The man I never met: Gugu Zulu

So here I am, weeping over someone I never knew...
What is THAT about?

Well, in part it is about how a voice on the radio becomes your friend. He comes into your home, bright and cheery, and gives you a connection to a world you would not otherwise enter. In Gugu Zulu's case, he commentated on all sorts of motor sport - for me, a link to childhood days when my dad and I used to watch Grand Prix together on TV.

Gugu Zulu was also a local boy "made good" - a rally champion and later TV commentator in whose success everyone somehow shared - we were glad that this man had done so well.

And he was simply a nice guy. His life should have been longer, reached more people; he should have been there to see his child grow up...

Part of the tears are anger too, at this loss of one life.

He died doing something he had planned for and was excited about: a climb up Kilimanjaro, in honour of Mandela, who was surely his hero, as he is many of ours.

Maybe, once we stop weeping, we can honour Gugu Zulu: by being kinder, laughing more, and going after our dreams.

His was a life well-lived.

http://www.wheels24.co.za/Motorsport/gallery-gugu-zulu-20160718

Bubbling over...or bubbling under...

Create, create, create! - do something, sing something, paint or draw or plant or knit or tidy up - just DO something with that feeling of... of... what, exactly? Words like "fizzing" come to mind; but that sounds joyous and uncontained, and this feeling is not those things. It is deeper, stronger, and even, perhaps, darker. When the need to create is unmet - the thing not drawn, the poem not written, the page left blank - that creative urge turns muddy, sours my thoughts.

YET... yet... it does not, will not, leave. The staying-power of the need to be creative: THAT is new. In the past, it has gripped me for a day, or perhaps two; now, it has stayed for a week. I feel as if I am missing some clue as to WHAT this impulse is urging me towards - what is it that I must do, to satisfy it? "Start writing a book" - yes, but what about? I have so many ideas, yet none seems able to bear the weight of that word "book". "So write a chapter - see what happens!" Yes, well, maybe that would work... Maybe just writing this page is a key, a turn of the kaleidoscope that will reveal the next pattern...