Of Humor and Pain

She smiled from the passenger seat, “Now then, isn’t it time you told me about your life."

“Where to begin?” he chuckled, and focused on his driving. A storm was brewing.

But the story of an old witch’s presiding influence on his young life, juxtaposed to that of an old Matabele warrior’s mentorship, their distinctly different prophesies for him, the harshness of his guardian parents on their Zambia game farm, the brutal beatings, the misaligned meetings with his real father, the shooting of the leopard-mauled Rosie, the enduring significance of his first bicycle, the haunting memory of the waylay and murder of his Aunt Vera, the long-standing effect of the hate-filled black youth he’d once fought, the slaughter of their pets, the hideous night of the pillage and burning, the other murders, the escape, the unwanted train trip to South Africa, the white slums of Pretoria, the disgusting abuse he countered in his crippled uncle, the illegal association with next door’s black maid, Muhle, the religious indoctrination and then the seminal day of the whipping on the wash-line pole, the escape to Kimberley, the tragedy of being unwanted, the final discarding of his youth into the gaping maw of the Kimberley Big Hole, the return to Pretoria, and then to Boys High boarding school, the judgmental-ism of his youth, the conscription to the army, the border warfare, the stoking on the railways, and then the wrenching pain of losing the greatest love he’d ever known, all of it, he summed up with: “I was raised on a game farm in Zambia. With independence in ‘64 I was sent as a boy by train to live with family in Pretoria. The slums. Then went to Boys’ High, in Kimberley, then in Pretoria. Conscription followed; sent to Cape Town. Then the border. Was in and out of the army from ‘70 to ’75. Between call-ups I tried some University, and worked in my free time as a steam-train stoker, Mason’s Mill, in ‘Maritzburg. And then I went AWOL from the umpteenth call-up. Left SA as a stowaway. SA Oranje. Made my way up Britain by bicycle. Hid in the Orkneys. Went to Canada as a political refugee. Broke my back after six months. Had to shoot a bear. Got my degrees. All in that order. Now teach. Act. Paint. Direct. Write. Been "married" four, if not five times. No children. And the rest, as they say, is history. Ha!” He hoped that he was done with the past. He hadn’t even mentioned the shark and the year overseas with his father.

She reflected, then said, “But where’s the humor? Surely life is not just a long endurance of hardship?”

He smiled into her eyes for a second or two, then concentrated on the immediacy of the road. “Ha!” he chuckled, “The humor lies in attitude! In the ‘at’ of it. It’s not that things be funny, but that they be surmounted. Our smiling at what once was pain is the real lesson of life; never mind smiling into the teeth of what now is! In the journey from here to there, we can only really be where we’re at. Ha! Let’s watch out for where life’s at. Now, that’s what I’m thinking, ha!”

………………………………..

Still, if you’d like to see more, see: www.PaintingsByOrder.com and its links to my blog.

BRAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

As a result of today, I shall be ordered to kill. Such a thing is not unheard of for boys in Africa, even for nine -year-old's. I have been on this game-farm in Northern Rhodesia since I was four. Taking care of sick animals is part of my chores. Next will be…


But I am not aware of the beginnings of this story as, baby bottle in hand, I huddle with an orphaned fawn in the prickly straw under the low tin-roof of the three-sided shed. The little duiker comes back to life. It trembles on scraggly legs and sucks voraciously. Creamy milk dribbles from the dark purple of its lips. Its soft rust-red pelt is studded with white stars. 

Some sixty feet away, within the wire-fence of our paddock the small herd of antelope grazes, misty breath clouds billowing.


A wagtail bird flit-flits up to the nearest fence post, distraction enough in the corner of my eye. But now the kid gets restless. Still, it is all so peaceful, with the morning dew steaming up from around the distant buck.

Then there is a sudden surge of brown bodies as they swirl and cough. Sides puff like bellows. Feet stomp. Heads and tails lift, and they break into a wild panic just as a golden flame of dappled sunlight streaks up and over the fence.

Landing, the threat freezes. Then, flick! The leopard’s tail brushes the crisp air.

The frantic herd mills about; anxious deer press against the wire in the far corner.

“Hey!” I shout unthinkingly, and kneel and hug the baby protectively.

The big cat turns quick as flame curving around a dark log. Across the field its malevolent eyes are sharp as pinpricks as it stills to an intense stare.

I stand up. The buck in my arms wriggles and writhes. The leopard crouches.

I advance with the kid out of the shed and into the light, and yell again. “Hey! Go away! Foetsek! Hamba whenah! Clear off!”

Powdery dust clouds implode under its paws as the huge cat pads a few steps closer.

Directly behind me is the gape of the shed. Useless! We’ll be trapped! My eyes dart about. No! Stare it down. The wire gate is too far to reach, almost exactly between me and the menace. What to do? My breath clouds pant. Don’t break the stare! Focus!

