Gibran’s Loss
It’s the last days of Autumn on the Highveld. A clear blue sky caps the dome of daily life. The golden glow of our dying sun bathes each day with warmth and light. Enough light to need sunglasses at the noon hour. The mornings are crisp like fresh GMO lettuce from the chiller. The evenings counter with crispier baby cucumbers. I need not remind you that the Highveld nights will have one considering dating apps or at the least to check the stock levels of the wine cellar. Except this is not my cellar, so let me leave Gibran’s proverbial and my mates’ literal wine alone. In any event, however glorious and comforting company a Swartland Syrah might afford me, dealing with the empty the next morning far outweighs the momentary sensual pleasure.
And the empty takes up so much more space than the momentary pleasure. Even with disciplined sorting and storing in an out of sight bin, the empty is doomed to stand quietly in the dark until the next week when it will be finally bade farewell to me. It will join its pals old and new in a large bag, atop a rickety cart and trundle its way to an even bigger collection point for old pals. All this recycling done on a cheap labour dime. The waste pickers subsidising middle class single-use, throwaway lifestyles drop by drop with their sweat. And likely being shouted at by the same middle class folks when they’re pulling their load of empties up a steep hill, causing a brief traffic stoppage.
Indeed, it’s the empty afterwards that is the biggest hindrance to exploring the cellar. Maybe that’s like starting with the end in mind. Which was an actual question at a recent book launch I was lucky to attend. Someone in the little audience asked the writer if she approached her books with the end in mind. The writer responded that she did not — she sort of let the characters and the story tell itself. She did add though that; given it’s taken her about a decade to produce this last book, she might consider this neat and tidy way of writing her next book. Starting with the end in mind, mapping the narrative arc and sticking all the characters into a tidy tree. I was impressed — not by the question — it’s a bingo card question for a book launch — but by the writer’s warm, considered and eventually funny response to it. It was like the writer answered the question with the end in mind.
I doubt that’s true though. If anything, it’s been a long time since I was at a book launch that felt like a book launch. Not a platform for this or that, not a celebrity event, not a whoo-ha at all. Just a little gathering of fans, readers, friends, family and strangers together to see; maybe meet and hear the real human form of a writer in one of their supposedly natural habitats — a bookstore. Sitting there listening to the questions and the considerably more interesting responses from the writer, I was left wondering if this is what Gibran’s book launches were like. Warm, enriching experiences of not just a book or a story but an altogether too brief glimpse into the being in human form doing the writing. The being, brave enough to stand up and be counted amongst our story tellers. Our dream makers. The convention breakers. The hope givers and the (almost shy) applause takers.
The book launch had me asking if my (still missing) copy of The Prophet had been picked up on a night like this? Gibran smiling, his eyes alight with Life (maybe a hint of mischief too), his answers flowing with the ease of a Spring river, his light so obviously visible. Maybe someone at the launch of The Prophet turned the book over in their work roughened hands. Read the blurbs and maybe some pages before being gently set down again. Likely it cost too much to be picked up that night for my copy bears no signature from Gibran. Maybe it sat in a little bookstore for months afterwards, like Ishiguro’s Klara. Until it got marked down or lucky; maybe it was the perfect gift for a dear friend, a secret lover, a doting parent or a troubled teen. Maybe it was forgotten on the kitchen counter when it should have made that trip to land in someone’s hands. Thankfully it did eventually land somewhere and then finally ended up in my hands. Until it slipped quietly out of my hands. My now empty hands. And this empty is taking up a lot of space in me right now.
Gibran’s Loss is a note about embracing life, as beautiful as it appears and as empty as it feels some days.
PS: the neighbours have been eerily quiet. Maybe they’re (quietly) reading the entire blog.
© Jesh Baker for Oppi Stoep 2024, All Rights Reserved
