Spike sez...

"Thar' she blows!"

Oh the time will come up | When the winds will stop | And the breeze will cease to be breathin'. | Like the stillness in the wind | 'Fore the hurricane begins, | The hour when the ship comes in.

...a massive bloody system parked in the middle of the south Atlantic for the better part of a week has been generating swells of a wintry magnitude. We are, according to our world-class wind and weather guru, about to be hit by some of the best surf seen since the ice melted — from the mountains; this past winter.

Whatever. Let's hear it from The Man before we speculate on the more recent past and Spike's relative silence since Friday...or whenever it was.

"Into the week, the swell fades by Tuesday, and then it's the turn of the SW Cape and West Coast to get a DIK 15-20' WEST SWELL from Wednesday into Thursday and still solid waves lasting into Friday." ... "The waters are freezing now, and the wind is pumping. Swell hanging in at 3-4'. The tow ous are deep in an underground bunker chowing testosterone and dopping milk and running on specially adapted underwater treadmills in the new gym called Sturgeon Active. Dust off your wino chaser for a large thundering WEST swell comes next Wednesday from a huge storm that forms all weekend, stabilises on Sunday and then simply squats in one spot for 2 days, spewing forth a multitudinous brood of storm-smeared squealers."

Indeed. And he has pictures to prove it. But, I ask, what has happened to Spike? Where is he? We've heard nothing from him since his last convulsion. Is this brooding hulk slouching towards the Cape the figment of a wave-starved imagination? Not according to magicseaweed, which has been predicting an offshore swell of five to six meters for around a week now. But magicseaweed's assessment of the resulting surf has been tempered by predictions of unfavourable winds and other factors to which only to salt-and-beer soaked wave watchers are privy.


When even the bad times are good...

Oh the seas will split | And the ship will hit | And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking. | Then the tide will sound | And the wind will pound | And the morning will be breaking.

I'm banking on receiving an update from Spike some time tomorrow — just to calm my fevered brow, you understand. I've been sitting on rocks taking pictures of kelp lice riding six-inch slop on popsicle sticks for the past month or two and cannot take any more of it. Mind you, some people, like Chancy Gardener above, appear able to make something out of nothing. I caught him at Dangers a week ago. But, really. I'm tired of watching the garden grow and want some decent surf pictures. Yeah, and I want them now.

It's not that I don't believe The Man. The waves, like the whales, will come. I know this to be true. I am, after all and when all is said and done, a man of faith and an occasional blogger to boot. And I now have a camera. I have therefore taken two days' leave and will be plodding the Atlantic shore from Wednesday evening. It's not that I'm not used to trudging rugged trails. This past weekend, we spent hours beating a path less travelled around the Sentinel, home to Africa's largest waves. I've posted the pictures here, intended writing a storyboard essay on tourists paying a fortune for an hour's fun while we get a day for nothing but, as usual, ran out of time.

The updated Cape Point album is here, by the way. Tourism by proxy always was a good idea waiting for a blog to happen.

There are some good pictures to be taken out there and I want one — or many more would be good — of them later this week. Fifteen feet? Who cares? I don't have to ride the buggers. Ten to twelve feet and a taste of winter would be fine.

Oh the fishes will laugh | As they swim out of the path | And the seagulls they'll be smiling. | And the rocks on the sand | Will proudly stand, | The hour that the ship comes in.

Bob Dylan | When the Ship Comes In

Note: Okay, so I probably don't fully agree with where he's coming from or his assessment of the imperial ambitions of 'fundamentalist Islamic jihadists', but Iain McWhirter certainly blows the whistle on the latest round of mealy-mouthed endearments being whispered across the killing fields.

Nobody else in the mainstream media appears willing to call the cowed Yanks and callow Brits to account for their increasingly nauseating rhetoric. Instead, they amplify it in the face of looming disaster. McWhirter's piece is about as close as it gets to a reality "...too ghastly to contemplate" — as former South African prime minister and Bush soulmate B.J. Vorster would undoubtedly have put it.

Nothing, bar the situation becoming more precarious as a bunch of crazed neo-imperialists on drugs continues to drive the West over the edge into history's Black Hole, has changed. The pomo Hitlers of our age are still in control. Period.

Rainbow Nation...

Clouds over Khayalitsha...

The Colour of Money

"That ain't workin'..."

"...as long as injustice and inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest." ... "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will overcome it."