I sidle slowly backwards. My mind reels. Hoist the kid onto the roof? Run and climb the fence? Throw a rock? Scare the thing with a yelling charge?

Stupid!

In one instant the leopard approaches, the next it veers and straddles one of the other buck. It happens so quickly that I do not even see the attack. Clamped by the neck, the buck’s bony front legs dangle like two knobby twigs, and its back legs bounce as the great cat gathers speed.

“Hey!” I scream.

Loping with the limp deer still in its jaws the leopard lithely hurtles the fence, but the carcass catches. The sudden drag has the massive cat somersaulting over its prey, but not letting go. Its claws noisily rake at the wire and its powerful thigh muscles ripple as it tugs. The poor buck appears to come alive as its legs spasmodically kick and the head jerks this way, then that. But the leopard savagely wrenches it downwards, and the wire-spikes slit into the antelope’s tender underbelly, spewing its entrails in obscene bloody ropes that writhe and bounce in a trail after it, until, at the edge of the tall grass, the specter is gone.

I stand there, stunned.

The wriggling duiker, still in my arms, brings me slowly back to my senses. The wagtail bird flit-flits away. I put the kid down. At a distance the herd, momentarily mesmerized, one by one, nonchalantly resumes grazing.

We’re safe!

But somehow, I know I’ll see that leopard again.

Bash! Thud! Bash! The noise at the kitchen door, a week later, startles me awake.

Wha!? the Alsatian barks in the dark. We’d long ago turned off the generator. Wha!?

Bash! Bash! Thud! Bash. “Bwana! Bwana!” old M’dhalha’s voice calls.

Wha!? the dog barks. Wha!? Wha!? Wha!?

“Bly stil! Shaddup!” big Daddy Sarel shouts. He carries his rifle. “Voetsek, hond! Ek kom!” he yells, and the banging stops as he one-handedly fumbles at the lock. The dog, scratching at the door, whines. “Jy!” Daddy Sarel orders me, “Soek vir die lig!”

I scrabble in the kitchen drawer for the torch, grab it up, and shake it in my efforts to get it working, until it suddenly beams up into my blinking eyes.

Daddy Sarel, still in his pajamas, opens the door a crack. The dog yelps from his kick.

M`dhalha, our old servant, his thin bare black torso shiny in my light, urges, “Leopard, Baas! Buya! Come! He is with the donkey!”

“No!” I dart past Daddy Sarel and M`dhalha and run, the torch-light raking the ground ahead of me. It soon throws a distant wash on the side-wall of the stable, from where the eerily distinct sounds of a cat-like screeches and enraged yowls become a terrified orchestra of caterwauling, braying, snarling, and thudding.

I slow to an uncertain stop.

The adults catch up. Daddy Sarel plucks the light from me and thrusts it at M’dhalha, and as we round the corner of the stable the cacophony suddenly goes ominously quiet.

Daddy Sarel halts up, and readies the rifle.

Why is there now only a distinct yet soft ‘whee-ezing’ sound?

We creep closer and M’dhalha rakes the yellow beam up and down the scratched old door, and then stabs at the place where the leopard, clawing and chewing at the ant-eaten wood, gouged the earth to squeeze itself inside.

“I told you to replace that door!” Daddy Sarel whispers at me, when from behind it an anguished and haunting bray erupts: Eee-yah-oo-aw! Eee-yah-oo-aw! Oo-aw!

Daddy Sarel motions me to stand back. M’dhalha jerks open the door. Daddy Sarel hoists the .303 to his cheek. But he does not shoot.

There is no leopard.

The beam goes back and forth. Is it behind the knocked over feed drum?

Rosie’s backside is toward us. From somewhere in front of her, near her neck, purpled blood, in pulses of mist, sprays outwards. The stable glistens eerily. Then I bite into my lip as the donkey hobbles around to face us. Her right foreleg, attached only by thick gooey ropes of raw skin, dangles. Skewered bone shards project from the knee joint. Her hoof, now a useless clod, drags. And as the light goes back up to her face I gasp and cover my mouth. Her eye-socket is a bubbling hollow, pulsating thickly with yellow and slimy gore. The ear is a red rag.

Sudden movement out the door and past us blurs, yet I see sharply focused pink whiskers, a glass-yellow eye, and rust-red-blood as M`dhalha pivots with the light.

The terrified cat streaks away along the yellow beam and Sarel’s rifle swings up.

“No!” I abruptly yell, and lurch forward and push at the man so that the Kabang! blasts about our ears, echoing, Ga-bang! ~a~ga-ban, a-ban...

“Moer! You little bastard!” Daddy Sarel shouts furiously. “Moer! Jou klein moer! Jou verdomde stupid bladdy moer!” He lifts his arm up past his shoulder to deliver a backhand blow, but as the light sweeps away from us I jerk back, and the blow swishes by.

Deliberately, Daddy Sarel reloads. The bolt clunks loudly. “Light the bitch!” he swears.

