Keeping Up with the Joneses

"Mr. Jones, I presume?"

Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman | I wrote a song for you | About a strange young man called Dylan | With a voice like sand and glue | His words of truthful vengeance | They could pin us to the floor | Brought a few more people on | And put the fear in a whole lot more

His skills as a wordsmith, good as they once were, have long ago been subsumed beneath his marketing skills. At the age of 64, Dylan has become an intriguing parody; he is either a giant ego rendered genuinely incapable of giving up the stage, or a man so amused by the fact that he can still con people into paying to see him, that he can't stop. Or maybe he's a toxic mixture of both.

And so the older he gets, the more productive he becomes. Last year he published an autobiography, so oblique it failed to reveal anything as mundane as facts, and played more than 100 live gigs. This year, he's still on the road. His tour, he has vowed, is never-ending: a sensation sadly familiar to anyone who has actually been to one of his concerts in the past 20 years.

Melanie Reid | The answer, my friend, is that it’s a load of old hype

Although in terminal decline—much like its American counterpart, British journalism still packs a punch. Following a week-long Bob Dylan fest both sides of the Atlantic (which, needless to say, I missed), headlines extolling Martin Scorsese and Dylan's unquestionable collective genius left me feeling pretty ill. Why? Because I believe all assumptions questionable and I believe the media best suited to posing questions that probe their veracity.

The American media, servile lapdogs of mediocrity, were never going to be up to it, so I looked to the other side of the Atlantic. And there they were, hacks with axes lining up like out-of-work navvies at the dole office, all willing and able to slice and dice the song-and-dance man from Hibbing. They do a good job, and I find their articles entertaining and intriguing.

The dry humor, a Brit stock in trade, results partly from the subject. A withered gnome of a man reminding one simultaneously of Charlie Chaplin and Vincent Price, Dylan offers an easy target. In fact, weighed by millions of uncritical fans and unable to unmask supposedly meaningful dissections of his work as poison-pen barbs targeting the person, he's irresistible.

Still, any journalist should view the leap of faith needed to connect this iconic relic of rock to songs of searing intensity as an unguarded moment during which they have a free shot at dunking readers in the schlock of their misguided adulation.

You gave your heart to every bedsit room | At least a picture on my wall | And you sat behind a million pair of eyes | And told them how they saw | Then we lost your train of thought | The paintings are all your own | While troubles are rising | We'd rather be scared | Together than alone

But that's about as much as I'm willing to concede to Dylan's frequently vitriolic detractors. First, Dylan is no 'pop' star. Were he one, abysmal record sales would have relegated him to obscurity thirty-five years ago. He is simply not popular in the colloquial sense. Secondly, on first hearing Dylan's work, and like those who instantly detest him, most fans report not having heard or experienced anything like it before.

Unlike any other form, yet incorporating myriad influences, his music stands alone.

It's frequently asked whether the man with the voice of sand and glue can sing and few would dispute his singular lack of talent as a great musician. The best that can be said for the mix of harmonies, lyrics and sound emanating from the loudspeakers is that it works to stunning effect. Those attracted to it, and who for some unresolved aural peculiarity are immediately able to decipher his sneering asides, find Dylan speaking directly to and for them in a manner similar to the way Mozart, Haydn or Mahler might do to lovers of classical music. Like the great composers, Dylan's multilayered songs bear infinite hearings and interpretations.

Does he deserve a Nobel prize? The notoriously conservative Nobel committee generally opts for safe bets, pandering to immediacy only in its willingness to give peace prizes to politicians fleetingly considered de rigueur. But, yes, if William Golding, J.M. Coetzee and Ernest Hemingway deserve one, why not? If Nadine Gordimer can travel to Oslo while Milan Kundera sits at home, sure.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter. Having lost most of my Dylan collection during a move last year (along with a massive vinyl selection), and having only Volumes 1-3 of the 'rare and unreleased' material, I couldn't care less whether Bob Dylan gets feted or not. I listen to the remaining wealth of his music in my possession and I mull over his lyrics. They stick with me more than do the poets of my youth, e.g. Shelley, Keats, Frost, Thomas, Brooke, Rimbaud, Owen, Sassoon, etc.

