kagablog

 
by Ramon dos Santos
 
 
As we travelled back from Beaufort Wes to Capetown I realized I had not seen this much horizon, maybe ever before in my life.
That year somebody tried to blow up a couple of shopping malls while, at the same time, another somebody played a lot of Macy Gray.
We cheered everytime we heard her sing in Stones, inbetween rock ballads and final countdowns. Sweet and dear Macy.  Lost, like a lonely fairy-princess, in a dark wood of German-minded rockers.
 
Kaganof and I had been talking for days about how to become a guru.
The reccuring dilemma being the demographics of our potential following.
Firstly: how do we get one? Then: how do we make sure that ours stays a stricly under 25 girls-club? We had little money, some looks, a lot of attitude and one 15 year old Toyota Corolla named Lucy between us.
“At least Lucy qualifies for a membership. Agewise,” Kaganof said and raised his glass to the finest woman on four wheels. (Where are you now, Lucy?)
 
On our arrival in Capetown, having lunch near Camps Bay and eating an obscenely sexual fried caucasian fish, the sunlight hit the wine like good news.
Having struggled with logistics for a few days it was then decided over lunch that we would start with being each other’s guru.
It wouldn’t give us the unlimited sex and admiration of  countless followers, but at least provide the moral support and comfort that only a guru can give you. We would take care of the rest later.
We drank some more wine, looked at the sun and both felt a great relief in the fact that we were sitting next to our guru.
 
Later that night at a party that did not seem to have a heart or a center, with the effect that everybody just kept walking from room to other room all night long, it quickly became clear that we were the only gurus on duty.
At first it looked like free hunting. The typical brainless college muscle that represented the male sex seemed no match for us, ambitious young mental Thunderbirds.
But it’s hard to be a guru, carrying high standards of truth and honesty and devotion to the now, when the audience is only interested in the cosmetic element of social intercourse. And as the party dragged on and the cosmetics wore off, we started to doubt if these people even deserved our salvation.
 
Next to the guru-squad, only one other human being there that night seemed to be driven by something else than media. Something uncontrollable and spastic. A madness and a sadness and a lot of pain and destructiveness.
But also, the exstatic.
The almost real.
She went by the name of Christine.
On the first night of our mutual guruness, she was the only woman that followed us to the Corolla and breakfast at Saul’s.
As we played the juke-box and our steaks, I lost touch with the reality of my guruness and fell hopelessly in love for the next couple of hours with Cristine, who danced in her blue dress, all alone, to Pink Floyds’ Great Gig in the Sky, while outside a grey sleepy light anounced a new day.
At the same time Christine, following a compulsive need to make her life as complicated as possible, fancied herself getting a crush on Kaganof who, bless him, was still hovering majestically over things and matters, and showed no intention of playing a major role in her reality show.
We continued breakfast at Llundundo bay, eating the first fresh leaves of light. Kaganof and I joined forces and we made the earth rotate towards the sun. Christine said she felt it too.
While we talked about death, love, Pink Floyd, Webern, Schopenhauer, fried calamari and Christine’s desperate struggle with life, Kaganof had, with the ease of a cat, fallen asleep on the rocks.
I instantly recognized destiny and decided that this was the moment to strike.
But when I turned to Christine she was looking very hard at the sea, all the way across the Cape of Good Hope, right into the heart of the Arctic.
Love was definitely not in the air.
Then I noticed she was crying.
Without a sound.
Almost real.