The New Normal

That seems to be the phrase these days. The “New normal”. Just because everything is different and nothing is normal, this seems to just sum it all up. Accept. Move on. Get branded a conspiracy theorist if you question any aspect, or dare to wonder. That’s not normal. Or is it?

For me this new normal is a time of acceptance, as well as rejection. Rejecting some of the inane new rules; accepting that we need to toe the line, when it makes sense to protect those around us, as well as ourselves. Rejection of the person who I have become, as well as accepting that I can change some things: my hair, my weight, my attitude, my actions. Dab some mascara on to feel a little glamorous. But I cannot change being the age I am now, or my past.

Now, more than ever, as much as most of us we feel that we are in touch with the rest of the world, thanks to social media, we are really living in our own little bubbles. What if the powers that be, the ones who make the world wide web go around, decide to pull the plug. Could they? Where would all those connections be then? How much of what we think we are experiencing is real? If you were cut off from the rest of the world, excepting for direct contact, what would your normal be? Would you start arguments with strangers, people you have never actually met?

I remember a childhood book. Not so much the story, although I think it involved a floppy eared rabbit, but the moral of the story was that normal is what you are. So although I think I was a bit different, and still am, and I come from a long line of “different”, fabulous folk, my difference is normal to me, and to those who love me. Nothing about this time is really normal at first perception, but it is this time, and it is what it is. Different but normal for now.

There is something about time. We (mostly) see it as a series of events that happen in a straight line. Birth, growth, death, and all the happenings in between. 1920 was further down the line, 2020 is now. But maybe it is a circle, and we keep repeating, and doing the same things over and over again. Today’s normal might not be so new. It could be yesterday’s warning. However you choose to see it. You can choose to learn, to wonder..

The Virus-the Worrying stage

I swing between worrying about everything, and being laid back to the point of almost dead, as often as most people breathe.

Did I leave the driveway gate open/ kettle boiling away on the gas stove? Are my dogs okay?  Will  a gang of house breakers get in and murder us?  All these clash with a “my time is my time, I have done all I can do, and, like whatever” mindset.

And here we have The Coronovirus aka Covid 19 Pandemic.

I think I might be an expert at dealing with this crisis. As in, do not panic, die silently on the inside when imaginary germs enter my personal space, panic slightly, disinfect everything and just accept that it is what it is, what can we do? We only live once. But preferably a good once. So I am fine. Cool as a cucumber. Actually, to be honest, I am really hot. burning up on the inside hot, as only a young at heart, middle aged woman can be. But that’s good, right? This “made in China” virus does not like heat, according to the almost reliable sources from Facebook. Durbanites and hot older women should all be fine then.

So here is my plan of action:

First, do not panic. Do nothing. I started this morning, by going back to bed after breakfast, for a nap. Not the cat type, quite by accident it was more of a mini coma. I had a small nightmare about being bitten by a Boomslang ( a highly venomous snake that lives in trees, but was living in my curtains for this one), and even in my dream I remembered that there is no magic potion for Boomslang bites. I was going to die, probably. That was not the nightmare part though. The worst part was that I was trying to take photo’s of the snake, and my camera was malfunctioning. I was slightly more concerned about that than my imminent death, which was likely to be highly unpleasant. I even tried to Google a repair shop from my phone. We all know phones do not work in dreams. Like running or shouting for help. Well at least it was only a bad dream, the cure was simply to wake up.

Secondly, avoid crowds of people. I do not like those. Should be easy. Oh yes, grocery shopping. Disinfect everything, do not inhale. Wine is an antioxidant. Buy some. Same goes for chocolate.

Thirdly. Dogs do not carry the virus. Spend more time with them.

Last point: what is the deal with toilet paper? It hasn’t happened yet in sunny SA, but I hear it is becoming more valuable than gold around the globe? Why? I have many theories, but right now, in case it catches on here, I am off to stock up. Oh.

 

 

How to prepare your ants, and impress your dinner guests

How do I like my ants? Poached of course. In the dishwasher, on the economy wash. Clean too. They look quite healthy and well, despite being mostly deceased. Well all, not mostly. Not every story has an upside.

We are having a typical Durban Summer: hot and wet, alternating with rainy and wet and often followed by cataclysmic thunder storms and wetness. We pretend to be surprised every year by this, as if we had not spent our entire lives living in this hellish cycle of heat and wet red rashes.