To slag Dylan for failing to carry his talents to middle age is more than disingenuous. It's crap. The raw genius of Blonde on Blonde, tempered and matured, infuses Time Out Of Mind three decades later. It's more than can be said for most of the above poets, whose reputations were generally inflated by their early deaths (Frost and Sassoon excepted). Hudson recognizes Dylan's genius, but dismisses it as adolescent name-dropping. As Churchill might have said of Brooke, "Some names. Some droppings."

Writing off (poker faced) Like A Rolling Stone as a "...warning to a slumming rich girl..." takes some balls.

Now hear this Robert Zimmerman | Though I don't suppose we'll meet | Ask your good friend Dylan | If he'd gaze a while down the old street | Tell him we've lost his poems | So they're writing on the walls | Give us back our unity | Give us back our family | You're every nation's refugee | Don't leave us with their sanity

Then again, to argue Dylan's poor standing among the likes of Beethoven and great poets is a double-edged sword. Why put him up there? At least it distances the artist from his art and robs our intrepid journalists of their cheapest trick, blurring personal and artistic distinctions to pander to our culture's innate desire to worship every so-called personality for 15 minutes before setting him or her aflame. Melanie Reid is smart enough, when dissing the person, to try hide her tracks:

"Artists are always best separated from their art. To confuse creator and creation is to invite crashing disappointment. A fan may love the work; they should, in my experience, stay well away from the creator, for they are likely to be let down."

Is this media barrage a 'personality' thing? I think so. Dylan's certainly not done much to deserve the coverage he's received over the past couple of weeks. Quite frankly, given the acres of space lent the singer and his film maker, it seems the 'voice of the sixties' has been mis-appropriated by the media to deflect attention from more weighty issues. But I surmise. It's more likely our tetchy journalists, their pens leaking negatives, were given these briefs as homework assignments, to lend balance to an unrelenting bombardment of uncritical acclaim.

That so many biographies have appeared over the years should reflect on the publishers and marketers rather than on their subject. Why credit Dylan, notoriously reclusive, selfish, and uncommunicative with marketing genius? Dylan's just doing his job. Whether he takes it seriously or not is beside the point. "I’m just a song-and-dance man." And the publishers are just doing their job. Give them some credit for so frequently planting this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon in front of our faces.

Over hyped? Perhaps. But, again, our reporters have only themselves to blame for creating their own Boy in the Bubble, i.e. "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts." In an increasingly illiterate world, will Golding, Coetzee, Gordimer and other Nobel laureates stand the test of time better than Bob Dylan? I doubt it.

I do agree that people like Greil Marcus, who leap to superlatives as quickly and adroitly as New Age authors do to fantasy, do Dylan (the person and the work) a disservice. But, then again, aren't they—like our journalists—just out to make a buck? As there are only so many praises Marcus can heap on His Bob-ness, our media hacks are limited by language to the number of imprecations they can heap on the reclusive singer / songwriter.

Well, yeah, so we end off where we began. Does the acerbic British press do a better job of covering Dylan than its lip-synching American equivalent? Am I an overgrown adolescent in possession of too many woolly jumpers and an arrested development? Sadly, for our British ink jockeys, no.

It seems that, both sides of the ocean, the press does what it does best, regurgitating facile assumptions as fact while drawing spurious conclusions on the wall.

Pop's roots are in the mercurial joys and anguishes of adolescence. Like a Rolling Stone may be as good as pop gets lyrically, but Dylan's warning to a slumming rich girl doesn't add up to much without his whinily splenetic delivery and the joyous rhythmic surge of the original recording. Once you start weighing it down with a mass of critical baggage, the sparkle goes.

Scorsese's film and Christopher Ricks's often hilarious, convoluted critical tome Dylan's Visions of Sin have reawakened the decades-old debate on Dylan's status as a poet. Yet Dylan's endless namechecking of cultural figures from Dante to Rimbaud amounts to little more than garbled adolescent name-dropping.

Mark Hudson | Bob Dylan: a poet and a poseur. There, I've said it...

Ah, Here she comes | Here she comes | Here she comes again | The same old painted lady | From the brow of a superbrain | She'll scratch this world to pieces | As she comes on like a friend | But a couple of songs | From your old scrapbook | Could send her home again

David Bowie | Song For Bob Dylan

Ring Them Bells

Ring them bells, ye heathen | From the city that dreams, | Ring them bells from the sanctuaries | Cross the valleys and streams, | For they're deep and they're wide | And the world's on its side | And time is running backwards | And so is the bride.

