Posts Tagged ‘stories’

 

I’m Back

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

I have been judged a lot lately for my need to share my personal stories. Although this is human nature and I don’t expect it to be any other way, I have always felt the need to try and justify why I do it and, mostly, I don’t do this particularly well. But, while reading The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, I came across the perfect line that sums up what it is in my heart that drives me to share what other people find far too personal to put out there:

“I share personal stories because I want to co-create a story of intimacy and cultivate our capacity for compassion in dealing with our human failings. I tell stories because I want to learn how to love well.”

I wrote while I was in India recently how being there brings me that sense of just being, a relaxation about self and an existence totally devoid of branding. As I grow, I define myself by the places my branches are reaching towards rather than by the place my roots are sucking from the earth. And with this comes a sense that, like the branches, my identity is being whipped around by my life’s experiences … and even when there is total calm, there is still a sense of movement within.

In many communities around the world there is a culture of story telling, of passing legends on from one generation to the next. We don’t live in a society like that and so we rely on the people who pass through our lives, imparting wisdom, spreading knowledge, sharing experiences that cultivate the compassion within us. We meet the people we need to and are fed by people who are guided our way. And this of course works in reverse too. We often think the work we do is where we end but every one of us has a part of us that needs to be shared. Every one of us has a story to tell.

I am a storyteller. That is what I do. I don’t write fiction because I am no good at it. My reality, my life, my shared humanity … to me, is enough story to tell. So, as I document whatever transformation happens in my life … and therefore in the lives of those around me who are part of my story by association … know that it is human nature to judge but know too that this is who I am whether you judge me or not. Judging me will not change who I am or what I write. But it may well change you.

I promise to be as honest as possible without hurting anyone. But don’t read my blog if personal issues offend or if you can’t get over my lack of the need for privacy.

Quoting the last stanza of one of my poems, Many mountains. I am:

… I am all the flowers and the trees. They are me
I am unpredictable. I am power. I am many
Penny, you are seen by all.
But you are things no one can see.

I’ll end by saying: Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbet4RdSo4

I will expand and embellish – as I am only too good at doing – and explain its relevance to this context. In time. But not now.

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One knot in a hand-tied carpet

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

There is a loose thread that still connects me to our first night in Bangalore when, lying restless below the air-conditioning unit, my eyes snapped open and I said, “What the f*ck are you doing here?” I was addressing myself of course. But myself didn’t have an answer, only a whimper and a mantra to help her sleep.
I wrote before about sitting on the cusp of my story but now, trapped between the end of one story and the beginning of the next, there is joy in the remembering and heartache in the letting go. I cried a tear in the rickshaw on the way to New Jaipalguri railway station to catch the Darjeeling Mail, an overnight train to Kolkata. India has claimed another small piece of me and, sitting in that rickshaw, I felt it hurt a little. But I have taken a little piece of her too. I somehow doubt she hurts as much but I’m sure she has cried even more than I can imagine. I may be hardcore but she is just that much more hardcore than I am.
“Step aside and wait,” I was told after waiting several minutes with a queue growing audibly restless behind me. After fleeing strikes and mob violence and certain nothing else could go wrong, we were stopped at the check in counter at Kolkata airport and told we were not allowed to board. No explanation … only worried looks and a lot of flicking through the pages of our passports while cross-referencing the computer screen and the scans of our Bahrain visas. With only forty minutes to go to departure, my head spun with scenarios that involved being stranded in Kolkata or having to fly directly back to Cape Town without the head-clearing transitional space that Bahrain was sited to provide. The problem was resolved with no time to relax before boarding the bus to take us all of ten meters to the waiting Emirates airbus. We made it out of India. Just.
Our night in Kolkata was in a gorgeous boutique hotel, the Bodhi Tree, that Mike had organised to help us recuperate. His plan was to get us into a hot bath … I suppose he felt the grime of Madahirat even where he was in Cape Town. And I suppose he also tasted the bile that rose in my throat when I felt my child’s life was in danger. And perhaps he smelt the stench of adrenalin-tainted sweat as we fled the area that caused so much stress. But in India the realities are not always in line with the ideal. The thing is no matter what you spend on a night in an Indian hotel, the plumbing is always the same: the toilet always stinks and the water runs slow and cool. The closest thing to a bath was the bucket which saw our final load of hand washing. But the room was an oasis of eye candy, from the handmade Indian puppets and masks and the original Rajasthani artwork to the silk bedthrows and brocade-covered furniture. Buddha resided over the private dining area and the halls smelt deliciously of ripe fruit and incense. “Is there any chance I can get alu poori and chai for my final breakfast before leaving for the airport?” With breakfast included, I had to ask. With one click of his fingers, his staff stood immediately to attention. I trusted my request would be fulfilled. And it was … moments before our final ride in a Kolkata yellow cab past the South City Mall and the Science City where we had spent the previous day, our final in India.
“Dad was wrong,” Nic said when I asked him how it felt to finally be leaving India, “you didn’t lose me.” He was genuinely amazed and I realised just how much of a burden he had been carrying around all this time.
Arrival in Bahrain was as calm as leaving Kolkata was chaotic. Thobes in slow motion floated across the airport floor and women in abayas made Nic step back in fright. There were so few people in the airport it felt like we were somewhere we weren’t meant to be. It was unnerving. The carousel wasn’t even working anymore when we got through immigration and all the luggage had been taken off by eager porters. Glenn fetched us in a real Jeep and drove us in air-conditioned comfort to our home for the next ten days. “Your bag stinks,” he stated on off-loading it. I declined his offer to help, knowing just where it had been in the last five weeks and I flung all 16.5kg over my shoulder, handing him my daypack, which smelt marginally better.
My sister, Melissa, ever perceptive to my need for therapy, welcomed me with a range of Crabtree and Evelyn bodycare products (she felt the grime too), supplements to my depleted wardrobe (I had been discarding things along the way) and several kettles of boiling water to top up my bubble bath which wasn’t quite optimal temperature. Not only that but I was presented with phyllo-wrapped salmon for dinner. And Kamala did my laundry.
I have done nothing but rest for two days, feeling slightly restless and as though I am late for something all the time. I emptied all my bags and washed the stench and grime from them. It felt like the first normal thing I had done in 48 hours; my definition of normal taking an interesting turn … like the twist in my tales.
I finished the Secret Life of Bees in Goa. And, as always, I found the last chapter so difficult to read, skipping backwards over the final pages in an attempt to prolong the inevitable end. But, with every story, the end always comes and I close the book with a forlorn sigh and a feeling that I will never find another quite the same. And I never do. Sometimes I have to wait a while until my head is clear of the one before I can begin the next. And the next is usually just as rewarding no matter how different. Like everything, it just takes some getting used to. But, regardless, one story has to end for another to begin. I began The White Tiger in Varanasi. I have three books next to the soft king-sized bed where I am propped up against the headboard with two extra soft pillows. There are no geckos, no mice, no peeling paint or ammonia smells wafting from the bathroom. And there are absolutely no roaches. I finished the White Tiger but I can’t yet wade into the next story. I am not quite ready to move on.
Yes, India has taken a piece of me but I am not walking away empty handed. She has showered me in her perfumes and filled me with her hope. She has fed me bravery and sprinkled it with kindness. She has dipped me in the cesspool of self-knowledge until I have choked and gagged and she has pulled me out and resuscitated me with reality. She has been generous and cruel, fiery and calm, spiritual and unforgiving. I love her and I hate her. She is like me. I breathed her in and she spat me out. We can’t get too close without taking a break from each other. But we will always see each other again and we will always love and hope and cry together. No two stories are ever the same. But neither are any two readers.
The Bahrain itinerary begins in earnest tomorrow. Not my itinerary this time. I don’t have to plot and plan. I just have to wake up, stretch, shower and dress. The rest is sorted.

