kagablog

Hansie Slim

Of:

Die tyd-kompleks

Metaphysics is fictional. And all fictional narratives afford a God’s-eye-view. A slow one, initially brimming with mute distortion, with things left not yet said (not yet known, to the young waking gods of design). This is the trajectory of all creation. And of tragedy. And of all Man’s joys and woe. The orgasms come at the end. Revelations. First we go and then we come. And off we go again, aiming for the next vista, next vibration. Gert only heard “end”, and “off”, and “God”. Gert had long resigned himself to these snatched voices; taunting, coaxing, musing, hugging in the vast tattered pages of his mind, his extra-cranial expanse; twirling in those Higher winds. This redeemed Gert from Logic, with its polite wife and DSTV and two grinning kids; with its money and responsibilities and blowjobs in the car (its secretary). It’s fucken ‘cellphone’. A rare Eureka - a brown, sullen eureka - came to Gert then, as he was climbing through upper Suburbia, the splashing lawns and racist Rottweilers (snobist, also), up his mountain: “FOK LOGIKA!!” God. End. Off.

Gertjie, unfortunately, didn’t see his Dassie again, nor its twin. He did manage to hit a bird; but it fluttered away, then flew, up away into the mountain’s dust-heavens. Into the browns. Gertjie sat down boyishly, looked at the Tok-Tokkie. Beating its drum. The Tok-Tokkie had the biggest drum on earth. Thabo had told him that. Its drum was the earth. “My dassie eet Tok-Tokkies..”, Gertjie decided. Propped the stone; aimed his kettie high; introduced the stone to alien reality: Welcome to velocity. Welcome, to SKY. Sheer terror. But the cosmos was kind. Naughty, but kind. The cosmos had its fun and then nestled the little stone back into its nest of stasis; its Mommy and Daddy of Still. Pat it reassuringly. Gertjie didn’t see any of this; just the initial, twanging delight of the stone’s ascent into brief hells.

Gertjie would never see another dassie again, but didn’t know this. Gertjie Would, however, see that naeltjie again (with his future, libidinous self panting on his behalf), twice more. And he would see other naeltjies also, transfigured, leading to other, more vividly humming centres of Eros.

Gert was cold. It was very cold out here, in the streets. Much colder than he had braced for. Gert, tossing about in the apologetic huddle of foliage that was his bed, was almost having second thoughts. But Life was convincing. Life had decided on his behalf. Du Preez & Kie Ingelyf would, obviously, not take him back. Not after that. And - toss, toss - he really didn’t beam at the idea of going somewhere else, a fugitive; the desperate scramble of shaving, and trying to clean, and combing and cutting and pretending. Gert didn’t know this, but

tomorrow he would meet his new life, his new family. “Broer. Jy’s nou deel van ons. Kom.” For now, though, Gert was alone. Wifeless, in all practical senses (she would petition for divorce soon; back in the real world, which still clung, still loomed large), he had no friends worth mentioning. Gert was childless too, something which he sensed had contributed to his escape; his final, violent shrugging off of Maria and the dull joyless life she had built around them. “Waar’s jy nou Maria?”, he smiled at the image of her crying and waning and crying into the faintly accusing embrace of her mother. Her dad (”Daardie ou bliksem.”), sternly behind them, arms appropriately folded. Crying with her newly acquired debt, her bleak future. This helped Gert find sleep.

In Gert’s central dream, the world of Right and Wrong and Responsibility was after him, in the form of some hidden beast, hunkered down and shivering with might just beyond his periphery. And in this dream Gert was hiding, then hiding some more; now hiding quickly, breathlessly, now hiding carefully. But Gert could not shake his periphery, it was everywhere.

When Gert woke up, his sole cushion was gone. His wallet with its ID and the four hundred fifty-three rand. The streets were showing him in.

***