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Those who used to visit this blog on a regular basis—before I became anti-American—know I refer to myself as a "good Catholic boy". Sometimes, when writing or posting an entry, I understand confusion might arise from contradictions inherent in a profession of faith and the content of my average post (vituperative calls for the disembowelment of the U.S. president and other profane shit).

Some see easily through the fog clouding my intent. AKMA, a priest of the Protestant persuasion (we used to shoot them in Ireland—but it was for their own good, I assure you), has always done so. He shows a healthy appreciation of human nature and has taught me that not all Prods are Heathen.

In fact, I've always regarded the Adam family as closet Catholics. That I regard Frank similarly would not, I know, gladden our favourite peacenik's heart, but there you go.

Speaking of closets, we might as well cut to the chase and this excellent New York Times op-ed by John L. Allen, At the Vatican, Exceptions Make the Rule. Allen's the National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent, but that doesn't atomatically qualify him as an idiot. Hear him out. His piece, ostensibly about a soon-to-be-announced ban on gays entering the seminary, points to the heart of a healthy Catholic outlook.

Yeah, reread that last sentence—it could be taken as a classic piece of underhand casuistry.

It's important to remember that, as Allen points out, the issue is not whether you regard discrimination as healthy, unhealthy or ideal. There's far more to it than that.

The forthcoming Vatican document on gays in seminaries will unleash a wrenching debate about Catholicism and homosexuality, but one thing it is certain not to mean is that in the future there will be no gays in the priesthood. The continued presence of gays in the priesthood will be the product not just of difficulties in enforcement, or the dishonesty of potential candidates, but also of design.

Although this is a difficult point for many Anglo-Saxons to grasp, when the Vatican makes statements like "no gays in the priesthood," it doesn't actually mean "no gays in the priesthood." It means, "As a general rule, this is not a good idea, but we all know there will be exceptions."

Understanding this distinction requires an appreciation of Italian concepts of law, which hold sway throughout the thought world of the Vatican. The law, according to such thinking, expresses an ideal. It describes a perfect state of affairs from which many people will inevitably fall short. This view is far removed from the typical Anglo-Saxon approach, which expects the law to dictate what people actually do.

While Italians grumble about lawlessness, fundamentally they believe in subjectivity. Anyone who's tried to negotiate the traffic in Italian cities will appreciate the point. No law, most Italians believe, can capture the infinite complexity of human situations, and it's more important for the law to describe a vision of the ideal community than for it to be rigidly obeyed. Italians have tough laws, but their enforcement is enormously forgiving. Not for nothing was their equivalent of the attorney general's office once known as the Ministry of Justice and Grace.

The British historian Christopher Dawson has described this as the "erotic" spirit of cultures shaped by Roman Catholicism. Catholic cultures are based on the passionate quest for spiritual perfection, Dawson writes, unlike the "bourgeois" culture of the United States, which, shaped by Protestantism and based on practical reason, gives priority to economic concerns. As one senior Vatican official put it to me some time ago, "Law describes the way things would work if men were angels."

This value system means that while Vatican officials often project a stern moral image on the public stage, in intimate settings they can be strikingly patient and understanding. Policymakers in the Vatican tend not to get as worked up as many Americans by the large numbers of Catholics in the developed world who flout church regulations on birth control, for example. It's not that Vatican officials don't believe in the regulations. Rather, they believe the very nature of an ideal is that many people will fail to realize it.

Of course, one can debate whether a ban on birth control, or on gays in seminaries, ought to be the ideal. The point is that although Vatican officials will never say so out loud, few actually expect those rules to be upheld in all cases.

Some in the Anglo-Saxon world see this as a form of hypocrisy: the church apparently issues laws while winking at disobedience. But Vatican officials view it instead as a realistic concession to fallen human nature.

On background, some such officials have said that the point of the forthcoming document is to challenge the conventional wisdom in the church, which holds that as long as a prospective priest is capable of celibacy, it doesn't matter whether he's gay or straight. Vatican policymakers and some American bishops believe that's naïve. In an all-male environment, they contend, a candidate whose sexual orientation is toward men faces greater temptations and hence a greater cause for concern.

That's a debatable proposition, but it does not add up to an absolute conviction that no gay man should ever be ordained a priest. Rather, it means that bishops should take a hard look at such candidates, but in the end, they'll still use their best judgment.

