Joy an Act of Resistance

Finding joy and surrender in life's wild tides

It’s easy to complain, it’s easy to be negative and it’s easy to see the worst in people. On the other hand, finding joy and cultivating a positive perspective on some of life’s real grit and grime, is, I think, is the much harder path.

But we all know deep down that the harder paths always offer the far better adventure.

Lately, with life feeling a little uncomfortable for me: health issues of people I love, plans unravelling, letting go of connections I’m attached to and constantly stubbing my toes on all of life’s little obstacles, I am encouraged to find the joy in the grit of things.

I’m not an advocate for being happy all the time- I think sadness and strife is of equal value in life to the good times, but I’m an advocate for finding bits of happiness within the unhappiness, learning lessons in the absolute pit of things and offering joy as an act of resistance to a world that is so seamlessly etched with circumstances that provide the perfect breeding grounds for easy negativity.

Dansavan: The Best of Times; The Worst of Times

When I accidentally looked down at my passport one day and saw that my Vietnamese visa was expiring far sooner than I had thought, it was time to succumb to what all seasoned travellers have to do at one point or another: the classic and notorious “Border- Run”. Whilst some travellers have the luxury of dishing out a few extra dollars to hire services to do this task for them, other travellers who have spent the last of their savings with the same zesty apathy as the tossing of confetti (me), have to take the old fashioned route of crossing the border with their own two legs.

Despite several warnings that Dansavan in Laos was a haunted shithole that had the tendency of mysteriously trapping it’s captors there, we figured that we’d be in and out in three days- back to Vietnam and carrying on as ‘normal’ in no time. Of course, any type of travel-presumption that predicts no hiccups upon the journey is an awkward and inevitable jinx from the beginning.

Arriving via bus to Dansavan in Laos was suspiciously rocky from the start:

• The bus from Vietnam dropped the three of us (Nathan, Tamar and I) 15 minutes from the border. This wouldn’t have been too much of an issue if I didn’t have the world’s most comically large suitcase with me and there were no taxis in sight

• The guys at border patrol had never heard of South Africa and struggled to believe it was a real country / nationality

• When we eventually got to Dansavan, we had to walk 20 minutes with our luggage, in the rain, amongst rage-fuelled dogs towards the nearest motel

• The nearest motel reeked of sewage

• Our mission to find food failed

• When we tried to escape the sewage in the morning by migrating to the second nearest motel, we came to find, after an hour of dragging our luggage (a well-oiled pastime by now) that both the water and electricity were goners and it was home to its own, (albeit less bad), vague smell of sewage

• We decided to stay there anyway. What’s another two nights, right?

I have always maintained a joyful passion for a town that has seemingly nothing to offer. I think boredom is healthy and that the authenticity in ‘no gimmicks’ is genuinely enticing. I like a town with no tourist attractions, restaurants which only sport plastic chairs and the old characters who hangout in a town’s local dive bar- spewing intriguing and alarming commentary for all to lovingly argue with.

Dansavan gracefully shattered that romanised little notion in a matter of hours.

It wasn't the lack of food, the wrath in the dogs, the seedy and desolate streets, the fickle electricity, the constant smell of sewage, the persistently drab drizzle, the thick grey skies, the severe language barrier or even the broken facilities at every motel and restaurant that did the trick. Rather, it was the eerie, haunted, chilling, hair-standing-up-on-my-arms, hollow, type of feeling that consumed each one of us from the moment we crossed the border. It was in the eyes of the locals, the sinister curl of a dragonfruit, the stains in the sheet and the whispers in the wind: a feeling of unease that began to chip away at any remaining shards of psychological well-being that any of us had to offer.

When my visa back into Vietnam got denied after a few days and then again, a few days later, we began to believe that we were falling helplessly into distant folklore: sucked into the depths of Dansavan, possibly forever.

We accepted our fate as we ate the same meal at the same restaurant three times a day, walked aimlessly around the grey streets, trudged in circles in the rain, lay on our backs on the floor, debated and argued about everything possible from politics to the intentions of dolphins, reminisced fondly about snacks and clean clothing, chased some goats, fought with each other, befriended a street child and spoke about the days which existed before and hopefully after Dansavan- although we seriously began to doubt that either side had ever existed.

