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I despair. My children are becoming mall rats. As a child I use to walk miles through veldt and hill. Take my lunch and tea by sparkling rivers. Skinny dipping in the stream.
If my children went skinny dipping there now, the householders would chase them off their front lawn!
Where can they walk to? Through suburbs and factories? Next to polluted streams stinking of sewage and litter?
Sitting there I was struck by the "Sense of Place". The sense that this place is unique and special. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the entire country.
They want to mine the sand dunes. I hope the crocodiles eat them first. No sculptor could remould that line of dunes back into beauty they hold now, let alone a mug on a bulldozer.
Pretoria is special. A city between parallel ranks of hills. I often visualise what a place would look like if you could "lift" the city off it. Pretoria must have been wondrous. Pity about the city though.
Same with the environment. Tempers flare and petitions fly if a mining company dares try mine some distant Game Reserve.
They shutting down another park in the city and rezoning it. Oh. Well. Its only used by drunks and layabouts anyway.
DAMMIT MAN! We live here! In the city! Not in some distant game reserve which we see maybe twice in our lives. Here! We see it every day.
Whilst I will be first in line at any petition protesting any infringement of our scant game parks, I want to live in beauty. Not merely visit it!
Why are we so small? Why are we content to stuff ourselves into wee apartments and flats. Into stuffy little houses surrounded by a tiny idealization of an english country garden? Stuffy houses with stuffy "voorkamers" packed with "pretty things".
We scurry to work to the mall to home. We grit our teeth and bear it. Let us just get home, it will be alright.
Its weekend, lets go out! Lets go make love in the sun! HA! Lets pack a picnic and sip wine on the banks of a stream whilst the children swim. Lets hike along the mountain and enjoy the view, pausing only to sip water from streams we cross.
Ha! There is nowhere private. Nowhere safe. The stream stinks and puts me off my food. Let the children swim in that? No way! Walk the mountain? Thats private property mate. Can't even find a way onto it. Drink that water?! Nah. Lets just go to the mall.
You arrive, park your car. There is a bod with a smile and a house uniform minding the cars, so don't worry. Down stairs are lounges with conversation nookies, games and free chat rooms. If you're in a nookie then others aren't welcome to butt in. If you in a chat room, well then, thats what you here for, free chat.
Coffee, food, fresh bake goods, a tea garden, pub, resturant. Also a second hand bookshop. Bookshop with BIG sign. Take any book, sit down and read for as long as you like. No obligation.
Every night there would be a live musician - mostly of the quieter sort.
Upstairs would be amongst other things bedrooms for those who not up to driving home. Live services. Nails, massage, Reiki, fortune tellers, etc. Service providers welcome to rent rooms by "time slot".
The garage would have comfy old chairs and a eternal stew pot, bread and wine bottle. Any one off the street without a penny can come have a bite to eat, a bit warmth and a sip of something to ease the mind. (OK, so the wine bottle is the left overs from the paying guests slightly diluted.)
How can we design cities that pour sewage into its own arteries of joy? How can we bare to drop so much as a chip packet? Why are we so small in soul?
Comments, queries and conversation.
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