Those determined to apply this decree in uncompromising fashion will be able to do so. But while the Catholic priesthood of the future may include fewer homosexuals - and it will certainly have fewer gay seminarians and priests willing to speak openly about their situation - it will not be "gay free."

On the ground, as bishops and seminary teams make decisions, many will still draw on that classic bit of Italian clerical casuistry: "If Father Christopher were here, he would understand."

Ring them bells St. Peter | Where the four winds blow, | Ring them bells with an iron hand | So the people will know. | Oh it's rush hour now | On the wheel and the plow | And the sun is going down | Upon the sacred cow.

I think they're looking for trouble if they're asking bishops to have a hard look at gay seminarians, but their safety is not our immediate concern. Allen identifies debatable ideals but, more importantly, he highlights the value and inevitability of an apparently illogical and hypocritical inconsistency.

Any religion holding its adherents to impossible standards is bound to fail. But failure's no reason to let go of the ideal. And breaking the impasse is easy. You merely acknowledge your universal status as natural-born losers. Why the hell not? It's cheap, easy and obligation free.

Catholics, thank God, are held to very little (although this can be a jail in itself). But 'freedom' is extremely difficult for most to appreciate or handle—particularly those who grew into a Church run by people who believed their own propaganda. We're quite capable of compromising ourselves and don't need the Church to do it for us.

A broader education might have engendered a realization in the old school that most of us are savages interested only in the flavor of the month and that some flavors linger longer.

We need a "finger pointing", no matter how much or frequently it manages to piss us off. I mean, we're talking human beings here, and that means all of us.

'Cept gays, of course.

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Ring them bells St. Catherine | From the top of the room, | Ring them from the fortress | For the lilies that bloom. | Oh the lines are long | And the fighting is strong | And they're breaking down the distance | Between right and wrong.

Bob Dylan | Ring Them Bells

Bite Me...

"Bite me. Please."

Barely two years after the United States invaded Iraq in the name of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, the world is being pushed towards a confrontation with Iran on a similarly flawed premise.

Siddharth Varadarajan | The Persian Puzzle: Iran and the invention of a nuclear crisis

The UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, officially signed Iran's death-warrant yesterday. By passing a US-backed resolution that refers Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council, the member states have endorsed America's genocidal Middle East policy and paved the way for another war. ... It's just a matter of whether Iran "will go peacefully into that good night" or not. The ground has already been cleared for another larcenous crusade; another monstrous, unprovoked aggression against a peaceful nation. The red-herring of "non-compliance" will be brandished to the world while Washington gears up for its next bloody campaign. The plan to reshape the Middle East is moving forward at breakneck-speed and unsuspecting Iran just entered the imperial crosshairs. Fasten your seatbelts for another savage cakewalk.

Mike Whitney | The impending Cakewalk in Iran

Thank You...

"There is chaos. There's bloodshed. There's carnage."

"We need a people's movement. My friends in the media aren't doing their job. Most of our friends in Congress aren't doing their job. President Bush certainly isn't doing his job. So we have to do our job as Americans."

Cindy Sheehan

Some, who speak for many, are doing it. And though it might do little immediately to deter the savages now waging war [pdf] on the world, it heartens many who are not American to know the Bush administration is, slowly but surely, being marginalized. By Americans.

Armed and dangerous...

A man's best friends?

On most big-city freeways, a commuter headache is a fender-bender and a line of rubberneckers. This big city is, ah, different.

Here is a Johannesburger's driving headache: a stolen Mercedes-Benz rams an armored truck onto the freeway shoulder, four more carloads of AK-47-toting bandits screech up beside it and the 20 or so thieves encircle the immobile truck, guns trained on the ensuing gridlock.

Using tools powered by portable generators, they peel back the truck's roof and scoop out the cash inside. Then, firing wildly, they all speed away.

That was the scene on the city's M2 freeway on Aug. 22. And four weeks earlier, when a similar holdup unfolded on the same freeway, near the same exit. And three days after that, on the N3, east of downtown. And about two weeks ago, just off the M1, in Soweto.

The good news here - and it is very good news - is that South Africa's once-terrifying rates of carjackings, murder and even armored-car attacks have fallen sharply since the late 1990's, when violent crime seemed almost out of control.

The South African Police Service's annual crime report, released Wednesday, states for example that the number of murders dropped another 5 percent in the year ended in April, and fell 40 percent since 1995.