Eventually we woke up one morning, at the third-nearest motel (with its own unique smell of sewage) with less than 2 ml of sanity to offer between the three of us. With my visa still curiously pending we realised that our best option was to give up on Vietnam altogether and venture further into Laos. (The last straw was a bout of flesh eating bacteria that Tamar and I were suddenly hosting paired with the town not being home to a single doctor). So, we jumped the necessary hoops to take a local bus 10 hours into familiar Thakek, cheering with disbelief as we frantically waved Dansavan goodbye. Two days later, I googled Dansavan just to check that it all had been real and alarmingly, nothing came up.

The strangest part about the whole palaver is that when I reflect on these travels, I miss Dansavan the most. Call it Stockholm syndrome or a curse (and probably be right) but I long for those endless, rugged days teetering on the edge of simultaneous laughter and crying. I long for our dingy dinners which lasted for hours because we had nowhere to go but there. I crave the shards of hope which, every now and then, reared their heads as sunbeams amidst the sewage and the drizzle. I miss walking around with rotting flesh and broken shoes- running from dogs, trudging aimlessly around and hunting (unsuccessfully) for literally any snack.

I always find the same curious pattern: I end up looking back on time’s of hardship with the most special type of fondness.

Maybe it’s because when you’re in the throes of challenging times, falling into senseless laughter is the only natural medicine. Maybe it’s because in the depths of discomfort we lean on each other more tenderly than ever. Maybe its because when you’re stuck in a Bordertown like that, you’re closer than ever to the wild beating heart of the adventure.

I remind myself of that in the adventure of the hard times now.

When The Bus Breaks Down

I remember distinctly trying to make the journey from New Delhi to Dharamshala during my travels in India. My two travel buddies and I prepared for a 10 hour bus ride and set off, as we always did, in the middle of the night in order to save money on accommodation. As I leaned back in my seat with my earphones blasting sweet melodies, I naively prepared to doze peacefully for a couple of hours until I woke up in the morning to a serene new landscape.

If that had actually happened, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post.

50 minutes after departing and dozing I was awoken to the bus shuddering to a halt whilst lively and concerned Hindi began to erupt from the other seats. Soon, like a confused sheep, I followed everyone out the bus. Whilst taking in the new landscape: a fever-dream type of petrol station which sat in the middle of nowhere, I noticed that a small crowd of Indian men were surrounding the back of the bus, examining with both concern and laughter whatever had gone wrong with the ancient vehicle. I watched as the men cut various wires with scissors, jumped comically at the sparks that followed, bantered with each other and shrugged their shoulders as they gazed up at the few stars which protruded through the smog-shrouded sky. “How long is this going to take to fix?” I asked one of them. He shrugged his shoulders, casually shook his head from side to side and replied “about 30 minutes”.

3 hours later we were still at the petrol station and I knew I had two options. I could succumb to the Westerner in me and complain, pace around, panic, look at my watch irritatedly, demand that someone translates to me exactly what is happening and perhaps burst into tears at being trapped in a remote petrol station in the middle of the night. Or, I could learn from my Indian co-passengers and laugh, shrug and gaze up at the heavens to find a few lucky stars. After weeks of being in India and watching people constantly find ease in the most uncomfortable and unideal of situations: men napping serenely in their empty ox carts amongst frantic Delhi alleyways, families excitedly playing checkers under a highway bridge alongside their destroyed tuktuk and taxi drivers merrily dangling their barefeet out their cab windows as they waited hours for their customers to eventually need a ride, I figured that I would strive for whatever innate wisdom they had managed to so naturally channel and surrender to- the whimsical chaos of things not going according to plan.

So, I excitedly explored the strange and desolate fields surrounding the petrol station, laughed ecstatically with Clementine at the randomness of a pile of onions on the floor, savoured every drop of cold Mountain Dew, found an abandoned merry-go-round to play on and giggled with the crowds as we watched the self-declared mechanic unleash yet another round of bus-wire-sparks upon his hair and overalls. Eventually, we retuned to the bus and traveled happily for another hour or so until it broke down again with a familiar shudder. There, in a new piece of nowhere, we watched an incredible sunrise whilst squatting on the pavement and whispering the Hindi phrases we were learning. There, in the scorching Indian sun, I found an abandoned bench and fought my way into a sound nap which lasted from 5am to midday in the company of 75 persistent flies who plagued every inch of my body.

We arrived in Dharmashala at 6pm, 13 hours after our expected arrival.

