On the Couch with CA

It was Thursday 5th of December 2013 and I was trying to think about what to write about on my blog.  Outside the Cape Doctor was on its "best behaviour" as usual.  As it howled outside my office window, it reminded me of a time living in District Six ( "D6" ).  I thought this would be a good subject but the event that occurred later swayed my thinking to pay tribute to a fallen hero. The year was 1978 and we were preparing for Christmas.  At the time I did not realise that that would be our last Christmas at "Kildare", Windsor Street, Cape Town - "Kildare" the name of the street my grandmother was born and lived in, in Newlands before it was declared a white area - this was our address in D6. The wind was blowing and I was walking about in the bare streets of D6 where once many houses and buildings stood, now all bulldozed to make way for white people.  Our house stood adjacent to our neighbours who refused to move until we were...

With just little over a month to go before this year, 2013 ends, I start to look back at it and how far I have come in such a short space of time, compared to the 48 years I have been around - it is quite remarkable. Every day is a challenge, but it is a challenge that always comes with a lesson.  Just waking up and deciding that today is the day to just let go and let God, the universe, or whoever we decide determines our life to take control can be a very hard one. Far too often we find ourselves wanting to control every situation, every minute of every day.  Sometimes we just need to let go and let it be. In the words of my daughter "you have OCD".  Of course when one has this you don't know it.  So I had to look it up. Yes I guess that is one I did not know.  "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder".  Bloody nerve to come and tell me I have OCD just because, the mat is slightly skew, or there is speck of dirt on the tiles, or the coffee table is too f...

As it is not in my nature to keep quiet when faced with issues related to discrimination, inequality, crude comments about the country I live in, let alone a man who sacrificed his personal life alongside many others, who I have known personally and indirectly, to allow the following comment from a certain David Cocks who commented on Sir Richard Branson's blog about "Mandela's Way" to go unanswered.   David Cocks had this to say in his comment: "I was living in South Africa at the time when Nelson Mandela was the chief motivator for the ANC as well as the major influence for APLA and various other anti-white organisations.  He was the force behind indescribable murders and torture carried out on innocent white people who very often were employers of black staff on farms and in other business.  Their deaths left vast numbers of black families unemployed and homeless apart from the actual brutality of the callous murders themselves.  Before slapping Mad...

He sailed the seven seas from Cape Town to Antarctica, and many other places, but always returning to the pub down the road before making his way home to face the "music" .   This was the travels of my father. I never got to know my father very well but for the time that he was around, I did get to spend some time with him.  According to my siblings and mother, I was his favourite, and was tasked with asking him anything whenever someone wanted something.  Perhaps it was not I who was his favourite, but that I had the courage to ask.  I have learned that if you don't let someone know your needs, you are not going be open to receiving. I remember him taking me to work with him when he worked at Freddy Hirsch and then to ballet class on a Saturday morning in Plein Street and going for lunch at the Entertainer afterwards, where we sat and had viennas and chips.  One Saturday we sat and had lunch with some woman and her son.  I guess my father knew her...

I recently posted on Facebook a request for topics to write on, and a friend and ex (won't say "old" for fear of a nasty comeback comment) classmate, suggested I write my views of freeing the mind.  So considering that I usually have an opinion on almost every subject under the sun (No!  I am not a Miss Know it All) here is my view on freeing the mind which is open for debate.  I personally don't think that we can actually free our mind unless we are prepared to block out everything that goes on around us.  We are constantly bombarded with advertisements from a number of sales companies trying to sell us something because it is going to make us more beautiful, thinner, richer, healthier, or even confident.  We worry about our families, our work about the neighbours having something better than we do. Then we have politicians and religious leaders all trying to condition us into thinking and behaving in a certain way.  Not to mention, society bre...

It was a cold, windy day, and the crowds were gathering in their numbers to come and listen to the king. I stood on the other side of the giant walls which surrounded the gathering and I could hear the screams and shouts as the king made his appearance.  I was not there to listen to the king, but to try and earn some extra cash from those who were. This was my first attempt at becoming an entrepreneur and I had dragged my third eldest sister along to come and assist me in this venture.  We had arrived early that morning after I had dropped off my daughter with my second eldest sister who was to baby-sit her.  I was very excited about doing this and was expecting business to thrive. I was going to try and sell a thousand rolls and because I thought it was a great opportunity I shared my idea with a colleague/friend who then decided she needed to also take advantage of the opportunity.  I never thought about competition as I believed there was enough to go...