The flip side, however, is that the remaining violent crime is not only ever more spectacular, but ever harder to rein in. Every time the police and security bureaucracy finds a way to thwart criminals, the criminals invent a way around it, or find an easier target.

Or they simply turn up the firepower.

In five splashy days early this month, a dozen armed bandits stormed a Johannesburg casino at sunrise, taking employees hostage and wheeling away a trolley filled with cash; thieves killed an armored-car guard during a Soweto heist; up to seven robbers sprayed gunfire through a high-end Johannesburg mall, killing a bank guard; and up to 15 bandits shot a guard and battled the police while plundering an armored vehicle outside Durban.

That followed another headline-grabbing robbery in Johannesburg's toniest shopping mall, in which five criminals disguised as burqa-clad Muslim women cleaned out a swank jeweler, then shot their way to freedom.

No wonder, then, that many South Africans feel less safe than ever, whatever the statistics say.

New York Times | As the Police Get Smarter, Highwaymen Get Meaner

Note: I've no desire to detract from an excellent New York Times article covering a booming Third World cottage industry, but I must ask this. "Where the hell does it get the idea the police are getting smarter?"

Not Dark Yet

Receiving an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, a hapless academic introduced him to the audience as "the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America". Dylan writes that, sitting there on stage, he almost bit himself in fury. "Oh Sweet Jesus! It was like a jolt. I shuddered and trembled but remained expressionless. The disturbed conscience of Young America! There it was again. I couldn't believe it. Tricked once more."

No wonder he has had such a hard time of it from journalists. It is more comfortable for all concerned if a public figure slips into the particular cloak of celebrity that is offered to him and gets through his life by playing a part in public; but then, Dylan has never been in the business of providing comfort. Just as he was enraged in his twenties by the idea that he was the voice of anyone but himself, he has, approaching his pensioner years, refused the various personae on offer: grand old radical, political prophet, four-chord guru, cultural icon.


• Dylan — the supreme troubadour
• Bob Dylan: Behind the hits and the myths
• Bob Dylan: How I found the man who shouted 'Judas'
• Bob Dylan: His top twenty albums
• Bob Dylan: A meeting of minds

It takes one to know one...

George Bush, Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu are being used to persuade people to adopt stray dogs in Romania.

Posters featuring them with the slogan: "A dog loves you just the way you are" are appearing on billboards across the country.

Hitler was a well-known animal lover who could not abide cruelty to any animals, while Ceausescu, who ran a police state that tortured and murdered thousands, was rarely seen without his two pet dogs, Corbu and Sarona.

George W. Bush is also a well-known dog lover and has two pet dogs - an English Springer Spaniel named Spot and a Scottish Terrier named Barney.

Ioana Casetti, the president of the Romanian National Committee for the Protection of Animals, said: "Our idea is to make people sensitive to what an animal can offer in terms of affection by showing them that even the most hated dictators on this planet received love from their dogs.

"I expect criticism but also some appreciation for our work and idea. But more than that, I expect that people will get the message that anyone who loves dogs can save them from a shelter."

Bucharest and other Romanian cities have huge problems with stray dogs and an estimated 200,000 roam the country at any one time.

Ananova | Bush and Hitler 'back' stray dog campaign

U.S. immigration officials refused Tuesday to allow Robert Fisk, longtime Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent, to board a plane from Toronto to Denver. Fisk was on his way to Santa Fe for a sold-out appearance in the Lannan Foundation’s readings-and-conversations series Wednesday night.

[...]

The controversial British journalist, who is based in Beirut, filed many eyewitness reports on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and criticized Western reporters for "hotel journalism", a phrase he coined to describe correspondents who covered the war from heavily fortified hotel suites and offices.

The New Mexican | Lannan speaker delayed in Canada

The Great Leveler?

"...we got to be ready for the worst." George W. Bush

Damn right, you cheap little opportunist...

High water risin', six inches 'bove my head | Coffins droppin' in the street | Like balloons made out of lead

Cindy Sheehan is currently in the news. She and her organization have no connection whatever with American Gold Star Mothers, Inc. We are a 501 C(3) organization and, as such, do not engage in political activities. We do support our troops. After all, they are our children.

