#8 One of those nights
It is just one of those nights that everything that you touch has a connection to something else in your life!
To entertain myself, I found a documentary about George Gershwin. He wrote the song Summertime that overtook the world up until today. The tune was mesmerizing; it was so familiar and so close to my heart, it all made some sense. It had been written in the 1930’s, Gershwin, being a Russian Jewish immigrant with an opera in mind, saw the struggle of a black nation in the land of freedom- with unspoken limited possibilities- the America we have grown to know as life changing. And so it is true, times are changing and so do the ideals of people, but they can leave amazing marks.
While the documentary unfolded, the name of Angelique Kidjo passed by and she gave her version of the Summertime lullaby. I searched Kidjo’s rendition on ‘Spotify’ and after listening to it for a few moments, I realized that she had shared space with me once before.
It had been in Cape Town, South Africa and it was the concert that was inspired by Nelson Mandela’s goal to raise awareness on AIDS called 46664. It was there that Kidjo had sung together with so many other icons of my life, Annie Lennox, Jimmy Cliff, Johnny Clegg, Peter Gabriel and Bono.
While my friends and I were standing on the field and journeying in soundscapes, the helicopter of Nelson Mandela flew over in the afternoon. Everybody could feel he was about to arrive, and when he finally entered the Sea Point Stadium Arena, there was a sense of unity, thrill and an ecstatic energy embracing everybody.
As the father of freedom silently holding his hands stood on stage, the crowd was in bliss, cheers and noise filled the air with positive vibrations. It took about ten minutes before he started to share his message with us, and we were thrilled to listen to his clear and powerful vision.
But how was this all relating to me?
Well, a few years before in America, my visit to the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay gave me an insight into the people that had been held there and under which conditions they had to conduct their lives to due their crime ridden mannerisms. And then a week later, I found myself at the Robben Island penitentiary in the bay of Cape Town. It was like Alcatraz in many ways because it revealed the stories of revolutionaries fighting the Apartheid like the ANC movement.
As I entered cell 46664, I could feel the energy imprint of Nelson Mandela surround me. At that moment, the question of insight entered my curiosity; “What did this amazing man understand about life in here?” And then the answer whispered back to me: “ You are totally free in your mind!”
It is hard to explain what and how all these pieces of the puzzle add up to, as we are all looking for the meaning and goals of life, but we can choose from so many directions!
The intriguing optical illusion that kept me occupied for hours.
Well, permaculture is a way to express how the world could work in a more harmonious way, so many things are warped to fit the hand of others with hidden agendas; the finer details will never be openly discussed.
But what is possible in our minds is to see that the power to change the world is in our hands. If there is some discontent with the system, become aware of it but understand that revolting against it will cause a great amount of loss to fight it. It is much better to unite forces and start a movement of people who are like- minded and start a revolution of constructive action, plant seeds of food. The more life is created in our world to absorb the ‘fear machine’, the greater positive diversions can be created.
The power of seeds are amazing, the existing system does not know how to deal with this potential! Together with a friend, we planted sunflower seeds in Amsterdam. Every evening, we would walk the streets and plant the seeds anywhere that there was bare soil. Often we would get stares from strangers or snarls. We even got followed by the police when we covered the grounds around the American Embassy!
So, the thrill is in your own intentions to want to make a difference, take action and make a critical building progress to life!
‘Power to the people’, if only you know it, the thought of positive direction can make that difference.
Three generations, my grandmother on the left and me sitting on my mom’s lap,
“power to the people and chocolate cake!”
