Walking the Wild Swim

Writing about an experience is on par with taking a picture, cementing it in your mind, forming an image that fades unhurriedly because you’ve extracted its essence, its stillness, the poetry in its breath. Blank page. It is so big and it is so empty, this page that I know I am going to make a million mistakes on, this page that I want to right all the wrongs. This page that scares me more than sharks and murky waters.

Floods put the Wild Swim on hold. “Shall we postpone?” They said. “Do you know what is in that dirty water?” No, it’s not about the swim; we need to walk the soil we still aim to save. Shall we speculate why our rivers are so easily spoiled, why rain can pour all our scattered waste straight into the sea? We might still swim, the naysayers can say otherwise but we can still swim. Driving down south, a rainbow followed us for miles. We missed the turn to fetch Fred’s swimming gear – U-turn and 20 minutes back, a tyre tried to throw us off the road. An hour detour and we left with no gear, but a warning, a list of boxes to tick. “Don’t swim,” she said, marine scientist disclaimer, indemnities signed. Fred made her write them down: Box 1: the water is murky. Box 2: there have been ceremonial killings on the beach or rivers, or beachings of any dead whales. Box 3. No additional safety and medics on standby. Box 4. Don’t swim near river mouths. “Yes, Fred, I’ll swim with you.” The Wild Swim is on, we might just mix it up a bit but the mission has always been about the land and the money we need to spare it.

A broken heart piecing back together. All those minerals that are so sought after, the energy inhaled from walking barefoot, crossing those river mouths, wading in murky waters, seeing the stars that we’ve blinded ourselves to, a united intention amongst individual sagas, like minds walking for days on the Wild Coast lifted your fears and made you feel alive and ready to swim despite all those ticked boxes. You said we’re swimming those 22k’s. It wasn’t listening to skunk anansie that stopped us from swimming. Andrew swam: day one he recruited a team and off they went into murky waters. They swam and we missed it. All boxes soon to be ticked. As the sun set I got my swim wearing slops and marching to a waterfall. I swam in a rock pool with the only medic we had after the rest were recruited to a cyclone, answering the lingering question: no, we can’t swim. Swim officially off, box 3 ticked. Yes, Fred I’ll swim with you.

“Did you hear Siyah’s story?” I ask as we hold our breaths with the stench of the carcass of a pygmy killer whale. Something I didn’t know then but do now because I asked my marine scientist sibling who said, “Oh yes, I forgot to mention I ID’d a whale carcass on the rocks right where you were planning to swim” – a very rare whale that they have little information on, and here these oceanic creatures of the deep have beached. What we put into the ocean is killing them and our guide Siyah saved four of them after he believes they saved him. Wearing his amadiba-anti-mining shirt, the red earth running through his fingers like an hourglass he tells us they believe this soil is stained red with the blood of their ancestors who fought to keep this heritage safe. This land they will fight to shield through murky waters. Saved in our attempt to save the red sand. Reminded of who we authentically are, renewed and reawakened. I feel so much richer for having stood in the mighty wisdom of the Wild Coast. Wild and free. Siyah’s leg is scarred from when he saved his brother, whose foot was bitten off by a shark, swimming in murky waters he was bitten when cetaceans surrounded him and urged him on and they survived, expanded after a life-changing experience with another creature, bonded by a connection so deep. Braver to face life’s challenges and empowered to guard the red dunes from miners. It looks like the water is clearing. Why are we so afraid of what hurts us? Painkiller. Fresh air. Yes the boxes are ticked, yes I will swim with you, Fred.

Walking to the longdrop in the middle of the night, met by an unbounded ocean view, honey glazed by the moon’s rays a little before a competitive rooster made us all rise to consciousness. To smell the ground we lay on, to look at the setting stars, to feel the cool wind and acknowledge the land we tread. Truth serum, close quarters, vulnerably indecent, we are now intimately connected by sharing our stories, individual crossroads met somewhere under the stars. Walking along an edge I say what an awful place to fall and slip before the words have hit Siyah’s ears. Thigh deep in mud – I stepped wrong, again, the story of my life – they call me irresponsible. I can see the ticked boxes and yes, Fred, I will swim with you.