American Gold Star Mothers

The consumerism of the world is unbearable. The U.S. people must come to understand, how this country with only 5 percent of the world population, consumes 25 percent of the oil and the energy of the world. ... This planet cannot stand this model any longer. I think developed countries — so-called developed countries should reflect upon the way of living and the waste of energy. And the government knows this. The big trans-nationals know this. The U.S. only has 20 billion barrels of oil in reserve. It seems as though there is no more oil around. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of oil in reserves. Iraq has like 150 billion barrels of oil. Iran, close to 300 billion barrels of reserve. Oil for 200 years of course. Now, it is clear that the U.S. government wants that oil. That's why they planned, first they tried to get the Venezuelan oil and, of course the coup, they staged against us. That was an oil-motivated coup. They want to have the control over Venezuelan oil before going for the Iraq, for Iraq's oil.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on DemocracyNow

Water pourin' into Vicksburg, don't know what I'm going to do | "Don't reach out for me," she said | "Can't you see I'm drownin' too?" | It's rough out there | High water everywhere

Bob Dylan | High Water (for Charley Patton)

Fair? Balanced?

Kate Moss — A Face for the 20th Century

I, of course, do not believe a word of it.

Really.

Bush's Bumboy

"Psst! Wanna do me?"

"I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count."

John Bolton, December 9th, 2000

Having neglected the Web for a while, it took me some time to realize I'd better check the NOLA joke's sell-by date (see post below).

It's been dong the rounds for about ten days, so I guess it's getting a bit stale. Here's a light-hearted alternative. Steve Bell's renditions of George W. Bush and Lord Blair of Kut of Kut al-Amara* never fail to crack me up.

I do realize my loathing of these creatures borders on the pathological but, hey, I can live with it. With the world fast disappearing down the toilet, Bell's humor is seldom, if ever, lavatorial. In fact, the man's ability to bring style, class and some light air to the shithouse never fails to amaze me.

Then again, he has such wonderful material with which to work.

As both the mooning face of U.S. foreign policy and a suitably attired chink in the Global Baboon's body armor, isn't it nice to know John Bolton's future is assured [MB1.5 pdf]?

* Lord Blair of Kut of Kut al-Amara is much beloved of one Robert Fisk, a media hack of the old school boasting a decent education and decades of experience. Fisk is not averse to offering his public a heady mix of blunt truth, historical perspective, rigorous honesty and gentle doses of a dark humor.

Note: The theme of Steve Bell's cartoon is not new (see Kirk Anderson's, illustrating the rather academic articles to which I've linked). It is Bell's double-edged, yet nuanced, artwork I so enjoy.

Desert Places...

Tuesday and I feel so laid back I could be horizontal. I certainly don't feel like doing any of this 'blogging' stuff, but I thought I'd shuffle up a couple of graphics.

There's something to be said for cramming a week's shopping into a Friday night, packing, and getting out of town Saturday morning until Sunday evening. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it kicks you down a gear or three, untangles the psyche, and focuses the mind.

Nah, it doesn't focus the mind. In fact, the last thing a weekend away does is focus the mind.

Mine drifts...


On the beach...

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast / In a field I looked into going past, / And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, / But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

We hit out along the east coast towards Cape Agulhas (Africa's southernmost tip) with Zonker and Amelie. An accomplished artist and nurse, Amelie's visiting from Trondheim, where she's lived these past twenty-five years. We met her, Zonker and The Dutch Boy last Tuesday night when we went round to cook some meat on the fire.

Smiler was there too. I hadn't seen him in twenty-five years either. As it turns out, neither he nor Amelie have changed much. Smiler, who's working rigs off Brazil, is the one who's changed most physically.

But you recognize a person's vibes and I was mightily pleased to see him.

"Hey, you old bastard. I want my books back. Those you pinched when you and Chuck jumped a trawler to Hong Kong."

Smiler will be around again, so there's no urgency (actually, he can keep the books). But Amelie heads back to the Arctic Circle this week so, with Spring breaking all about us, a trip up the coast always was going to be on.

Heading out of town, we figured it to be about five months since our last venture, a three-day foray to the mountains above Porterville, among ancient canyons and crags, freshwater pools (lovely, dark and deep), and a full-moon sky.

It struck us this past weekend would be a full moon too, as it was six months ago at the Equinox. We were up the west coast then, at the mythical point break distinguishing Elandsbaai, paying homage to the quarter century that separates us from our lyrical, dope-shrouded outdoor past.

We're still paying homage, but not to anything in particular.


"...at the edge of the lake"

The woods around it have it—it is theirs. / All animals are smothered in their lairs. / I am too absent-spirited to count; / The loneliness includes me unawares.

