I have never understood why some people have no regrets as I have lived a life full of regrets. That is not to say I am unhappy or dissatisfied with my current lot, but we all make mistakes. In fact, I like to think that is how I have learned a few things that have enabled me to find happiness.
In my last letter I referred to Toledo Worm when in fact it should have been Toredo Worm. I apologise for my mistake and if you want more and accurate information click on the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipworm.
I was reminded of some of my past mistakes by an email received from Moiré, a girlfriend from my university days. The email was titled “Blast from the Past” and indeed it was. It elicited a multitude of emotions and a bagful of sorrows that had been buried by time.
The memories resulted in a sculpture, ‘Travels to the Interior’, as I was taken back both in time and into myself. The sculpture consists of a boat containing figures and animals made from various wood collected from the beach. Boats are an image I like to use as they were part of my youth and express many things that I feel about life. In my experience, life, like a boat, has an uncertain path and is vulnerable to the many storms that might sink it or set it on a new course. Also life for me, like ships that pass in the night, is a brief, intense and fragile few moments in time.
The name and the shape of this boat remind me of the early explorers. The title is from early Afrikaner literature and the boat reminds me of the ships in which Van Riebeeck sailed to the Cape. The vessel is a natural form that suggests both the boat and the waves upon which it rides. Here and there the waves boil out of the form and express something of the emotional maelstrom that I felt.
Aboard the boat are figures and animals each representing either persons involved or symbolising the surrounding events. The owl is a symbol of death and or wisdom and it lords over all. The dog is symbolic of domesticity and or infidelity and the swan represents sex and sensuality.
What happened? That is, of course, none of your beeswax and any case I can only tell a part of it and my version of that story. Suffice to say that mistakes were made and I feel remorse for mine. To subvert that other cliché associated with regrets: Had I my time all over again, I would do it all differently. Hopefully, I would do it better.
Milton, who penned his Areopagitica in defence of the freedom of the press in 1644, wrote “That which purifies us is trial and trial is by what is contrary”. I am not saying that I am now pure although I may be a little less black hearted than I was. Milton’s point is that in order to understand good you need to know about evil. (He does not say you have to do evil.) What I am saying is I have learnt a little from my mistakes and being wiser I am a happier man.
May 2009
