landmarks
Last friday I was having dinner with Hendrix-Cat and as they have fancy schmancy computers and broadband they showed off Google maps. Most of the world had already been labeled eg where mr HC saw the road in LA undulate like a wave during the earthquake, the rehersal room with the severed finger.
Mr HC showed me Cape Town which I've never actually visited. So I directed him to my childhood home. A verdant village (all white south african hamlets are) by the Neilspruit river with the Irene Estates a large farm which it grew out of. We swooped down on it and I pointed out the Oval where cricket was played. Where I once cycled to without permission and when I returned to the house and the state my mother was in - it was another small chink in the awareness that something was really not all right. But as I looked at the map I became disturbed, I could not make out the shopping centre, I could not make sense of where the river was, I knew logically that a huge amount of building had gone one since we left in 1977 but it disturbed me. Was that the group of buildings which housed the armaments factory which the Van der Byles had sold the land for? Were those the farm bulidings we would vist with a bucket to collect our milk? Where was my primary school? And most importantly where was Pioneer Road which we lived on. It curved around. A dangerous curve which a drunk driver sped around and ploughed into the parked cars of my parents friends who were having dinner with my parents one night. I never heard it though our house was on two acres well set back from the road. The plots of land looked packed with rooftops. I'd also heard that many of the houses had subdivided their properties and sold off their gardens for develpments to make money. We've also got news that the entire village is now 'gated' and surrounded by a security fence.
But my eyes scrabbling across the screen evoked the fear in me that perhaps the internal landmarks of my life the things that I take to be true the things I hang my memories, my certanities, my personality and even my outlook on the work may not exist at all. I could of course stamp my foot and say 'But they were there that was my childhood and you can't tell me any different' but in the past year so many things I've bumped up against to realise they are false phatasims that I've nurtured in my life and I'm afraid these will turn out the same way.
posted by m @ 9:14 PM
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