P Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney

Spinning in the rain, have you tried it? It’s a wonderful, dizzying feeling. On Wednesday I spun in the rain, like a lone Retard. And it made me laugh. Real laughter, not forced or make-believe, real laughter that had euphoria bubbling through my veins, rushing to my heart and sending loud, jumpy bursts of happiness out at each beat. Cue some music and hello Hindi movie.

I should have known right then though, that happiness really was just an occasional episode in the general drama of life (as Elizabeth Farfrae so eloquently put it in the Mayor of Casterbridge), because when I stopped spinning and my world stopped gyrating in a haze of colour, and I remembered that I wasn’t a little deer with a little yellow butterfly on her butt, vivid reality painted a sombre truth. I caught my balance just before the scales tipped, sending me tumbling off the precipice of melancholy.

So I did the only thing that I knew would calm my addled mind. I went to look for Nemo. That little fish somehow always seems to sooth me. Maybe it’s because I can talk to him and I know he’s not going to tell anyone else, or maybe it’s because sometimes we need to ask questions to which we really don’t want to be given an answer – and Nemo, never ever replies. He just listens (I’d like to pretend he does), swimming in and out of his little reef-like home: It amazes me how he can swim in virtually the same spot for hours, and I can stand there and watch him for about as long.

Though just when I thought that I was fine, just when I could begin my William Blake essay with a clear mind, along came Lin. Lin with a white Kit-Kat and everything’s-going-to-be-alright hug. And that’s when the rickety vault I’d managed to assemble cracked, and feeling the familiar arms of someone who cared, set me off blubbering like a three year old. Not many people who have their own woes to contend with, will wring you off your tears and wipe your nose and stroke your hair till you feel safe and stitched together again, but Lin did. Our worlds are full of people we may know, acquaintances who flit in and out of our lives lending a smile or a nod or sometimes even the knife that’s stuck in our back, but very few of those associates we can call Friend. Dear God, I thank you for my friend, Lin.

I’m sitting here in the dining room, looking out at the ocean. It’s a deep sapphire this morning, with gentle ripples to break its otherwise unmoving surface. How deceptive it is, don’t you think? There is a tumult in those depths, yet to the observer it seems as calm as a sleeping child. The sea reminds me, that still waters are never as they seem, immobility and tranquillity sometimes hide the furore at its core. The sea reminds me, of the heart.I’m sitting here in the dining room, looking out at the ocean. It’s a deep sapphire this morning, with gentle ripples to break its otherwise unmoving surface. How deceptive it is, don’t you think? There is a tumult in those depths, yet to the observer it seems as calm as a sleeping child. The sea reminds me, that still waters are never as they seem, immobility and tranquillity sometimes hide the furore at its core. The sea reminds me, of the heart.

Nothing Lasts Forever

I walked around in the rain yesterday. It was wonderful. I had my iPod jammed into my ears, the volume turned up, blotting out everything including my thoughts. Thoughts make me sad you see. I'd walked about, tilting my head up to see the dull silver of the sky. The water droplets, falling down, almost like the heavens had been flooded and the worlds ceiling was leaking. It was more of a drizzle, and my outstretched fingers wiggled through the chilly air, trying to catch the tears of the sky. I'd watched those water droplets slide off of leaves and stain the pavement with their gentle beat. The world is beautiful when it showers. Elegance in simplicity, I can stand and watch it unfold for hours. And my thoughts and tears were washed away, till the wound inside was raw. The rain is my antiseptic, and I knew, as it scrubbed the well of my heart dry, that I would one day heal. Because nothing lasts forever, not even pain.

Despite it all...in my world, there is no greater man...

I'm a Pisces. Which, I guess, means it’s only natural that I’ve been a water baby ever since I can remember, like a fish to water, that’s the expression isn’t it? Swimming is one of my catharses. I can swim and swim, up and down the length of a pool, till my body is exhausted and my mind is a blank slate of nothing, till I’m too tired to do anything including think. It’s one of the balms to my abrasion riddled soul. My Dad taught me how to swim. I still remember how he'd taken off my floaters that day and held me there, belly down, making me move my arms and kick my legs in a comical imitation of a stagnant freestyle. And then he’d let go, and I’d floundered, and sputtered and sunk in a thrashing mass of four-year old. But he’d been there, to pull me out before I even knew that I’d gone under and we’d tried again. And the only reason I’d kept on at it, was because I knew I wasn’t going to drown, I knew that every time I went under, he’d be there to pluck me back out. And then, eventually, he let go, and I was moving! A clumsy first lap, that had me utterly spent at the end, and when I reached the wall and grasped onto it with my tiny fingers and turned back, there he was at the start, clapping and beaming. And I coughed and sniffed and smiled my huge, gap toothed grin, then kicked off and swam all the way back to him. And when I reached him and he picked me up, out of the water and spun me about, I knew, he’d never let me drown. Ever.