Poverty is, as President Thabo Mbeki has so frequently observed, our country's gravest problem. Poverty and our skewed economy underpin all social ills. We could have reversed it, but we sold out our solution in 1996, swapping the RDP for GEAR. Will we indeed overcome poverty, Madiba? I doubt it. Should you believe otherwise, a day at the beach might change your mind. These people don't give a shit that our kids are raped at seven, are on meta-amphetamines at ten, have no education, homes, or health care, and are dead of gunshot wounds at 17.

Whatever...it doesn't matter. I'm chucking in the towel. For now. As my kids grow up and move off to Ireland, I become more inclined to follow them.

Faced daily with the world's greatest income disparity and unable to sustain a family on an income based more on global greed than any policy of the company for which I work or the skilled work I do, I cannot see my personal fortunes changing. While many of us work for others and struggle to put food on the table, overt opulence continues to flaunt itself in the face of abject poverty. I cannot believe that it will not continue to do so for generations to come. It has become the way of the world, the way we do business around here. Forget the church and state. It has always been about business and, after decades of not-so-covert manipulation, the money moguls have bought the future and are now riding us into the ground.


"That's the way you do it..."

"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will."

The rich are rapacious, rampant, and insatiable. The poor have no power and their future looks grim. Grinding poverty and short-term gain, Madiba — these things kill. Be it by AIDS, TB, crime, violence, social dysfunction, imploding value systems, the collapse of the family, or what have you, they squeeze the blood from our veins and the life from our country. Until we find ourselves a Castro, a Chavez, a Machel, or a young Mandela, it will always be so.

I'm not alone in feeling this way. Over the past ten years, I've seen hundreds of South Africans leave as economic refugees. My view is limited. Several million are earning a living overseas. Many faithful South Africans live and blog there, as homesick as all hell. Yeah, the English, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh; they are Africans too. Social problems do not phase us — they are to be expected and perhaps even serve as signs that we are coming of age as a developing nation. We've been through too much over the past fifty years to be upset by minor irritants such as repression and revolution.

Thank God, over the past century and as President Mbeki pays statesmanlike tribute to the late Great Krokodil, we've had people of stature and integrity to guide us past possible futures every bit as horrendous as those faced by Sudan, the DRC, Iraq, Palestine, Angola, Chechnya and so many other countries. We've the Reagans, Thatchers, Bothas, Bushes, Blairs, Vorsters and countless others to thank for such grotesque failures of the human spirit. For every blood diamond on the world market and for every limbless landmine victim, there's a Mercedes, BMW or Audi being delivered to a sought-after address.


"Money for nothin' and your chicks for free..."

"Yet in this new century millions of people remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. Massive poverty and inequality are terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world also boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom."

Nelson Mandela

Ultimately, our ability to sustain our dream boils down to the price of a loaf of bread and, perhaps because even buying a loaf of bread is a political act, I'm addressing this entry to you. I can no longer afford bread and I do not accept such a situation as a sacrifice in nation building. For as long as a minority live high on the hog, spending blood money taken from a majority forced to eat dirt, our dream will remain our illusion and the rich man's reality. And you will be flogging both like a dead horse, stating that which we know, mouthing truisms that hold no substance and offer no future.

By the way, I won't be buggering off just yet; I owe Trevor some money and the rest to the company store. But I will say this much. I'm on my way out of here and will probably end up in some corner of County Mayo, the land that gave voice to my grandfather and our President's favourite poet. Look at it this way, Madiba. In our wired world, a plane ride is several hours and another country. Distances have dropped and miles have diminished to minutes. So, Irish I may be, but I remain as much an African as you.

Note: Pictures taken Sunday while looking for a place in the sun.

Love and Marriage...

Sean and Margie...

I have, as they say in all the best circles, gained a daughter. Needless to say, I'm over the moon about it. And given that she's blonde...

"What?"

"You can't say things like that."

"Like what?"

"You're going to start in about blondes again, aren't you?"

"So what?"

"Asshole. She's your daughter-in-law."

Nobody has any need to remind of me of this. I am, after all, a good Catholic boy and an occasional blogger to boot. An attractive daughter-in-law is meat and drink to a man like me, but I should be a dead man were I even to suggest...

My son, like his father, is a man of honor and integrity and would gut me like a fish were I to...

emm...

...damn, what it is it with blogging? Does absence make the brain grow dumber?

...go beyond saying I think he's one hell of a lucky guy.

Whew!


Eating wild berries and roots...

Anyway, my aesthetic appreciations are neither here nor there. I have had many other things to deal with. This past week I became, yet again, an uncle and, next week, will see my eldest daughter turn 21.

