Sweet Blood
It’s baking hot in the village. The locals will tell you February is peak summer; blue skies, humidity crowding the air and occasionally a good rainstorm to keep things lively. Depending on their conditioning they might also complain at length about mosquitoes and how they’re always getting bitten by the little critters because they have such ‘sweet blood’. Others will tell you how it’s the best time for locals to enjoy summer, now that the major crowds have left, returning to their cities and villages in the north of the country. “From whence they regularly post pictures of that time they were in Ballito with the SBWL tag” according to one local who’s been making a serious effort to speak more English with me. Because apparently my Afrikaans is like I learnt it in a school. Like duh.
But beyond being cooked in your own skin for the better part of the day and much of the night, developing early crows feet from squinting into the brightness of the day and smelling slightly like you you’ve been on a hectic gym workout when you’ve just been standing quietly in the shade; the ebb and flow of daily life in a little village on the periphery of Durban remains as charming as it’s ever been. It’s not without its quirks. And some would argue that these quirks are what make it special. I think they’re just being kind. Which we could all use a lot more of and I could certainly offer a lot more of when engaging with the people and their quirks in this east coast fishing village in the holy land.
And I fail at this job of being more kind, every single day. Fail at being more kind to myself and the humans that I interact with on a daily basis. Which feels like an epic failure when you consider that I rarely exchange any more than a few words with no more than a handful of other human shaped beings in my regular day. With such low numbers, you’d think I could get this right more often, but as I’m learning — I’m the biggest, chonkiest obstacle to my desire to succeed at unruffled kindness to other humans with metronomic efficiency 24-seven-365, for the rest of the days I’m gifted to meander about on this planet with now close on to 8 Billion other human shaped forms.
Now this has not been a startling revelation of some sort or any other such hollywood type drama that’s supposed to be that ah-ha moment in the movie. And we give so much thanks for that. Because all I’m learning the deeper I go into this process to unpack, examine and reassemble my self and being, is that I started at the wrong place. ‘Unpacking is already way too far down the line’ according to the Dervish. ‘Start with what you know’ she says, her eyes lost to the darker blue line marking where the sky stops falling down and the sea stops reaching up. Her voice trails off and I wait patiently for the rest of the words to follow. None do and I accept that today is not the day to ask more.
What do I actually know? Now some people will tell you what we know is what we can observe, record and then analyse for patterns and the like. What is known according to them as science. And it’s the only thing they can rely on, the pinnacle of human reasoning, of understanding and the basis of all our choices. But don’t tell them anything about how the whole of science itself is tainted by the all encompassing nature of white supremacy and it’s ugly effects on the world as we know and experience it daily. According to them, that’s not science, that’s conspiracy theory. So now I know what science is and I know what conspiracy theory is. None of which are much help to me right now.
What do I know of me then? My being and its makeup, the constituent parts, systems and process that have brought me here — to this point of looking at myself, my life and my daily actions and finding myself wondering — what the actual? How is it that I’m here being like this at this point in the Gregorian calendar? Which are the choices that I made along the way that might have resulted in different outcomes? That I’d be having a midlife crisis in my birth city — okay, twenty kilometres north of the city, in a fishing village but you get the idea. Which of those choices would have led me here to be actively, more like desperately trying to make a career — okay just a living wage then — out of writing? Which point of the choice making over the past twenty years decided that I’d find myself returned and in such close physical proximity to so many people I share swathes of genetic coding with and yet feel so distant from the bulk of them? That I’d be sitting here navel gazing while my age mates appear to have it all and have it all figured out too. What choices did I make then that have brought me here — to this in the wee hours of the morning — pondering these thoughts. Writing them out and going so far as to share them too. And all this and still I’m not one little step closer to knowing any answers. I’m left with just one question; what else do I need to unlearn from my life to date?
Sweet Blood was written in the hours between first light and sunrise and if it’s muggy, then I’d suggest reading it again when it is cooler. Or you are, whichever happens first.
© Jesh Baker, 2022