Walking the Wild Swim, we took tiny little risks and got to the other side, feeling only a little foolish at being so afraid to begin with. Everyone I walked beside inspired me to swim further. All those stories of ice and miles and deep dark water, no excuses, making it happen, swimming for a purpose. Frozen with fear, it’s too cold, the waters are muddy, rejection bites like a shark, its scars riddle my body, and I am most afraid of a blank page. I may have slipped everywhere we walked, and my brain is chimera, the greek myth included, scared of everything, especially the backs of my bad decisions, but that is no reason not to swim. Fear, I know, feels exactly like excitement, you just have to rephrase the wording. I wonder if I’ll ever finish Kapnomaniacs, despite another year of non-existence because we can’t face the hole I’ve fallen into. Why couldn’t we just laugh, take a picture and keep walking with mud on my legs? Waterfalls massage our backs. Walking the Wild Swim, is it true that I can inspire, from this crevasse? Maybe I can make a difference, one misstep at a time, picking up one piece of litter at a time. Yes I will swim with you, Fred.

As the sun rose the following day the whole team would leave. All boxes ticked, murky water, whale bait, safety gone, backup gone, estuaries open and flooded. Now finally after days of no-swim we are going to swim even though I offer no safety if I cannot see but yes, Fred, I will swim with you. We spoke about the ticked boxes as we had spoken of them before but suddenly you listened, your mind was opened under the stars that bore their weight down on us. That cigarette you just cadged off me, Fred, that’s a far greater risk than swimming in murky waters. Kapnomaniac, a term I had coined to honour the disorder of the smoking addiction. You have a cough, Fred, you’re wearing a sign that says ‘suicidal’ in bold. I want to publish the story of smoking, but we have a far scarier addiction killing us all: consumerism. All this light so we can’t see the stars. Collecting trash, hoping someone will clean that beach covered in plastic, poisoning the water to wash off the dirt, I don’t agree with any of our systems. Money can’t make clean water, but it can certainly take it away. Then what will we drink to survive? Another Wild Coast waterfall, another secret spot where we can swim, let the water fall straight into the sea.

We volunteered to swim the 22-kilometre stretch they want to destroy for a bit of money. What is money? Where does it guide us while we can’t see the stars and will we save this land without enough of it? Everything we need to live on this on earth is abundant and free, why is it so difficult to convince people to respect it? Our fears and futility. Who cares? A frog hopped across my path and I took off my hiking boots so I would tread lighter. Leave no footprints behind. I long for the world we were given, before we rephrased it, where we can see the stars and drink the water, where we don’t flush it down the loo, with our shit and our garbage flowing straight into the sea. One Ocean. Many names. Words that mean the same thing. Yes I will swim with you, Fred. Whether we swim or not, we’ve planted a mighty seed. Whether we raise our target or not, we’ve made a few people think. Think about the wild places, and how they feed you, mind, body and soul.

Balloon release/Trash throwing: Po-tay-to po-tah-to… you say it’s pretty, we say it’s perilous, but we need to call it what it is, prohibited.

At the Indy 500 yesterday thousands of balloons were released as part of another useless tradition that continues annually at this waste-riddled event. I saw a number of activists’ tweets speaking up against this criminal act that is dubbed ceremonious, a release, an acceptable part of an event. I commented that, by law, the people responsible for littering thousands of balloons must be fined and charged. If it didn’t look so harmless that would be the case. This is a popular sentiment but for one naysayer who defended the tradition simply because he believes “pollution from coal kills more birds than these balloons.”

The argument for why balloon releasing is acceptable has no rationale and in the face of all the destruction being done systematically there is no reason to ignore one form of harm over another. There is much to address and change worldwide and standing up for balloons over coal simply gave me the opportunity to point out the damage of carbon emissions from these motor races. I didn’t get into the nitty-gritty surrounding the rest of the scrap that comes from big-budget, high-profile events, where plastic is the currency and waste the reward. If they were to take the trash from the event and scatter it across the country the effect would only appear differently in its execution and would be condemned, but ultimately it would be the same thing. How can governments be so scrupulous as to spell out laws against littering but exclude this white elephant in the sky? As I have banged on about before, the balloons are only a part of the problem. Why are we still depleting helium in these futile uses, disposable decorations that we actively scatter across the globe, creating some sort of lucky draw as to where the devastation lands, a craps table where public figures cheer as trash disappears to an infinite number of destinations. If only they would come down as they go up, if only the race were interrupted by rains of balloons, roads closed by flaccid plastic, coating sidewalks, gardens and swimming pools, with trees bedecked by deflated balloons… Then maybe people would call this act what it is: criminal.