Two weeks later, when we left Dharamshala, we rushed to get to the bus stop for our 10pm pickup. The spot where we were told to wait was desolate, dark and home to a few exhausted looking street dogs who aggressively tore through the giant piles of steaming garbage which resided right next to us, taking up most of the pavement. As 10pm, 11pm and then 12am came and went, I settled down onto the floor, using my backpack as a pillow and scarf as a blanket. I plugged my earphones in and began to watch Architecture Digest videos on my phone. Although I was on a desolate highway nested in the outer layers of a pile of garbage, warding off street dogs with my free hand and getting rather peckish, waiting for a bus which very well may never come, It was one of the most pleasant evenings of my life. I was settled into a state of complete surrender (one of the greatest gifts India can teach), I was free, warm, in great company (Clementine) and, as I had learned from the people of India: intrigued rather than worried as to what would happen next.

When the bus did come 4 hours late, there were no seats available for us until some compassionate strangers made a plan and I was seated next to one of the largest men I have ever seen. There, I awkwardly cramped myself into a position that was good enough to sleep in and awoke a few hours later to the mans head on my shoulder, snoring grotesquely as the bus dramatically groaned to a halt. It had broken down, of course and we were left to clamber out and stare at some of the most heart-staggering scenery I had ever witnessed: mountains pluming from curved rugged highways into a sky that held giant birds rising and falling and rising again into the who-knows-whats-gonna-happen-next of a singing Tuesday morning in Northern India.

After all of these condensed experiences of busses breaking down in Northern India and my decision to switch to a mindset that approached the situation with curious surrender instead of control and worry, whenever I next took a bus and it broke down, I began to actually look forward to the occasion.

Because, when the bus breaks down:

1.) You always remember it. I hold onto very few of the smooth, perfect journeys in my life but always remember, with a chuckle, the brilliance of all the journeys which went horribly wrong

2.) You can step out and emerge yourself into the scenery- getting a more intimate taste of wherever you’ve ended up

3.) You get to know people: you may come from starkly different cultures but you can both dwell in shoulder-shrugging-solidarity at being stuck on the side of the pavement together

4. ) It’s an opportunity to learn surrender- when there is nothing you can do about a situation except for accepting it, you can lean into the delicious world of surrender more deeply than ever which provides a light-hearted peace and curiosity which the people of India have naturally mastered

We live in a world that is so subtly yet negatively filled with the Western etched mindset of trying to control, rush towards and worry about the future that I think that the bus breaking down is the ideal arena to practice the shedding of these values that bring strain to our lives and choosing instead to lean into the wild world of making peace, letting go and flowing with the incongruent tides of life that so cheekily and frequently change things up for us - seeing what we dare to make of it.

And no matter how much I preach this, I will never maser it as suavely as the group of Indian men who stand with their hands on their hips, smirking, kicking up dirt and gazing at the stars as the things around them gently explode into amusing imperfection.

Let go, Let Life

I remember when I was almost inconsolable with romantic-heartache in a rural seaside village. One of the village-members, a man who I consider to be very wise, told me that I needed to get out the way of life. What he meant was, I was causing myself misery by trying to pry the hands of life away from what it was trying to do for me. In every possible translatable way, life wanted me to let go and be alone but I was fighting against these cosmic tides, exhausted and out of breath from being hell-bent on holding on to what clearly wasn’t meant for me anymore.

It’s only taken me 24 years of being incredibly bad at this to start to finally turn a corner of this whole ‘let go and let god’ journey. I have always let my anxious attachments dictate the show by chasing people who are walking away from me. I have often ignored life’s signs and clumsily paddled against the currents which are carved out cosmically just for me. When life says ‘left’ I have insisted on going right. When life says ‘sit’, I stand. When life says ‘don’t go to Stellenbosch university, you’ll hate it’, I insist on going anyway and then ending up where I was meant to end up anyway- in a tent, in the middle of the woods five months later. After 1000 lessons in this exact curriculum, I’m finally learning the humbling reality that life/god always wins, so I may as well hop on board and join the team.

This means, when they walk away, let them. When that road closes, stop trying to trespass. When that door opens, enter. When they stop replying, wave goodbye and wish them well. When life says, ‘get down and brace for impact’, get down and brace for impact. When life says ‘now is not the time’, then, now is not the time.

If you let it, it’s all a hidden portal to joy:

A New Kind of Intimacy

I have always reserved my intimacy for my romantic relationships. The scared touches, chuckles in the dark, stroking of the hair, forehead-to-forhead connecting and uncoordinated dancing intertwined in raining streets has been the chaotic stomping-ground for me and whatever partner to plunge deeply into the world of intimacy together.

