Sweetest Pea,
I set the alarm for 5:55 this morning. I wanted to see the eclipse.
There it was, simmering through the middle pane of the three in our bedroom in the dip between Lion’s Head and Table Mountain. I didn’t even have to leave my bed. I nudged Sam: kyk die maan! He lifted his head and said a slow wow. I tucked myself into the curve of him and I watched it for a while. My eyes, impressed as they were, had their own agenda, so I busied myself with thoughts to keep them from closing again.
Like imagining the Sun, the Moon and Earth lined up in black space hanging there for a tiny age (it’s an age when you’re trying to keep your eyes open). They’re so balanced that Earth is blocking the light the sun beams over the lightless moon and now the moon is ruddy and – OMG how does that all work?! How do things just float around in space in predictable patterns? Where are the anchors? The pulleys? The tethers?
My brain was just doing that loopy thing all brains do when you have one of those big cosmic moments that shrink you to your proper dust-particle-sized nothingness when Sam mumbled: It looks like fudge. This arrested my ontological meanderings and lured my eyes into the shut position. Half asleep and half dreaming, now and again I would try to open my eyes in that movement that requires you to stretch your forehead so far back it crumples into your hairline before one eye will pop open for a second. The last time I saw the red moon, a tiny edge of it had been restored to its usual iced-over-river colour.
‘Ontological’ is a brand new word in my vocabulary. I read it in a New Yorker poem yesterday evening and thought why would anyone use a word like that in a poem? This is why people think poems are hard. Then I looked the word up. It means ‘relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being’. It’s a good word to know, don’t you think? Whenever I learn a new word, I have to try and use it as soon as possible to make it stick in my head.
I found out, in 2020, that the technical name for a supermoon – which is what this morning’s rusty fudge disc was – is ‘perigee syzygy’. Guess where I used that so that I could make it stick and enjoy its weirdness? In a poem! Maybe the poet I read last night had also just learned the meaning of ‘ontological’ and wanted to find an elaborate way to remember it. I tell myself this as comfort for the fact that it took this long to look up a word I’ve seen often before and because I judged her for using ‘ontological’ in a poem when I used ‘perigee syzygy’. Though I did include the meaning in my poem.
The 2020 supermoon I wrote about happened in April. We were in lockdown. I was trying to write poems every day because April is NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and was using prompts from other poets. In this case, I used words (the italics) from Sylvia Plath.
Here’s the poem:
Sheltering under the supermoon
(Or: Perigee Syzygy in lockdown)
“your face/Of candor pares white flesh to the white bone”
—Sylvia Plath
What we see from inside this vaulted conch
is an eel slick with night. Days seem endless
and wide, but the ink sky is a crack through
which to count the socketed white stars,
or to dream a tail flick of a dream or
to watch, like now, the supermoon —
vivid as a mother’s face when the child is fevered —
bent over the strained earth.
It’s been an unremarkable time since I last wrote. Neither eventful nor uneventful. I can’t remember any particular interesting insights I had.
I realise that it’s not because I haven’t been doing interesting things, it’s just that I haven’t been processing them in complicated ways. They happen. They’re good. Or not good. I let them go. No analysis, comparison or yes-butting. Quiet brain.
Is this happiness?
Actually, why do I use that word? It’s not one I like very much. The drive for happiness is a false and treacherous one. I think it leads to restlessness and discontent, because actual happiness – which is contentment with what is – is so unglitzy. But we’re encouraged to pursue it like it’s a destination that can be reached.
I had a very funny voicenote from Dee this morning. We hardly ever speak but when we need to rant about some irritation, we send one another voicenotes. It’s so satisfying to have friends who get irritated by the same things you do. As you know.
This morning, she was letting off steam about how so many of the middle-class women she’s friends with love to complain about everything ‘even as all around us, the world becomes visibly poorer’.
Brattishness is everywhere and it’s not new, but it’s just so much uglier when you’re comfortable and housed and fed and you’re complaining about some minuscule detail of service – or any moment you’re in – which does not fulfil your nebulous standards.
Friends have often told me I’m too nice, and there is an element of truth in that, which is concerned with boundaries and valuing yourself. But I find spoilt-brat behaviour so unappetising. That’s actually what Dee said: that lately she can’t enjoy outings with friends when she can see them starting to heave themselves into a tizz about some minor flaw on the face of the world which they require to be perfectly furnished according to their own strange needs.
I wonder if these people are capable of accepting the imperfect world as it is without wanting to tweak and improve it by bossing, complaining and fussing. I also wonder where they get their energy for all these daily fights. I save all my spare energy for queueing at Home Affairs every few years, so that I can get through those ordeals without sighing extravagantly to make sure everyone is clear that the white lady has opinions about the service, and so that I can come away from them without bitterness about how very little the government cares for any of its citizens. The Fuckers. (The Fuckers being the people who stole, and continue to steal, the money meant for fair and equitable governance of the people. The Fuckers are probably the kind of people who send muffins back because they don’t have enough blueberries in them.)
