A few years back – before moving to Cape Town, before getting married, before setting aside my high heel shoe collection – the barefoot man and I had two little red notebooks that we kept to write to each other in when we were apart. When we met up again, we’d swop them and read what had been written to us in our absence.
In early January the barefoot man and I set off on his new V-Strom 1000 (that’s a very big Suzuki motorbike, for the uninformed amongst us!) and headed out for ten days of cell-phones off, as many dirt roads as possible, and new views around every corner. Heaven, in short.
On Sunday, the last day, after the talking, after the processioning, after the burying, the barefoot man and I took to the mountain. Phoebe-dog came too. It is our meditation, that mountain, our church.
Last weekend the barefoot man & I were in Joburg for a conference and insetad of my default car-hire, we used the Gautrain. Twenty minutes including waiting time from ORT (Oliver Tambo International) to central Sandton in air-conditioned quiet with plush seats and almost sci-fi looking stations, and no hint of getting snarled up in Giloolly’s interchange or Grayston drive – what bliss!
We used the trains all weekend from Rosebank where we stayed up to Sandton, downtown to Park Station seeing the city I know so well from a new, pedestrian point of view. I do not know this city like this, it is a city of wheels and traffic lights and shopping nodes and underground parking lots to me. Not one of shadeless pavements, intimidatingly wide roads and stupid un-sitable pseudo-benches in train stations . It’s funny how well I know the city, and how foreign it is to me all at the same time. I don’t know the walking, train-riding, taxi-catching Joburg, not many in my peer group do.
Almost 4 years ago while training as a yoga teacher I came across the idea of “sanskara”. Sanskara has varying definitions, but in general they agree on the idea of there being repetitive pathways or patterns in our lives that are embedded in our minds. They are said to be the impressions from past experiences – and, if you’re so inclined, past lives – that are left on our subconscious minds and which form the fears, desires and habits that influence our future behaviours and responses.