"Life," as my former Spiritual Guide and Corn Flake Mentor, M. Scott Peck, was fond of pointing out, "Is difficult."

Not for me it ain't, Bubba.

Nonetheless, for a busy professional, an active social life is hell. I've been hiding out in the hills this past month, eating wild berries and roots, listening to Lord Randall on my iPod, and filling my current SG&M Father Christopher's Inbox with rambling allegations of black helicopters, flaming crosses in the East, scarlet mists in the morning, and a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

He's returned none of my mails, the bastard. I'll say this much though. He did send me a tin foil hat, a DVD of Repo Man, and a free pass to Brother Marek's next Love Clinic down at the Jesus Bunker. One way or another, Father Christopher always comes good.

"You can't say that."

"What?"

"'Comes good.'"

"Why the hell not?"

"It's my line."

"Ah, for fuck's sake, Lenny, it's not. Drop dead."

Umm, yeah...I don't know. I think I need the break I've just had. Or something.

In short, bear with me. Those mails that have come my way this past month, will be answered; those promises made, will be kept. Quite when (and given my family, South Africa, George W. Bush and the world), I'm not sure.

But hey, as I heard some kid remark down at the beach today (small swell, cross wind, but reasonable surf nonetheless), "I'm stoked."

As are all Margie and Sean's family and many friends.

Note: The above photograph of me eating wild berries and roots is not a photograph of me eating wild berries and roots. It's either a surfer about to eat sand at Llandudno a week or two ago or Van Gogh's journey toward the Bright Light. But so what? I'm not going to beat up on myself for posting it and neither should you.

Trust me on this.

Officer Materiel

False Bay afternoon...

I've not finished with Cape Agulhas yet... there's the inevitable lighthouse — which has a pretty interesting history. You also get to meet fascinating people in the country, including former generals charged with funding covert wars and chemical and biological weapons' programs, but these snaps couldn't wait.


Platboom sandscape...

Where else but Cape Town would an afternoon at the coast deliver such contrasts? On the western side of the peninsula — at Platboom, a windsurfer's paradise — a virtual snowscape of blinding sand and, on the eastern side, i.e. False Bay, a sun-purpled Sea of Tranquility.

I must say I empathized with the General and, for a while, felt I was chatting to another side of myself. He retired at 45, owns a couple of properties, and is a pillar of his community. A hell of a nice guy...


Ostriches on the beach...

Yeah, yeah... we're nothing special. But which other coast suffers birds like these?

Ostriches are classified as dangerous animals in Australia, the US and the UK. There are a number of recorded incidents of people being attacked and killed. Big males can be very territorial and aggressive and can attack and kick very powerfully with their legs. An ostrich will easily outrun any human athlete. Their legs are powerful enough to eviscerate large animals.

Wikipedia


A Chacma baboon ponders his next meal...

Or guys like this?

Their diet is omnivorous, but is usually vegetarian. They are foragers and are active at irregular times throughout the day and night. They can raid human dwellings and in South Africa they have been known to prey on sheep and goats. Their principal predators are man and the leopard, although they are tough prey for a leopard and large males will often confront them.

Wikipedia

I've always felt kindly disposed to conservative Afrikaner nationalists living the legacy of their war against democracy (in democracy's name, of course). I understood them in a way — back then, and respected them in many others. Fearsome opponents, their world view clashed with mine, but they were — and remain — as honest as the day is long.

Ah, well. As much as I'd like to have retired at 45 on a golden handshake (state employees were allowed to buy back pensions to age 19 at a nominal fee — or something equally ridiculous), I'd have made a lousy general.

Another time perhaps...

Note: And yes, for those who remember a time when English and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans hid their guilt by taunting each other, the juxtaposition of the baboon and my mention of conservative Afrikaners is entirely coincidental.

Ask Gary Younge; he hits the nail on the head. Myriad responses to his article highlight his reasonable view...

The Tipping Point

...Cape of Needles

Cape Agulhas is the southernmost point in the continent of Africa. It is located at 34°50'00”S, 20°00'09.15”E, in a rural area 170 kilometres (105 mi) south-east of Cape Town. The cape was named by Portuguese navigators, who called it Cape Agulhas — Portuguese for "Needle Cape" — in reference to the rocks and reefs that have wrecked many ships in the area...

The cape is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization to be the dividing point between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. South of Cape Agulhas the warm Agulhas Current that flows south along the east coast of Africa retroflects back into the Indian Ocean. While retroflecting it pinches off large ocean eddies (Agulhas rings) that drift into the South Atlantic Ocean and take enormous amounts of heat and salt into the neighboring ocean. This mechanism constitutes one of the key elements in the global conveyor belt circulation of heat and salt.

