Once great writings
I really used to be good at writing. I only just realised this reading some of my old writings. Since they are long forgotten, I thought I would publish them again. This is from 2000, 5 years ago. My world view may have changed a little, but boy, could I write back then.
"I was driving home last night around three in the morning, thinking of the concept of home. And more particularly, what the concept means to me. I'm very much one of the unattached. I really don't think of any one location as being my home, the place where I am at rest. Staying here in Pinetown (what a bad name, like wattletown or gumtown) just outside Durban has certainly provided me with little sense of place. If anything, the town I left a touch before three last night is still home.
Pietermartizburg. PMB. Big name for what is a small rural city. I've hardly slept a night there in 4 years, and even in my last few months here in SA haven't been there for more than a few hours at a time. Yet the familiarity of the place is like I know for no other. When you still know the side lanes, the confused alleys or the timing of the traffic lights on the main streets. Then I guess you know a place give or take. But that doesn't make it home. You see home is really the place you'd want to be, when life is being plain unreasonable. The better place. And sure, on some particularly shitty bus trips, or in some forsaken hotel room, fighting another bout of something tropical or intestinal, PMB is the place I occasionally would rather be. But not always. To be honest, it really seems a bit lame. Traveled the world, seen the oceans and the mountains, and I, like everyone, hanker after the ordinary of where I grew up. We all seem to do it. Love the normal despite the exotic. And although PMB is pleasant, its not exotic. For some lucky souls, the normal is the exotic. For those folks who live in the Seychelles, or some Himalayan hamlet, or Chobe, or the like, well they can hanker after home for it is after all the sort of place we largely hanker after. But who really dreams of visiting PMB. Which, by virtue of my misplaced individualism, doesn't really allow me to cherish PMB as home. Living there, aside from good mountain biking and proximity to the berg, would finally drive me into just another dull ex-colonialist stupor.
So is home then my backpack, as I occasionally romantically infer. NOT (don't tell me anyone actually believes mawkish triad like that). Nor my tent (Sheryl) or sleeping bag or any other possessions. Which means home must be a state of mind. Hmmm. I spent a bit of time thinking about that. After three, finding toll money and steering at 120km/h. Not the way to approach the problem, but then the apparent solution was that home was moving.
Arriving has to be the second worst part of travel (after packing, obviously) and a three thirty arrival "home" quickly had me surmising that to be still driving would be far better. Hence home=motion.
I used to often drive 540km to PMB on weekends, and come back again on Sunday nights. I adored the late night return trip. Loud music, snack food, empty road. And speed. Soaring through the flat highveld in SA in the early hours of the morning, totally happy (and somehow ignoring the horrendous Monday shortly dawning), my car singing its exaltations with soaring revs, I wondered how anyone can pursue a secure nest. Home was motion. Which of course, is total crap. Home is a place (look it up in a dictionary) If you want to describe the sense of place in placelessness, invent another word! So, after running a few of these thoughts around in my head for a while (While finding the keys, collecting the CD's from under the seat, throwing out the snackfood trash) I concluded that home is just not much of a sensible word in my world view. And given that it's a fairly pivotal concept in most people's worldviews, it no doubt means that I am, in the words of Johan, weird At three in the morning, sober, having just driven 140km for supper, unlocking your parent apartment at 28 years of age, this is hardly a revelation"
Hope you enjoyed that!
"I was driving home last night around three in the morning, thinking of the concept of home. And more particularly, what the concept means to me. I'm very much one of the unattached. I really don't think of any one location as being my home, the place where I am at rest. Staying here in Pinetown (what a bad name, like wattletown or gumtown) just outside Durban has certainly provided me with little sense of place. If anything, the town I left a touch before three last night is still home.
Pietermartizburg. PMB. Big name for what is a small rural city. I've hardly slept a night there in 4 years, and even in my last few months here in SA haven't been there for more than a few hours at a time. Yet the familiarity of the place is like I know for no other. When you still know the side lanes, the confused alleys or the timing of the traffic lights on the main streets. Then I guess you know a place give or take. But that doesn't make it home. You see home is really the place you'd want to be, when life is being plain unreasonable. The better place. And sure, on some particularly shitty bus trips, or in some forsaken hotel room, fighting another bout of something tropical or intestinal, PMB is the place I occasionally would rather be. But not always. To be honest, it really seems a bit lame. Traveled the world, seen the oceans and the mountains, and I, like everyone, hanker after the ordinary of where I grew up. We all seem to do it. Love the normal despite the exotic. And although PMB is pleasant, its not exotic. For some lucky souls, the normal is the exotic. For those folks who live in the Seychelles, or some Himalayan hamlet, or Chobe, or the like, well they can hanker after home for it is after all the sort of place we largely hanker after. But who really dreams of visiting PMB. Which, by virtue of my misplaced individualism, doesn't really allow me to cherish PMB as home. Living there, aside from good mountain biking and proximity to the berg, would finally drive me into just another dull ex-colonialist stupor.
So is home then my backpack, as I occasionally romantically infer. NOT (don't tell me anyone actually believes mawkish triad like that). Nor my tent (Sheryl) or sleeping bag or any other possessions. Which means home must be a state of mind. Hmmm. I spent a bit of time thinking about that. After three, finding toll money and steering at 120km/h. Not the way to approach the problem, but then the apparent solution was that home was moving.
Arriving has to be the second worst part of travel (after packing, obviously) and a three thirty arrival "home" quickly had me surmising that to be still driving would be far better. Hence home=motion.
I used to often drive 540km to PMB on weekends, and come back again on Sunday nights. I adored the late night return trip. Loud music, snack food, empty road. And speed. Soaring through the flat highveld in SA in the early hours of the morning, totally happy (and somehow ignoring the horrendous Monday shortly dawning), my car singing its exaltations with soaring revs, I wondered how anyone can pursue a secure nest. Home was motion. Which of course, is total crap. Home is a place (look it up in a dictionary) If you want to describe the sense of place in placelessness, invent another word! So, after running a few of these thoughts around in my head for a while (While finding the keys, collecting the CD's from under the seat, throwing out the snackfood trash) I concluded that home is just not much of a sensible word in my world view. And given that it's a fairly pivotal concept in most people's worldviews, it no doubt means that I am, in the words of Johan, weird At three in the morning, sober, having just driven 140km for supper, unlocking your parent apartment at 28 years of age, this is hardly a revelation"
Hope you enjoyed that!
posted by bergfly @ 1.1.06
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home