For some strange reason, the ants seem to think Summer is the time to hold their indoor Olympics. They send flyers out, network via social media, and announce on radio stations, calling for all to attend their “not to be missed” event. They arrive in droves, with their families in tow. The women ants carry small tupperware containers in their handbags for leftovers. You never know when a midnight snack might be called for. The men march around in their fancy pants and socks, importantly announcing their arrival, and staking out crumbed areas for their families. The little ones drink.

First item on the agenda: the kettle throwing. Now we all know that ants are extremely strong and can carry many more times their own body weights in something or other, dragonflies maybe, I forget the finer details. They do not actually throw the kettle, they are not all that powerful. No, this sport involves flinging themselves in great numbers into the kettle. In a straight line, presumably. The winner of the gold medal is the one who survives. Silver, bronze, and the other lot win the early morning coffee seasoning award.

Second event: walk away with the dog food, while the dog is still eating it. Risky. The winners get the dog food. The runners up? No leftovers.

The sugar bowl line: we line up, and march purposefully towards the sugar. Most Durbanites will keep this in a sealed container, that is seldom truly ant proof. This event almost reminds one of the great sperm race towards the golden egg. The starter goes off, they sprint off, legs and antennae waving about everywhere, first one to find the weak spot wins. And then it’s all over.

And while they are all toasting the winners with sparkling cat bowl water, I will be shooing the rest of their relatives out through the kitchen window. No gatecrashers allowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letting go

Whispered prayers float away; bright balloons, released unwillingly from the sticky hands of young children.

I try to hold your hands, gripping tightly, desperately, because my life is yours. But you are mist; I cannot keep you, and all I have left is the coldness and the fading echo of words I can never hear.

I thought that my love for you would be enough to hold you close, but my arms became the iron bars of your cage. You fought to leave, your journey was no longer part of mine. And when I saw how bruised you became, trying to force those bars apart, I released you. You carry pieces of my soul with you.

Will you look back one day, and remember a time when we smiled and laughed, and ripped through each day as if we had forever? Maybe you will. And maybe one day, I can leave this place, your empty cage, and remember love without sadness.

 

 

Changes

Some things never change.

The sun rises and sets each day, whether we see it or not. Summer ends; the darkness stretches later into our mornings, and tears off the ends of our days. New babies bring an endless supply of firsts: smiles, teeth, steps. And love fades away, the only evidence that it ever existed, lives in the yellowed pages of worn out photo albums.

How do we fill in those spaces, the seconds and hours between sunrise and dusk? Before the moon, in its varying stages, becomes the only true source of light.

We make mistakes. Sometimes, unwittingly, we stumble into walls. And there are times, when we build those walls ourselves. We need them, whether to climb over, break through, or allow them to keep us where we need to be, we have a choice, as they are our own.

And then sometimes, and only because it happens to us, something changes. It will push the clock onto its knees, and break the pattern of all we know. But in the greater scheme of things, the clock keeps on ticking, and the universe does its automatic, rotating thing. On time, as always. A loaded gun pointed at your quivering chin does not cause the Queen to miss out on her morning cup of Earl Grey. The world keeps turning, and that sun rises on cue, just as the weatherman said it would.

We love, and we learn to live with loss. We are reborn, and a little part of us dies each day. We take the new bits and try to forge them to the old.

And the Earth keeps on turning. And the music plays on.

Winter

I love you.

The words hang in the air between us, frozen in time, and I cannot take them back. In that moment, of heat and pleasure, your warmth against my coldness, my thoughts had become solid.

You say nothing. Silence stretches the distance between us, endless seconds, as the cold begins to separate us.

And in those moments, before it becomes too late to return, I smile.

And take another sip. Coffee, you will always be mine.

Rainbow

Did you know, that a rainbow, seen from the sky is a full circle? A ring of multiple, glowing colours on top of the clouds.

We only see half of  the optical illusion from where we stand. Our vision is limited, tethered by the forces of bending light, and our own sets of beliefs and superstitions.

What about ourselves? Do we really know our own capabilities?  Or do we just wake up every morning and go through the motions of the day, looking forward to reaching the end of it, when we can take our shoes off and watch the latest repeats on TV? Spending our days looking forward to Fridays and weekends that are never quite what we  had envisioned. We and others see only a fraction, different facets, of our true selves.

