Ruth's Real Life

A new year beckons. Before you know it we will be challenged by another 1st of January.  It's time to effect the change for which we yearn. Along come all the hopeful resolutions that briefly see the light of day before dying their usual death. Don't make resolutions - again I spoke to a group of people recently and asked them if they had made resolutions for 2020, many of them had. Most were horrified when I told them to ditch their grand plans as they would cause more stress than they were worth. The 1 st of January is like some magical line in the sand – there is a vague hope that we can step across the line and suddenly be all the things that we haven’t been for the last X number of years. The right inspirational moment Things that need to get done, get done. If you amputate a finger while cunningly carving a radish to decorate a salad, you don’t sit on the couch waiting for the right inspirational moment to go to the closest casualty room. You put your...

  (It’s not what you think.) My life, to quote Carole King, has been ‘a tapestry of rich and royal hue’. For as long as I can remember my tapestry has been stitched, not with fine and silken threads but with words. I can remember, even as a little girl, the excitement generated by the yellow blocks of paper that Mom would bring home from work. I drew pictures and invented words and worlds that took me away from the loneliness of being the youngest child and only girl in our large family. When I was twelve, I won my first writing competition. The story, about the 1820 Settlers, has long since been lost but I still remember what it felt like to write that piece. The story was submitted to the competition by my English and Maths teacher, Mrs Dorothea Knox. I still remember what it felt like when she beat me with a long wooden ruler with a metal edge. She called the ruler Mr Persuasion and wielded it daily on those of us who did not shine at Maths. I never shone. In ...

Tall Standing   I am done with the safety razor life:   I have slouched in the shadows of smiles, I have been loved into comfort-fit shapes, I have run in a tight box of approval Banging against the hollow sides of my truth, Bruising heart and soul to bloodless thinness.   I choose to walk out of the photograph of self, I expose the black blank back of my eyes And dare you to stand tall enough to meet my gaze, Stretch your arms ‘till they are embrace long, Prise the words from between the stones of your teeth.   Now, call me by my name.   Ruth Everson   A comment yesterday by Mandy Collins (@collinsmandy), expressing her longing to be heard, reminded me of this poem, ‘Tall Standing’. It was written at a time when I was angry with everything and everyone. I was battling with issues of identity and felt lost in a world that seemed to demand conformity.   It’s not always easy to sing a sol...

Dream big dreams This poem was written a number of years ago in response to the following story about a very special girl called Amy. Amy’s parents went away. In their absence, her grandparents came to look after Amy and her brothers. At five, Amy already had an adventurous spirit. This was a girl who loved to climb trees. Amy loved to climb the tall tree in the front garden. Her little feet knew the safe places on the trunk. All the knots and branches carried her upwards. Always, there was the longing to rise. One morning, Amy’s gran came into the garden looking for her. She saw Amy in the tree and was terrified, as any reasonable adult would be. She demanded that Amy climb down, so she scrambled down and sat on the low veranda wall. Amy promptly fell off the wall and broke her arm. The moral of this story for me is simple. People, who love us dearly, will often call us down from what they perceive to be the dangerous places. Children dream big dreams and adu...

Grand Passion     I would like to be loved. I’m not asking for GRAND PASSION, Moonlit romance Or a knight in shining armour. I’d just like to hear Someone else Breathing In The Darkness                         Ruth Everson There’s nothing wrong with passion. When I ease into the wrinkled winter of my life I’ll remember the heat of a slow kiss. The smile on my face won’t be in anticipation of red jelly and custard after a supper of mince and mashed vegetables. It will be the memory of a hand trailing skin-sparks across my back. We all have a fundamental need to be loved, but passionate love seems to be transitory.   Psychologists claim that we stay in the passionate stage of love for a maximum of two years, after that reality kicks in. The radiance of new love blinds us to the things that The Beloved does that...

On Thursday, I was invited to discuss my poem Black and White with 90 Grade 7s. The poem is about my second mother, Johanna Rapule. At the end of the talk, the girls asked a number of questions about the poem but there is one that has haunted me ever since. ‘What would you say to Johanna if you could speak to her again?’ The easy answer would be to tell her that I loved her. The real answer would be the deep regret that, although she knew my hopes and my dreams, I never knew hers. Growing up in apartheid South Africa, it seemed normal to have Johanna living in the tiny khaya at the bottom of the garden. It was normal to have her cook and clean and iron. I was five; my world was shaped by adults. As I grew up, visionary teachers, like Maureen O’ Gara, awakened me to the injustice that kept Johanna in her place. As a student, I protested and waved placards. We ran from the police down the streets of Benoni. We wrote angry poems, smoked furiously and drank too much wine. ...

A new year begins and with it come all the hopeful resolutions that see the light of day briefly before dying their usual death. Don't make new resolutions  I spoke to a group of people yesterday and asked them if they had made resolutions for 2012, many of them had. Most were horrified when I told them to ditch their grand plans as they would cause more stress than they were worth. The 1 st of January is like some magical line in the sand – there is a vague hope that we can step across the line and suddenly be all the things that we haven’t been for the last X number of years. It gets done Things that need to get done, get done. If you amputate a finger while cunningly carving a radish to decorate a salad, you don’t sit on the couch waiting for the right inspirational moment to go to the closest casualty room. You put your finger in a Tupperware container and just go. Building a better picture Our brains contain a dominant picture of who we are. In order to ma...

I Want to Restart the Beat of my Heart What are we waiting for? We stand with our toes in the ocean of our own inspiration but are afraid of the pull of the currents of our hearts. The moments that move my heart seem to happen at the most ordinary times. What my poet’s heart has taught me is to be alive to the possibility of finding the ‘extra’ in the ordinary. On an early morning walk along the Durban beachfront, I came across Bongani and his sand woman. Bongani is a sand sculptor, and amidst the dolphins, a soccer ball and the fearsomely fanged cat that he was working on, stretched a Rubenesque sculpture of a woman. I doubt that Bongani has ever heard of Rubens but like the Master, (famous for his painting of voluptuous women), he had captured in his naïve work a sensuality and grace that ensnared my heart. I want to re-start the beat of my heart The figure was of a bountiful woman, clad only in a thong, lying face down in the sand. Initially, what caught my...