Arriving at the Indian ocean I take deep long breaths. Running along the shore I notice how the sea never tires or my eyes of watching it. At times it’s as if I live in a hillside cave, eating, dreaming and writing. I chart the daily arc of the southern sun. Day after day it can become unforgiving and cruel but I embrace it remembering that it’s northern twin only makes rare and feint-hearted appearances.
They plant trees in this city and others like it to help bury their guilt, for building future slums and calling them houses, forcing women onto street corners and insulting them, watching the unemployed turn black, allowing inner city kids to fulfill prophecies of them becoming animals, but when the trees suffocate and goats can’t be found where will they turn? Maybe some forgotten poet will be conveniently found to burn. (1980)
Such a deafness affected my heart’s ear that all I could hear was the gentle sound of your breath cradling my soul in a blanket of hope making me believe that we two could live inside each other’s dreams rather than the nightmares of the world. My writing hand freed from torment began to build boats bound by words which could not be swept away by the inevitable waves of doubt that they would meet sailing down deep rivers or crossing stormy seas in search of you . . .
On some days those indivisible twins - absence and invisible presence - are such palpable things, they are like intertwined tunes playing somewhere in the distance fading in and out of range, like shifting aches which I can't quite put my finger on ( you-aches ). The sparkle of your voice on the phone pulls your presence into focus in such a way that the absence gets pushed far back to the edge of the horizon . . . on some days
When evening comes the moon slices the darkness and stars spread like a million scattered crumbs. The heady aroma of honeysuckle hangs. My skin radiates a gentle heat stored during the day. I know that out there are people living, arguing, eating, laughing together, building bridges, working in factories, driving home, healing wounds, making love, watching tv, dancing, studying and travelling. I have done some of these things.
In 1954 a CIA orchestrated coup deposed the elected Guatemalan president who was pushing for reforms threatening US financial interests. 2001 new year’s eve, standing with thousands of Guatemalans in a small town square watching groups of dancers in various states of drunkenness. Men dressed as devils, vampires, bizarre bear like creatures - escapees from North American comic books. Two people appear in Osama Bin Laden masks, green head wraps and black robes in the centre of the circle of dancers. The Osama’s move rhythmically to the ranchero music, their wooden Kalashnikovs held above their heads. Two days later a teenage Guatemalan guide stops as we climb a volcano, he smiles “ Osama Bin Laden good! George Bush no good! ”.
Mahmood Hashmi - A recently deceased 93 old dear friend (critic, playwright, essayist, editor publisher, educator) used a metaphor to talk about the effects of migration.“ A fully grown tree if uprooted from one place to another hardly ever grows as well as before, some times it dies prematurely. If you a move a sapling it does much better but if you transplant a seedling and it grows it will never know that it was once somewhere else ” I greedily stored the thoughts he shared, for I knew that my friend’s passing would be like a library closing it’s doors forever.
Why do people change? What moves them ? I force my myself out and dive deeply into the motives of other people’s lives. I wrestle to understand what drives their actions. An enormous moth, the colour of finely textured dark brown tree bark comes to rest on the inside of the windowpane . A few feet away, on the wall, a patient hungry gecko eyes it ambitiously. The world I am creating has its own laws, a terrain of metaphors, ambitions, memories, lusts, confusions, joys, beliefs, horrors and lost paradises. Occasionally the fleeting image of someone whose outline briefly brushed against mine springs across my mind and leaps transformed on to the page.
Johannesburg Airport December 2006 - a photograph I wish had taken. While sitting in a coffee shop in arrivals, waiting to be picked up, I see a man from a travel agency holding up a sign. The top part of it has the name of the agency printed in bold type “JOURNEY BEYOND ”, the lower half is hand written in thick marker pen “meeting Angel ”.
1960s - I recall standing precariously with my younger brother, probably aged six and four, on the back garden fence of our house in Sampson Rd, Sparkbrook,Birmingham. In the far distance, literally the edge of our childhood world, was the green dome of a mosque. We were convinced that it must be Pakistan, which our elders mentioned with bitter sweet longing. Some time later we discovered that the building was in fact the ornate office block of the Wimbush bakery in the neighbouring area of Small Heath.
“ What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time ” John Berger . . . . . . " Photography is nothing - it's life that interests me " Henri Cartier-Bresson
Light and Time
- Arriving at the Indian ocean I take deep long breaths. Running along the shore I notice how the sea never tires or my eyes of watching it. At times it’s as if I live in a hillside cave, eating, dreaming and writing. I chart the daily arc of the southern sun. Day after day it can become unforgiving and cruel but I embrace it remembering that it’s northern twin only makes rare and feint-hearted appearances.