I wrote ‘What goes up’ in 2014, spelling out why balloon releases should be banned. At the time I was battling to convince a small organisation to replace a balloon release with something less harmful. It took threats and pleas and it was unfortunate that it was the threats that got the desired results, as I would have hoped logic and reason would suffice. Littering is illegal and to do so intentionally and publicly must incur a fine, a penalty dependent on the severity. Releasing thousands of balloons into the air is the worst littering offence one can do. I threatened that if they went ahead with the balloon release, I would ensure that they incur the full penalty of the littering offence. This small event no longer pollutes with hundreds of balloons, yet it is acceptable that today thousands are released to kick off a race. I find it baffling that this is not by law, outlawed. I can’t comprehend how reporters could condone and compliment a reckless custom that should be obsolete.

It is 2018. As the world slowly phases out single use plastics and the environmental voice, warning against the numerous clear and present dangers the earth is facing, is taken only slightly more seriously, the despicable balloon offences continue. Surely First World countries know better and do better, surely the obvious fact that this is nothing more than littering on a grand scale is not something I need to spell out.

There are campaigns against McD’s balloon giveaways because these child lures have a tendency to go up, within moments of being handed out, and come down far away. Thousands of McD balloons have been collected from pristine beaches and nature reserves around the world. Whether they float or not, free balloons on plastic sticks or filled with helium should be banned. One child and one balloon at a time creates international damage. Why then are there no legislative measures to stop these high-volume balloon releases? As I keep repeating, there is no such thing as away. What goes up must come down somewhere. What looks pretty going up, brings only waste and peril coming down. When will we see this for what it is? It is time that this ceremonial littering is stopped.

Image: Blue Planet Society @Seasaver

White plague kills seven on airplane #PlanePandemonium

On a recent 45 minute flight my colleague ordered water (I’m always packing… a glass bottle that is). The flight attendant handed her a 50ml plastic water bottle, with a 20ml plastic cup that he placed upside down on top of the plastic bottle. The kid sitting next to me ordered a packet of sweets. They came, as all sweets do, in a plastic packet, and the same attendant placed the plastic packet inside an empty plastic cup. Has there become an international plastic cup day, or is this just standard practice on airlines? The latter, of course.

Order the in-flight meal and each of the six or so items on your plastic tray is covered in a plastic wrap. As is your plastic cutlery, your napkin and plastic cup of tap water. Air travel has plagued my mind for years as possibly being the biggest culprit in the plastic waste trade, but now I know it with certainty.

The International Air Transport Association says that in 2015 airlines saw close to 3.6 billion passengers. It has been reported that airline passengers each generate half a kilogram of waste.  Of on board products, 75% are recyclable, yet less than 20% are recycled worldwide. Do the math, that equates to 1.8 gazillion tonnes of plastic waste, or somewhere near. This figure is horrifically disturbing.

Surely the culinary geniuses that rule the airline food industry can equate the cost to airline companies and the cost to the planet with what they know? Surely we can do better, because we know better? Health, safety and quarantine regulations aside, the health risks of the plastic toxins in the plastic wrap is equally detrimental. Another global report found that no airline recycles all of the major recyclables. No airline has a comprehensive programme for minimising onboard waste, or composting food waste. All airlines offer food that is wrapped in a plastic that is not entirely recyclable.

So look at it this way, from the meal you had on your flight, one penguin died. From the drink you had, a seal died. From those sweets, a dolphin died.

Food aside, let’s look at the fuel. A big plane uses as much energy as 3 500 family cars, equivalent to six cars per passenger. Long haul flights produce on average twice as much emissions per mile as compared to those which cars emit. And short haul flights produce three times as much as that. According to IATA 770 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is produced (2% of all CO2 emissions produced by humans) by the airline industry annually. That means that the average passenger produces 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Scientists believe that particulate matter emissions from airplanes contribute to 1 800 early deaths per year in the UK alone.

