City life’s more or less the same worldwide…
Windhoek’s going to be “home” for a while, so not having any genuine “wild animals” to view,  I’ve turned my attention to all these good people wandering around here, projecting their own image of entitlement & self importance.
How do they do it ?
How do they manage their demons, their secret fears…?
Some of them’ve got nothing…
When it rains, they get wet, they burn under the sun everyday… Sleep where they lay…
King of the pavement…”Me…my spot, go away”… Like that.

Others drive past, intently… “Don’t let this traffic slow me down…Oh hell”… Onto the horn, flashers… “Get outta my way”.

I watched as a Woman drove into oncoming traffic, around an ambulance stopped at some arbitrary (to her) pavement tragedy, hooting, gesticulating wildly… Phone at the ear… Was it the traffic, or secret demons driving her ?

They pour into “Joe’s”…
How do any businesses survive ?  Listening to this lot, almost without exception, their bosses’re arseholes, incompetent wankers.
Most sentences I eavesdropped on, began with, “Ja, boet, I fucking told him”… & ended with, “Ja, so he can fucking take it or fucking leave it”…
No respect, no love… Demons, fear ?
Down go the drinks… Beers, spirits, shooters…
Up go the voices… Everyone’s talking, no-one’s listening.
Jesus, Man, it’s only half past four… What’re these young guys doing  ?  Drowning their demons ? Masking fears  ?  What  ?

What am I doing here  ?
“I’m exploring Windhoek of course”.
Yesterday it was the Namibian Art Gallery…but this’s much better.
“Walking puts you close to the ground”…
“Keeps you in your groove”.
“Mmmm…. Sure” ?

Joe’s beerhouse’s one of the more colourful “local watering holes” around here…
Feels like a very lekker “tourist trap” to me…
The usual crop of almond eyed hookers hovering in the corner.
Tall, attentive Herero barmen patrolling, quick with a fill up.
Old “Africana” hanging from, propped up against, nailed onto & balanced on, everything, everywhere.

Dingy… But oh so very cool.

The kind of joint that makes you wish you could retire & “have one of these on the beach at home”.

Be careful what you wish for  !!

So, Ja, the personal demons…
Watching this slice of Windhoek’s population… Same as London, Sydney, Durban… Anywhere.

“Sometimes you’ve gotta bleed to know”.

I was lucky… I had love.
A deep, unconditional, all consuming, God given LOVE.
Oh yeah… An almost violent emotional condition…
Nothing else mattered…
I was a spinning dynamo…She was the switch…
Anything…everything was easy…natural.
I became “WE”.

No demon could show itself then…
“We” would run it down, like a juggernaut, flatten it, not even feel the bump.

I miss that now…long gone… but as a consequence, my view of the world is from a different angle…
I KNOW now….
I may be “knocking on heavens door”, but when I see life happening… I KNOW.
Maybe some of the demons’re still around, but I can recognise them.
They’re bruised… Impotent now…
“We” did that.

Have any of these people got it ?

I’m not well versed in religious writings…
So I’ll just have to make a presumption…
When Jesus said, “turn the other cheek”.
I think He meant, “Drop the ego”.

It’s so easy… Our demons feed off fear.
Fear feeds off our egotistical desire not to be seen to fail, even to come off second best.

John Lennon, among so many others, sang, “All you need is LOVE”.
The scriptures, religious writings from  around the world’re full of the same message.
For what it’s worth… I believe it too.

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