"A sailor's geography is not always that of the cartographer, for whom a cape is a cape, with a latitude and longitude. For the sailor, a great cape is both a very simple and an extremely complicated whole of rocks, currents, breaking seas and huge waves, fair winds and gales, joys and fears, fatigue, dreams, painful hands, empty stomachs, wonderful moments, and suffering at times.

A great cape, for us, can't be expressed in longitude and latitude alone. A great cape has a soul, with very soft, very violent shadows and colours. A soul as smooth as a child's, as hard as a criminal's. And that is why we go."


Meisho Maru 38

The sea off Cape Agulhas is notorious for winter storms and mammoth rogue waves, which can range up to 30 metres (100 ft) high and can sink even large ships. These conditions are caused by a number of factors. The naturally strong winds of the roaring forties, which blow from west to east, and the cold Antarctic Circumpolar Current flowing in the same direction, come up against the warmer Agulhas Current in the region of the cape. These conflicting currents of water of different densities, and the west winds blowing against the Agulhas Current, can create extremely hazardous wave conditions; these are further exacerbated by the shallow waters of the Agulhas Bank, a broad, shallow part of the continental shelf which juts 250 kilometres (155 mi) south from the cape, after which it falls steeply away to the abyssal plain.

These hazards have combined to make the cape notorious among sailors; the coast here is littered with wrecks. Cooranga, Elise, European, Federal Lakes, Geortyrder, Gouritz and Gwendola are just a few of the vessels lost at the "Cape of Needles". Owing to the hazards and following the loss of several vessels, a lighthouse was built in 1848.

"I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea."


...Indian Ocean sunrise

Unlike its better-known relative, the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Agulhas is relatively unspectacular, consisting of a gradually curving coastline with a rocky beach. A survey marker indicates the location of the cape, which would otherwise be difficult to identify. The waters near the coast are quite shallow and are renowned as one of the best fishing grounds in South Africa.

The rocks that form Cape Agulhas belong to the Table Mountain Group, often loosely termed the Table Mountain sandstone. They are closely linked to the geological formations that are exposed in the spectacular cliffs of Table Mountain, Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope.

Source: Wikipedia

"You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all."

Bernard Moitessier

I can't but think of a couple of... well, three bloggers here, people who travel — whether they do so physically, mentally, or emotionally: Peter, Mark Woods (who pointed me to John S. Kiewit and inspires in so many other ways), and Leslie. Why? I've no idea. They do, that's all.

Travels with Zonker

On the Road with Zonker

A trip to Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa, is no doddle. It demands a couple of hours' deliberation, planning, victualling, and a good car.

We got the first three right, but loused up on the last. Zonker's 18-year old Mercedes spent three days outside Struisbaai's Nostra restaurant, an electrical fault stranding it along a 14-kilometer stretch of white sand, azure water, and sun-puffed clouds sailing a deep blue sky.

"So what?" we thought. "We have better things to do than repair Mercedes Benz's signal failure to live up to its promise of engineering excellence."


Struisbaai — in the lee of the Southern tip...

We took pictures instead. This activity involves a great deal of walking, climbing, and other physical discomforts. But no matter — we are, when all is said and done, professionals, bloggers, and hard men to boot.

Not that these things matter either.

I have a new camera now and am trying to wrap my hands, mind, and whatever creativity I might have around the damned thing. It's a digital, but it offers more than the smaller PowerShot. 'More' means complex and I'm a sucker for 'complex'.

Rather than take a straight snap, I'll try something. The result is most often, as we professionals put it, unfit for human consumption. Sometimes, I reckon these damned latter-day cameras are better left to their own devices as most of the snaps that work were taken at default settings.


...and Zonker's car's home for the weekend

Format is a new complexity with which I'm grappling. Given a wide-screen (rather than wide-angle) picture-postcard option, I couldn't resist the damned thing and, because it saves space, took most snaps using that layout. The result is a nightmare to fit to an album designed to tell a story of a weekend rather than offer pretty pictures.

Never mind. I'll get it right.

Some day.

Unseen Spectacles

Guiding lights...

It's a bugger. I've a pair of spectacles at Elands Bay and, now, another at Llandudno. Quite where they are at these places, I've no idea. I have, as we say, mislaid them. Quite how I manage to lose items of value in Godforsaken places, I've no idea, but I've a feeling it derives from my singular focus on whatever it is I'm doing at the time — trying to capture halfway decent surfing shots.

