I finally understand

Let me take you back to when you were in high school. For me this was over 7 years ago (crisis!). How well do you remember your English lessons? I personally remember spending many an English lesson slumped at my desk waiting for something really exciting to happen (it never did...). Sure we had a great teacher and my mates were very entertaining (...behind her back) but I still recall pondering about the point of it all.

This is my mother-tongue language, I KNOW HOW TO SPEAK IT!!! Why, oh why, do I have to analyse crazy e e e e Cummings poems? What's the point of a book review? How will interpreting the lyrics of an Enya song affect my life for the better?

I picked up and read some of the 'greatest' English literature, (works by Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, Chinua Achebe, Paul Theroux, J.M. *spit on the floor* Coetzee, John Wyndham... ) or at least that's what they told me. I did feel somewhat dissapointed that this was the best that was on offer. I didn't enjoy many of the set works and found it difficult to stay awake while reading others. Still, I persevered and basically put in just enough effort to get 60% for all submitted work.

This did come back to haunt me when I applied for tertiary education after matric. I was somewhat surprised to see that mathematics (the other subject I thought very little of... just get a calculator man!) and English were awarded more credits (used as entry criteria for various courses).

I only really understood the methods behind the madness after going into third year and postgraduate studies. Communication is EVERYTHING and therefore English is EVERYTHING! The better you are at communicating your point across to others the greater the impact you have on them. Once you have honed this ability, success (in whichever form you percieve it) will undoubtably follow. The best way in which one can hone this skill is by learning how others managed to do the same i.e. reading the works of great writers (however boring or pointless they may seem). These people are geniuses, if you can't appreciate what they do then you cannot begin to understand the delicate art that is communication.

As for the seemingly random poetry analysis, book reviews... these were tools used to open our young minds to something even more important than effective communication. Thinking! Back then we all (and when I say we all, I mean "I"...just in case my generalisation doesn't apply to the masses) took things on face value "it's written down in this text book, therefore it must be right" . We were not, as I once thought, being forcefed boring time-consuming crap to keep us occupied while our parents were at work (although that definition still applied to subjects like Counselling , P.E. and Religion). We were actually being taught how to look for deeper meaning. Theories are just that, they aren't right or wrong, merely some guys opinion. We weren't just being taught to question the theories put forward by others, we were also being motivated to come up with ideas of our own.

I wish someone told me all of this when I was still at school. I would have spent far less time faffing around, doodling in the margins, setting things alight, plotting how next to pick on the red headed kid...

Something different... a by chance meeting

The nice thing about having a blog with 'arbitrary' as a title component is that I really have freedom to speak my mind and thoughts. Usually it's just random crap but occasionally something serious comes along and as much as I like my posts to amuse people, it's necessary for me to avoid doing so too often or I might end up having a themed blog (something I fear I have been drifting slowly towards).

So back to the post that will dismiss any thoughts of logical structured themes and predictable posting.

Last night I had a dream. It was a strange one (strange that I remember it so clearly for one…). I dreamt that I was hanging out with my old friend from school, Merron or Mave for those who knew him. For those who don’t, Mave was a great guy and something of a role model for the people that take things as they come, chilled out and morally outstanding. I refer to him in the past tense because Mave lost his life in a helicopter crash. To be honest, he survived the actual crash; it was his heroic efforts to save the helicopter pilot that ended in tragedy.

So back to my dream…

It was one of those realistic ones that you can’t tell apart from reality till something very odd happens. In any case it starts with me doing some fieldwork and all of a sudden I bump into Mave out in the middle of nowhere. I turned around and there he was just standing there in front of a yellow-brown 4x4 with this massive grin on his face.

‘Mave!? is that you!!! Holy crap dude’.

I run over and give him a hug to see if he is real. Mave invites me to come for a drive with him. I agree and we take this very leisurely drive along a dirt road to nowhere. Deep in conversation all the while we chat about the old school days, what he has been doing and a bunch of stuff that I can’t recall as well. Eventually we reach a small house alone in a valley. This is where he has been all this time, just hiding out and living a simple life, a life away from all the hassles and stress associated with average human life. I’m just beginning to understand why he had chosen to leave in the first place when he takes me inside to meet his girlfriend.

To be more precise, his girlfriend Katey Perry… and that’s the moment I realised it was a dream and woke up…

Sigh! It was just a dream… Yet Mave’s personality was captured so perfectly (apart from his taste in girls). It was so real up to that point. Did I really chat to my long lost friend. Was that his soul I had conversed with? Call me a silly, superstitious, so and so but I’d like to think that it was.

I had met my friend and shared words with him. We had a nice time catching up. He was happy and I was happy that I had found him. I looked into his eyes and saw no deception, only a friendly and honest guy, a guy I used to know once upon a time.

It was good

Cheerio Mave! Hope you are well where ever you are.

PS. Stay away from that Katey Perry chick, she is nasty and annoying ;)

One of life’s greatest childhood debates revisited

I often think back to when I was a kid. Back to a time when our developing brains had just grasped the English language and discovered its true potential. Sure we learn the basics first, ‘mama’ ‘papa’ ‘give me ..........’ but we progress ever so quickly from there. We learn to manipulate, lie, make and set moral boundaries that stay with us for the rest of our lives. Language and the ability to communicate is a powerful tool that is often taken for granted.

Back to my topic… I feel that one of the more interesting communication milestones reached as we grow is that of debate. It fascinates me that we learn this ability so early on in life given the rather pointless nature of discussion and informal debate in the life of a 4 or 5 year old. Still, we persevered and perhaps benefited from it at the end of the day (character building some would say…).

After having failed miserably at communicating our point across to adults (“…and that’s why I NEED a bag of Easter eggs and a large net for school tomorrow.”) we lower our standards and have the most imaginative and drawn out discussions with other random 5 year old kids we stumble across at school. I thought it would be fun to revive one of these childhood debates. Partially because it would be a terrible shame to have gone through all that and not used it to our benefit in a discussion now that we are older and more mature (of course we are).

Here goes…

Discussion topic: My Dada (grandfather) is way cooler than your Dada.

I really do believe that I had the coolest grandpa and I’ll be impressed if anyone can come close.

My Dada.

Sure he wasn’t a perfect man but he did have a band. He played almost every type of Indian instrument beautifully. I remember him happily jamming with all his sons in the lounge of our house at over 70 years of age. He even rode motorbikes! My dada was originally a builder and to my knowledge helped in the making of some of Durban’s finest buildings. He also managed to bag the daughter of the owner of a once successful soda pop company as his wife (go figure, chicks had a thing for guys in a band back then too…).

In his later years he occupied himself by building fine furniture (most of which is still in use at our home). It would have been nice to see him in action as a young man. Alas the majority of my memories of him are of him pruning the roses in the garden wearing his beige hat or in his workshop swearing in frustration at workers he caught mixing cement the wrong way or something along those lines.

How cool was your gramps then?

(Alternantively you could revive another debate topic that stood out from your past.)