The beam swings to highlight Rosie. Her throat gurgles. She looks alien, limp, and glued to the red-brown mud in breaking strings of her own blood. Mists of crimson, lurid and surreal against the golden light, pulse from her neck. But still she does not fall. Her sides heave with her coarse breathing.

Daddy Sarel thrusts the rifle sideways at me, and commands, “Shoot her!” Then he marches off.

The rifle is enormous, suddenly foreign, and too heavy. Dazed, I barely realize what I’ve been told to do. But I know how to shoot. Given a pellet gun on my sixth birthday I’d become deadly accurate, but when I’d bent to pick up a suddenly lifeless sparrow I’d sworn over its grave that I would never kill again. Then again, boys make makeshift vows about all sorts of things.

Wordlessly, M`dhalha now helps me hoist the weapon, his large hand bearing the weight of the thick barrel, his body against my back. “When you and it are one,” his calm voice at my ear instructs, “you’ll know to pull the trigger. Hit it here,” he adds, his careful long fingers softly touching the skin over my left eye, the cool tips then sliding to the hollow of my ear, “or here.”

I lower the gun, turn away. Tears fall. “Can’t we fix her? Please, M`dhalha? Can’t Rosie live?”

“For what, my Bwana? For herself, or for you?”

I stare up at him. Then I know that something much larger than me is at stake, and going with its momentum, I lift the weapon, align myself, and stroke the trigger.

Ka-ban-whump!

The donkey falls like a dumped flour sack.

But forever afterward I will remember lowering the weight of that rifle, rubbing at my shoulder, and feeling somehow very, very old.

The next day, as the gruesome chunks of bloody meat are being carted by wheelbarrow to the cheetah and lion cages, I find myself crying again. M`dhalha’s hand comes down on my shoulder. Stifling sobs, my teeth clenched, I groan, “I should’ve cared more! I could’ve prevented it! I didn’t fix the door. That’s why I didn’t want the Leopard shot. It was my fault!”

“Inkosana, Little Boss,” M`dhalha cautions, “I am thinking that there is such a thing as caring too much. Eyah? Perhaps you should have let Bwana Sarel shoot u Silo Silambile, the Hungry One, or next it will come back to eat one of us!”

But less than two weeks later that same u Silo Silambile, the Hungry Leopard, arrives in a stout bamboo cage on the back of a creaking beige-colored Datsun pick-up. Seven or eight wildly sweating men run through the orange dust clouds alongside the rattling vehicle, chanting and ululating, while inside the bamboo bars the terrified creature hisses and spits and claws and jack-knifes madly about.

The .303 in hand, Daddy Sarel checks the breech. “Adam! You and that new piccaninny over there, stand back!” Turning from us he calls out, “Manguana, you tell that piccaninny of yours to keep away from here, you hear? And tshesha, hurry! Grab a rope!”

Manguana, despite his gray hair, is the new ‘boy’. He has a coldness about him that I do not trust. I’m sure he is the same man that a month ago I saw at the back door with the half dead snake for sale in his fist. And now he’s shown up for work with this filthy piccaninny of his, who stands at a sullen distance, taller, perhaps even older than me.

Unsure, Manguana takes hold of a noose, and motions his child. “Aikimbo! Hamba ima lapa lo bietjani mlungu. Go stand by the white boy,” he orders. But Aikimbo just darts away and goes over to the generator shed.

I deliberately go to stand beside him, and smile a greeting, but the black kid looks down on me, and again moves away.

And then the creaking truck at last comes to a squeaking stop. Six of the men quickly slip long bamboo poles into and through the cage so that they can carry it without being in reach of the snarling cat’s unsheathed claws. The back of the pick-up faces toward the holding cages, but the low retaining wall of the driveway prevents it from getting close. The truck’s left side is also so near to the waist high embankment that the three men standing above the height of the truck bed have to grasp the extended poles at their knees, while the men on the other side of the cage are kept struggling with their poles above the height of their shoulders. And somehow, in the ungainly transition of forces between the lower men simultaneously attempting to mount the awkward height of the embankment, and the upper men attempting to synchronize the swinging of their poles, along with the constant weight shifts from the infuriated whirling of the entrapped beast, the whole thing teeters, totters, and falls! Some three-hundred pounds of cage and cat scrape downwards amidst fear-filled screams and snarls and a clawing and a letting go that ends on the earth in a crackling of split bamboo.

“Fok!” yells Sarel.

Immediately, men scatter. Voices and arms and legs are thrown in every direction as the door springs open, and the leopard, frightened and yowling, emerges.

“Pasop! Watch out! Gooi! Throw! Throw those ropes! Gooi!” yells Sarel.

A single noose ensnares the cat’s neck. “Hau! Miena bamba êna! I have him,” Manguana exclaims. But the leopard, seeing some opening, bolts. Three or four men spring to Manguana’s side. I scramble to join them and we all haul on the gyrating rope. It grows taught. The leopard suddenly flies off its feet, yowls and writhes in mid air, and lands on all fours; facing us.

