The Gigantic Dane no longer walks from A to B, he bounces. Like a rubber ball, I’ll come bouncing back to you, whoo-oo-hoo. Last night the Namaqualand mechanic came around and wrestled with the dog on the kitchen floor instead of fixing the car. The dog won.
‘What a fokken wondelikke hund! He belongs back in Namaqualand, jislaaik!’ said the Namaqualand mechanic who only really admires things Namaqua.
If you stretch my love till it’s thin enough to tear
I’ll just stretch my arms to reach you anywhere
And like a rubber ball, I’ll come bouncing back to you
Rubber ball, I come bouncing back to you.
This morning the housemate is off to the funeral of two teenage boys dead of Aids. She says it will be one of those lively funerals where everyone dances around the coffin and sings happy-clappy songs and ululates. Even when the family is weeping, they will also be rejoicing and singing at the tops of their voices.
I am staying home to roast beetroot, write fiction and pull out weeds under the forest plectranthus bushes. Process the envy I feel because my ancient landlord gets to eat cassoulet in France and travel up and down the Rhone and I don’t.
An older friend, an elegant slim woman who came from a very wealthy family and had collected the classic photographs of Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz, once told me she suffered with envy and that it was the coldest and most hateful emotion. She wished envy was like jealousy because jealousy is all about love and hating someone who steals love away from you, wanting to win your lover back, wanting to stab the preferred one in the heart with a dagger. Passionate, impulsive, heart-filled.
You bounce my heart around (You don’t even put her down)
And like a rubber ball, I come bouncing back to you
Rubber ball, I come bouncing back to you
Whereas envy is just a bitter craving for what another has — a bigger house, more money in the bank, more pictures on their walls, more critical acumen, more opportunities, more of everything. ‘At the core of my envy,’ she said , ‘there is the icy place of deprivation, insufficiency. I never have enough to keep me satisfied.’
Out in the garden, the Great Dane is jumping up to bite off the flowering heads of my yellow and bronze day lilies. Wickedness. I have murder in my heart, but he is a puppy and so I just shout for him and he bounces back across the grass, a canine Bobby Vee.
