It’s not as empty as it seems?

It sometimes feels like I am always on the periphery of things. Just at the edge of the excitement or completely removed, so distanced that even if I was right in the middle of it, it still would not let me in. These things are not just interesting jobs or an exciting research project and even better still, the calm serenity of wise company, but infiltrates into the very basic fabric of everyday life like a cup of coffee with friends. Going hiking with old buddies. This feeling of being left out can make me feel crazy. One would think that at the age of almost 47 we learn how to deal with this kind of ‘out-sidedness’. Can I even use that as a word?

How does one begin to cope with this reality and create an alternative train of thought? How do you go about developing that thick skin that says: “I don’t care if I am on the outside, there is still room to learn about what they are talking about”. At other times it might actually just be easier to say, “Ok, I will knock on the door and ask to get in and learn more about what they are talking about and see if there in an opportunity to inform the conversation or be informed by the conversation.

Perhaps even just writing about this feeling is enough to deal with the instant panic it brings about. Now is maybe not the time to panic, but to rather have that inner conversation that says, “move on, there will be exciting things to do and places to see if you are not looking too hard or fighting so much against the empty space in your life, that is perchance not ‘empty’, but filled with a cosmos to create, learn and live!”

The voice of gentle Giant rests

The voice

Of a gentle Genius

Quiet forever

The father of Philida

Historically correct

Politically

Said

With respect

The voice

Of a gentle Genius

Captured forever

The creator of A Dry White Season

Leader of the Sestigers

Lover, Father, Professor

Your gifts to the world

Growing in our hearts

The voice

Of a gentle Genius

Lives forever

The giver of Before I forget

Takes his last bow

Visionary, Interpreter, Liberator

Vacant we find your place

We can only hope to follow in that narrow space

In memory of Writer Professor Andre P. Brink, by Simone Beatrice Naik Hagfeldt, 2015-02-07.

Die stem van ‘n Groot Gees rus

Die stem

Van ʼn groot Gees

Verewig still

Die vader van Philida

Histories korrek

Polities

Gesê

Met respek

Die stem

Van ʼn groot Gees

Verewig vasgevang

Die skepper ʼn Droë Wit Seisoen

Voorloper van die Sestigers

Minnaar, Vader, Professor

Jou geskenke aan die wêreld

Leef in harte voort

Die stem

Van ʼn groot Gees

Leef verewig

Die gewer van Kennis van die aand

Maak sy laaste buiging

Leier, tolk, oorwinnaar

Jou plek staan voortaan leeg

Ons kan net hoop om te volg in daai noue steeg

Ter nagedagtenis aan Skrywer Prof. Andre P. Brink deur Simone Beatrice Naik Hagfeldt, 2015-02-07.

Hot and Cold - Here and There

Icy rain knocks on the sky roof all day. I do not dare to venture out. Winter gradually locks me in. Shifting between a little more than four walls, cooking beef curry, brewing tea and mulling over new ideas.

From the other end of the world I hear about the relentless baking sun. The beating heat of high summer is conjured in my mind. We are sitting around under a shady tree, anticipating sunset, licking the soothing pleasure of a pineapple sucker.  I am sympathetic and envious! How about sending me some of that heat?

In another corner of the day, a victim’s pain reaches me. Family violence, publically executed, seemingly there are no consequences for the perpetrator. How does he live with his guilt? Another hit from the meth pipe? Are they all just victim’s creating more victims surviving on the expectations of an hourly philosophy? Almost succeeding in shattering dreams and toying with an idealists’ reality.

On the other end of the world I can only listen and understand. It is easy to sit on the sidewalk watching the spectacle of pain. A deep sadness descends. Tragedy is no longer something ‘out there’ it makes us reel in the pain of memory.  I dare to share some soothing words. Calming down frayed nerves, nurturing empathy, strengthening resolves. Hoping that we all learn something new in the recurring cycle of each day.

Simone Beatrice Naik Hagfeldt, 2015-01-29.

Love and Peace

Today I baked dark chocolate cookies in a waffle iron. Four-and-a-half waffle cookies that were not waffles. Scoffing the two-and-a-bit with some rooibos tea for company. It was perhaps a silent cry and a peace offering to the self contemplating the idea and fear of how to react to losing a friendship.

We live on this planet of diversity. With time as a natural progression, the fact that a growing distance could develop seems inevitable. Our lives become influenced by time and space, a gap in age and probably most of all a departure from sharing the same thinking on issues. Our memories become riddled with keeping the best bits as it suits us individually and as time moves on it is either a process of injustice collection, broken recollections or leaving everything to the oblivion of yesteryear. Why bother to want to go back and remember the mundane, the complex, the challenges and the triumphs? I guess it is critical if we choose not to cling too much to the ‘what was or the ‘what could have been’s’. There will be too much pain to be nurtured on the lieu of the losses incurred. Time gradually runs out to chase opportunities that might never come along.

Listening to a survivor of the Nazi holocaust made me draw parallels with the losses incurred through the brutality of the Apartheid Regime, our own version of social, economic, cultural and political oppression riddled with the perils of the ultimate injustice - not allowing people to be persons in their own right and identity.

All the more the contemplation and pain of coming to the realisation that in life, we sometimes have to make peace with people choosing to move on. Losing friendship and a bit of that sense of  “I am, because you are.”

We can easily draw parallels between what happened to the Jews in World War II and the continuous persecution of so many in war, racial conflicts, territorial disputes (etc…), but nothing can change the pain experienced by the survivors and those who suffered – who made the ultimate sacrifice of losing their lives.

Love and peace is more than a dream. Sometimes it is an internal struggle and the core of battles with those around us. The search for Love and Peace moves us beyond me and connects us to live in communion as we.

Simone Beatrice Naik Hagfeldt, 29 January 2015.