Now, being single and with every whisper of life urging me to keep going it alone (and with me begrungidnly on a quest to actually listen to that advice), I have felt the urge to focus on unlocking a whole new level of intimacy: intimacy with life itself.

For the past few years, every goal-list of mine, even if it’s meant to be career orientated or financial has always included the simple point: “to really taste the fruit”.

It all started when I would watch my ex boyfriend, Torin, attack a mango with such passion that I would joke “should I leave you two alone together?”. There, in the sunshine of the garden, Torin would be waist-deep in mango juice, sounding with ecstasy in response to it’s vibrant flavours and chuckling from the belly at its glorious, all-consuming mess as it’s sunshine shards began to climb all the way to his elbows. In some lenses, this scene beheld a dread-locked hippie who refused conventional kitchen utensils. I, however, saw someone who was so entirely grounded in the present moment that he had unlocked the joy of intimacy with the moment and intimacy with life itself.

I am often preoccupied- romanticising the past, worrying about the future, scrolling on instagram, overthinking all my relationships and wondering what’s for lunch and the moment I finish lunch, pondering what’s for dinner. So, with my current life path Sahara-Desert-cleared of romantic and sexually intimate bonds, my new life-project the past little while has been to learn how to be intimate with my daily life and thus, more grounded and satisfied in the present moment.

Here’s what some of my chaotic, intimacy-with-life ‘bucket list’ looks like:

1.) To really taste the fruit

2.) To sit on a plastic chair with instant coffee and feel a sense of completeness in the morning sunshine

3.) To really look everyone: strangers, awkward acquaintances, homeless people and even the boarder control officials in the eye

4.) To really feel, with concentration, effort and care, whatever terrain is beneath my feet that day

5.) To get out the car or building and bust an ugly pirouette every time it rains

6.) To let my cries wail and my laughter echo

7.) To feel tenderly held by the intricate platonic tribes I’m lucky enough to be a part of

8.) To linger a bit longer in the street, after my UberEats parcel is delivered, and look up for a few moments at the milky stars

9.) To let every melody, hum and riff of all my favourite songs vibrate in my deepest soul-crevices. Really, for the first time, listening with my full body

10.) To plunge into cold ocean waters with intention and emerge relishing in the feeling of every goosebump rising to the sun, greeting her with perfect aliveness

The more I run towards these goals, the closer I get, I believe, to finding the innate joy that is actually always there, hidden in the daily intimacy of what life really has to offer.

Joy, Resistance

The title of this blog post is the album name of a British heavy rock band called The IDLES. Someone I loved very much introduced them to me. He would blast the song ‘Television’ on his shifty Subaru sound system, fling his hand out the car window, slam the ecelrator, tilt his head towards the skies and bellow the lyrics:

I GO OUTSIDE

AND I FEEL FREE

‘CAUSE I SMASH MIRRORS

AND FUCK TV

Moment of the Day

Since I don’t have a quote up my sleeve, here’s a moment that lives in my head rent-free.

In the outskirts of that same grim Laosian Bordertown that I mentioned earlier, Dansavan, we got caught in an epic monsoon rain storm that pelted so vigorously and consistently that restaurants shut down, dogs scampered to quiver under scraps of shelter and all vehicles pulled over to the side of the road as the streets precariously grew larger and larger puddles- becoming more muddy mush than tar. We trudged in the rain miserably as we became soaked to the very core (even the German precision which crafted my Birkenstocks would later flounder against the monsoon rains as they crumbled to pieces the next day). As we yelled our complaints over the roar of rain and thunder, I began to hear peculiar bouts of laughter emanate from somewhere.

Literally beneath the large, grey line of cargo trucks which had pulled over to the side of the ‘road’ during the storm, a group of men sat laughing. Using the underbelly of the trucks as impromptu shelter, the men sat around little makeshift tables, squatted by pots which stewed their lunch and even hung their hammocks beneath their trucks- lounging, dangling and mingling amidst the chaos of the storm as if it were a perfect Saturday afternoon on a tropical Island.

Ever since then, when I find myself trudging through the storms of life, I hear the wild laughter of the Laotian men who manage to emanate joy from right beneath their trucks in the centre of rain.

I hope that the joy in the grit and the wild laughter in the storm finds you too, of course.

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