The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.”
-Charles Bukowski
-Charles Bukowski
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| — | (via thisisitthisisall) |
Penguins
One of Cape Town’s special charms is that wild penguins live on our beaches. Anyone can go and see them and even interact with them. It is important to understand here, that this is not like going to a zoo to watch some poor dilapidated creatures looking hopelessly back at you from a concrete habitat with a gulchy moat. These are wild African penguins. Free-hearted penguins. Penguins that hunt swift silver fishes through the frothy sea and torment toddlers in the shallows.
I’d heard that you could always find a few on the beaches around Simon’s town so we started the trek Southwards, with a plan to have lunch at the Tibetan Tea House where they sell traditional Tibetan food and artefacts. The place is decked out like a Buddhist temple complete with prayer wheels that can be spun as you climb the steep, lavender edged steps to the front door and there’s a gallery attached where local artists display misty saffron and violet canvasses with mistier meanings.
The serene atmosphere of the place did nothing to still our excitement about the penguins. We ate a little too fast and then took an uncomfortably hot stroll back past the prayer wheels and across the melting tar road to the beach - a sheltered stretch of sand with boulders the size of small delivery trucks scattered nonchalantly at its far end. The ancient and terrible tide that dumped them there washed itself out tens of thousands of years ago. All that remains is a ploppy waved little bay, tame as a bathtub. Our eyes were peeled for black and white at shin-level as our feet sunk into the burning sand.
There was nary-a-penguin to be seen.
We took off our shoes off and walked along the water line splashing salt water on our faces occasionally to cool down. We must have had that-penguin tourist look about us because after a while, an affable Brit with a smoothly naked two year old clinging to each leg asked us if we had come to see them and directed us towards the enormous rocks at the other end of the beach. After minor rock-climbing effort we saw the first one, standing majestically still, looking out towards the bay. We both froze. We didn’t want to disturb it. We looked on as the penguin continued its reverie; it was a silent, motionless and slightly windy couple of minutes. After which, we started wondering if it was taking a nap.
We made our way cautiously towards it to get a closer look; there is something numinous about approaching a wild animal out of captivity. One feels respectful, a little shy; and perhaps a little insanely, one feels like an ambassador. You can’t help hoping that your manners will be acceptable from their avian point of view; that your dealings during your visit to their native village will be inoffensive enough to improve their impression of us. You have an irrational desire to somehow communicate that not all humans are curious destructive apes that will clump through their territory destroying everything they see. Some of us are OK.
We’d taken about five steps when it turned its head towards us. Its polished black eyes assessed us for a moment. And then it waddled away. It wasn’t being timid. It just didn’t feel like talking to us. You could see that from its expression.
It’s strange to think that a black and white creature could be camouflaged by granite rock. Perhaps it’s because they keep so still; like beaked cats, they blend into a rock here, a bush there; at first glance they look like penguin shaped speckles of light and shadow. When they walk, they walk at a leisurely pace in one’s and two’s, scanning the landscape by moving their heads from side to side as though they were searching some famfor iliar landmark. Like Alzheimer pensioners trying to find their way home after a wild night of bingo and flask brandy. They seem a little tired and a little disappointed with life. You end up wondering whether they are, whether you’re projecting, or whether penguins just look like that. They can’t exactly smile. That said, there’s also body language. They move with a deep sigh as though the effort were just a little too much. There is no hopping or jumping or running.
Until they swim. Like tuxedo bullets. Like tabby dolphins. They’re quick and lively and graceful when they go in the water; birds evolving into fish.
As we walked back along the beach towards the Tibetan Tea House it became clear to me why, for so many years I have detested Disney movies. Especially Disney movies involving a boy and an otter / a boy and a dolphin / a boy and an orca (are you kidding me?) / a boy and a … I don’t know… something cute; the storyline is Mills and Boone – esque in its unending capacity to repeat a single plot ad absolute nauseum: Wild animal and (usually) boy become unlikely friends; one saves the other from death / an abusive uncle / callous whale, otter or dolphin hunters and they will enjoy a special bond forevermore, even though the wild animal goes swimming, hopping, flying or slithering off towards the horizon away from the teary eyed boy at the end. Scratch slithering; mammals only, please. Everyone cries into their popcorn and then goes home to carry on destroying the planet with one time use plastics, gm corn and water wastage.
I hate the misrepresentation of nature in those movies. I worry about what will happen to the way a child cares for nature when it fails to meet expectations and create mutual co-dependencies. I know that nature is not like that because I saw nature’s response to humanity in penguin eyes that day.
What I saw was this: we were utterly irrelevant to them. Strangers like so many other strangers that had come to ogle, to extend a hand to see what would happen, to croon, to call them cute and to attempt ambassadorship on behalf of the human species.
Most of all, I got the impression that they were a little relieved when we moved away from their granite village.
We didn’t belong. Who knows.
Maybe they were happy when we left.
Maybe I was projecting.
Maybe penguins just look like that.
Free choice?
You think you have free choice, you don’t. You can’t opt out of paying taxes, you can’t opt out of living in the city and decide to pitch a tent in a field somewhere. You MUST fit into the system; get registered and be counted. You must pay money to live on the planet you were born on. Your choice is removed the minute your parent’s sign your birth certificate.
Wish you were here - pink floyd
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