“Gooi weer! Throw more ropes!” Sarel shouts as from some thirty feet away the cat comes in a rush of sliced air. But with the truck behind us, we cannot back up, and bodies catapult away in haphazard consternation. Some dive and roll under the Datsun. Some hurtle up the parapet. And all escape, except for Manguana, and… me! With the sudden release of the rope Manguana falls backwards, tripping me. In the tangle of our legs he screams with fury, kicks wildly, and backpedals up against the truck’s tire. I roll aside, but only just in time for the blur of the snarling brute to hurtle past me.

Manguana shrieks as the cat’s angry jaws tear into his neck. Its hind legs repeatedly rake up and rip downwards, opening up the black man’s stomach with successive savage jerks.

Amidst the melee of howls and shouts and the gushing blood and the swirling of dust clouds I see Daddy Sarel squat low with the gun, but already I cannot stop myself.

I leap up and, as lashing as the tail is, snatch at, and grab it, fully committed to yanking the beast off its grizzly prey. At once the huge leopard spins on me, bloody fanged and slit eyed.

And Sarel fires.

The bullet’s impact skews the cat’s body in mid swipe and its head arches back and spews blood. Then it falls sideways, and shudders itself to a still.

At last, I look aside.

Manguana, like a shredded rag doll, continues to sit upright against the tire. His head is hunched over in a dark red apron of blood. Hideously bright white bone sticks up from behind his neck. Then the head suddenly swings sideways, hanging only on cords of glistening flesh. In a face still frozen with fear, the pink teeth grin.

“No,” I exclaim. Numbly, I look around for Manguana’s son, Aikimbo. The boy is standing next to Lemon, our surly houseboy, by the kitchen door. But when our eyes meet, Aikimbo just stares back, his eyes glinting with a strange glow of excitement.

“Get up! Staan op!” Daddy Sarel’s voice penetrates through.

Like a tug-of-war victim suddenly let go, I’d fallen backwards in the dust. Now I rise stiffly, and stand numbly, and stare at the blood-sodden heap of the dead cat.

Whump! Daddy Sarel’s heavy backhanded blow bashes into the side of my jaw, spinning me off balance so forcefully that I stumble to my knees.

“You stupid little bastard! Moer! You bastard, I tell you! I told you to stand aside! Why the bladdy hell didn’t you listen? Now look what you’ve done! See! This is all your own bladdy fault! Yours! You’re responsible for this! All of it! Next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you to do something! You hear? Hoor?”

“Yes Pa. I’m sorry, Pa! So... sorry.”

But Daddy Sarel turns and strides away, shouting, “Lemon! You take care of that new piccaninny. You got your cousin this job. You now bladdy well take care of his brat!”

Aikimbo stares directly at me, then smiles.

It’s a smile that chills.

Later that night M`dhalha informs me, “Manguana is only the piccaninny’s uncle, not his father. Understand? I am thinking, Aikimbo has seen much of killing before now. His father was killed in front of him by white soldiers. Eyah? His uncle was taking him for too be in Zimbabwe. But Lemon is his cousin, so...”

“So, Aikimbo has come to stay?”

“Eyah, miena Bietjani Zimba, êna blala. Yes, my Little Lion, he is staying.”

I nod, and then realize what he just called me. “Bietjani Zimba? Little Lion! Is this the new name for me?”

M`dhalha smiles. “A name is not the thing unless the thing makes it so.”

“But, ‘Little Lion?’ M`dhalha! Would I not be called this if I didn’t deserve it?”

He tries again. “A name is not what you are; it is what you must be. That is why we call you Bietjani Zimba, I am thinking You must grow with courage.”

“And ‘Aikimbo.’ What does this mean, please?”

M`dhalha grimaces, “Groan-maker.”

“Groan-maker! Ha!” I think a moment. “And your name! Are you not a ‘M`dhalha,’ the Wise One, my Nkosi?”

He laughs. “This name is not for what I am, but for what I must always try to be. Even the Makula Zimba, the Big Lion, is careful not to rush foolishly, I am thinking. If his courage does not kill him while young, then this lion is learning to use his courage properly. He knows a sharp kudu horn can go into him like a spear. Eyah?”

“Eyah.” Then, I shudder. I go quiet. Rosie, Manguana, and now even the hungry old leopard. All dead. For what? So that I could prove my bravery? Be called the Little Lion? I shake my head. No. There’s quite another name for me.

And yes, I fear, I deserve it.

Aspiraling as we Aspire

Spiral Dynamics; A Quick Explication of Clare Graves’ research.
(by R.F. Michelle~Pentelbury)

Essential premise:
Every Individual is EVERYTHING; the degree of Predominant Realization/Identification with Everything becomes the issue.

Second premise:
Degrees of dissatisfaction/disassociation/and even confrontation will naturally depend on a given inherent want to protect/establish/align the self/ego/comfort-zone as separate from Complete Integration.