Oh wait. Was that me complaining? No. It was an exclamation of indignation on behalf of everyone.
It’s a pleasure.
But back to happiness, I’ve always thought that for me the best definition would be ‘to work and to love’. Which is not original (Freud), but which I felt more distinctly after I read Tove Jansson’s books for adults (she’s famous for the Moomin series) years ago. If you find these books in your travels, please read them: The Summer Book, A Winter Book and Fair Play. I know that you’d like them for several reasons, but it’s her joyful, creative, hard-working, hard-loving (she was queer, in Finland, when being queer was a crime) life that made the biggest impression on me. She was always busy. She was so full of curiosity and energy and endeavour.
When you’ve got interesting projects occupying your thoughts, you probably wouldn’t need to aggressively complain about the quality of the coffee beans used to make your flat white.
Love and work.
I always wanted to have a plaque made – cheesy idea – that said ‘Love and Work’, and hang it by the front door (even cheesier, but where else would one hang a cheesy plaque?).
While I was checking whether it was Freud who spoke about love and work just now (yes, it was), I came across a quote that is wrongly attributed to Goethe, which I’d never read before. The actual quote is very similar and it was written in the Seventies by a teacher called Haim G. Ginott in a book about teaching. The adjusted and wrongfully attributed quote is great food for thought though. If you quote it to someone make sure you attribute it to Ginott and not Goethe:
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make a life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanised or dehumanised.
So. Anyway. I am – apart from The Fuckers – fine. Happy, in fact, if the definition is ‘love and work’. I have you and Ollie and Sam, and a vast network of interesting people I have regular and satisfying contact with, and a small, loyal, tight little chosen-family circle.
I have work I care about. I wrote in my journal some time in the past month, when I was stressing about something, that my solution would be to work. ‘For every problem the solution always seems to be: work more, work harder. WORK,’ was how I wrote it.
When you are not tormented by your own mind.
If you’re not being persecuted in small, cumulative ways, or in large, terrible ways by others.
If you have food and shelter.
If you love.
If you are afforded the dignity of working, and especially the rare privilege of doing work that feels meaningful.
Then just, you know, stop moaning. Lord!
Nothing is simple when you don’t have those things, but if you do have them, how can you bear to hear yourself whinge about the fact that ‘they’ don’t have the latest smartphone you want in the colour you want it.
We all moan. But it’s so unattractive to be a moaner and a complainer.
A few years ago, Jay and I discovered that we had both recently noticed that we were moaning a lot. So we made a pact: every time we caught ourselves moaning, we had to send one another the poo emoji. Whoever had the most poo emojis at the end of the month had to pay for lunch. We only had to do it for one month to cure ourselves.
I’m going to stop now, because I’m sounding a bit preachy, I think. I’m sure there are a dozen things I should have said. If I remember them, I’ll PS. But right now, it’s time to get up and stretch my bones.
I love you. I miss you.
Kowski.
PS: In list form:
Watched:
Bientang (the play that Jolyn wrote from her epic poem – it was so good!)
Watership Down (the series, not the movie. It got slammed for the graphics, but I really enjoyed it. It’s such a timeless story.)
American Rust (not great reviews, but I really enjoyed the performances. It’s true that it feels familiar because of Mare of Easttown, but it’s its own thing, and I thought Jeff Daniels and David Alvarez’s performances were great.
Mystic River (old movie – liked it)
The Town (Adapted from The Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, directed by and starring Ben Affleck – liked it)
The last three are the kind of things I hated as a child: mostly men with men problems, causing problems for other men, and solving them with violence.
Listened to:
‘Poison’ by Sarah King (you’ll laugh at the first line and know why the song stuck)
‘Fear of Water’ by SYML (pronounced Sim-mel – thanks Noah!)
Haydn’s lost cello concerto (I heard the story and then the music on the radio driving back from a long walk one afternoon)
Did:
The Franschhoek Literary Festival started again.
I went to a walk-about/presentation by Athi-Patra Ruga at the Irma Stern Museum. I really, really enjoyed that.
A 12km walk with Ollie for Mother’s Day, plus walks with three people I haven’t seen for ages.
Wrote (among other things) an essay about swimming in pools, which made me very happy, because I haven’t written creatively for a while.
Read:
Apart from the books I read, I have to mention an excerpt from a book by Jessi Klein. It was on The Cut and it was called Epiphany in the Baby-Food Aisle. She compares motherhood to the classic hero’s journey and she really pulls it off – plus it’s funny.