He’d just taken my training wheels of my little pink bike, there I was, swathed in body armour like I was going into some kind of battle (which wouldn’t have been too far-fetched, considering I’d been at war with the ground since the day I first took my few teetering steps): elbow guards, knee guards, gloves for my hands and a bright blue helmet strapped to my head. A comic little knight atop a little pink bicycle: I would have laughed at me, if I wasn’t so concentrated on pedalling as fast as I could, and not toppling over. It was fine, I knew he was right behind me, latched on to my seat all the way, I wasn’t going to fall. And then suddenly I was moving so fast! And I looked behind to see his big grin and realised I was all on my own. He was all the way up the hill, smiling like Eid had come early, while I was whooshing down. And I remember my shriek of terror and delight, as I realised I was riding a bike, all by myself! I remember him clapping and whooping with me. And I remember, how I crashed at the bottom and how he’d run over to pick me up, and we both laughed and got me back on my bike so that I’d have another go, “You’ll be right behind me won’t you?”, I’d asked as we pushed my little pink steed up the driveway again, “Always” he’d replied.

And when I was eleven, we'd gone to Drakensberg as was tradition every year, and I'd learnt to ride a horse - not a little pony at the circus - a horse, and I've loved it ever since. And my Dad was the one who held the reigns when I got unsteady and when I was comfortable taught me to trot and canter and gallop. My Dad was the one who cupped his hands and hoisted me up and was right there to bring me back down. I was never afraid of falling off, I knew my Dad would catch me.

The first time I drove a car, was on the Sappi dirt road. It was my Dad's Eid present to me. His Merc was his pride and joy, and he let me, who had no experience with cars whatsoever, take his baby out on the road. It was his way of giving me an incentive - and it worked, because a month later I got my learners and began driving lessons. And a few weeks back, on the way to Durban one early morning I'd joked, "Why don't you let me drive?" and he'd agreed, in a beat. An hour and a half on the highway, in peak traffic, and he never batted an eyelid. All my life, I'd been placing my little person in his hands, and that day, the tables turned. I could have crashed the car, I could have met in an accident, I could have panicked and killed us both...but I didn't, though he hadn't known that I wouldn't. Just like I hadn't known for sure that he'd be there to pull me out from under the water; that he would be there to balance the bike; that he would be there when I fell off my horse...

Trust is the greatest gift a child can give and the most difficult thing for an adult to hand over.

“Our relationship is the day I taught you to swim, the day I taught you to ride a bike, the day I taught you to ride a horse, the day I got in the car and gave you the keys and let you drive us all the way to Durban in peak hour traffic.”

Numb is the worst kind of pain

I never did understand why people would do something so idiotic like take a blade to their own skin. It used to appal me, just thinking about it. What stupidity, I thought it was, to cut yourself. How could it possibly make anything better?

They do it, because then the pain inside hurts less. It’s so much easier to focus on a tangible wound that you can see, that you can watch bleed, a visible tear so you can go, ‘ah, that’s why it hurts so much’ rather than one you can’t. When you’re hurt inside you can’t touch it, or soothe it, or at the very least see it, to know the reason for its existence. It’s just there. And that’s so much more painful. Because there’s nothing you can do about it.

At least, you feel each searing sting as the skin is rent, and even as blood droplets bead the torn seams, you hurt a little less inside. There is something you can fix: with some water, antiseptic, a bandage, and a little bit of time – it will heal.

It’s just an exchange, of one sort of pain for another. And at night when you curl into the tiniest ball you can manage, and you cry, it’s not because there’s a gaping hole inside you, no, it’s because you cut yourself and watched it bleed…it has nothing at all to do with the degenerate wound beneath your skin. You tell yourself, it’s the one you can see that cries its little bloody rivulets and stains your sheets and your soul, with its regenerative burn - not the one that you can't.