Recently, though, I've come to realise that perhaps I've been viewing the targets of my lens through tinted glasses. Without them, it becomes quite apparent that, given half a chance, my photojournalism associate, companion and assistant (without whom I would probably lose myself), is a damned side better photographer than yours truly.


Hard knocks walk a straight line...

Well, okay, that's not going to stop me pointing cameras, so I should perhaps rephrase that. Looking at some of Wendy's shots, taken at the same places, it amazes me how different her pictures are to mine. Photographs reveal to us as much as does writing and, because we understand the medium less, perhaps more.

These shots were taken at Thermopylae. While I focused on the wave (and, given the poor lighting angles, botched ninety percent of what I was trying to capture), Wendy did her thing. The results are way better than anything I can muster. While I go for the conventional, journalistic shot, she indulges a creative, spontaneous flair and takes, in moment, whatever catches her fancy. It makes for eye-catching pictures.


Surfing to summer...

I'd love to put up an album of shots taken at Thermopylae for my friend Hugh, but messing around with tough lighting has made for lousy pictures thus far. The break works when the swell swamps Queens or Off the Wall, and it delivers a powerful, fast-breaking left. We've seen some good waves over the past couple of weeks and, as winter fades to summer, we're unlikely to see such surf for some time to come (unless I get lucky on the False Bay coast). But I'm getting it right and, by next year, should be able to deliver some halfway decent surfing photographs.

Quite what my photo-journalism associate will be photographing by then, I shudder to think. She has talent, and is putting it to good use. Mind you, if I buy myself a pair of rose-tinted shades, I'll probably view my pictures in equal light and spare myself great shame.

Myopia can be a beautiful thing.

Borat Quashes Ouster Attempt

Borat celebrates the ERA...

"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards...and may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."

Borat

Considering Laura Bush's influence on U.S. President George W. Bush, Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev's forthcoming White House Summit with his American counterpart is unlikely to yield much.

The summit, during which the cultural regime change of Kazakh folk hero, TV presenter, gypsy catcher, country music star, and film producer Borat will top the agenda, comes shortly after the First Lady's unveiling in the West Wing of a full-length portrait of the Kazakh superstar.

Mrs. Bush, a country fan, is known to have become greatly enamored of the smash-hit country single, Throw the Jew Down the Well and, to coincide with the release of Borat's Oscar-nominated movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan has invited him — as the de facto Kazakh cultural ambassador — to dine at the White House. "He has a certain, uniquely Texan smell," said Mrs. Bush during a trans-Atlantic telephone call.

A fan of Joseph Stalin, an enemy to all with chocolate faces, and an ardent advocate of Western democratic values and other forms of bestiality, Borat's unvarnished expose of Kazakh life has angered the ruling elite, which seeks to enlist U.S. support for his permanent removal from society. "Nazarbayev will leave town a skinned poodle," snarled Fox News spokesman Tony Snow. "Not everybody gets to fuck with the First Lady."

With Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton (D) now expected to ask Borat to stand as her 2008 running mate (Cosmo Kramer has signed with Senator John McCain), the Central Asian national is presently enjoying publicity ratings surpassing those achieved during his stormy, much-publicized relationship with British media magnet and Staines gangsta rapper, Ali G.

Commenting for the first time on his forthcoming attempted ouster and the persecution of a Jew named Cohen, the ever-humble Kazakh national has appealed for calm and greater investment in Kazakhstan.

"In response to Mr. Ashykbayev's comments, I'd like to state I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my Government's decision to sue this Jew. Since the 2003 Tuleyakiv reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on inside of bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats, and age of consent has been raised to eight years old. Please, captain of industry; I invite you to come to Kazakhstan where we have incredible natural resources, hardworking labor, and some of the cleanest prostitutes in whole of central Asia."

Unlikely support for Borat has come from within the anti-Semitic and primitive former Soviet republic from Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of President Nazarbayev.

Speaking on national TV, Nazarbayeva stated, "We should not be afraid of humor and we shouldn't try to control everything." After pausing to glance briefly off camera, she added, "I think."

Borat refuses to be drawn on his relationship with the First Lady, Ms. Clinton, or Ms. Nazarbayeva.

Throw the Jew down the well | So my country can be free | You must grab him by his horns, | Then we have a big party.

Borat | Throw the Jew Down the Well

The United Colors of...

Queens, last week...


Off the Wall, this evening...

...Water.

Singularities...

The Eternal Circle...


...leaves Blood in the Cracks.