No headline necessary
ST CLEMENTS again tonight for the reading of the balance of the 100-worder short stories. The place is becoming a mini-hub of Durban art and culture, and it was there last week that I got into conversation with the vivacious Hannah Lurie, who sculpts and does all kinds of other artistic things as well.
The latest is a book of her poems, titled No Title Necessary. It's a compendium of wit and feeling, across the widest range, and what strikes me is a poem dedicated to Douglas Livingstone, a Durban scientist/artist who is sadly missed.
Doug was a wonderful character. Apart from being one of South Africa's most important poets, who honestly explored that mysterious interface between life and the cosmos, he was also a delightful character, full of fun and unassuming. Not too many people have a doctorate in microbiology as well as in English literature, yet Doug wore it oh so lightly.
He would describe the process of writing a poem. "The idea surges around in you for weeks, months. Then one morning you wake up and there are a whole lot of empty wine bottles and there's an ashtray full of stompies – and there's a poem."
Hannah describes one of the worst days of her life being when the brass bust she made of Douglas was stolen from where it had been placed in the Kwa Suka theatre, obviously to be sold to a scrap metal dealer and melted down. This was a few years ago. There was a big hoo-ha and a reward was offered.
But then a tramp arrived, wheeling a barrow covered by a sack. He whipped off the sack. There was Doug's bust. The tramp gave no explanation and would accept no reward. There was a fittingness. Doug was the kind of man who would respect a tramp for being human and interesting.
Hannah's closing lines on Doug:
Rest in your poets Paradise
Sorcerer of science and language –
How fitting that your stone
Will always be living.
No club for him
MORE emerges from the story of the photographer who fell out of a Harvard trainer off Durban and survived after parachuting into the sea. It seems this happened some time in the 1940s rather than the 1950s, as originally thought, but that's not the point.
Two Pirates lifesavers paddled to the assistance of Stan Gee, not just one. As related in an earlier column, Les "Rubber" Robinson took Gee onto his paddleski and transferred him with difficulty to a harbour tug. They were about three miles out to sea.
But not before Gabie Botha – who had followed Rubber from the beach – had dived about a dozen times to free Gee from nine parachute cords in which his leg was entangled.
An interesting conversation preceded this effort. Robinson said: "You dive, Gabie, you've already been bitten once by a shark. Nobody gets bitten twice."
In fact he was wrong about that. Botha was to be attacked by another shark, and again he survived.
The first time was while body-surfing off Country Club beach in 1944. The second was three years later, also at Country Club, again body-surfing.
In the first attack he got a huge bite on his left thigh, which just missed a major artery, He made it to the beach bleeding copiously and was rushed to hospital, where he was delirious for two nights and a day and his shocked parents at his bedside discovered the depth of the vocabulary he had acquired in the Pirates clubhouse.
In the second attack he felt something tugging at his foot – "probably just tasting" - and he pulled free. The shark then bit him on the backside, nothing like as seriously as before. Again he made it to shore, trailing blood.
Stan Gee got membership of the international Caterpillar Club for successfully baling out of an aircraft. For Gabie Botha – today a perky 86-year-old – there's no club. There just aren't any others who've survived two shark attacks.
l
Tailpiece
PADDY and Mick are ploughing a potato field when the plough turns up three unexploded hand grenades.
Paddy: "We must take dese to de police."
Mick: "What if one explodes?"
Paddy: "Den we tell dem we found only two."
Last word
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment