Here I Am

Of course it's all sacred ground - from deep under the soil to the limits of the highest air born bacterium - but some ground feels more sacred than others.

Of course it's all magical - but some moments are deeply magical.

Of course it's all God - but sometimes we really, really know it.

Trekked into Roodepoort on Saturday to pick up 4 pairs of Warren's trousers from the tailor. I recommend dealing with a tailor when it comes to clothes. They're not expensive and you end up with clothes which fit you, not some mass-produced image of you.

We stopped at the Hillfox Flea Market on the way back for incense sticks from our arithmetically-superior Down's Syndrome girl, then at the Bryanston Organic Market where , in the pouring cold rain, we reconnected with some sellers of incense resin we'd lost track of for over a year. After purchasing Frankincense, Amber, Myrrh and Tonka Bean, we gathered up some pak-choi and tomatoes which were guaranteed not to have had a toxic chemical near them in their lives. Also some honey from The Honey Man, who wears a bush ranger's hat and regales the (dripping in this case) passing throng with the superior quality of his wares. Damn, they are good. And a lucky stop at a manufacturing jeweller's stall brought us into contact with a craftsman who seemed confident in his ability to make for Warren a Thor's Hammer to specification.

Wow - if I never have to go near a shopping mall again, it's a wonderful way to go.
Except for one of those defining moments which, as irony would have it, happened at the only pass we had to make at a mall, in between the tailor and the Hillfox Market.

Warren was getting his A Grade security diploma laminated, and chose to use a tiny franchised outlet within the bounds of Westgate Mall. (Americans and other aliens, please note- South Africa "boasts" so many shopping malls that it's hard to conduct a commercial transaction outside of one, or to fail to get slapped in the eye by one of their ugly monstrous building-creations every couple of kilometers).

The franchise wasn't open yet, so we headed for the West entrance to catch some nicotine.

As we stepped outside, my head snapped upwards almost involuntarily. For there, wheeling a little way above the pretentious entrance doors, were dozens and dozens of birds.

House Martins, with their stumpy sturdy tails ruddering in the wind. Lesser Striped Swallows among them, their graceful winged tails trailing beauty. They wheeled, swooped and dived, tumbling a little in the fairly strong air currents, as if something had just now disturbed them.

I watched enraptured for a good ten minutes, while all around me people passed into the bowels of the mall, un-noticing, uncaring of the spectacle a few metres over their heads.

I felt touched by Deep Divinity - a brush across my soul as light as a feather and as thrilling.

To seal the moment forever in my mind, as the aerial display was winding to a close, here came two Pied Crows out of the East, unseen from behind me, sculling swiftly Westward over my ricked-back head in almost perfect imitation of a moment of Divinity I'd experienced -oh, a good year or so ago now.

Since that moment, I've been feeling connections bristling from every cell of my being, waving like antennae at the universe, proclaiming Here I Am.

Pic: the gorgeous Wood Hoopoe, who first appeared in my very sacred garden this morning