Van der Post paints
a dreamlike sequence of the great trek from where they stumble on the startling
Flamingo Bay, hidden by a cleft in the cliffs and by maritime cunning, pursued
for countless days and nights following the elimination of his pack-bearers,
leaving three of them – the young ‘Takwena Tickie and the grim Arab Said – to forge
through, to forge comradeship in the land of unforgettable images.
I found it
within a few minutes on the side of the broad vlei wherein the rain-water was
still a shining silver among long dark reeds and a couple of long-legged herons
stood black and motionless and so like Japanaiserie on a lacquered screen that
I was almost startled when one of them gave a melancholy croak as it stirred
restlessly in its sleep. (page
165)
When they
encounter a lone ‘Takwena, prey turns hunter
‘Quoish,
Effendi,’ Said remarked with grim Arabic approval; ‘Quoish Khitir: one for
nine; it is a good beginning but the reckoning is still far from complete.’ (page 175)
in a real el
Borak moment, while the unbelievable truth of Flamingo Bay has the
geopolitical finesse of Talbot Mundy’s The Eye of Zeitoon, with along
the way scenes of timelost uncertainty.
I scrambled
up the crack in the first light and was back on my seat of ancient learning in
time to see the whole Homeric wine-red sea of morning swell on the horizon. (page 187)
Where The Eye
of Zeitoon makes heroes of the Armenians and ruffians of the Turks, here it
is the Russians (written well before Bay of Pigs). The snaking lines of
well-drilled ‘Takwena pack-bearers become dragons of the jungle, dragons who
feed off ill-gotten gains of the wormdollar Rouble.
You reckon they’re
different? I’m not so sure if they both are there to eclipse the lost landscape
of rustic activity.
I saw the
round huts, neat cattle kraals strangely black in the green grass, stockade maize,
millet, and pumpkin fields bleached a wintry yellow with stubborn little
pig-tails of smoke over them all, and familiar blood-red footpaths stretched
out like the nerves of a human hand ready to take their naked traffic down
into the dark bush or over the hump into the arrogant blue. (page 184)
Today, Tanzania
is eclipsing the largest African nature reserve with a massive dam
– who’s funding it this time? China.
I agree all
those three countries politically couldn’t be less alike, yet all inhabit the
same illusion – the vanishing point of technique (see Drama2 “speed”).
All three regions live under one master – the solar serpent or wormdollar,
cold-blooded denier of Earth and moon. When van der Post says “Homeric wine-red
sea” you are in the simpler world of billowing breezes and recurring dawns
that tell the story of Man (the adventurer, wanderer on Earth).
“They” or the
Martians in our midst inhabit a land of tricks or illusions where rivers are
diverted, flood plains ravaged, citizens ejected. You might say, “All life
is a trick, dog”, as Howard does in one of the Conan stories (or was it
Thomas?) and it might be, if it’s human and personal.
“They” are the dark impersonal forces who convince is with tricks - illusions of technique. As you may have guessed I’m referring to Musk and his algorithmic rocketships. This
is
a quote from DT business
To watch
SpaceX’s reusable Falcon boosters land elegantly back on Earth after launching
a satellite into space or delivering a capsule to the International Space
Station, as it did on Saturday, is a sight which defies all logic. Your brain
insists it should not be possible to land a rocket on its end, precisely in the
right place, on a launch pad in the sea. But it is.
Yeah, the brain
may be seeing things, since all these SpaceX/NASA rockets must be
comprehensively programmed with flight algorithms. What you are seeing is the
vanishing point of technique, which is the land of illusion.
In the land of
illusion, everything is perspective, and you travel through the perspective
illusion whether you use rockets or
petrol-fuel (see “speed”). As CC Beck says of flying,
Let me tell
you a story about the Emperor of China, back in nineteen aught four, as we
old-timers say. One of the early aviators took an airplane over to China, and
the Emperor was not impressed at all. One of his assistants said, “Look,
Emperor, it’s flying!” And he says, “Well, that’s what it’s supposed to do, isn’t
it?” (TCJ 95, 1985)
The land of
illusion is the land where perspective always approaches the vanishing point;
what you see (the rocket) is an illusion of perspective. You will always be in
this perspective illusion, whether you go to Mars or Timbuktu.
It’s not real;
it’s just technique. Reality is a physical thing, and it’s symbolised by the
moon (aether Drama2)
So there we
were, soon after eight, crawling through long grass towards the crown of our valley
barely a hundred paces away, solemn under the unbelievable moon.. I lay for one
lovely second staring up at her, seemingly so close in that moment of trumpet
call on this far peak in the mountains of Umangoni, until Tickie touched me on
the shoulder whispering with an odd tremble in his throat: ‘Oh! Do you hear Bwana?
My Bwana, do you hear?’
Rivers are real;
dams are false (apart from Robert Robertson’s, natch). The Forbidden City is
real; Beijing is false. Hutongs are real; Shanghai is false. NASA if it’s seen
as a trick is real; NASA/Silicon Valley is false, the wormdollar of the future.
Savage Tales 2