On writing

I always feel bad about the long intervals between each post. I had hoped and imagined that I would post at least once a month but this year has been difficult. Much of what has been swirling in my head feels so out of rhythm with what has been happening in the world. In short I'm struggling to write in a time when it feels like the world is constantly precarious and on the verge of burning into ash. When the Israel-Iran 12 Day War was happening I was in a small town with no robots (traffic lights) trying to write about something I love. I was at the foot of the mountain being looked after thanks to the Jakes Gerwel Foundation's Residency for three weeks. I treated it as a bubble and now the bubble has been burst and I am face to face with the reality that I am struggling to write unless I turn my world into a bubble.

This is an old tension I have faced before: what do I (or maybe should I) write about when it feels like the world is going 'tits up'? When I first began writing I liked the idea of being a writer who is writing in conversation with the times. I have never felt I have the privilege or the luxury of writing about anything other than the struggles of the world. A political and social commentary as it were. And then I forced myself to write about gardening and swimming because I desperately needed to write about things that were not related to violence and colonialism and white supremacy and all the isms which make the world a difficult place to live in.I didn't want my writing to be only about activism. I wanted writing to be about the simple aspects of my life that also feel beautiful and shield me from the calamity of the world which often robs me of frivolity and joy.

In a sense, it feels wrong to write about anything else other than the fact that I feel aggrieved by so many things in the world. And sometimes my cynicism and heartbreak feel like I am drowning and I want nothing to do with the world. And then I see an African Hoopoe in the garden for the first time and I ideate what it would mean to write about birds in this moment. They have been my favourite companions (I can hear them so clearly as I write this). I want to write about discovering that the African Hoopoe is uBhobhoyi in isiXhosa and I grew up not actually knowing what ubhobhoyi is even though I used the expression " kugqatsa ubhobhoyi" my whole life to describe a hot day, not ever seeing oobhobhoyi gather on a hot day after the rains like I did in the Karoo. I want to write about the Sunbird (Ingcungcu) which I see everywhere  and has become my most favourite bird as tiny as it is. The other day it came so close to my window to feed on the nectar in the lilies that I saw for the first time that it had a blue and red collar which is so beautiful I have no words to describe it. 

In other words,  I want to write about beauty in a world that feels impossible. Most days I am mostly jaded until I revisit a creative project that I am working on which gives me the kind of joy which reminds me that "life must be lived" as poet laureate Ntate Wally Mongane Serote repeats in one of his poems. But some days I flounder and I don't know how life must be lived when there is actual warfare at the tips of our fingers. I know I die a little every time I try to follow the news about the latest violence in the world. I have been wanting to write an open letter to the station manager of the radio station I listen to when I am in the car, Umhlobo Wenene, and ask him to explain why is it that every news bulletin needs to begin with a story about black people dying (those who listen to the radio station will know what I mean). There is no trigger warning, there are no good news. Just death. Last week my sister and I were arriving at church and parking the car as the 10am news were starting and the bulletin began with a story about a young man who had killed his mother (or was it his grandmother?) with an axe (wamxhaxha)-- or was it a saw? The point is, death is all around us and yet the birds keep singing and the flowers keep blooming. And writing feels wrong.

I have been searching for permission from writers who have long since left us to understand what it means to write in times of despair. I am yet to find the permission I am searching for. Mostly because I know I have to find it within myself to choose what it is I will say in and amidst a world that seems to be tearing itself apart. I have never been the kind of person who hides from the world but in the past few years I have become more and more aware of the privilege of being unaffected. Even though I am tired of being in survival mode and guarding against being an empath who soaks in the pain of the world like a sponge, my body refuses to write for the sake of writing. 

I have been thinking about May Boatright from the movie version of "The Secret Life of Bees" (played by Sophie Okonedo). She is one of the characters who refuse to leave me (much like a character from a novel who remains like a friend) because she gave me a language for what it meant being an empath. She kept all her prayers of all the heaviness she carried with her and wrote them on pieces of paper she tucked into a wall in the garden. It was a coping mechanism for dealing with the cruelty in a segregated America. But one day she faces a heartbreak she cannot leave on a piece of paper in the wall and she drowns herself in the river near the home. She leaves behind a letter explaining that she can no longer hold the calamity in the world. Much like May, writing  and praying have been the place where I can make sense of the world. And yet lately, both prayer and writing have felt impossible. I have only recently returned to my altar but I still cannot find the words for prayer. But thankfully I know that prayer is also sitting quietly with grief. For now, perhaps the quiet is enough.