School: The Great Destroyer

I dreamed I had not prepared for a Zulu test and it was postponed at the last minute to my great relief. I am still feeling slightly anxious on waking. It got me thinking about our education system. And I’d love to hear what you think.

I just think we’ve got it all wrong, like we need a different model. I feel like there is too much emphasis on the attainment of knowledge and passing and failing (and the associated anxiety). Knowledge is now everywhere. We have people who ‘know stuff’ everywhere. But how many people can DO stuff? The percentages are totally skewed. We need thinkers. But we need more doers. And right now everyone wants to be a ‘thinker’ because that’s what society values. And everyone wants to be valued.

What if we had a learning system out there for all the doers? A mentorship system where children could learn by shadowing someone and being given progressively more and more responsibility until they are capable to stand on their own. Like artisan fathers would do with their sons. Now those sons have to go to school and feel useless. Then we try to teach them their craft but it’s already too late. They can learn the craft but the passion is gone because they just don’t feel good enough and they have to spend their life trying to get that back. All the while they spent the best part of their lives behind walls instead of touching grass and listening to the birds and being alive. They’re disconnected because all they were ever really told was important was knowledge and in fact it’s right at the bottom of the list. We need children with passion, confidence, awareness and most importantly courage. Then knowledge and skill.

Imagine a global mentorship system where children could pick potential occupations and apply for mentorship? I know knowledge is important I’m not saying isn’t. But we need to encourage creativity and pulling things from the inside out, not stuffing things from the outside in all the time. Tell me what you think.

Shapeshifter soul

My soul wants to be bent and shaped
and moulded by life
eroded like a wind-blown rock
smoothed like a stone wedged into a river bed
under centuries of flowing.

She wants to be surprised
by the asking of each moment
the unfolding of its appeal
what will I be called to do?
can I meet this calling with Grace?

My soul wants to be opened
exposed
that my worldly imperfections,
and yours
become our beautiful.

My soul wants to be humbled.
But more than anything
she wants to watch the great mystery of life play out
like a curious child watching summer clouds in a crisp blue sky
shifting, forming shapes, dissipating
and forming new one’s again.

Each. A gift. A teacher. A death. And a new beginning.
Hilton, January 2013
© simone and all the world

A time to dance

There are rainbows
dancing on the walls of my house
light playing with light
Wind, encouraging it to dance

Out the window
the spring jasmine also
enchanted by the music of the wind
swirls and shakes with delight

The light and the jasmine
are effortless
accepting
welcoming of this musical gift
unafraid of its intensity
its changing
its parting
or if it will return
They know that now
it is a time to dance
and so they dance

Can I be so free spirited
that I simply dance to the music you bring?
To my world of pasts and futures
and what if’s and how’s and fears
past tears remembered

Can I be here, now
in this loveliness?

Like the wind, your every word
coaxes me there
ever closer to Rumi’s field
where we will meet
and dance

Hilton, September 2012
© simone and all the world

this morning

this morning
i stepped out into a field
of long grass and golden light
and for the first time
you were there

i watched a tiny bee pollinate a delicate
pink and white flower
and as it swayed in the breeze
i felt
yes

i can wait here
for you to come to me

December 2012
© simone and all the world

Sisters by Lebogang Mashile

I see the wisdom of eternities
in ample thighs
belying their presence as adornments
to the temples of my sisters
old souls breath
in the comfort of chocolate thickness
that suffocates Africa’s angels
who dance to the rhythm of the universe’s womb
though they cannot feel its origins in their veins

Blessed am I to be love in the temple of my own skin
my nappy centre kisses the sun
in a harmony divine
devoid of the ugly that does not know this as God
but the sons of oppression
never gave sisters
loaves to feed the hungry fury in their bellies
nor did they teach them to fish for spirit

So I pray
to the voices that whisper in my soft curves
for the lionesses of my blood
to hear the songs of the cool reeds
to feel the green blood beat of cataclysm on their breasts
and to know the embrace of freedom
in nourishing silences
where their radiant ebony vessels
are reflections of their souls
©2003, Lebogang Mashile

Spring is here

Spring is here
and all
all the all
small things
bumble bees and beetles
and frogs and things
they are all here

Spring is here
and the plain tree rustles
and the mozzies
Zzzzzz in my ear
and the light fades
fast now
but i am here to see it
because spring is here