Fuel aside, and back to my plastic name-and-shame. There is much to debate about air travel when it comes to reckless plastic waste, but none more so than the baggage cling wrap business (A complete and redundant waste). There goes a sperm whale, so your bag can make you look like an asshole. Ever seen what happens when customs needs to inspect such luggage? Bought by beginners, it is a waste of your money, bags with locks and bolts get broken into, cling wrap won’t protect anything it’s the easiest material to cut through, before it then destroys the sea and drowns the life in it. That plastic will eventually fill the stomach of a whaleshark and it will slowly die of starvation because it is impossible to digest plastic and as plastic surpasses plankton in the oceans biomass, fish can’t order much else to eat.

I have not quite listed the seven deaths of my heading, but you get the gist (I should have said 700 not seven). The bubonic plague killed a number of people (clearly not enough, look at us now). The plastic plague is doing far greater and irreparable damage that will leave a darker (Permanent) mark when the history of the world is recorded for posterity. What future does the white plague offer any of us?

Two parts hydrogen one part oxygen and seven billion parts obtuse

Without water life cannot survive. A little fact known by mankind ever since he inhabited this globe (Even before we dubbed it the globe). It is the most precious resource on earth. In fact considering that astronomers have yet to find water anywhere else and therefore have not found life on other planets, we can deduce that water is the most precious resource in the galaxy.

Mankind knows how vital water is for the survival of all life. Yet we use it to flush pee down drains into larger bodies of water. Nine liters every time we take a dump. We incessantly flood our water supply with chemicals, plastics and poisons. We wash our cars, sweep our streets, clean our dirty laundry with the most critical commodity on all asteroids known to mankind.

Within five minutes of a water supply not running effectively into our bathrooms, kitchens, laundromats (And at the office), all hell breaks loose. Public toilets become a festering cesspit of microbes waiting for that water supply to return so our clean water can make all those germs go away. Shocker, but we have long established that there is no such thing as away. So we clean our shit with water which pollutes the very water we cannot live without. Right. Makes sense.

There really is no sense in our water system. The one we have created that links our toilets to our water, mixes our pollution with our water and basically uses what we need to preserve, to destroy what we cannot live without.

Day by day buildings are built, cities grow, people keep breeding and our vital water supply is straining under this system. When will we change it? When will we value water above all else? When it is too late? We will look back on these actions and wonder how mankind could have been so foolish.

Freedom… Is there such a thing?

What is freedom anyway? Is anyone really free, while we have placed borders around spots of earth and called them countries? Is anyone really free, while we are ruled by desires beyond our thinking capacity? Is anyone really free, while forces of nature control our gravity? Is anyone really free or are we all just bordering on freedom?

Where do we come off claiming that we have free will? What part of our lives can we choose differently? We are bound by the border we were born within, defined by the language implanted in us along with a conviction of a creed, what choice did we have? Is food a choice, it grows on trees but how many starve? Can anyone not eat, function without the criteria that drives our choices?

Imagine there were no borders. Imagine there was free will. Imagine if you could choose. Imagine if you were free.
We get to vote on the rule of our spot of earth. Suffrage…. How much suffering surrounds that right? How does one vote for freedom, when no one is free?

Beyond the borders of what we have defined, there, are we free… or are we just out of our minds?

 

On the precipice of producing more than traffic

Cities. What is your favourite city? I see that question often in the Times, they do a travel column where they have a Q&A with a celeb about the places they have been. They always ask what is your favourite city and the most common answer is New York. I wonder how many people have been to every single city in the world. More than that I wonder, are any different, a city is a city is a city and they are all the same. Too many people, and too much traffic.

Everyone in the city is busy, so busy creating traffic, causing traffic, being traffic, trying to get out of traffic. Where are we all going, crawling along bumper to bumper? What are we doing? Why are we so busy? This system does not get us out of here, it just keeps us here, in traffic, making traffic.

Cities are made up of treadmills, people running and running nowhere. Closed in our boxes we call home, walking the pets we confined with us. Walking around the block and walking nowhere.

Cities are made up of trash, besides the traffic we manufacture pollution, endless amounts of stuff to throw away as if away is a place, perhaps it is somewhere alongside the traffic.

