Wednesday

12 April 2017

— one of those quintessential sun/shade April days

Good Morning All,

If, that is, it is still morning! When I got up this morning, I discovered nefarious elves had unhooked the power cord to my computer, and ten minutes of heart-in-throat efforts did not revive my Apple one wit. Nothing, I discovered, looks as black and a black computer screen.

Alas, I could not stay to make threats or offer bribes, because I had to get my Colt to the car shop for a new windshield, the old one having cracked. They said four hours, but seven was the actual figure.

A few days ago, I mentioned I might burden you with a passage or two from my account of Britta’s and my wedding, back in 1974 in Swaziland, said account having gone missing lo’ these many decades, until my sister-in-law Hannah presented me with a sepia toned copy when the smalls were here.

So, though you are under no obligation, here are the opening three paragraphs of A Prose Home Movie:

Normally April begins the dry season. By May, driving into Swaziland, following the swells of the land through eucalyptus forest and brown grazing land, you are pursued by a relentless column of dust. Depending upon the surrounding soil, this column, this contorting disembodied neck, is sometimes a diseased yellowy white, and occasionally a deadish gray. But mostly it is red, and it is always there, always only a step or two behind, pacing you, waiting—you can’t help thinking—for you to tire.

         You pass a man on a bicycle and he is instantly consumed. Up ahead a signpost is and then isn’t. The man-high grasses that skirt the roadside are swallowed up, and the road itself is there and then abruptly gone. Everything vanishes. Isolated shops, flat-crowded tree, rocks the size and color of hits, and hills and entire fields of skeletal maize stalks pass under shrouds and are no more. But still the dust comes on, voracious, looming up in your rearview mirror like the specter of some huge prehistoric reptile threatening to take you in its gritty mouth. You haven’t gone five miles before you are standing on the gas pedal, chasing your own bolted imagination and drifting into corners as though there were no one else alive.

A cement bridge provides you an unexpected haven. The dust boils up along the bank, fuming, but afraid to brave the water. It will hang there backing up upon itself for minutes, surrendering its pulse but slowly, and settling with a filmy cast over all. In the reeds beneath you the river gurgles contentedly, and for the few seconds’ passage you are lulled. Until the car bumps up onto the opposite bank, rousing some other sleeping serpent, and the chase is begun again.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron