I grew up in Johannesburg but feel like I’ve never known it. I’ve lived outside of Joburg now for almost a decade and only go back every 3 or 4 years and it feels like a scary and strange alien place every time I do. That sense of it always changing (sometimes not for the better) resonates so much with me. Some people seem to love that about Joburg. Others, like me, feel discomfited by it, I think.
A true elegy.
Beautiful piece, beautifully written x
I grew up in Johannesburg but feel like I’ve never known it. I’ve lived outside of Joburg now for almost a decade and only go back every 3 or 4 years and it feels like a scary and strange alien place every time I do. That sense of it always changing (sometimes not for the better) resonates so much with me. Some people seem to love that about Joburg. Others, like me, feel discomfited by it, I think.
❤️❤️❤️
As an ex-Jo'borger myself, I loved reading this piece. You capture the gritty beauty of it, alongside the hopelessness and frustration.
Simply beautifully told: you have a gift to transfer feelings!
And you helped me see again that I don't so much love in "the city" as it lives in me.
And every time I let it live in me I feel love for its other inhabitants.
If I just lived in the city I could be am alien, without love, without responsibility and without the compassion of humanity-at-work.
When it lives in me I am fed and get to pass on the goodness of life on the city.
THANKS?
Thanks!!
Not "thanks?"