Could we make more than traffic? Is there a way to stop making trash? Is it possible to produce something else? Is there anywhere to go but on a treadmill? Is it possible to stop the traffic, to not be the traffic because at the end of the day you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic?

Boycott bigotry and do away with discrimination #Colourmustfall

This month we get an extra day. In a leap of optimism I am going to suggest that on this extra day we all just get along. Like the good ol’ days… when was that again?

My fellow compatriots have taken to the universities to torch the buildings and burn the artworks. At the same time #boycottoscars and #oscarssowhite is trending.

Is it alright that everyone has a problem? A problem over religion, sex, sexuality, skin colour, preference, diet, belief, origin, education. Or is having a problem the only problem? What do you plan to solve by tearing down paintings off the university walls and burning them? Every year South African university students and staff protest rampantly and the reason why is lost behind the brutality of destruction. Losing sight of the future and of the solution and acting in a way that deserves no reward.

Wherein lies the solution to the Oscar race discrepancy? The all American noddy badge event must be boycotted for liberty, right? How many red heads have won an Oscar? How many bisexuals have won an Oscar? How many Atheists have won an Oscar? How many Jews? How many midgets have become president? What exactly needs to change? Here on the southern tip of the dark continent a friend of mine applied for a position at one of these universities. He was the only applicant. As a white male, he of course did not and could not get the position, despite being overqualified. Is that a solution?

Would the boycotters be pleased if they were given their own award category, would that appease or would sex then become an issue again? Would the boycotters be pleased if a law was promulgated, like good ol’ BEE in SA, that someone of the traditional African colour had to win? Should this years award for best actor not be awarded for the simple reason that there are only white ‘applicants’? Is that not as insulting? Is this boycott then not insulting to every single Oscar winner?

History seems to have taught us nothing. Education seems to have gotten us nowhere. When will we see beyond our differences, and act beyond our fears and our greed?

We pick our battles and I think it is time we pick smarter. The vast majority of wildlife in the world is bordering on extinction. Post colonialism lands are defunct and destroyed. Life that once thrived in Africa is but a myth. Our seas are drowning in our litter. Yet we fight each other while we fight disease, desperate to eliminate dying young while we are eating every living species out of existence. Then conflict over skin colour.

It is an insult to humanity to deem colour a difference we still challenge. We are all in this together. Why can’t we just be kind to everything that lives? When will we fight for the life, the dwindling species around us that needs our attention? When we will join forces to restore earth, above all else, and boycott that destruction?

Happy New Day #AnyExcuseToCelebrate

Being met with Happy New Year at 1am after an Aussie skinny dip is one thing, hearing Happy New Year on March third is quite another. Ok it is not yet February but I was met with that happy new year revelry last night, which got me thinking.

People generally greet one another with that until they have seen every single person they know, or at least until about now. Anyway about that thinking: What if you celebrated each day like you did each year?

I don’t mean turn your life into the hangover eternal. I mean reflect on each day gone by with as much respect, and look forward to the next one with equal list-setting slash resolution-avoiding slash goal-making (slash irresponsible-bingeing). Not to set yourself up for failure, if you cannot make it a daily endeavour then just a weekly one, or like brushing your teeth. Say to celebrate the orbit of the moon as much as you do that of the sun. That sounds a bit hippy even for me, so then simply to allow the notorious Monday to appeal for sanction for celebration.

When you hear the Carte Blanche chorale don’t despair and weep your way to Monday, celebrate the end of the weekend like you would the end of the year. Look forward to Monday like you would the first, even though it isn’t a holiday.

Considering that celebrate is regarded as a euphemism for booze, this is not encouragement for you to phuza your way through the week. That can stick to Thursdays.

Happy New Year (Or should I save that for February eighth). Happy days. Remember while you celebrate through 2016 to refuse plastics and save a penguin.

 

A degree late and a day short of any dollars to donuts #StartWith1Thing

A year after their high school graduation a group of highbrow teens realised that they had all gained weight. They started an annual reunion to get together for a spa jaunt to keep their weight down and their health up. Twenty years later as a group of morbidly obese adults (despite never missing a reunion that they called COP#) (There was a time when # meant number), the problem was visibly demonstrated to more than the parties present, and so, with added peer pressure, they all agreed to lose 2 pounds (while snacking on donuts, or need I emphasize, dollars to donuts).

