Diary entries, penned across the stillness of three Kramer evenings that stretched too long

-Lufefe Radebe

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I shared an intimate moment with myself recently. I have spent time reconnecting with friends; whimsical, passionate souls who lead lives that drift in obscure directions, however hopeful, for they are people of a particular, delightful madness. People that percolate a fascinating charm, that turns time spent together into grand moments of hilarity. Comrades who seem to have mastered the artful practice of living imperfectly (whatever that means) and by being a friend to their hilarious and absurd lives, I connect with something that brings me closer to the human condition itself. Just like umngan’wami, uSbonelo Ngcobo, my childhood friend. Once a bully, now a refined romantic. 

I spent a warm night with him in Alexandra on a visit yesteryear. That particular evening, we laughed and reminisced about the old days (we seldom see each other, so when we do, we find ways to squeeze the past, present and the future into single conversations) and we reflected as amajita on his life experiences being a young, vulnerable tormentor, while negotiating internalised trauma and hatred from his Gomora childhood. It were ironic in so many ways! Those bloody words bullies like him used to strike fear in other children, have woven their way into our own future lives. However, I think in a way that is forceful, yet poetically philosophical (or perhaps another animated attestation to my grave impulse to attach meaning to everything). Nonetheless, quite hilarious if you were to ask me.

‘After skool is after skool!’ 

That night was a snapshot of the timely maturity of what has been my life. Our lives. To grow up, nokuphelezelwa isikhathi, is a thing of melancholy. To live in a world that is so vague, yet unlimited. Constantly negotiating it. So, what happened to me in those formative (high school) years? I do not exactly understand the influence (on me), however I still feel the sharp remnants of that struggle still agitating my peaceful existence. Pushing me to seek healing and its tenants. Remnants of pain still clench and torment deep into my soul. Whatever it is, it clings to me. 

And so I write. 

What other alley is out there that would lead me to find peace. 

To another kind, much recent memory. A Friday afternoon I spent with uThembeka. Her laughter always comes to me freely, liberated as the air around her. She has a radical love, one that sees me. Love that inspires seldom childish giggles, feelings I left back in my childhood. I shared a profound time with her, and I understood that when I felt a warmness crawl my skin, at the sound of my own laughter. I had long ago forgotten what it was like, to laugh and laugh long… Life is getting better. Life is getting better.

And to finally allow myself back to intimacy. A brief be-ing with myself. A subtle reminder. As much as life has been hard, it is unfolding in happenstances I do not want to begin to understand. In small miracles. Slow miracles. To a patient healing. Life, as it turns out, is getting better… 

The following scribbles are just that, scribbles, other entries and streams of consciousness. 

On the peripheral embrace of Hillbrow 

To speak of a Darkness that is a rupture and transcendence. One that dwells and finds itself in the liminal inbetweens of forged, and not granted identities. Negotiating its naked Self against a world that breathes the humid history of its humanity back to its face; one that has sought to sever the sacred ties between its Body and its unrelentless spirits. Now, to begin the process of reconciliation is to realise the strange form of magic that rests in quiet and searing realisations, and I think it is a strange form of magic. Oh, that sad Stage that erects itself in the peripheral embrace of Hillbrow. It came with the little happenstances that either break us or make us whole. 

A velvet, cruel Ballet of Self-alienation and reclamation 

To witness the cruel dance. A dance of friction, sacrifice, erasure. The artistic, yet violent osmosis of Darkness into grand theatres and Stages of life, where other truths exist; like the struggle of Darkness against itself. While whiteness can and does exist as a contradiction, the self-imposed civil-war of Darkness within that contradiction can and often does emerge to find from itself a peculiar, artful form of consciousness and beauty. A glittering beauty that will never be defined by the world’s gaze, but one that will be kindly whispered, as kind as Orion’s Belt, cultivated in the reclamation of what was always ours - our lives. 

Yet fragile, but still joy 

To be-ing with happiness, and exist-ing with joy, I learnt, may be to accept the world as it is. To live faithfully, and open to the joy that washes over the sharp and brief connections between kindred spirits. A Joy that is yes, joyful, yet fragile, for it is Darkness we are talking about. Therefore it lives and tenses in between. In between, living perpetually in the inharmoniousness that demands its erasure, therefore existing as an unseen body; claustrophobically between parts of the Self that seek and long for connection, and those that have no choice but to survive the perpetual violence of that endeavour. It is an existence that is quite, yet defiant. An existence that can be joyful, when one accepts the violence unto their bodies in the name of Darkness. Fragile, yet joyful. 

Before I conclude..

The words that will follow, are words that I wish I had when I lived in the in-betweens. Between Agony and Ecstasy. To then leave destruction behind for the reclamation of self. 

I know not any other alley that can invite me closer to an honest existence such as the act of writing.

And so I write. 

I exist as a contradiction. 

A punished contradiction, for its liberating endeavour it invites our Dark souls. 

Honesty. 

We can be certain of this, that Stage on the peripheral embrace of Hillbrow will shatter. And from the dust will be born new lives, new stories and a new possibility for a much softer, lighter, kinder existence that may emerge upon us. 

What about tomorrow? 

One day the Black Body with its inherent majesty, will no longer be a reference for subjugation, but a tenant of history– as it has always been. It will longer be one with oppression and silence but demand volume, drawing the world to its will. For this body we are talking about is not just a thing. Think of it from this said perspective: That this Black body is but a much more artful, violent, stubborn fire. A radical beating heart of the living. A true testament that we ought to seldom concern ourselves about tomorrow. Black people never know what tomorrow will look like for them. But we will be there. Blackness, is an animal of its own, mahn. A true testament that indeed, no force, no power, can ever extinguish its flame. We will rise on the Sun.