When Ordinary Art is Extraordinary

I’ve been on a cyber journey for the past two months – seeking out interesting and exciting blogs to populate my link list and to inspire me in writing.

I looked to ‘writing’ focused blogs and found a lot of highly motivated American mom/writers who get up every day and fold the laundry, pack the kids lunches, and find the ‘me’ time somewhere to work on their books. They talk of WIPs and ‘Me Time Thursdays’ and I feel small and excluded like junior high at recess…

I looked into funny blogs – the witty ones who’s authors think of all the cute titles for their followers and have one liners to fit all life’s day to day drone. They leave me feeling amateur and ill-equipped to comment. They are outside the world of the PC moms, a world I like but am afraid to join.

I stumbled upon racial focused blogs and made my small comments amidst those filled with angst and resentment.

I even went over to the development bloggers – those who represent a past in me that I have yet to analyse and deconstruct. Hence I am skeptical and dismissive yet still drawn to their experiences and perspective. Yet there too I am an outsider. I loathe projects and funding and all the industry entails.

I am an expat now – and looked to this group as well. The expat bloggers. I joined some sites, linked some great blogs. It is here I relate best to what is written, to the experiences and outlook.

In my search I have found some great people, sites, inspiration.

But I have been false in my intentions and I have been led astray. By the desire to fit somewhere, to get a blog award with a pretty tea cup on the picture and post it proudly on my blog, from an appreciative ‘blogger friend’. It is addictive this linking and commenting and creating of a network.

But it is not why I started to blog. It has nothing to do with the powerful gut deep desire to express, to write, to create. To share genuinely what I have to share.

And that is why today’s post is a dedication. To a blogger I randomly found, who has truly inspired me and made me regret my hours making small comments around the blogosphere.

This is a woman in a small corner of the web, in a small town somewhere, who has not been blessed with a perfect life or millions of friends and followers. But she is a true writer. She is the essence of the word. She is a great, a classic, undiscovered.

I feel like I’ve been busking and found the hidden diamond. I am torn between sharing and not. But it is not for me to hold her writing to my heart alone. After all, art is like life and should be shared, opened up and appreciated.

Her name is Kelly and the site is humbly called Ordinary Art.

Please read and digest the beauty and talent you find there. Real self-giving words that grace the page in a way I can only dream of. Share the link to this site. Send her a blog award. Or not. But she deserves recognition and a broader audience and I felt compelled today to do my little part.

Kelly – thank you for genuine inspiration and a glimpse of your beautiful soul.

"We can't all be heroes - someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by"

The most inspirational thing I did this weekend was manage to leave my computer in it's bag, while we took off to a friend's beach house for some family time (read: lots of Scrabble, walks on the beach and over indulging)...

On my return to 'civilisation' I got a mail from a friend who is also one of the greatest teachers at my son's school (sadly he'll be leaving next school year, but that is the nature of International schools!). It appears some people accomplished a wee bit more over the Easter holiday!

I figure everyone can appreciate the inspirational value of a true story like this - of a regular guy with the right amount of determination and positive energy - achieving a lifelong dream! Excellent - have a read below. Go Johnny!!!

Friends!

Years ago, I swore that I would run a marathon before I turned 40. Well, I never really got around to it and I never really pursued this dream, partially because I don't really enjoy running. I've always liked running after a ball or a frisbee but simply running for the sake of running always seemed a little futile to me - and boring. And, if I'm honest, I've had a standing policy to avoid pain at all costs (which explains my steadfast reluctance to get any tattoos or piercings) and running for such a long distance looks and sounds painful to me.

