My Dutch publisher tells me that soon we’ll have something to celebrate. Remember I told you about him, the cool dude who races his Porsche around Nuremburg Ring, who has so much horse power standing in his garage and has this beauty of a wife, who produced a herd of six weird children, the one who eats the best food and drinks the best wine. Yes — now you remember. I did exactly what he said and started to celebrate. That is quite unusual, as I never really do what anybody says, except for him and my wife, Frau Rommel. She doesn’t drink so I have to celebrate alone. I do it alone because the few friends that I still have are too snotty-nosed to celebrate with a visual vagabond like me. After a few days, I phoned my publisher and asked him what I was celebrating. He said that he would phone back later as he had a mouth full of food and an expensive bottle of French wine in front of him. Finally, he told me that my 10th coffee table book had gone to print in Singapore. He thought that was worth celebrating. So till the book has landed, I will be looking back at some dispatches and incidents of that long road travelled, at all of the mistakes that I’ve made and filed away as experience. ‘Over one horizon lies another.’ Stories from my Happysadland and beyond, till the dust settles and the diesel runs out.
In my backyard, the eating, talking and drinking was loud and brisk. I looked at the happy people and then at the Mulberry Tree gently swaying beneath a blue sky. I was enjoying myself throwing ripe Mulberries at the fun people, hoping to stain them. My wife said that I should stop doing that because Mulberry marks stain. Andrew was telling a pretty blonde with nice knees how gifted he was in most things. (Just then a flock of Hadeda birds flew overhead with their truly African sound, “ha-ha-ha-dah-dah”). Andrew’s sentence sounded like —- “I am ha-ha-ha-dah-dah a camera maker, ha-ha-ha-dah-ha, industrial designer, ha-ha-ha, and digital colour printer, ha-ha-ha-dah-dah-dah”. As the sound of the Hadedas faded, loud applause erupted. I stopped throwing ripe Mulberries that stained and joined in. Andrew was immediately voted ‘Asshole of the Day’ and I was assigned to portray him sitting there bathed in the brilliant light. I chose the faded South African cap for his untidy hair, dark glasses to subdue his great vision and hand shadows for the divine spark. Three months later, armed robbers murdered Andrew Meintjes in his Jo’burg studio. Now all I have is this, the ‘Happy-saddest’ photograph I have ever taken. But, every evening, when the flock of Hadedahs fly over my house, calling out in their African lament, I see Andrew up there against the evening sky. “Ha-ha-ha-dah-ha-ha-ha-dah”.
- Andrew Meintjes