We Shall Arise and Go Now

4) We Shall Arise and Go Now…     

 …and go to inners-free. By 3.15, Saturday 16^th October, 2010, the day of the Official Reunion Dinner, we three are up. Our world is an accord of coffee and chat and laughter and freedom. And how does one transcribe the flights of fancy from the ridiculous to the sublime? We take choice not for granted but as a responsibility. No man, we create a new order; the Church of Chook. Chu-ook. Chickens! We’ve already got one, called Kentucky Fried. No! They’ve got the franchise? What about Turkey’s? Americans already have that one. Kentucky is in South Africa? No, it’s in the USA. Ha! Mike’s at his pulpit, behind the couch, under the arch. The interior arch of the apartment; the inner arch of the self: We’ll create yet another new order in which all are to be held accountable for vagrant thoughtfulness, for the fragmentation of fun, for the lack of purpose, for dissolution of the whole. And our new church shall, like an egg or like a chicken, be at once both first and last, alpha and omega (or was that like a chicken and then an egg?) Everything? Which part of the whole does one not include? Which part of everything shall we discount?  What part of no do you not understand? Both up and down; below and above; oh, and sideways too. Which way sideways? Depends. What depends? How full of strond we are, ha! That’s exactly what is anderkant die long-drop. Long-drop? You know, the other side of the kak-huis? Oh! Outhouse. Yes, that’s what Koos Kombuis sings. Listen. Mike goes to play the CD. An Afrikaans Leonard Cohen burbles iconoclastically. Incorrigibly. Indelibly. Indubitably. Rob rattles in the sink with the breakfast dishes. He turns and begins to clear the table. Now what’s happening? The sink’s overflowing! That didn’t take long. That’s a waterfall with a long-drop. Ha! Rob in my mind metaphorically runs to get his real-life surfboard out (he truly had carted it into the apartment on first meeting in what resembled a giant tin-foil wrapper, and anyway, this is my story and I’m sticking to…) Waves! I’ll plunge in with the dolphins. Dolls have fins? Well, only if they marry them. Ha! Even the knife and fork drawer is full of water! The plastic things are floating! Floaters are in the drawer? Whose drawers? The guy who somersaulted. So? Why don’t you take a shower? Show her? She’d first have to be in the Church of Chook. No man, there’s nothing not accepted, no one is to be excluded, even if they know it or not. Soon as you’ve eaten chicken, you’re in the House of Chook! And before that? Well, then you’re in the egg stage. Egg-static! But you’re gonna be a…. We are what we eat. We are what we think. We are what we do. We three are. Which came first, the chicken or the..? What ‘is’ is not an ‘is’? No level of education or financial circumstance or ideology, no cast or creed or chicken or no turkey is to be excluded. Turks! We’re including Turks? I remember turks-vye? Man, long time since I had one of those. Yes. And koeksisters. Swee-e-eet! Gentlemen, we’ve got to get us some of those. Maybe for Tony Stockwell’s barbeque tomorrow. Rob? What time’s your flight? Flight? He’s gonna surf all the way out. Man, ever been to Plettenburg bay? Only women go? Picked a sand-dollar up off the beach there. Put it in my pocket. It became pebbles. Always loved the image of placing pebbles, picked up one by one and meticulously placed, one by one, into a sand picture. Monks. Coloured pebbles, one by one. When the amazing product is done, they immediately rake over it and start yet another. It’s the immediate, this moment that counts; the product is fleeting. Time marches on. Marches. Slips. Slides. I hear the tramp of the thirty good men. Why was it thirty? A rugby team. Oh, and there were… two sides! Yes, pitted against each other. Follow up, follow up, follow up! The forwards did all the work. You wingers never even saw the followers; you were always out in front. Out in front? Yep, now I’m out so far it’s the roof over the tool-shed. Ha! Vintage wrecks. Linda wants a 57 Corvette. Nice cars. I’ve a Mustang. Restored. Man’s gotta have what he can have so he can spill over into something else. Good thing he’s not a sink! What I want to know is: what idiot would install a sink without an overflow-drain-hole? No madam, is not for to be my fault, that sink is for to not be having a drain-hole for the plug when she is in. Ha! Is not for to be my fault that bus was gone when I was waiting on the bench. Is not for to be my fault there was no star when I was driving without my light. This lamp post, it was put in the wrong way. Which way is up; which way is down? Sideways! That’s the platteland. Flatland. Life’s gotta have some ups and downs to keep it interesting. Will I be safe on my run? We’ll follow you in the van. No man, I’ll just be half an hour. Ok, if you’re not back in forty minutes we’re coming to fetch you. Rob? Rob? Do you also run with your eyes closed? Rob? Rob? He’s sleeping. And the story was all for him! That’s Ok, we’ll tell it again, someday. Someday; we take responsibility not for granted but as a choice. Why not today? Moment for moment. Memory is selective; we re-invent it from the last time we filed it, and so we make it so. Sew up the pieces. So? So, we will arise, and go now; go running bravely toward the light.