Perhaps once you had a ‘thing’ in your life where you found silence, peace and the true reminder of what it is to be alive. For me, it was small calibre shooting. .22 ftw. When I was there, I didn’t take it seriously. Oh, I got colours, but that was because for some ridiculous reason, I had inherent talent. Heaven knows it wasn’t because I applied myself. I was /BOUNCE in my every waking moment. Bams admitted to wanting to duct tape me and hide me in the bus on our SA’s in 1996. Bastard :) He had a point though. That was the only year that the North Transvaal team failed miserably. What can I say, I am a social lubricator and my Emma skills were WELL advanced even then.

How can I explain such joy? Yes, I was firing a rifle and for most of you the thought of such “violence” is abhorrent, but to us it was better than breathing. Actually it was breathing. Slow, oxygen rich blood mixed liberally with butterflies (flying in formation), teen angst and an atmosphere that you can only find on a small calibre range*. It was the closest to Zen our generation ever got. It was more than we knew. It was lying as still as you could for 4 x10 minutes at a time. And in those 10 minutes there was nothing but you, your rifle and the sweet waxy copper cartridge which meant single minded focus on getting it right. Getting it centre, getting a bull.

It makes us yearn even now. When life and sex and being grown ups has jaded us that focus, that drive, that achievement makes more sense than Kierkegaard or Kundera or e-tv.

I miss the confines of my jacket (which I stupidly sold…>.<) the belt around your arm anchoring your rifle to you and you to it. I miss the smell of gunpowder and that snick when the bolt engages the bullet…your entire purpose of being concentrated in just the tip of your finger…and then…oh and then, the ever so slight recoil and the knowledge of a good shot. Of aiming true and leaving barely a hole in the target. No lines crossed. When you have insinuated that tiny bullet through paper in exactly the place that makes your coach beam and blush with shared “look at that”.

1. Word of the day: redolent (The Sage: 3. serving to bring to mind)

2. Insight of the day: Tension headache + Voltaren = effortless writing

3. State of the pool: endless icy cold blue

4. Random thought:Very little tastes as good as being thin(ish) feels.

5. Awesomest lines: Canvas by Elsa Volschenk

Paint me our colour
with brush strokes that speak to you the words I do not utter.

Fill up all the white corners you’ve missed
and use up all the space to say it all.

But do not ask me to pick up a brush

My silence may belie my heart’s ache
but it will show my deepest love in bright red

This is the colour that I have chosen.

Soon it’ll change to green and I would have learnt to be without you

*Kleingeweer – Quiet, the smell of gun oil – a particularly non invasive and yet soul pervasive smell that to this day reminds me of innocence and doing something so well that all else fails – Highveld dust, a perculiar mix of sun soaked baking hot indolence and blue metal cold focus.

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