Then I heard about the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town, which is not really a marathon at all. It's two races: a half marathon (21.1 km) and an ultra marathon (56 km). The idea is that one has the opportunity to run by two oceans, along the Cape Peninsula, which features some of the world's most stunning scenery imaginable. I decided to try my luck at the half-marathon, which seemed like a happy medium: not too long and hopefully pretty enough to warrant some reward beyond simply finishing. I had wanted to do it last year, but got sidetracked in my planning. Then, I wanted to do it this year but it turned out that I would be taking 14 students to Cairo the previous weekend, which seemed like a difficult combination of trips to make (Cape to Cairo in reverse, Rhodes must be turning in his grave). And yet, almost in the last moment (mid-February to be exact), Amber and I talked once more and decided that it might be worth spending our Easter holidays in Cape Town, a town we've always loved for its climate, scenery, amenities and friends. I registered for the half-marathon and suddenly I was faced with the daunting task of getting into running form in less than 10 weeks.

As I mentioned before, I've never run before and it was a whole new experience for me. But I conscientiously got up before sunrise three times a week and ran before school. At first, I ran for 20 minutes, then 40 minutes and finally I actually ran for 70 minutes a few times. All in all, I only ran on 16 occasions and only once in the two weeks leading up to the race because I was traveling. According to my estimates, the longest distance I had run in training was 10 km - about half of the distance of the race. But I started to get better and actually felt OK about trying this insane experiment (I still maintain that running makes little sense unless you have a destination in mind or at least the possibility of scoring/preventing a goal). Nonetheless, I arrived here in Cape Town full of great ambitions: the cut-off time for the half-marathon was 3 hours and according to my calculations, I was hoping to complete the race in about 2 hours 45 minutes - just enough to qualify but not so fast that I would hurt myself.

A couple friends of mine had also registered for the race and they had each run several full and half marathons, so they were clearly well ahead of me in many respects. I had no idea what to expect and the 24 hours preceding the race, I became increasingly withdrawn and pensive, as the anxiety of attempting (and possibly failing at) this challenge approached. On the morning of the race, we woke up at 4:00 a.m., ate some granola bars, drank lots of juice and water and headed off to the start of the race, which was scheduled to kick off at 6:00. By 5:15, there we were, with 10,000 other contestants, in the pre-dawn dark, eagerly awaiting the start of the race. When the gun finally sounded (in the distance, because we were a good 500 meters from the starting line), I was almost bursting with anticipation because I simply had no idea what to expect from this crazy endeavor.

The start of the race was a bit hectic, as everyone jockeyed to establish their position in the line-up and within minutes I lost sight of my friends. From then on, I was on my own and it was a strange type of solitude, among thousands of strangers, both in the race and along the side of the road, cheering us on. At first, the only ones cheering us on were the volunteer marshals showing us the way, a few prostitutes plying their trade in the early morning hours and quite a few homeless, who rubbed their sleepy eyes in disbelief as thousands of panting athletes intruded upon their sleeping quarters. But as the sun rose over Table Mountain, providing us with a majestic view of this stunningly beautiful natural monument, the first spectators stumbled out from their homes, many still in their pyjamas, clutching their coffee cups and breakfast croissants, nodding approvingly and perhaps offering a word or two of encouragement to this or that runner. But as the sun rose steadily and the day began in earnest, the streets started filling with an increasing number of spectators and soon the roads became alive with the sound of cheering people, bands playing music and open barbecues roasting bacon and eggs. The race numbers pinned to our chest and backs had our first names printed on them, so every now and then, I would be spurned on by the seemingly random call of a "C'mon, Johannes!" or "Lookin' good, Johannes, keep it up!", which was truly encouraging. I could usually barely muster more than an acknowledging nod and a smile but it really made you feel special to be recognized - even if it was temporary and fleeting.

I am not a fast long-distance runner. Literally thousands of people passed me and I was astounded at the various body types that participated in this race. Normally, when one thinks of runners, one thinks of lean, thin and diminutive statures; you know, the stereotypical Ethiopian or Kenyan athletes, who are little more than bones, sinews and aerodynamic calves. But every single type of body was visible in this crown of runners - and most of them were significantly faster than me. But that didn't matter because my goal was to not stop to walk at any point in the race, even if it meant running at a snail's pace (which was definitely my speed going up the hill on Southern Cross Drive, which in my mind will now always remain synonymous with the term "hell"). But I kept running, even passing some other runners, much to my (and their?) surprise. By the time I reached the finishing straightaway, I was more tired than I had ever felt before and felt pain in parts of my legs (and biceps, strangely enough) that I had never even knew existed.

