10: wrestling goats

Symbolic misreadings at the butt end of the year – November 2022

Hello Sweetest Pea,

I’m so bored with myself. I’m so bored with myself that I don’t know what to write to you. I would like to give you my most scintillating self, but all I can give you is this: my hair is messy, my days are so similar they bleed into one another, and I have very little power in the battery pack after another weekend of work and another morning of rising the minute the first bird peeps its hello into the semi-dark.

It’s 3pm and I wish I was napping right now. 

I count it as an absolute certainty that in paradise, everyone naps. A nap is a perfect pleasure and it’s useful too. It splits the day into two halves, making each half more manageable and enjoyable.

This quote is from How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. It sounds like a book for slackers, doesn’t it? But it’s useful for people who believe absolutely that diligence, discipline, frugality, duty and responsibility are the way you earn your way into paradise so you can have afternoon naps. People who have a Protestant work ethic; who have it ingrained in them that work is the noblest of duties and must be accomplished to the highest standard, every day, or, as Henny Penny had it, the sky will fall. 

That be me. 

I like to think I have improved on that front. I mitigate the instinct for overwork as a means of redeeming my grubby soul by having as few material needs as possible. That way I don’t drive myself to do work I hate just because it pays well and then have to dedicate my every waking hour to. I try to make sure that there is time every day for as many aspects of being human as possible: a little fresh air, some reading, a spot of exercise, some aimless pottering and the tiniest bit of people-ing.

Most times I succeed and one of the things I like most about myself is that I have crafted a life that doesn’t require me to make a pretty melody by plucking only a single string all day every day. I want to use as many of the strings as I can on the instrument I was given. 

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Oh, hello metaphor, my old friend! 

Theorists propose that metaphors are not mere figures of speech, but can actively shape one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. (From: What can metaphors teach us about personality?)

This morning I wondered whether a propensity to communicate in metaphor and to be an enthusiastic symbol spotter might be shaping my thoughts so much that it is turning me into a nutjob. 

That’s because I was making pages of notes while googling ‘black goat’. 

I don’t like goats. (Photo by Dragon Pan on Unsplash)

It’s bad manners to talk about your dreams in public – a very successful writer recently told me that when she is reading a book and someone talks about a dream, she stops reading – so skip the next line if that is how you feel. 

I dreamt last night that I was wrestling a rebellious little black goat over a wall. It squirmed and fought all the way. 

I dislike goats intensely. I’ve had two unpleasant experiences with farmyard goats. They scare the bejesus out of me.

Goats are not a conscious part of my dream symbol system, so I needed to investigate. I was furiously listing all their meanings thinking ‘Oh yes, that’s so right. Yes! Spot on!’ Then I had the thought that I might be getting a bit symbol unhinged. 

I wondered whether I had something on my psychology reference shelf that might deal with people becoming vulnerable to imagined signs and symbols. I picked up Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore and the first chapter is called ‘Honoring Symptoms as a Voice of the Soul’. 

Except I read ‘Honoring Symbols as a Voice of the Soul’. 

I tell you, when you want to make stuff mean things, it’s like every part of your body rubs its grubby little hands and says, ‘Let’s play!’. 

It’s funny, becoming so symbol-befok you see symbols where you should see symptoms.

Even so, I can’t get rid of the image of the writhing, twisting, glossy, tar-back, small-horned kid goat I was trying to haul over a wall without injuring it or myself. 

Metaphors enable us to think and converse about abstract and subjective experiences. Literal language is tethered to the sensory world. Metaphors extend our reasoning to encompass the intangible—the philosophical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of human experience. They enrich thinking, stretch imaginations, and enhance interpersonal understanding. (From: Metaphorically Minded)

I’ve been working hard, which is why things are boring, but I’m not too worried because there’s a clear purpose and an exciting endpoint. And I’m managing to take care of my body – if not my (goatish?) soul – which is easier to do when you don’t work in an office. 

I felt glad this week about my (goatish?) determination to make time to exercise even when there isn’t a single other thing I can make time for. Four people I know have been booked off by their doctors due to acute stress and imminent physical collapse, so I will continue to shoe-horn an hour into four or five days of the week to move.

Overwork is not a way to make a happy or a healthy life. I do think that a spirit of care and for our human bodies is starting to leech into public consciousness, but sometimes overwork cannot be avoided. 

Plus, November is a bitch. Who doesn’t feel like they’ve lost their puff by this time of the year anyway? We’re all hanging on by our toenails. 

In the spirit of conserving energy to keep hanging on, my current playlist is called Low Power Mode. Je Te Laisserai Des Mots (Patrick Wilson), which you played to me in the car one day, is on there. Also Johannesburg, which is featured on an album called Egoli released by Africa Express in 2019. The song features several artists and it’s so laid back, it tastes like beer on the stoep at sunset. 

A musical highlight of the month was finally remembering the name of a group I discovered in the early 2000s and whose name I have been trying to access in memory for weeks. It’s called Antony & the Johnsons. Have a listen to ANOHNI’s extraordinary voice here. 

I read Ian McEwan’s new book and was deeply lost in the story and it pleased me no end to finally read a book of his that I could get behind again, because his last three have not been my bag at all. 

And then, on screen this month, the second Enola Holmes movie with Millie Bobby Brown was so much fun again, but I would say one should watch the first movie before the second one, so that you understand the set-up fully. 

We whipped through the final season of Derry Girls with alacrity (and with subtitles on), and we are almost done with the documentary Steinheist, about South Africa’s biggest ever corporate scandal. 

When it comes to money and business and fraud and how big-time thieves do their thieving, I have tiny whiteouts because there’s so much I just don’t get and never will get about stocks and trading and wharra-wharra-wharra, but I am quite rivetted by the story of Markus Jooste. I first truly started to grasp the scandal’s significance when I edited Fortunes: The Rise and Rise of Afrikaner Tycoons by Ebbe Dommisse at the beginning of 2021. 

And that, my darling child, is me. I’m off to think about black goats some more. 

How’s your month been? 

Lots of love,

Your Kowski.

There’ll be an extra letter this month to give you a sense of what to expect during the January Self Reset and to guide you to sign up if you’re interested in joining me.

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Meanwhile, do share the Love Letter with your friends if you enjoy reading it because they might too and holding on to good stuff instead of sharing it is very anti-Barney the Dinosaur.