Sometimes it takes nothing more than a growing sense of frustration in that our world consists of various shades of grey, to persuade us to finally make a change for ourselves. And sometimes it takes a traumatic event, a push over the edge. We can fall, and crash, or we can take this as our opportunity to shed off our old, tired skins and remember some of those dreams that we had when we were children.

I remember searching for, and finding pretty stones, semi-precious, some of them, in the clear streams when we had our family holidays in the Drakensberg. The stones were beautiful in the water, but once removed and dry, they looked dull. Dusty pebbles rather than the precious crystals I could see on the river beds, through the rippled lens of icy cold water.

If our lives are dull and dusty, maybe we are out of our elements; we need to find a time and place where we can shine, find some ribbons of those dreams we once had, make new ones.

There is so much more to you and me, than what we can see on the surface. We are capable of so much more, of being better people.

Take another look, from a different angle.

 

 

 

 

Upcycling your cooking

Stop! Do not throw out your garbage! You can eat it.

I have important information from an extremely reliable source. Facebook. Therefore it simply must be true.

They say (I apologise, because I cannot remember who “they” are, or where I left anything), that you should eat your avocado seeds. Yes, that hard, skin-coloured ball inside the fruit, that resembles a tiny brain.

You can liquidise them and add them to your morning health smoothie, they say. Sounds tasty? Mashed wooden brains. There are all sorts of health benefits to ingesting these delicacies. I cannot actually remember any of them specifically, but I am almost certain that  there was a mention of shinier hair, brighter skin and a hugely improved memory. And you could possibly run faster after a few days of sipping these tree tasting smoothies. Away from the kitchen, that is.

Another article proclaimed the wondrous health benefits of onion skins. You could make a tea with them or simply pop them into your soup. Why? They prevent all types of imaginary illnesses and render you idiot proof. They might be worth a try. After all, what do you have to lose? There could be a niche business with that onion tea, marketing it as a hangover cure, or reading peoples onion tea leaves. An onion guru.

Potato skins are old news. Restaurants have been cashing in on their garbage for ages, cooking the skins, and filling them with bacon and cheese, and all sorts of sundry leftovers. As for potential health benefits, Facebook has not yet advised us. Or warned us of the dangers. You know how it goes: for a month or two, we will view two million and one posts about potato skins, and how they cure everything from toe fungus to bankruptcy, and then suddenly, when we are ingesting so many, that we are almost taking them out for pre-dinner drinks, the dire warnings begin: plague, famine and flat feet.

I would suggest freezing your garbage, to be safe and never risk missing out on any miracle cures, instead of simply tossing it out each week. Then wait for social media to advise you of the next, most wonderful Superfood.

It could be used teabags.

Words

Sometimes, it feels as if all the words were Scrabble tiles: you tried to pick them up using the vacuum cleaner, because there were too many, and now they are all jammed together in the pipe, a meaningless jumble, and nothing can get past them. It is not as simple as prising them loose; you have to get them out in the correct order, and everything begins with the first word.

The first, forced out of the tight knot of words, slowly followed by a second, and then another, until they begin to flow, and the wall has broken, the dam of words has been released and they all whisper and bubble together, over the rocks, as they flow from your heart.

Music and movement

The music inside you has died.

You used to hear it with each step you took, and each time you exhaled, its rhythm keeping time with your heart beat. It rang like church bells on sunny days, and rumbled along mournfully when it rained. It was always there, ringing in the changes, keeping pace with your life as you danced and stumbled through your years.

And, one day, you notice that the music has stopped, and you cannot remember when last you have heard it playing.

In its place there is a silence, and within the silence, there is a vast emptiness, an infinite expanse of nothing. Where your smile never reaches your eyes, and words of sympathy are felt only upon your lips. You move without real purpose, only to shuffle from one necessary task to the next. Without your music, your heart knows only how to pump blood, for survival, but not how to keep you alive. There is no light in the love that you carry, only weight.

You keep moving, because within the movement, there is sound. And the sound that accompanies each footstep begins to carry its own beat, and there is a trace of a melody, if you listen carefully. One step, and then another, while your heart keeps up its tempo, and the blood that moves through you begins to warm you.

It is a song that you know well, but you will never know its name, or recall all of the words once it fades away. For now, it belongs to you.