Zonker's bought himself a perfectly maintained, 15-year old, single-owner Mercedes. As a touring car, we couldn't ask for better. Drifting elegantly along the flower-bedecked roads of the mountain-shaded, tumbledown coast rolling into the southern ocean, German opera and classical music filled the air.

"What the fuck is this shit?" I asked him.

"Touring music. For the Merc."

It made sense. In spacious luxury, we sailed the road without noise or rush. The car's easy opulence suited us, lending added appreciation of the shades, colors and contours enfolding themselves about us.

"On the other hand, all you have is a carload of stoners smuggling endangered plants," I pointed out. "If we hit a roadblock now, they'll lock up Amelie and Wendy and we'll be lucky to escape with a hefty fine."

Zonker scowled at the girls' bags before turning back to me. "Mmm... it's a pity about the plants and the sea life, but we are, when all is said and done, traveling in style."

There was no denying it. For a weekend overlooking the Whale Coast across an open lagoon fronting our verandah, I'd listen to Wagner any day. It was easy to forget this was a one-night trip. It was easy to forget that Amelie might fly off Friday and not return.


Desert places...

And lonely as it is, that loneliness / Will be more lonely ere it will be less— / A blanker whiteness of benighted snow / With no expression, nothing to express.

I guess forgetting is easy because we're old friends and old friends are like that. We take each other for granted in the easiest, most loving ways. Our conversations last a lifetime and they bear many repeats. Without missing a beat, we are forever picking up where we left off.

When she was a naive Afrikaner farm girl making her way in the big city, Amelie introduced me to Wendy by way of a Wit Els camping trip. She and Wendy lived in the same residence and my friends and I became frequent visitors. Wendy and I broke every rule in the book, but the little old lady running the place took a shine to us and we were always on our second chance.

Easter's west coast and mountain trips, though far longer than this past weekend's, were similar in many ways. Good company, good coffee and good friends. We experienced indifferent weather atop the mountain above Porterville, but so what? We are, when all is said and done, experienced campers.

Not having been 'back home' for so long meant Amelie could give us a pretty objective, sobering view of South Africa's standing in the global village. Superficially (and beyond her wealth of digital paraphernalia), we're not doing all that well. Crime, violence, imploding infrastructures, endemic corruption, a giddy capitalism (i.e. greed), and massive income disparities show us to be pretty much towards the bottom of the global pile in terms of living standards and sustainable futures.

As far as Joe Soap is concerned, Hunter S. Thompson gave us a perfect example of the typical 'white' South African's retirement plan.


"...lovely, dark and deep..."

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars—on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost | Desert Places

And I guess that's the problem masking our not-insignificant successes. Much as we aim at cultural and racial harmony, the average schmuck hates everybody but skin-deep mirror images of him or herself. Racism and xenophobia are massive problems in South Africa and, if you think you know where the problem lies, think again. Old white racists are literally a dying breed.

My generation, that which was sent to war on either side of the Verwoerdian divide, feeds the dominant view. It's ugly. And we pass our prejudices on to our kids. Mine have raised themselves (we've just 'been around for them'), so they're okay. But the average South African? As racist or resentful as all hell.

Unless one makes money from it (a la the NOLA developers or former Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka), racism's the world's greatest waste of energy and, even should it pay, one of humanity's foulest byproducts.

Anyway... yeah, that's the cause of our superficial failure to cut it in the Twenty First Century. We fail to work together. Everything is about 'Me'. There are very few true South Africans about and they're being screwed every which way. Many, like Amelie, now live overseas and it's sad, because these people are our friends.

Or our kids' friends.

"Howzit, Iain?" "Gabriel?" Etc.

However, beyond our failures, and given enough to get by, I reckon we have a grasp on something most of the world fails to see. Even if we're not doing too well at it, we've a vision of a world that could be and, having that vision, occasionally get to live it.

It's about friends, other people, shared values (share and share alike) and life, overall, being very cool. How could we not see it that way? Cruising the highways of Heaven (and forgetting the fucking German music), layers of beauty as deep as one's perception seep through the fabric of land, light, sea and air.

Like an old friend, it's a country as remarkable as one's living of it.

At a hastily convened press conference late last night, surviving members of 60's British pop group The Animals apologized for misleading their public for forty-one years.

"Apparently, there is no house in New Orleans," a contrite Eric Burdon told stunned reporters.