The earth-shattering agreement was momentous more for the fact that the whole world (this included outside of the USA unlike their world series) finally concurred. Back in ’95 at COP1 despite the conspicuous conclusion that if you pollute all the drinking water you will have no water to drink, Coke continued to win that argument.

Speaking of Coke, it’s that time of year where Santa Claus checks in on who has been naughty. While consumerism insists you prove that you’re nice by showering children with toys, thereby instilling in them that they need lots of toys to be content and must one day own lots of toys and in turn give lots of toys to ensure that the next generation be equally content. Amongst all the contentment and merriment Coke (despite still dressing Santa) is losing ground in this sugar-free fad phase, how much ground depends on the vitamins in the water, and who buys what.

What this all has to do with climate change is topic for COP22 not the start of the festive season. Although it will be interesting to see how these morbidly obese adults lose 2 pounds. Who cares about that for now lets pop some corks, stuff our socks with chocolate and break lots of resolutions before making them again on the eve of New Year.

We are all junkies and our junk is poisoning us as much as it is the planet. Here is how to come clean:

When I was younger I smoked, but I’m healthy again and for many years I have been able to confidently claim superiority to all addicts. Until I realised that I was just lying to myself, or I was simply unaware of my addiction (If I am not mistaken I think that is the avow of most addicts).

Recently I pointed out the poisons of someone else’s addiction in an attempt to guide them to a better place (Change them). Ignorantly standing on the pedestal of abstinence I said that addicts have no self control or awareness, you couldn’t be addicted if you did. As sure as what goes up comes down, and as my mother always said about pointing, in saying that I was shown how little self control I had of my own.

Addiction is anything you cannot choose not to do. (Those obsessive compulsive neuroses not included here). I thought I just loved chocolate, until I realised I had no control over it, I had to have it, I was addicted, however this awareness I had before three-fingers-pointing-back at me. How I gave up chocolate was the same way that I gave up smoking. I call it the For Now method. I would simply make a choice in the moment of craving not to, for now, knowing full well that I could equally and just as easily choose to, but for now was making the choice not to. I can smoke, I can eat buckets of sugar, but right now I will pass.

Simple as that. For now I will be in control and take the road leading me away from addiction. One for now at a time I became smoke and addiction free (coffee not included yet). For now was also taking back control, when I saw that I had no control, that was a problem for me, I like to be in control where I can be. Being controlled by an addiction wasn’t an option when I saw that all I had to do was claim back control, for now.

That was until I was challenged to stop thinking. Turns out I cannot stop my thoughts, and therefore I cannot even control my thoughts and am so far beyond addicted to my thoughts I have to painfully admit that I am hopelessly heedlessly shamefully addicted to thinking. (I think we all are). I also think, and I say this having never attended any such meetings, that admission is the first step. I can at least now see and admit that I am blindly inconsiderately stubbornly ruled by a jabbering of thoughts in my head that completely rule my life. I therefore have to admit that I have no self control or awareness.

I do not smoke, I do not take prescribed or non prescribed drugs, I do not take straws or plastic packets, but my menial jabbering mind keeps me in a perpetual imaginary state between yesterday and tomorrow that even my glimpses of present tense are so brief I might as well be hooked on crack and work in a mine.

….My heading offered a solution didn’t it? Come to think of it I have come clean, I admit it, (There). I do see it, I hear it, I want to stop it but I can’t. I was planning on finding a solution to offer, but this is easier, to come clean by admitting that my mind is loud and I have no control of it. It’s somebody else’s toddler in the temptation aisle. Only this toddler isn’t asking why it’s asking what about now, and now, and now…and now, now, now, now (There is no power in this prattle). If you think that I am over exaggerating and believe you can control your thoughts or that it is easy (then congrats you’re a guru) but I don’t mean shush it for a few seconds. Or distract it with a mantra or technique, which is like holding your breath in the bath. My mind is like my 15-year-old self, it thinks it knows everything. Seeing the addiction in search of the solution, at least I have come clean. Maybe I will attend one of those meetings to find the next eleven steps, I wonder if they can show me how to silence the twitter.