Big Minded Small Town-edness

So after all the drama of living in my nation’s capital for a decade or so, and deciding to leave for smaller (greener?) pastures where the animal fat has been chewed and the supposedly greener grass has been smoked, the romance of the ideal has settled.
The truth is not much has changed. The same people are still the same people or perhaps different people are still different people.
The nomad, who is myself (with a recently acquired hunter-gatherer spirit) has decided to settle in a town which smells of nothing in particular, but faint traces of sea-spray and complacency that can be detected by a very analytical snout.
In retrospect, there are still things I miss about My Nation’s Capital.
The serious-looking lawyers and barristers with huge briefcases oozing a post-modern kind intellectual testosterone on Schoeman Street in the mornings walking past Pretoria News head office with their wigs, the taxi ranks; my ‘magwinya and loose-cigarette mall’.
The petite TUT students in their naïve afro centricities with their portfolio bags and weed pouches and body piercings. The public transport system which, I’ve now realised, is seriously advanced. Busses that take you anywhere where the name Pretoria still applies.
The young professionals and job market stock in their Corsa Lites and Citi Golfs smoking Peter Stuyvesants and recalling, yet another, Sundowns’ fluke of a victory and the chaos that followed.
The Rastafarians, the fake Rastafarians and the genuine Trustafarians. The Asian Marabastad community. The astounded and dazed feeling I’d get after having spent, yet another night in Sunnyside.
The heritage-rich skyline with haunted Edwardian-styled buildings now inhabited by ‘fatcat’ city officials whose gravy-enriched farts feed decades of apartheid’s ghosts of corruption.
So I am this man, still possessed by the contradictory yet authoritative charms of My Nation’s Capital but somehow bedding this simple virgin with round cheeks who obtains the greatest pleasure from missionary positions and grilled porkchops by the seaside. She, besides her name, has absolutely nothing to do with the advertised spontaneity of London.
Though, I must admit, I’m content in her complacent arms. This is the city of my upbringing of which I have very little memory of. It’s like meeting someone for the first time again, this time in the waking life.
That confuses the natives though.
“Khanyo, where are you from?” one asks.
I reply “I’m from Pretoria”.
“So how is it that you speak xhosa?”
“..because I’m actually from here”
That usually ends the conversation as I feel the label of “Madman” sticking to my oily forehead.
Sometimes to the contrary:
“..so how’s that dude?” they continue, to my dismay
“I grew up here then I left for Witbank when I was a laaitie…long story..”
“aw, cool. I want to also go to Joburg. Apparently it’s quite happening there.”
“Well, the thing is, Pretoria and Joburg are not the same place..” I add in futile ‘patriotism’.
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean..”
With that, I concede. I’d then be followed by a barrage of questions about celebrities and concerts and the party scene and fashion and all things glamorous to a small minded bumpkin in a small town.
So all in all, I guess the real lesson I’m learning from all of this is Humility. It’s funny how life’s situations can force you out of one ideal into another. And the manifestations of each ideal can be even more interesting.
The manifestation of my kind of humility is solitude. And by solitude I’m not referring to being a recluse. Solitude, by my definition, is freedom from any tangible association with acquaintances. So that’s what I’m trying to maintain.
This came to me whilst I was sitting in a pub aptly named Brittania (?) with an unidentified cousin of mine and his entourage. So over a dozen milk stouts or so, I listened to their conversations drifting between their former headmaster’s new house and Sarah Comley’s new drug habit. She, in actual fact, was no-one they’d met personally or even went to school with but she was known. A questionable reputation followed her, I presume.
By the end of that night I was perplexed, disoriented and frustrated; I found nothing enriching the personality or even the brain in a whole night’s drinking. Instead I felt as if I was going insane and that something had been taken from me!
You see, it is the solitude that now helps me to detach myself. If I wanna go for a beer, company is not a prerequisite. If I wanna go to the beach, I’m happier doing it alone. It keeps my brewing narcissism in check. It dissipates the urge to enlighten, to rise above what I diagnose to be chronic small-mindedness in the people I’ve met.
But is this not narcissism on it’s own? I mean it is somewhat judgemental – not everyone can be the same right?
I guess that’s how we are as human beings with our left-brained logic. You take a sample from a certain number of people from different parts of a controlled area and divide the results per capita in that area. What you get is a representation of the general populace obtained by a ratio.
In that, regard, I may be a little bit judgemental. But may I remind you that prejudice is merely a survival instinct we all have. It’s built into our formulae as heirs to this savage kingdom.
What makes me laugh is, historically, this region is the birthplace of some of our nation’s greatest thinkers and, yet, I am just not finding their legacy as much is I’d hoped. Maybe they were fed up for the same reasons and took their legacies to the Apartheid Museums, Jozi poetry sessions, street names in Soweto, State Libraries or Freedom Day celebrations funded by the inefficiencies of basic service delivery.
Maybe it’s just me.