Sunday, April 26, 2009

Closed For Maintenance

Time perhaps to pause and reflect.

It is becoming progressively more wearying for me to put down a few lines for this blog. Hanly was right: my creative brain is busy packing up.... Perhaps.


And perhaps not. Certainly my brain is getting tired, but what I mainly feel missing is a good deal of motivations. Practically, after 4 years of Barrydale Times (printed version) and a good half year of blogging, I honestly start wondering what am I doing this for. 


Just today, driving into the village, I saw the usual amount of rubbish under the "Welcome in Barrydale" sign; it was exactly the same rubbish I photographed 3 months ago and wrote about. Nothing has changed and I wonder if something will ever change.


The other day a friend said to me: "Why do you care? Do what everybody else does and stick your head in the sand." 

He is right. Everybody, some more some less, does that, and this is why things are pretty bad all over - people, like ostriches, tend to forget that though their head is well in the sand, their backside is not . Not only, it's also pretty exposed.


Unfortunately, if people keep their head in the sand, one has to scream to be heard, but I'm tired and I'm running out of breath.


To put it mildly, I'm fed up. Fed up not only with writing a blog, with pesticides and rubbish, I'm fed up with humanity, with wars, with corruption, with stupidity, with lack of concern, with selfishness, pettiness and greed. I'm just fed up.


Reading here and there, in the last few years, I came across a lot of words. They tell horrible stories, they talk of oppression, injustice and pain. But words are words, and the sowers of confusion never tire to contradict, to find excuses, to justify pain and turn blood into patriotism and, believe or not, necessity.


Pictures instead don't lie. I could display here a vast collection of them: from that of a beautiful girl with both her legs shredded by the bombs of civilization and democracy, to the one showing a mound formed by the many corpses of 5 and 7 years old Gaza children, died during the last Israeli invasion.


I won't. Enough with blood, we see too much of it, we're getting callous.


I will only show you the most sad and tender of all, the most beautiful and the most heart rending; something to remember in the dark of our hole under the sand.

Enjoy it.




By for now

Barry Duck


1 comment:

Jurgen said...

Hello Barry Duck,

Please do not give up on this blogspot as we find your input to be very valuable.

We have just returned from Knysna, and having made a few comments on this blog, and seen the photos of BarryDale that you have posted, we decided to drive back (to Riebeek-Kasteel) via Oudtshoorn and BarryDale. We are glad that we did, even though it added a couple of hours to the trip (in fact we have just got back home 15 mins ago 19h00 ).

Had it not been for your comments we would never have decided to explore Barry Dale and to enjoy a lunch at one of your restaurants.

I found it to be a very beautiful and quaint little town - I looked around for litter in the town itself but did not see any.People seem to take pride in their houses and I think that the town has a lot of potential. However , where are the people? Besides the tourists dining at the local eateries we saw no locals.

Do you have an electronic version of the BarryDale Times - like we do in Riebeek Kasteel ? You need to reach as many of the locals as possible and use this blog as a springboard from which as many people as possible can put in their input - as it will make BarryDale a better place at the end of the day. Have you looked at CapeInfo.Com ? They used to distribute the electronic Valley Reporter and its worth contacting them so as to get your circulation up.

You have such a beautiful town and I really wish that more residents like you would actually take the time to get more involved. If you all were so passionate you could accomplish such amazing things.