The air knows it
The flowers know it
they are alive with warmth and treacle sweetness
Alive with warmth and love
and new beginnings
i am here because
they are here
because i am

Spring is here
i know it is
a time for new beginnings
for life to remember it has life
for love to remember it is love
for love
i’m quite sure the space i make around my heart is for this
this spring
this new beginning
this all and all
abundant,
fecund
and lustrous thing

this Spring

© simone and all the world

I want to be like the sun rising

I want to be like the sun rising
slow and steady, but
definite in its path
lighting the world on its way

I want to be like the seasons
changing,
like autumn inevitable
into winter and spring again
like the leaves gracefully falling
without resistance to their changing
colours, and
their ultimate end

I want to be like the sun setting
in bright pinks and reds and pale blue’s
bright
turning the trees into their most beautiful
black shadow’s
in the evening light
© simone and all the world

mans place in the world

a man sits on a rock
legs outstretched and
crossed in front of him
he is earthy brown
with greying stubble
on his face

he sits on the rock
looking down
on the wide bending river
and a vast wilderness

there are giraffe browsing below
and birds calling
all around him
in a rising morning symphony

there is a giant sycamore fig
dwarfed below him

he sits on the rock
n
o
t
like a king might
looking over his land
in the early morning
feeling proud

he sits on the rock
looking down
at the fig
the river
the giraffe

the wilderness and the blue hills beyond

like a servant to its beauty
like a brother to its wild growing
like a father quietly knowing

iMfolozi Game Reserve, November 2010
© simone and all the world

Beautiful bricks

i discovered a wall around my Heart this morning
and for once
in matters concerning me
i said, “OK”
and left it there

Beautiful bricks neatly stacked
And no need for repair

© simone and all the world

Eid Day – Nadia Davids

SCENE ONE: MORNING

We’re crisply pressed and neatly ironed
our shoes tap-tapping, gleaming black,
sitting, scrubbed, earnestly fidgeting
we’ve woken this morning
as we have for a month
to the cries of God

Through the mouth  of a holy man
sonorously calling to our homes through our sleep
that prayer is better than rest
and God is Great
(all I feel is coercion)
his call pulls me to  my father’s car
where I sink into leather smells
and religious doctrine
the mosque is full
of smiles and suits
moving mannequins
and shoes cluttering the doorway

SCENE TWO: AFTERNOON
Lunchtime, and today is compulsory
so are old people’s kisses,
puckered lips and stale perfume.
I want to shrink from their wrinkled embraces,
but find their grip is stronger than their heartbeats
they cling to me as though
I am life, whispering
toothlessly about God and goodness
cries and questions, ‘eat-this-not-that,
You-being-good? Here-take-this-money.’
Tables groan, remembering a more Spartan time
framed pictures of the Ka’aba and
butterflies pinned to their graves.

Auntie Farieda sits in the corner
too fat to move, and too tired to live;
Uncle Omar is holding court
he has three more pains
and a new walking stick.
He is older than Moses
and more important. He spits
in a bucket and drinks his tea in a saucer.
His wife moves softly silently
she lives softly, silently,
his mother nods, forming sounds of interest
while I sit in a chair
with white fringed scarves
and embroidered silk
watching my talkative mime.
SCENE THREE: EVENING


Magriep and Hallelujah!
Sleek in Armani
(check my shoes for Fabiani)
I’ve got my father’s Merc
and his cellphone on my belt.
We used to skit to K.C.
but now it’s to the Waterfront
where we’ll tawaaf around the banisters
greeting our brasse at every turn.
A lean at forty-five degrees
is a double prerequisite
for my phone and my keys
to be at ultimate exposure.
A race towards the bathroom
(while maintaining my designer roll)
reveals a crowd around the mirror
on a mission to check their gel:

Slaamat my broe (my hand on my heart)
where’s Psycho and Malles?
I didn’t get them today –
still in Rylands?
Oh… more money that way

The kinders are looking lekker
short skirts and nogal scarves
Jenni Button and Donna Karan
gold jewellery on their arms.
Lamming it uit met my brasse
I know that I belong
they style like no other
I got to join the throng…
~ Taken from Lovely Beyong Any Singing, Landcapes in South African Writing, an anthology compiled by Helen Moffett