10 years ago
RESIDENTS on the one side of the new North Cape Mall have come out in support of their neighbours on the other side. Nooitgedacht resident Andre Westraadt no longer knows who to turn to. “I spent millions building my house. For what? For it all to be destroyed by the developers of the new mall. It’s not fair,” he said.
IT IS IRONIC that many of the things that give us joy or pleasure have to be broken first. Think about eggs. One has to destroy the structural perfection of this source of life in order to enjoy breakfast.
You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. My dad used to address a boiled egg with sardonic humour, quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark: “Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert.”
Our odd behaviour admittedly applies mostly to food.
Think about grapes. Or wheat. They have to suffer the most vigorous crushing and pounding in order to become a good glass of wine or a loaf of bread. And I am assiduously avoiding offending vegetarians by not mentioning the slaughter of animals to provide our daily protein.
These poor creatures do not appreciate our religious or culinary rituals.
Think about a racehorse. Part of the training involves terms like “breaking in”.
So we destroy the horse’s instinctive urge to run wildly and freely, then dress it in silks and ask it to do that very thing under physical constraints like reins and racetracks.
We realise that words can sometimes mislead. It’s all about semantics. But what more intimate ritual can there be than breaking bread with one’s family and friends.
The destructive undertones of “breaking” soften into sharing and enjoying. Less salutary would be breaking news, breaking faith or breaking a secret. But there are acceptable satisfactions in breaking a code or cracking a crossword puzzle.
Perhaps one could really push poetic licence and say that a heart that has been broken is more fine-tuned to appreciate sincerity when it comes.
Breaking a promise might leave a more lasting bitterness in the mouth.
Philip Larkin celebrated the first buds of spring as “breaking into newness, like something almost being said”. Breaking into song is a happy occasion. Breaking a bad habit is gratifying. I confess to breaking the backs of two monkeys that were riding me straight to perdition in my younger days.
One was smoking and the other was alcohol.
It took courage, resolve and a lot of tender loving support to break out of the clutch of those demons.
I am close to being an octogenarian and I like to ascribe some of my longevity to those episodes of breaking two destructive habits.
It goes without saying that I acknowledge God and my late partner, neither of whom ever abandoned me.
There is much fun to be had with simple words.
Some encounters hurt, like breaking the speed limit, or breaking one’s diet or word.
Breaking new ground or breaking fears and phobias have their worth.
There are limits, especially if one has eaten beans or cabbage.
Go ahead. Break into song. It’s fun.