Third premise:
The more matured the soul, at whatever chronological age, the greater the realization and aspiration toward complete integration; the less mature the soul, at any chronological age, the greater the realization to stay entrenched in the familiarity of the level/tier/rung/step with which one MOST PREDOMINANTLY identifies, DESPITE being EVERYTHING.

Therefore, going “top-down”:

9th level: CORAL
"Integration" means a COMPLETE inclusion and absorption and compassion and acceptance for EVERY and ANYTHING.

8th level: TURQUIOSE
Fundamentally integrative, but experiencing DEGREES of individual preferences and wants, and thereby acting upon those self-gratifying needs. Evaluative as opposed to Judgmental.

7th level: YELLOW
Fundamentally fragmented between becoming integrative and that of retaining the concepts/precepts/constructs/proclivities of its adherence to/inculcations by/usage of/familiarity with the identification of the self within the First Six Levels (which are essentially JUDGEMENTAL and
DISSASOCIATIVE.(i.e., A very emotional and distraught state of being to stay in; the “sin” is in awareness of attitudinal stances ).

6th level: GREEN
Attempting Egalitarianism and Equity for all; thinks those who do not see things from that point of view to be in essence, idiots.

5th level: ORANGE
Wants to provide service and jobs and welfare for many, being top dog at best, and is highly motivated to lead, guide, and direct others toward success, but has high exclusion factors if others don't meet with
expectations. (Donald Trump)

4th level: BLUE
Needs to associate itself with a larger group of like-mindedness, such as all ~isms: Communism, Capitalism, and any Religion-ism, and discounts/devalues/judges/disparages/and can even hate those who disagree with its fundamental beliefs. “Truth is truth.”

3rd level: RED
Needs to have The Self exercised/extolled and promoted despite/over/above others; evident in gang leadership, degrees of competition, and most disparagement of others.

2nd level: PURPLE
Needs thru insecurity of self to belong to a clan/clave/closed family/club that is esoteric/closed membership/ and fundamentally “exclusive”.

1st level: BEIGE
Needs primarily to satisfy/gratify its own needs and has little need to include or overcome others for the sake of influence or power (as in level 3)

Applications?: "Gnothi seauton" ~ know thyself, the better to integrate and include and have compassion for others.

Finally, here's an essay I wrote about it as I use it and teach it to the acting community:

http://www.morpheustheatre.ca/news/colourofcharacter.pdf

Always.

R

Magpies, Medicine, and Magic

The bird dangled in danger. Eight or perhaps even seven of its company clamoured advice in a cacophony of cawing care. But I was not there. Nor could anyone else see sufficiently into my backyard to espy the dilemma. And for that bird, caught up in the moment, there certainly was no possible escape.
It was the summer of 2004. I happened to have arrived into a new world. Like being reincarnated after the nine-plus hours of my spinal surgery, there was also the rebirth toward a coherence of clarity during the last nine days of nauseating delirium. Now, home again, I found myself alert as a newborn to the sounds and sights around me.

But alas for that bird, I was down in my basement studio, oblivious to the world above. Abdullha Ibrahim alternated with Hugh Masekela on the CD carousel. But given time for my medicine I turned off the music, came upstairs, stair by stair, hobbled the corridor to the bedroom, and became aware of the unusually incessant clamour outside.

I glanced through the window.

Ah, magpies. I thought I recognized their squawks. Like small but colourful crows, their very long black tails, stark white underbellies, and darkly shimmering plumage is always attractive. But right then I did not want to watch. There was the matter of pills at the bedside bureau, and the recording of the time, and next of heading for…

Then I heard it! The frantic clawing at the picket fence had the desperate sound of a burglar trying to surmount it.

Alarmed, I peered out.

Finally, off to the left and almost obscured by dense foliage, I saw the desperate thing, caught up in the wooden staves of the picket fence. Others of its clan ganged up in the nearby trees, and busily cawed with all sorts of advice.

Wedged by its skull, the weight of its body having slid it down the finger-width gap between the picket staves for some eight or nine inches before it became hung up on the crossbar, the magpie had no purchase by which to climb up again. And it still pulled and pulled to get free. But even as I watched, it gave up, shuddering with exhaustion.

With the clip-off hood of my winter-parka I approached the bird silently. Its back to me, it could not watch. Its compatriots fell eerily silent, but did not fly off.

The bird still breathed.

I advanced, gently enveloped it in the hood, easily slid it upwards along the slats, then one-handedly unwrapped the cloth and lifted the light-weight toward the sun.

Almost immediately it fluttered up and then off to a perch not five feet from me, and looked back at the scene.

“You’re welcome,” I said, and turned to walk away. And the rest of the magpies resumed their chatter of chattering over the matter. After all, that any one of us should be there at that precise moment, given the thousands of gardens in which the event for that errant bird may have occurred, was pure magic. And the past brings us to the present, this exact present, in which resides the very moment that gives rise to the next. Seems as though we all need to be careful where we land, lest we too be caught up and dangled into immobility, they chattered.

