” If you could understand the inner workings of a rainbow, or how languages evolve and work, or why the innards of flower came to be, then you might be halfway to appreciating this place.

ART. The art that we have seen!!! In Stellenbosch there is an outdoor market full of African carving, weaving, painting, beadwork, embroidery. Now I can’t say how it compares to the art one might see in the bush, closer to the artists, but the little that I have seen has been wonderful. But there is also art from the city, from the Townships, which I have fallen in love with. Some of it is pervasive, hawked on street corners, at stoplights (robots), but it still moves me. We also saw something called “The Creative Block.” An art dealer (apparently she does corporate art too) has started a small gallery in Cape Town. www.creativeblock.co.za. It is her intention to give many artists a venue where they can sell their work, and to make their work affordable. The paintings are all the same size, 18x18 cm (about 8x8 inches), and are all mounted on large white blocks, about 2 meters x 2 meters (6 feet x 6 feet), so that that each of the four sides of the block holds about 50 or 60 paintings. When one sells, the curators (who actually seem to have a lot of fun re-arranging the pieces) immediately replace it with another. It would be fun to collect them and make your own block.

ANXIETY AND APPRECIATION. Being a newcomer, driving on the left hand side of the road, being concerned about crime and violence, leaving friends behind, all produce, I have noticed, a low level of anxiety. It’s almost immeasurable, but it’s there nonetheless. I dismissed it as unworthy of consideration, until I began to multiply it, as it would be multiplied by someone who has freshly emigrated and found him or herself in a new world. Refugees, our grandparents, illegal immigrants, ALIENS!!! It has given me a new respect for these folks, who must learn a foreign language, find a job, find a place to live, pay the rent, send their kids to foreign schools, endure discrimination; all this with homelessness, hunger, and deportation hanging over their heads. These are strong folks indeed, no? And when they make it…wow, what a feeling that must be.

On the other hand, it reminds me of the Asian folks who collect cans and bottles in the streets of Boston, walking down Comm. Ave. with a stick across their shoulders, and two big garbage bags of empties hanging from the ends of the stick.

“What, you can just go around here and pick this money up off the street and no one will arrest you?’ they might have asked the ones who have come before them, their uncles or sons.

And they sons will answer, “Yeah Pops, you can, no problem. Go right ahead. What a country, huh?”

MUSIC. I now know where the Blues came from. There’s a music store in town where the guys are more than happy to share their knowledge of African music. So. I have started collecting. To listen to this guy from Mali, Ali Farka Toure, is to hear the direct connection between Africa and the porch in Mississippi where some old gent in the early 1900’s picked out the blues on a battered guitar. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Nem-PNHLY. Click on this and check him out.

And then we were watching southern right whales off the coast of Hermanus, a town where they, and other whales, come to feed and give birth and, it seemed to me, play hard. While we were walking along the path enjoying the show of breeching and fluking and general foaming and whitewater caused by these big mamas, there was a sound of marimbas in the park behind us. Then the drummer, a powerfully beautiful man with no front teeth, started singing in a deep operatic baritone, aria-like. His partners continued on, jazzy, flushes of The Modern Jazz Quartet woven through Pavaroti.

And so it goes.

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Photos

UNTITLED by Wonder
from the Creative Block

UNTITILED by Selvin
from the Creative Block

Comments

[cora]

dennis! i'm reading your blog! this all sounds amazing. i'm so glad you're having a good time. please keep posting things, i always get really excited when i check your site and you have a new blog up. i hope you're well! good luck- cora