Death & Hope
As a multihued mass of humanity on this unbelievably perfectly adapted environment we call Earth and home, we have got this.
It’s a typical late winter morning in the village. The sky is not so much grey as it is silver, the water is glassy at the backline, the surf foaming as it crashes and from the viewpoint, it looks for all the world like pouring cream lapping at the shore. The horizon is hazy and a few of the larger ships in the outer anchorages are visible, the rest is a shifting, undulating spectrum of silvery sea and sky. The air is just perfectly chilled, not cold, just enough to remind you it’s still winter in this little village on the periphery of Durban. The onshore breeze brings the mild, almost sweet saltiness of the Indian Ocean to us and I’m reminded how much nicer this east coast village air smells compared to the distinct Atlantic tang of a regular Cape Town onshore breeze.
The locals are out in their numbers; the younger families with their broods tearing up the small pavement outside the spot the regulars have made their own. Their voices rising and stopping mid shirek at each new activity, their parents looking suitably fit from all the running behind them while keeping up inane conversations with the childless people that hardly care less that the fifteen month old is heading towards the busy street at an alarming pace.
Thankfully a slightly more humane human sees this potential disaster in the making and whips the toddler up and to safety on the pavement next to her toned and perfectly dressed adult human. An errant mutt of indeterminate breed also gets pulled in closer to the small group clustered around the table as a pack including a majestic Great Dane saunters pass — his humans not so much out for a walk as a stroll with little care for the local conventions of super expensive running shoes and designer tights.
This bunch is out in proper vintage tie and dye, their hair a jumble of half dread, their feet bare and in desperate need of a wash and their general demeanour is pointedly ‘can’t give a toss’ about the snooty villagers and their folkways. I pick up the distinct aroma of patchouli and then it registers that this bunch is likely the people a friend mentioned; they’re visiting from the west coast for a few days while their youngest tidied up her pre Corona life on this side.
The OG hippies pass unmolested and the conversation settles into its regular hum and I'm reminded of meeting an old man sitting at a table much like the one I’m parked off at now; who told me that ‘it’s not a village if it doesn’t have old men sitting on corners drinking coffee.’ Likely his worldview could be expanded to include lattes, frappes and ginger immune booster shots and whatever else we can concoct that is not a simple coffee.
But I digress and risk losing myself in this little blog while so much else of real life is going on about me. And in the present there is much jabbering about pretty much everything. I recall that line from Ben Okri’s Anti-Spell about how we are rebuilding Babel and I think — ohh dear, am I just adding to this new tower with my little blog? Likely I am — but seeing as I have a whole two loyal readers, I persist with the process as much as with the writing exercises this blog started out as. In fact, it still is just that — a way of making sure I get to the writing regardless of whatever else is competing for space. In my day, in my head and in my life — at least my heart is spared any competition and I’m not sure it could manage it in this zeitgeist.
Listening to regulars speak and share their stories, I get the general feeling that right now many people are feeling overwhelmed. In life, in work, in their hearts. There is so much going on and some argue that it’s not that there’s more going on, it’s just that we’re so connected that we can hardly miss what’s going on. Around the corner or in another colder or warmer corner of the world.
The climate emergency is poignantly at boiling point and the inconvenient truth that Gore told us about after the election was stolen from him is here. We’re living it.
The madness of rising othering that the good prince told us about when he was the human rights head honcho at the UN is here. We’re living it.
The impending doom of rabid capitalism has been brought forward. We’re living it.
In the holy land and despite any fancy number rigging that official statistics might show, inflation has properly inflated itself and is fully pressed up against everyone except the super rich. But then nothing much really affects the super rich, except their own affectations and discussing that is about dull as ditchwater — to borrow a simple but totally effective simile from the ancient history of primary school English lessons.
The things that so many people have come to rely upon as the essential truths (and thoughts) of their lives are slowly coming undone. In small and big ways the human experience of following the ruts in front, made by those who have gone before is proving an increasingly wild experience. People of all forms and shapes and even intellects are seeing that things are not quite as right as rain, even if their own little material experiences are secure — even the rich in the holy land are getting some sense that this version of the game is at its last level.
People are coming to the realisation that there is in front of us only the looming game over text if we keep at this thing, in this overly affected way of living, being and relating to each other and the entire system that sustains our air, water and ground.
And it’s in this end of times, time — in this messy, hazy, fearful space that even in the little village, that there’s a small, shy, subtle spark (alliteration much?) of hope in people, in groups and in our beings — and it’s shining light on ways of being, with each other and the world that are utterly natural.
They might be anathema to rabid capitalism and its adherents clinging to the outside of it’s aeroplane as it launches down the runway — but to those standing quietly on the runway; it is becoming more evident that the real solution was never to be found in clinging onto a taxing cargo plane heading for the ultimate colonisers homeland (you can substitute spaceship here if you still believe in the tooth fairy and the Richards and Elons) — it was and always will be right here with us, beside us.
Inside each of us, not in some corrupt exceptionalism of mere money, status, access or their handmaidens; privilege and class barriers. No, the revolution for human dignity (thank you as ever to Aya for that lesson) has always been going on — and from the little I have seen in these past few months, when my own revolution for sheer material survival has been peaking, is that we are actually okay.
As a multihued mass of humanity on this unbelievably perfectly adapted environment we call Earth and home, we have got this.
Kindness, generosity, gently and powerfully breaking down class, race and other capitalist serving boundaries, innovation and basic care for fellow human beings is not just present and accounted for. It is manifest and growing.
People are showing up and being present, for themselves and each other. For their neighbours, their friends, their colleagues, the people they randomly see for a morning coffee. The people that never know a stranger paid for their coffee. She who left a note in a book on a bench. He who shared a kind word about the weather; asked after their child that was ill. Asked after the grandparent who got the shivers after her vaccine. The guy at the petrol station whose eyes lit up at the sight of the blue note for a tip. His heart leaping because it means there’s one less painful choice to make tonight. A Nunoos somewhere will shriek with delight this evening. A plant exchanged for some green banana; a patient wave when you drive like an ass or maybe it starts with free wild lemons at the local coffee spot.
Whatever it is, all I have learnt in the last two years is that I’m only here; alive and doing the work I love because people who are not billionaires have bothered to support my work in small and large ways.
I’m here literally because I’m being held with the gentlest, deepest care by a handful of people whose names you’ve likely never heard of. These are the people unpacking the detritus of the past, dusting off the best and putting that to work to make this better future. And they do this, every single day.
I’m in awe of us as humans, we are truly the best we can be when we are truly ourselves. Now, close this tab and go manifest your best self. Someone’s hopes and dreams depend on it.
Death and Hope is a lightly fictionalised account of real life events and any similarities to actual people and places; past and present, dead or alive is entirely unintentional. Except the regular people doing extraordinary things every day; those folk are real as human shaped beings come.
© Jesh Baker 2021 All Rights Reserved