And I recall being grateful for the magic. Ha! So too, I bet, was the magpie!

(This image was taken by friend Justin Neway's webcam in Colorado, 

shared with me ten years after the events in this story!)

Esemplastic Apperceptions of Metacognition amongst the Multiple-Gifted

Or: How Jack and Jill All-Trades thinks!

That long string of unfamiliar words, interesting, or off-putting?
Jack and Jill All-Trades generally would be enlivened by the challenge. And if Jack is predominantly right-brained, and Jill is predominantly left-brained, then each may reflect their interest in the notion of ‘esemplastic apperceptions of metacognition amongst the multiple-gifted’ in an interestingly dissimilar manner.

Jill would most likely take to her dictionary and soon have ‘esemplastic apperceptions of metacognition amongst the multiple-gifted’ translated into some such precise phraseology as, ‘accommodating variables and reflecting on one’s own thoughts as a person with many gifts.’ Then, asked to explore the possibilities inherent in the statement, and given that she herself is defined as ‘All-Trades’, Jill might undertake an itemization and database study of herself (and others) on a multiple of levels that correlates and substantiates her initial suppositions. As such, Jill’s study may well be as comprehensive and teleological as is comprehensible, yet she will probably experience dissatisfaction with her inability (of course) to have included every possible variable.

Jack (even after an excursion into the dictionary) would most likely arrive at a self-satisfactory understanding of ‘esemplastic apperceptions of metacognition amongst the multiple-gifted’ and, asked to explore the possibilities inherent in the statement, may randomly play with the concept at will. Jack may adopt the title for his band, calling it The Apperceptions. Or he may devise a game-board called Metacognition. Or he may... but that’s Jack, for you. Although quite capable, he’s not innately given to line by line delineation. And, after as discursive an exploration as probable, he’ll most likely arrive at a universal yet esoteric perception of the significance of his undertakings. Yet he too will feel that he could have done better were he not so interested ‘in just about everything.’

At issue are the inherent difficulties that the multiple-gifted experience with the specifics of task-oriented as well as day to day expectations of life. The multi-capabilities inherent in their natures creates a perpetual series of cognitive dissonances that, although perhaps not entirely debilitating, are impeding to their potentialities. Multiple-potentiality, that is, is of itself a hindrance to sustained excellence in any one endeavor. To be (a famous) artist, writer, singer, actor, athlete, academic, or not? Which? And, over time, as the multiple-gifted child grows into adult, the choice (and inherent frustration) of exercising the generality of one’s multiple-gifts, as opposed to concentrating on the specificity of any one gift, might better be understood by the individual who is more practiced at apperceptions of metacognition. That is, more practiced at an understanding of his or her thinking.

The implications for educators (and for all those wishing to understand themselves a little better) is that the multiple-gifted (indeed, as well as for all of us) are both innately and endemically habituated. More clearly understood, such behavioral patterns might better be addressed, deployed, and facilitated toward furthering the contribution of the self toward the self, and toward others, thereby augmenting our contribution in general toward the health of the whole.

Dictionary Definitions:

Esemplastic: Molding, shaping, or fashioning into one; accommodating many variables

Apperception: Mind’s perception of itself. ~ is the essential mental act in the great stages of mental generalization, perception, conception, and judgement. - Baldwin, James (1861-1934)

Metacognition: Awareness of thinking about what one is thinking.

Teleological:  View that developments are due to the purpose or design that is served by them.

So may we smile at obfuscations, ha!

iAfrika! (As Pitched Again)

Immersed in the life-blood of Northern Rhodesia and South Africa, iAfrika! is Adam Broadford’s intended atonement for an unfulfilled childhood promise to his old Matabele mentor. As the Bietjanie Zimba, the White Cub of an ancient prophecy, Adam recreates the searing significance of extraordinary lives.

After his unusual childhood on his guardian parents’ game-farm Adam attempts freedom when visiting with his real father in England, but is made to return just before the blistering birth of Zambia. Forced to go to South Africa, the youth engages in an illegal and life-threatening inter-racial love. Inordinate abuse in the name of redemption and several drastic choices further forge his future. Rescued by an insightful headmaster and sent to a Kimberly boarding school, Adam ineffectually attempts to sever the overwhelming ties to his past. After graduation, conscripted as a sniper in the South African Army, Adam works on reprieves as a steam-locomotive stoker in Zululand. He meets Felicity, the love of his life, but up on the border in the bush war, after a poetic retribution with an old enemy, Adam determines to escape Africa’s apartheid for good. Will his rejection of Felicity, of Africa, haunt him forever? On the Ides of March, 1975, hidden aboard a Union Castle steamer, and at last prepared to write, Adam faces his promise: iAfrika!