It is that time of year when South African high school students are finishing off their final year at school and the levels of stress amongst the students and parents alike are at an all time high. This time of year always takes me back to 1984 when I was preparing for my final exams. I am not sure which exam I was studying for that fateful, fortunate, strange (not sure what to call it) night when I was sitting on my bed studying and listening to the voices on the other side of my bedroom door.  It was the voices of my mother and siblings, and they were having a good old conversation and laugh amongst themselves.  It was at that point that I realised that it did not matter how hard I had tried over the years to get my mother's attention or did everything I could to please her, it was just never going to be enough or even ever happen. I decided there and then that enough was enough for me, and that perhaps ending my life, would be the best thing to do.  I sat ...

APOLOGIES  FOR THE BREAK IN TRANSMISSION I AM A WORK IN PROGRESS AND PERFECTION TAKES TIME SEE YOU IN A LITTLE WHILE

I suppose I could go on and on about how Romeo and Juliet fell in love and then tragically died - but that is not how this story ended (and thankfully so). The story does however come to an abrupt ending (well so I think) when we realised that even though we love each other, there are just too many "hurdles"  to take into account. We could so easily have continued to see each other behind closed doors, but that is not the ingredients for a honest relationship.  And although I cannot speak for the other party ( Romeo ), I can say that for a brief moment in my life I knew and still know what it feels like to love someone and be loved by that person in return. One suddenly feels alive to all kinds of possibilities that we only tend to dream about.  When he checked into rehab for alcohol abuse almost three months after we met I immediately picked up the pen and started to write.  I had decided that I would write to him about what I was doing while he was in reha...

After finally sorting out where he knew me from and getting some chit-chat out of the way, he started his life story with me with the following words: "I told my mother I am getting divorced again, and her response was - 'don't worry my son you will find your soul-mate' ".   And did the caution lights start flickering violently in my head when I hear him say this.  'Again' – what does he mean 'again' ? Turns out that he is married for the second time.  So I immediately say "Please do not tell me your wife is to be blamed." "No, it is all my fault, I am to be blamed" he says.  Well that is very brave of him to admit I think to myself.  Usually guys are wanting to look for sympathy from a "potential victim" .   But here was a man willing to admit he is the one in the wrong.  This was the start of our conversation on the evening we met in the pub when I should have gone straight home.  I decided not ...

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.  So you have read the start of how "Romeo and Juliet" met.  And from the messages I have received through Facebook, I gather you want to hear more about how these two end up. I would like to warn you that this is not a story for the faint-hearted.  Especially, if you have found yourself, in our shoes.  Some of y...

It is hard to believe that it would take an alcoholic less than 28 days to help me realise that I could feel and experience love.  It was the evening of the 6 th of December 2011 and some persistent voice was telling me to get off the train and to drag myself into the local pub on the corner.  So without any further debate with myself, I got off the train. I am not much of a drinker, but there I was hanging out in the pub chatting to a friend when next best thing I hear a voice from across the room say, "I know you" .  Yes, right, here in a pub and you know me, what a pick-up line I think to myself.  I give the bloke a stare and before I can say anything he says "You were at the same school as me".  Oh God! he just does not stop – another pick-up line.  What is he trying to achieve, when I never even attended any co-head schools, so he is clearly off his trolley.  Then without giving up, trying to get my attention, he says "you are from the same...

Behind the mask of a clown lives a person who sometimes chooses to forsake their own happiness in order to make others happy. Clowns will spend their days behaving like, what others will refer to as "total idiots",  yet be the most brilliant of minds.  It takes great courage to make a "fool" of one's self when you know that you are alive to what is going on around you.  Sometimes we need some crazy people in our lives to remind us that we are not alone when we do feel a bit out of it.  It is said that it is crazy people who think they can change the world and who actually do. Clowns have the ability to do just that.  They make us laugh when we feel down and help us forget all the troubles that cloud our daily lives. There have been many times I have been referred to as a clown. Even though I do not wear a painted mask or have a red nose and wear funny clothes (or perhaps I do wear funny clothes), I have discovered that I do wear a mask.  I ...

The following is inspired by all the times I felt I was alone and afraid.  This is dedicated to everyone who finds themselves at the edge of their despair. Her bare, cut and bruised, clay dusted feet were aching from the long run through the rocky desert.   She had no idea where she was heading.   All she knew was that she had to get away from the evils that were chasing her.   Everything she owned from the shoes on her feet to the clothes on her back she had left it behind.   There she was, naked, for all the world to see, but no one could see her, she was alone.  Alone in her mind, in her space, in her despair.  There was no way out, but to run, and run she did. It was during the middle of the night that she had woken up to discover that she was alone with no one to depend on and no one to speak to.  'When did all this change', she thought to herself.  Nothing had really changed, she was always alone, it was just the reality tha...