Life in the very fast lane...: As the years have passed me by,and the crows have ...

Life in the very fast lane...: As the years have passed me by,and the crows have ...: As the years have passed me by, and the crows have walked across the corners of my eyes with their heavy feet, I have learnt a lot about...

As the years have passed me by, and the crows have walked across the corners of my eyes with their heavy feet, I have learnt a lot about life, and loss, and about how immeasurably tough it can be to hold on to hope in times of trouble.

I met up by accident recently with friends of mine from my post-Matric days.  We jumped up with excitement when we saw each other, and what surprised me the most was how little we all seemed to have changed.  We made a plan to meet up for dinner the following week, exchanged numbers which after twenty-odd years had changed, and moved on to our respective dinners. Seven sleeps later, we found ourselves sitting around a table together, reminiscing about our salad days, and shrieking with laughter as we recalled our fun, mad and completely care-free evenings of yester-decade.

One of my friends had his parents there, who were up from the coast for the weekend, and who were able to join us.  One of the many benefits of hitting forty is in knowing that it is not going to adversely affect your reputation to be seen with your parents, or those of your friends.  And indeed, it was this particular father who made me laugh the most that evening.  We were on (about) bottle number two, talking about how we used to park our cars in Rosebank and walk to all our respective favourite bars (oh, the freedom!), and how we used to light Sambuca and attach the tot glasses to various parts of our bodies (oh, the maturity!), when this dad said loudly at the table, “you know Philippa, I will never forget meeting you for the first time!”  Unsurprisingly, I did not recall this particular encounter, so I had to enquire as to the details.  Mr. Moore proceeded to tell me how he was in Johannesburg on business, some twenty one years ago, and how he had telephoned his son to find out his whereabouts, only to be pointed in the direction of a local bar.

Mr. Moore recounted to the table how he had walked into this establishment and seen his son, and three other young men all huddled around a bar top, drinks in hand, listening intently to one lone nubile lass, who was talking loudly and telling jokes, wine glass in hand, to these four then fixated lads, who were apparently completely taken in by the story of the minute… Mr. Moore’s exact words were, “and there you were Philippa, drinking with the boys and telling jokes!”

The entire social congregation erupted with laughter, including myself, as I could just picture that scene, and nothing surprised me less… twenty one years have passed, and so many things have changed, but to be frank, that scenario could be happening right now, in this decade, with different lads, but the same, more weathered-looking lass – in fact, truth be told – this is a sort-of regular occurrence.

The evening progressed, and the stories grew more and more risqué as the minutes marched on.  We then got onto the serious discussions, and the chatter died down as the tone grew more serious.  I was asked what had happened in my life in the past two decades, and I found that the honesty bubbled out of my glossed lips much like an over boiled pasta pot.  As I recounted one story after another, my friend’s eyes grew wider and wider, and the sauvignon blanc got better and better. 

Mr. Moore was of course the most fascinated by all the life events, and he offered by far the most profound advice of the evening.  He said, very simply, “Philippa, as long as you don’t lose hope… promise me, you will never lose hope.”  Of course I promised; sauvignon makes me promise all sorts of things, and we moved on from the evening happily and with old memories now freshly recounted.

Some days went by, and quite by chance, I read the following quote which took me instantly back to that sentence of Mr. Moore’s.  It read as follows:-

Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark.
    – Rabindranath Tagore

This truly hit home for me.  We are all older now, and we have all been battered and somewhat bruised by life events along the way.  There have been some absolutely incredible moments of elation, and yet also, some absolute moments of deep despair.  I believe the trick, however, is to keep the faith.  Like the bird that sings knowing that the sun is yet to rise, so do I, as the somewhat plump grey pigeon, need to feel the dawn breaking, the tide turning, the sun rising… and sing (not literally) in the dark, knowing that the best, is yet to come.

Life in the very fast lane...: I am writing for a magazine called Inspire (www.in...

