March 2023 Newsletter
“ She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said, "losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow"
- Paul Simon- Graceland
The clouds finally opened up a few days ago and the sapphire blue skies of Fall arrived in all its lonesome beauty. The first trees are changing into their Autumn colours and the city streets are lined with early traces of golds, reds and yellows. My favourite season. Warm days and chilly nights. It’s staying dark a little later in the mornings now and swallows dot the power lines, getting ready for their long, arduous migration North. Another Summer is dying at my doorstep and I kick through the confetti when I step outside into the cool evening and stare at the airliners departing Johannesburg for far off places. “You can’t hop a jet plane like you can a freight train”, the line from Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot always enters my mind when I’m standing in my garden dreaming of letting it all go and just leaving. One day I’ll do just that… leave and chase that long white line from one horizon to the next just to see what and who I run into. Lift up every stone and try to make sense of it all. Maybe find a few more songs.
One day, a few years ago I asked my grandfather why so many old folks had such stark, sad and tortured faces. He didn’t look at me, he never really did when he was about to explain something of importance to me. He just stared into the distance, the sleeves of his pearl clip western shirt rolled up to his elbows. “ it’s because life beats you into submission and you only get lonelier the older you get. Everyone you love starts dying and people don’t understand you anymore. They talk to you as if you are not from this world and you have more and more limitations to what you are capable of.” It was a profound moment and I have never forgotten those words. They haunt me.
In recent years I’ve become acutely aware of just how short this ride called life really is. Just how precious time is. Time with friends and family. Times of youth and good health. You never know when it’s time for your ticket to be torn. Yet we take so much for granted. We are always chasing something insignificant. We always think we have more time. Then, all of the sudden the cool bar on the corner where you always played music with your friends are gone. Your friends find new opportunities and move away. Your parents get old and your children leave home. You wake up with a huge empty space in the bed you used make love in. Where you should have stayed a little longer that rainy Sunday morning but instead went for a run or to do something “ important”. Most people would shrug their shoulders at this observation and say that it is the human condition and thus an inescapable reality of life but I think it’s the easy way out. It’s a way to escape our fear of the unknown, responsibilities to our friends and family and our inability to keep our ego in check.
I’m experiencing first hand how life is getting lonelier. My circle is getting smaller. Friendships an inch wide and a mile deep. I’m grateful for the people making time to invest in our friendship and I fight hard to be the friend and family member I’d like to have. It’s not easy. I’m not immune to the delusions of grandeur and human arrogance. I don’t carry any resentment towards the people that walk away from me or don’t make time, I’ve just decided to focus on the friends that reciprocate the commitment and I’ll love them with all the madness in my soul. The rest I’ll respect and help if they’re in need but I’ll spend my most valuable and irreplaceable commodity on people and endeavours that fill my heart and life with meaning in this dark and chaotic world.
So, tell them you love them. Pick up that phone and call or send a message. Hold their hand and dance that slow dance. Kick a ball with your kids and stop in for that beer. Do the dishes together while Miles Davis on the radio makes you cry in disbelief at his genius. Flamenco Sketches with the volume turned up to ten.
JB