SAN ETCHINGS: ZEN TRACES

By ANTONY OSLER

EVERY NOW AND THEN, to our surprise, this life brings a gift. I am not talking only about daily lovelinesses — coffee in bed in the mornings, reading around the fire at night – but of something so markedly other that who-we-usually-take-ourselves-to-be is swept into something unfathomable. And, happily, this capacity does not diminish with age.

Here is what happens. I set out early across the veld in my ordinary shoes and with my ordinary hat. Not with any particular aim other than to wander without destination, to look without looking. Not far from the house, in an ordinary patch of scrub and winter grass, among ordinary stones, my peripheral vision catches something quite different: a pattern on a rock face, a pattern not made by sun and wind. It looks like a sun, with lines radiating outwards. It is the sun, etched by human hands. Deeply familiar, utterly new. For years I had been hoping to find San rock drawings, but now, out of the corner of my eye and without any doubt, there it is. F***k! No words. The wind holds its breath.

 

 

I go from rock to rock, looking intently now. There are others in this gallery – circular designs, animals, then a wheeled cart and a cross. Some of them old, some from after the arrival of Europeans about 300 years ago.

Then the astonishment passes, my thinking mind rushes back in. And its voice is harsh.  I know this artwork was made amid violence and dispossession. In my mind see the boers with their herds, their guns and bibles and their entitlement to this ‘empty’ land. I see them taking over the spring, chasing off the first inhabitants and settling here as their right. I see myself, the descendant of the boers, still in the farmhouse; the descendants of the Bushmen still in the worker’s cottage. I am ashamed. My head aches. Bare feet good, velskoen bad!

 

 

But then – faint, pleading – comes another voice. The one that begs me not to answer with my head alone; the voice that dares me to take off these finger-wagging lenses of political correctness, guilt and blame. What will I see then? it asks.

So I sit down among these unpretentious rocks, enter the stillness of sky, and find once again my connection to this place. This is not the enactment of a new ideology, or an anti-ideology; it is a different creature entirely. Nor do I have to dash my glasses against a stone; for when I enter this whole-bodied oneness, I find my spectacles already set aside, all opinion and argument with them.

And this is not another dogma either; it is something altogether more lively and un-pin-down-able, carrying with it the red thread of inspiration from that moment of oneness – the discovery of hand on rock. I am a Zen student, so I call it the way of Zen, but it can have any name you want to give it. Perhaps the Chinese Taoists were the most articulate, locating in such intimacy our most natural relationship to the world, finding under our hands the pattern in the jade.

 

So this is where I start – in the astonishment itself. No longer just me here in my store-bought hat and shoes. but me as part of a lineage that stretches back to rock and stream. All the people of this place are my ancestors. The sky is simply blue, the veld brown. As the Chinese Zen patriarch Daoxin wrote: ‘Walls, fences, tiles, stones and the entire earth proclaim the truth!’

I stand in the presence of Ironstone, Bushman and Boer. How astounding to come across these exquisite stone-age traces, to walk in the footsteps of those who made them. How beautiful the furrows, kraals and terraces of the settlers, how terrible the violence they unleashed.

But here’s the thing — the hunter-gatherers were not just victims; they also sang and danced and drew pictures in rock. The whites were not just oppressors; they also lifted their voices and sank to their knees. They both aimed straight – one with a gun, one with a bow – and they all called this arid land home. Now they are no longer strangers. At last I can grant them full lives; not mere cyphers of political judgement, but beings as nurturing, fearful, flawed, brave, weak, obstinate, kind and hopeful – and as in need of forgiveness – as myself. There is more than damage here. And this is beauty enough.

 

 

Now I am ready to return to the questions I asked myself about this place and its history. I haven’t run away from them. But I have heard the cries of the world – and its song – and that has changed everything. Now it is less about who is to blame, and more about how I can look after all of this – how I can honour it with my life. It is about trusting this very intimacy itself to guide my steps. To you, my actions may not even look like an answer — but that, too, is no longer my concern. For, one way or another, I will keep hold of the red thread.

No straight lines here; a crooked man in a crooked house in a crooked land with a crooked past – how wonderful! I will fix the puncture, wield the knife, sing the song … I will mark the ballot, chase the bandit, keep the girl-child safe … I will laugh with my neighbour, play with the baby, talk to the politician … I will save water, protect the veld, sweep my yard, and watch the moon rise in the east.

These stoneworks of art – how can I thank them!

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