Life in the very fast lane...: I am writing for a magazine called Inspire (www.in...: I am writing for a magazine called Inspire ( www.inspiresa.co.za ) - this is my latest article, which I am now able to blog as the magazine ...

I am writing for a magazine called Inspire (www.inspiresa.co.za) - this is my latest article, which I am now able to blog as the magazine has been published and is "out there" on our world wide web.

Selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go…

At school my favourite subject was English.  In this subject, I had a teacher extraordinaire, whom I completely and utterly worshipped, and who had a command of the English language I had never seen before and seldom seen since.

I have many vivid memories of her, and even more vivid memories of her reading to us at times.  There were of course many set works and projects, and as pupils, we all waded through them when we needed to, however, what I remember most is that this teacher truly believed that the most important thing in life, was love, and she used to repeat ad nauseum two sayings I suspect I shall never forget.  One was a quote by Shakespeare that “the course of true love never did run smooth”, and the other, I remember her telling us was, “love is proved in the letting go”.

I recall her reading the poem to us by Cecil Day-Lewis, the last two lines being:-

How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

My by-then-icon had tears streaming down her cheeks as she read this to us, and I looked at her in bewilderment wondering how on earth such a seemingly simple sentence could bring tears to anyone’s eyes?  I was sixteen then, naïve and unbroken.  Now, at the mid-life-crisis-age of forty, I too could shed a few tears over those lines, and I am now, a little less unbroken.

As a woman, and particularly as a woman with many close female friends, I am all too familiar at this age and stage of life, that love can for many of us be as allusive as that promised pot of gold at the end of that promised rainbow.  My friends and I now, whether we like it or not, all have a history of sorts, we have all loved, we have all lost, we have all stayed for longer than we should have, we have all too, at times, realised that the only way to protect ourselves and maintain or find our selfhood, is in fact to walk away, and let go.

Of course this grand plan of self-preservation sounds easy beyond the speaking of it, and it fails to mention that the path followed to get to that point of letting go, is in actual fact, the true test.

We tend to head into oncoming love-traffic with great ease, and get caught up in every single green light of emotion as easily as one, two and three.  What I believe the danger is, however, is that through these intoxicating and indeed hedonistic feelings, we often lose touch with ourselves.  We lose who we are, who we were, who we want to be, and we often compromise ourselves in order to fit into another’s brand new seemingly squeaky clean and exciting life.  Suddenly it is not what we as individuals want, but what we as a couple want, and sometimes this is not necessarily a good idea.

A great girlfriend of mine said to me at least a decade ago, that in relationships, one needs to be “the girl he fell in love with”.  I think of that saying often and I have to say, it can become a challenge.  If we are lucky enough to find love, or have it find us, we must remember to be that person we always were, and to remain true to ourselves.  The man who may (or may not) fall in love with us, will do so for a multitude of reasons, and we as women, need to keep these reasons intact. 

What life does show us so often though, is that love starts off as something wonderful, yet can over time change to something not so wonderful.  It is at the not so wonderful stage that a sense of self needs to prevail.  Love is a positive emotion and should remain as such – however, sometimes relationships dwindle, resentment creeps in, anger reveals itself, irritation emerges, and suddenly, we are in the middle of the fiery love forest, and that happy girl he fell in love with… is nowhere to be seen.

My intent is not to dwell on the negative that can at times befall us, my intent is, however, to dwell on the positivity of being a strong woman, of staying centered at all costs, of not being afraid to “stand up and be counted”, and for being honest.  I am not talking here about being honest with others – I am talking here of being honest with ourselves.  By this I mean knowing when it is that one needs to stay and try and carry on, and when it is that one needs to accept that the green light has turned to amber, and should now in fact, turn to red.