~ My Really True Big Fish Story ~

While my father rents a skiff, I run over to men loading gear into their speedboat. “We’re fishin’ for Baskin’ sharks, laddie,” the eldest of them answers with a brogue, as the other two stretch into rubbery black diving suits. “The biggest, the meanest, the most ornery sharks yer’ll ever see! In fact, ‘Sea-to-Your-Highness Maximus,’ they’re called. So mind yee keep oot of our way, yee ken! Or do yee think I’m fibbin’ now?” and he gives a big wink.
“Baskin?”
“Sure! They destroy the nets, see. So we go down and noose `em while they sleep. Drag `em backwards. Drown `em.”
“But fish can’t drown?”
“Och aye! But if yer drag `em backwards the water gits in their gills an’ they cannee breath, yee ken. Drown them, we does!”
“How do yee... do you noose them?”
The man holds up a thick pleated rope. “When they’re asleep, lad. We drop down behind `em, throw this over their tail, and bingo! We drag `em with the boat.”
“But why do you have to...?”
“Oi! Adam!” my father yells from the rental kiosk. “Hurry! Let’s go!”
The skiff’s twin pontoons have a seat wide enough for two. The sea stretches smoothly asleep whilst we paddle past the sun-lit overhang of the cliffs to our left of Babbacombe Bay, England. We go around a big pancake-shaped boulder, draped like an old lady’s doily in white barnacles. I want to clamber atop it, but Dad counters, “We’d better keep going if we’re gonna make the cave before the tide’s in!” The swish, ka-ploosh! of our paddles echoes, as does the clunk-unk! of oars against the gunwales. And eventually we get to the open mouth of the sunlit cave, and begin to slide inside.
In the distance I spy the divers’ boat, now stilled just beyond the colorful buoys that are strung out between several brightly painted dories. Whilst one man stays at the motor the others long-leggedly clamber over the boat’s side, like two thin black frogs, and slip into the deep, dragging the rope down behind them.
I can imagine their underwater bravery. One hand drags down the ominous loop of the large noose while the other, cupped and swimming and aided by expert thrusts of their flippered feet propels them ever downwards, quiet as lead-sinkers. They motion each other as they approach the sleeping bulk of a shark, big as a submarine. Seventeen or more feet long, deeply asleep in the warmth of the midday sun baking at the ocean surface, the great Baskin does not even feel the noose of the rope slip around its tail. Then gently, yet with malevolent intent, the twinned divers tug up at the free end of the tether. Suddenly they slap and punch and goad it into darting away. Awakened by strangely attacking sea creatures with their multi-sized bubbles warbling upwards from behind huge glassy eyes, the pounds and pounds of rubberized bulk twists in surprise, and then effortlessly glides away. But the rope tugs. The shark stops. Then, with a powerful thrust, it torpedoes away so tightly against the length of its snare that the man in the speedboat above is lurched off his feet.
“Whoops!” he yells with surprise.
“Hear that, Dad? They must’ve got one.”
“Huh?”
“Over on the horizon! I can hear them hollering. A poor old shark is going to be someone else’s supper tonight, by the sounds of it.”
“You hearing things again? Concentrate! We don’t want to be in the drink just because we washed up against those damn rocks! That’s it. Pull over to that rock-shelf over there! Let’s have a look see.”
The darker recesses of the cave’s throat swallows up blackness, but as we enter and get accustomed to the light I see that the water disappears down a narrowing tunnel, already half submerged and gurgling. The short inner tongue at the back of the cave forms a natural wading pool in which lie some wondrously glowing seashells, surrounded by rocks like wet black teeth.
“Here. Let’s pull the skiff up and have a look-see. Put the paddles across the seat, keep them safe. Good. Nice! Look. Plenty! Who else would ever come here to pick over these, hey?”
As we kneel and gingerly reach into the cold water I peer about. Pirates? Aside, our skiff wobbles lightly on a sudden slight swell. I glance back at the cave-mouth. With the sun streaming in it’s like looking down into a giant’s fish tank.
Then I notice it!
Directly below our retreat, the menacing bulk of a great long shark lurks ominously. It hovers, dark as a tanker-sized torpedo on the sun-dappled depth of the ocean bed. As yellow and green fronds of tattered kelp, like adulating minions to either side of it wave and bow, the beast lazily moves a thick fin. Sunlight shafts down in golden mists off the steel-colored hide.
But I have no time to say anything, before the whole ocean moves.
Perhaps it is the swelling wake from the heavily tugging speed boat that is now laboring past us toward the beach, or perhaps it is the sudden movement of the great fish, almost directly below me, that causes the sea so suddenly to swell, but no sooner do I notice the shark than the water lifts wet and cold over my feet, nudges hesitantly at the vacant skiff, then casually plucks it away. And smoothly, as though tugged by an invisible cord the craft quickly courses over the waiting monster and past the bare rocks that grin darkly, like silhouetted teeth against the cave’s wide-open shout at the sunlit sky.