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Feeling pensive

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

I remember walking to school, the park, piano lessons. Walking slowly in the hopes that each slow step would make me another minute late. It didn’t of course – I was way too close to all those places for a slow walk to make much of a difference. Or maybe punctuality was inherited. I would give the storm water drains a wide berth for fear of falling down and joining lives with the sewer rats. I used to get this feeling walking on the jetty at the yacht club too – I thought I would fall through the gaps. I remember those dreadful childhood tails about the boy who had long hair and never cut his nails and the girl who didn’t eat enough and went down the plughole with the bathwater. They terrified me. My parents threatened me – I was not a big eater as a child – I was destined to disappear with the bathwater. That was the reason for the wide berth. I remember being told I was a ‘sweet little thing’ I was. That was when I wasn’t being a ‘two-faced little horror’. I remember the fear of disappearing; the pressure – trying so hard to remain despite gaping holes ready to swallow me up because I didn’t want to eat my peas.
I remember the long walk down to school taking care not to step on the lines between the paving stones. But there were no cracks or gaps. And those dreams – I remember those dreams – of arriving at school without my bag, my shoes or even my entire uniform. Naked dreams; exposed, embarrassed and guilty. I remember the normality.
I remember running away from home. My sisters packed my bag. They said I’d have a great time. I remember not knowing where to go once I got to the bottom of the road. I remember getting home before anyone really missed me.
I remember Jonathan Eacon, the minister’s son. The first boy I ever took a bath with. I always had crushes on minister’s sons. I remember they never had crushes on me.
I remember walking home when my mother forgot to fetch me … I remember she forgot a lot … and I remember hiding behind each tree I passed in case she was driving past to fetch me. I remember she never panicked about not finding me because when she forgot me, she forgot me for the whole day.
I remember the fear of the leather slipper, the wooden spoon or the cane. I remember the defiance as I stood there and took my punishment. I remember the tears that came once I had closed my bedroom door.
I remember being stolen.
I remember good times too.
I remember the surgeons in wellington boots.
I remember the time I didn’t have to try and stop myself from hitting my child. I remember the relief when the need for willpower slipped away. I remember when my child said I love you for the first time. I remember the fear of losing him. I remember that daily. I remember when things began to feel right. I remember the feeling of the tear rolling down my face when I heard his first cry. I remember when I started loving him.
I remember when perspective began to change my world.

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