Helen Walne’s ‘Human League’
Calvinia was weirdly humid.
In the afternoon black clouds clung to the sky like tumours. They grew. They burst. The town smelt of wet tar.
At night, mosquitoes lapped at me as though I were a fleshy oasis. I could almost hear them high-fiving each other as they discovered an exposed foot, an arm dangling over the side of the bed.
I clicked on the light, massacred 13 of them and assembled their carcasses on the bedside table. They never learn.
Eventually, I found a can of Doom, read the label – “avoid contact with skin” – and sprayed my body. I’d rather be poisoned than sucked to death.
In the morning, I ate cornflakes and moths, their kamikaze wings powdering the milk. Then I heard it: snap, crackle, pop. A throaty roar. A murmur of voices. A growl. Silence. Bird song and silence.
I peered over the fence into the parking area of the neighbouring guest house. I’d heard rumours about the Italian crew and the fancy car. I’d seen the two security guards posted outside.
“It’s a Ferrari prototype,” a woman in the coffee shop had whispered. “They’re testing it on Van Rhyns Pass.”
“Nee, dis ’n Lamborghini,” murmured a bearded man.
And there it was: a sleek, low-slung beast decorated in black and white squiggles, its doors opened up like wings. Squat men in shorts caressed it and babbled in Italian.
I ducked as the security guard scanned the perimeter fence. I smsd my husband: “Awesome! Italians are testing secret car. Think it’s a Lamborghini. Looks like shark with Botox. Will try take pic.”
Then I remembered that the camera on my phone is the Blair Witch of photography: dogs become ghostly smudges, children look like extras from The Exorcist, and landscapes come out all atomic.
I would have to just look, absorb and remember.
On Friday I watched people watching themselves watching the U2 concert. In front of us, a woman spent the duration of the concert taking photos of herself and her son against a backdrop of Bono.
As the band blasted on stage, she sat with her head down, frantically uploading the images onto Facebook. To the right, a blonde woman sat illuminated by the screen on her phone, Tweeting and smsing.
Across the way, two boys in caps kept leaping up to take videos of themselves, the flashing screen a giddy background.
It’s almost as though we no longer trust ourselves to experience a moment. We feel compelled to have our presence verified by others. Like the tree that falls in the forest without anyone hearing it, we seem to have convinced ourselves that if we don’t capture an event or experience, it never happened.
We need to say: Look! I was there! But while we’re busy verifying our existence, collecting evidence of the great time we had, the actual moments pass us by. The details are lost. The Edge’s guitar notes hang mute, Bono becomes just a lead singer in a black jacket and the 360-degree spectacle is rendered two-dimensional, a flat picture amid a collection of other flat pictures – a trophy on a digital wall.
Memories are not 2D. They are a combination of all our senses: the opening chords of Where The Streets Have No Name; the tangy smell of pitas being eaten by the guys two rows back; the moon sidling into the sky above the stage; the feel of jumping bodies; the taste of cold beer; the warm flood of emotion.
In order to remember, we have to be there in the moment instead of being seen there at the moment.
On my way out of Calvinia, a cavalcade of cars zoomed past me.
Jammed between them was the Lamborghini, its underbelly sticking to the road, two slits of LED brake lights winking like something out of Knight Rider.
I cranked down the window and listened as the engine growled its way amid the scrub. The air smelt of herbs. Puddles of water reflected back clouds. I scratched the mosquito bites on my leg, put my foot on the accelerator and chased after the black and white car, watching as it became a speck on the hill, and then disappeared.
I laughed, thrilled as a child. I hadn’t caught it. I hadn’t captured it. I hadn’t even wangled an interview or filed an exclusive report.
Nevertheless, that snapping, roaring, throbbing car would be out there in full colour, snaking its way up and down the pass, whipping up leaves and creating a stir – with or without me.