“Go for it, Adam!” my father yells, one-handedly patting his top pocket with its cigarette package, pens, and note pad, then at his dress-short pockets. In his other hand, like some hopeful wand in the direction of the departing skiff, he waves his hat and sunglasses.
“But look, Dad! A shark!”
“What? Where? Oh Christ! No. Look. We’ve got to get out of here! This cave’ll fill in an hour. The boat’s leaving too quickly! Go for it son, or we’ll never make it!” He starts emptying his pockets.
Unsure, I plunge into the icy water in a racing dive, long and shallow. I churn arm-over-arm in seven or eight strokes that flash past my eyes, my whole being filled with mounting fear for the sharp-toothed menace from below as I strive to reach the errant skiff that now floats out into the mirrored surface of the bay.
Is it going to grab me?
My right hand, coming down hard and swift as a karate chop, suddenly strikes something solid, and at the same time yielding. I gulp in salty water, and nearly gag. I hear my father screaming, “The paddle!” Treading the dread water, I swirl about, see it, and stab out for the bobbing wood, but it bucks and sweeps further away.
“The boat! Get the boat first!” yells Dad, as if from the megaphone of the cave.
I churn around, then, despite my every fear that at any moment I am about to be yanked from beneath and dragged down to a sure death, swim desperately toward the lonely craft.
At last I make it to the skiff, and like a wet frog attempting to surmount a tipsy leaf, with glistening limbs spread and clutching here and there, haul myself aboard. With the single oar that I free from its wedge I paddle, at first in circles, but then toward the other oar floating at a distance. And it takes real courage at last to grab at it, for I am sure that the shark is waiting for me, as though luring me to the bait, ready to pluck me by the outstretched hand right off the flimsy craft. But now, zigzagging from side to side as I row back to the cave, I yell, “Can you still see him?”
“Not a thing!” Dad shouts, his voice echoing. “You probably scared him off with all your splashing. Good job, old chap. That’s it. Steady. Hold her nice and steady. That’s it. Wow! Brave little chip off the old block, aren’t you?”
But we are subdued as we row back across the bay.
While Dad negotiates for the deposit I go over to stand with others who are having a look at the divers’ catch.
Only about thirteen or so feet long, a grey shark lies inert, drying, and sandy on the warm beach. Its mouth is frozen in a gasp, propped open with a stick.
I think of how they kill crocodiles in Africa. Asleep, yet mouth agape for the little birds that clean its teeth, the crocodile finds its jaws suddenly invaded by a stake. As the surprised creature clamps down the sharp ends pierce ever deeper. Unable to reach its mouth, the enraged beast rolls and twists and then makes for the safety of the river, where, unable to close its throat, it eventually drowns. If land bound, the croc soon starves.
I look around. Some people appear to smirk at the harmless thing, as though they were the brave ones to capture it.
I bend down to peer into the grimness of the throat. “Hau! It has no teeth!” I exclaim.
“`Course not, me boyo,” declares a friendly Welsh accent behind me. The elderly man, his white beard, blue dungarees, and black gumboots stained with time, goes on, “That there’ll be one of your Baskin’ sharks, me lad. See those long gills that’ll almost be wrapping roun’ his chin? See his short snout, a bit like a squashed gray ice cream cone, no? There’s nought but gristle in them jaw bones o’ his. Harmless to man he is. Be eating only plankton, this kind. Mind yee, ha, this one’ll nought be eating nothin’ agin’! True? Hee hee!”
“Then why catch him if he doesn’t eat your fish?” I ask, my voice a little thin with indignation, despite my growing awareness that I’d been in no real danger back in the cave.
“The great blunderin’ rascals break up the nets, me boyo! But this here one’s just a wee baby. I’ve seen `em as long as thirty or more feet yet. Some say they can grow to fifty feet o’ blisterin’ nuisance. Ruinin’ our nets. Better to be rid of them, so as a man can earn a decent wage, wouldn’t you be saying?”
I shake my head. “No! No, I would not be saying,” I respond, feeling self-consciously rude, but persist, “In fact, I think you should be leaving all the fish in the sea where they belong. We don’t have to eat them! This shark, and others like him, didn’t deserve to die!”
“Blessed Saints! You’ll be persuading us all with your fancy ideas next, boyo! How old are you anyrood? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
I draw myself up to my full height, fix my eyes on the fisherman, and say, testily, “Next year, I shall be in my thirteenth year.”
“Gracious now! Let’s see, why, yer clever kid; that makes you only eleven! Well, me cocky young pup, you’ll be better to wait until you’re a man before you go insulting people’s livelihoods with your ill founded ideas, ye hear? At least then ye’ll be old enough for a man to be knockin’ some sense into yer!”
Well, here I am, a man now, and the killing of sharks still doesn’t make sense to me. That Great Baskin shark, Cetorhinus maximus, is still out there somewhere, still helpless, indeed!