But as I approached the final 100 meters or so, I could not help laughing out loud, pumping my fistin the air and clapping exuberantly because I was so extremely proud of what I had accomplished. Granted, there had been thousands of people finishing before me and people probably thought I was a little pathetic in my childish joy (and maybe I was) but I couldn't care less because I had made it! I cannot describe the feeling I had crossing that finish line and I don't know if anyone will ever understand but for me this was a great personal triumph. I couldn't contain my happiness and went around patting other runners on the back, simply because I had this irresistible urge to share my joy with others. We congratulated each other and I simply could not stop smiling, despite the throbbing pain in my legs and the aching in my entire body. I was rarely as proud as I was when I was filing by the race officials handing out the bronze medals that all finishers receive, even though I was one of thousands. Oh yeah, my finishing time was 2 hours and 33 minutes, faster than I had expected, which was also cool - but totally secondary to the achievement of reaching the finish line in under 3 hours.

I soon ran into my friends, who greeted me with a great big hug. We exchanged high fives, congratulations and soon found the beer garden to celebrate with a cold drink. We then watched the winners of the ultra marathon arriving (only 30 minutes after me, even though they ran almost thrice the distance!), which was inspiring as well. But in the end, it was simply a great experience to have been a part of. I don't know if I'll ever run a full marathon because I don't think I would have the discipline necessary to train for it. Then again, I still have another 20 months before I turn 40, so perhaps I'll get crazy again and feel the urge to embark on such an adventure. For now, I'm basking in the glory of having completed this task and that is plenty of gratification for me at this point.

Now I gotta put my feet up and do something really unhealthy, so I can feel like myself again. Yours,

Johnny Enzian
Irreverent Reverend (Johannes Schwerk)

A toast to you Johnny -


for giving us all a kick in the proverbial butt - what are our dreams? Live them!!!!

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly inspires

An excellent, touching, chilling, soul changing movie is a rare thing. In this day of brutally stupid, insulting empty humour and gun happy blood spurting American crap churned out weekly.

Living in a country where there are no movie theaters anyway, and the video rental shops are all renting illegal hand-me-downs from their relatives overseas… it is even more rare to find a movie that moves you.

We found one this week. Miraculously we had a few nights of peace and time to vegetate – with no foreign business visitors to entertain… we decided to visit the video shop. In Ghana, the concept of racking movies alphabetically has not yet surfaced… so I did the usual eye scan over all the obviously ridiculous choices, until I found a few with interesting covers. One of them was a foreign film, which is usually a no-no in our house as ‘someone’ hates reading the subtitles, but this one claimed it had English dubbing. The name was obscure “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It caught my interest though, and for $2, I figured if it was unwatchable, we hadn’t broke the bank.

We set up our livingroom theater – (it does pay to have a gadget-man in your life at times…) and put the lights off to watch on the big pull down screen. Two hours later we were both moved. Deeply. What a movie, what a story, how excellently done, filmed, dubbed, presented. Wow.

The movie is an adaptation of a book. The book was written by the person who is the central character in the film. This is a true story about the former French editor of Elle magazine, who suffered a massive stroke and found himself completely paralyzed in every single way except his left eye. His mind was in top form. He was completely trapped in his body. With the painstakingly patient help of a speech therapist, he dictated the entire book by blinking letters… about his experience and view of the world around him.

One can’t help but imagine throughout the film what it would feel like to be in his place. To know it’s possible… it puts everything in perspective. It takes away everything we experience daily – completely turns life as we take for granted, on it’s head.

The depiction is touching, subtle, dark, a masterpiece.

Everyone should watch this film, read this book. Anyone who sees a film like this could not ignore the vast differences culturally between Europe and North America. It is presented without bling, without ‘in your face’ cinematography, without Hollywood names… it leaves one to see the real people in it, the gritty difficult reality, the mirror that we fear to hold up to ourselves…

But the journey is so worth it.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, Fourth Estate, hc, 144 pp, $24.95