I am no longer that cute, flat-chested sixteen year old staring at my emotion-laden teacher in curious wonder, but I am still that person fixated with all things English, and beyond that, fixated with all things love.  And so it is with truth in my soul and hope in my heart, that I believe, that if in doubt, I will remain authentic to myself.  I will remember my teacher, I will remember her tears, I will remember her voice, and above all, I will remember when it is that I need to walk away, and when it is that I need to let go.

Life in the very fast lane...

As a forty-something-singleton, I consider myself lucky to have many fellow forty-something-singleton-girlfriends who are always up for a sip here or a gulp there in and around this great city of Johannesburg.  I have decided that in this country, Johannesburg is the blood that moves the body we call South Africa.  Of course, it suits me to think this way at present, and I reserve the right to change my view at any given or non-given moment.

But being a city girl at heart, despite my disastrous attempts at proving the opposite to be true, I have come to understand that every single city on this planet has its own energy, its own unique feel, and indeed, its own “life blood”.  In New York City, which is a place that will forever house a sliver of my soul, the life blood is of course that fabulous red drink we call the “Cosmopolitan”.  This is a cocktail made world famous by Carrie Bradshaw and her single friends in my ever-favourite Sex and the City, and attempted to be made even more famous by me, Philippa Spark, at various stages of very poor behaviour in an assortment of bars and night clubs across almost every square inch of that wonderful borough we call Manhattan.

Some of the greatest moments of my life have been spent in New York City, and I have memories that no-one will ever be able to take away from me, much less rival.

This entire preamble has been leading you up the muddied garden path that culminates in one of my most treasured sentences from one of the Sex and the City episodes.  The four girls, out on the town on a Saturday evening, Manhattan’s busiest night out (not that there are too many quiet nights in Manhattan), have had a bad run for their money with men.  They are all of a similar age and at fairly similar stages, facing the challenges of life in the dating lane.  As one who currently travels in the dating lane  (sometimes, in my case, this could actually be a “bus lane”), I can relate completely to a toast Carrie Bradshaw made on this particular evening, whilst quaffing a blood-red Cosmopolitan – she said, in her perfect voice, “here’s to the guys that love us, the losers who lost us, and the lucky bastards that get to meet us”.

I laughed out loud listening to her just then, most likely because I could relate completely to her sentiments, and I knew my girlfriends would too.  I read with interest earlier today, an article that Oprah sent out on women in their forties and how different they are to women in any other decade of their lives.

In our twenties we are wild and uninhibited (hell I miss those days), our thirties are often our most difficult – marriage, children, responsibility – none of these I am particularly good at, and then one gets to forty, and suddenly it is okay to let one’s hair down a little and just live unabashedly – this would include being able to make sweeping statements like Carrie did that evening, without feeling riddled with guilt for the next fifty two Saturdays.

All this being said, one must not forget the message being sent out by single women from here to New York, via satellite television – the guys that love us, the losers who lost us, and the lucky bastards that get to meet us.  I could start a dating warfare site with those words, but I am pleased to say I have better things to do on a Tuesday evening (just)… however, the message is, I have to say, profound.

There are those that we as women will love, and who may even love us back; there are those we will not love, but who may have the good sense to love us; there are those who, for whatever reason, chose to walk away from us and of course that must be due to huge character flaws on their part, and then there are those lucky ones still destined to meet us.  I have eight very wise words for the poor unsuspecting individuals who have yet to meet our small hive of queen bees and that is, “your lives will never be the same again”.

This is really a tribute to women in their fabulous, extraordinarily free forties; a tribute to New York City and all the incredible things that happen there on a nightly basis, but most of all, this is a tribute to all the single girls out there – no matter how flawed you feel you may be at any given time, somewhere, at some time, there is a guy out there, who will be lucky enough to love you, and have you love him back.

To my cousin Janice, on the eve of your fortieth birthday, and remembering your wild birthday party at The Boat House in Central Park which we all loved so very much, a decade ago tomorrow… may that lucky bastard find you soon… (and if you want to hold onto him, keep him away from your mad cousins for at least five years!).