Hebrew Article on Joe Slovo Circa 1996

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Book review 2005 "How Israel Lost: The Four Questions"

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Gus Ferguson 1940-2020

 

I learnt via FB this morning that a high school friend of mine, aged 58, has dropped her body. Cancer. An excellent wake up call for me to take nothing for granted and to stop sweating the small stuff.

And then this evening I learnt that poet, publisher, illustrator, pharmacist and all round good guy and mensch Gus Ferguson has also departed these shores. I first encountered his poetry aged about 16, in 1980, when I bought his collection Snail Morning at the Market Theatre book shop. It was probably the first collection of poems I had ever purchased, and I bought it because

 

a) I'd read an article about him and

b) Some kids who knew his kids and him had moved to our school - (Fran Seftel you know who you are).

 

I loved the gentle whimsical poems ostensibly about snails, and the Quentin Blake-like illustrations Gus did himself. After a long hiatus, when I returned to South Africa around 1991, Gus regularly published my poems in the various poetry journals he brought out - Slugnews and Carapace being the two I remember. That he managed to keep Carapace running for as long as he did, on a shoestring budget, is testament to his creativity, determination, persistence and vision. He gave hundreds of wannabe and established poets a platform where the barriers to entry were somehow more permeable that those of New Coin and New Contrast and the other poetry journals that mostly folded after a couple of editions.

Gus also has (had?) a poetry imprint, Snailpress, which probably published more South African poets in the last thirty years than any other publisher. There is no money in poetry, and that he kept its doors open for as long as he did is again testament to his great love for poetry, and for nurturing and facilitating the creativity of others. Snailpress co-published both of my collections (Hidden and Revealed 2007, Ripening 2020) together with Marcia Leveson's Quartz Press. For this I remain deeply grateful to Gus.

 

His own poems were full of humour and kindness, self-deprecating wit and a profound reverence for the G-d of little things. He was a great lover of the small and humble, and wrote with a twinkle in his heart that ignited the same gentle wonder in the hearts of others. The last collection of his I have - his seventh - is titled "Dubious Delights - of ageing and other follies" and I share six of the delightful poems in it, by way of tribute to Gus Ferguson.

 

The first poem was prescient:

 

ALZHEIMER'S FREIGHT

 

Those things that you wish

to remember are not lost

 

or forgotten; but

packed up and sent on ahead

___________________________

 

PARADOX GAINED

 

I read all the classics. I studied the news.

I stared at my navel. I still had the blues.

 

I trudged in the mountains. I walked by the sea.

I carried a burden. The burden was me.

 

I put myself down and, with consumate ease,

I floated away in the afternoon breeze.

 

But who is this self that is free from all woe?

And what is the burden abandoned below?

 

These are the thoughts, and many such more

that trouble me now as I weightlessly soar

______________________

 

WHILE HIS WIFE IS AWAY

 

The house is quiet

because, perhaps

he isn't talking

 

Peelable fruits

are eaten first:

avocado, banana, pawpaw.

 

At room temperature

the stove is at its most

economical.

 

The grannies

in detergent ads

are suddenly sexy.

 

Its probably

projection but the goldfish

appear depressed.

 

He watches TV

the cats watch the dog

the dog watches him.

 

They eat together-

they crunch pellets

he crunches granola.

 

Preparing to cook

he absent-mindedly

eats the ingredients.

 

The phone rings.

He lurches -

it's only a poet.

 

In mute soliloquy

he prowls the house -

a bit like Hamlet.

_______________

And how could a Gus Ferguson sampler not have a poem or two about snails?

 

CHANSON

 

Along the Rue d'Escargot

we always travel very slow

When nights are long and lights are low

 

the sky's a lovely silver glow.

Along the Rue d'Escargot

we heave our heavy portmanteaux

 

that hold dark secrets none should know

and that is why we go so slow

along the Rue d'Escargot

____________

 

SNAIL

 

In your wake

the starlight glistens

listen how

the cosmos listens

_________________

 

And last, but not least Gus's simple acknowledgement of how we are all on the great wheel....what he refers to as Sam sara sara in another poem elsewhere in the same collection.

 

BLEAK MOMENT

 

They are all

dead or dying,

the parents of our friends.

 

And we,

inadequately trained

are bustled to the front

I don't need my body to be well in order to be happy

Deconstructing the thought (or belief) that my happiness depends upon having a well body.

Here are some associated beliefs that it is worth taking some time to question:

I have a body - True/ False/Don't Know?

The body is "mine" - True/ False/ Don't Know? (and if I am the owner of the body, then what am I?)

I know what constitutes wellness - True/ False/Don't Know?

(Hint: wellness means my body can do what I think it "should" be doing. As Byron Katie says "who needs G-d when we have your opinion") 

I know what I need to get done in this world, in this lifetime - True/ False/Don't Know?

I am the doer - True/ False/Don't Know? (or does doing just happen and I find out about it post facto? Check your experience)

Down With Catipalism

When I was a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1990, I had this idea for a little comic. I think I had Sting's line from his song "Englishman in New York" floating around in my head. I asked my friend Porat, who was studying fine art at Betzalel, Israel's premier art school, if he knew anyone who could draw cartoon-like illustrations and he suggested an American woman, Liz Fainberg, who was also studying at Betzalel at the time. I think she did a good job.

(Click on each panel to see whole image)

 

 

Batya Jaspan

My cousin-by-marriage Batya Jaspan (nee Dredzen) was born in a small gold rush era hamlet called Pilgrim's Rest, in the picturesque Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Her parents owned the general store there which is now preserved as one of the town's Victorian era buildings

She was an earth mother figure, maternal, kind, strong, principled, taking under her wing many waifs and strays - including myself - who over the years wondered in and out of the kibbutz. Batya was born Cecile, but as a teenager in the socialist Zionist, avowedly secular Habonim youth movement she changed it to Batya, which ironically means in Hebrew "daughter of G-d". She left South Africa in 1949, and helped establish the new kibbutz, Tzora, in the Judean foothills, about midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In this photograph, taken circa 1952, she is holding her first child Yael.

The next black and white photograph shows Tzora in 1954.

Batya said later in her life said she may have unconsciously gravitated towards Tzora because its hilly location was quite similar to the hills around Pilgrim's Rest.

Batya lived on Tzora, with her life long friend, husband and partner Zvi Jaspan, from 1950 until her death in 2016.

This poem was written in 2016.

KADDISH (lezichra shel Batya Jaspan z"l)

May the name that every person
takes or makes
be blessed enough
as was yours
child of God

Not knighted or praised,
not glorified and exalted,
not extolled and adored and lauded,
but yes, honoured
and well regarded
be

not so much just your name,
but the work of your hands
and your heart

blessed she

above and beyond all the blessings,
hymns, praises and consolations
that are clung to in this world

May the earnest prayers
of all the House of Israel
be accepted by the Source
That walks amidst the trees
of the hills of Yehudah
and who is here
in the Dining Room
and the Clinic
and the Children's Home
where you worked 

may there be abundant peace from the cotton fields
contentment, equilibrium, satisfaction, help,
comfort, refuge, redemption, forgiveness,
remembering and forgetting
for us and for all who love

May the One who makes peace low and high grant peace
upon us and on all those who mourn
that the light has flickered and dimmed for a while
before it shines again from the North and South
from the East and from the West
above Tzora and
Pilgrims Rest

The Ology

If you want to understand G-d
look to the lifecycle of the May Fly

https://www.google.com/…/the-mayflys-lifecycle-a-fasci…/amp/