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Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else
Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else
Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else
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Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else

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Many texts make up the narrative that you will read in the following pages for the text is a game, a game that may take you a few hours to play, or it may take 6 months, it is a game in which you may be captured and ensnared and enthralled, or it is one which in which you cast the pages aside for they are superfluous and inconsequential, dull. This is not marketplace fiction which has a form and a story; it will not move in a linear fashion from the beginning to the middle to the end.

GOING SOMEWHERE? ON A ROAD TRIP TO NAMIBIA
There are many stories that are written about Africa
•Stories of the land - that vast open space
•Stories of people - THE HOMOGENOUS PEOPLE – Africa has over 900 million people who are all starving and dying and emigrating and complaining and ..... But always Africa, it is stressed time and time again (time, does it mean distance or does it mean infinity or does it mean space)
•Stories of Africa, that Special Space - Africa, it is in my blood, my soul, I cannot leave Africa for it has crept into my heart

LanguageEnglish
PublisherBarbara Adair
Release dateJul 31, 2016
ISBN9780620676236
Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else
Author

Barbara Adair

Barbara Adair is a South African novelist and some times travel writer. Her first novel, In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot (Jacana, 2005), a fictional account of the lives of Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles in Tangier, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction award. Her second novel, End (Jacana, 2009), is a pastiche based on the movie Casablanca set in Johannesburg and Maputo; it was shortlisted for the African Regional Commonwealth Prize. Barbara has also published many articles in such publications as: Sunday Independent (South Africa), Sunday Times (South Africa), Weekender (South Africa), Horizon (British Airways), Selamtra (Ethiopian Airways), New Contrast Literary Journal (South Africa), From the Great Wall to the Grand Canyon (US publication), and Sensitive Skin Magazine (NYC). 6h00 in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else is her first self-published book.

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    Six o' clock in somewhere, and many hours later somewhere else - Barbara Adair

    6h00 in somehwere,

    and many hours later

    somewhere else

    published 2015

    barbara adair and mark kannemeyer

    ISBN 978-0-620-67623-6

    PREFACE

    In December 2010, or possible April 2009, the months and years do not make very much difference for time, and space are relative concepts; they, or it, for maybe they are one, the same thing, exists in Einstein's theories, exists in my imagination, exists because every 28 days the moon is full, a round flat circle in a sky where pieces of fire are light years away, no longer exist, time, space, existence …..

    I set off from my home, a city somewhere in South Africa, the name of the city is Johannesburg, or, as it is sometimes called 'the City of Gold', gold leaf covers, gold is a coverlet, covering, smothering, excitement, but once again, after all, what's in a name, an arbitrary signifier that has meaning for those that ascribe it a meaning, it could be anywhere, any place, any space, any time, on a road trip to Namibia, a country that is close to South Africa and yet it is different, but after all what is a country, a piece of land that has an imaginary invisible line drawn around it, sometimes the line is the ocean, but it is a border, an enclosure, someone's space, my space, your space, my time, anyway Namibia is a country that has as its population 1,7 000 000 people, as opposed to South Africa which has as its population 70 000 000 people, (these figures may not accurate, there is a census, stand up and be counted, be an individual in the score of individuals, be a number for numbers are valuable, how can we ever be accurate, there is always one more that is born, one more that dies, one more born, one more dies …. And so it goes on, but the numbers, they give an indication, the one number is separated by a minimum of 68 000 000 numbers), it has within its arbitrary lined borders a red desert, a blue ocean, a green river and much else, there are very few people in this space, there are few people in time ….. and so it was a road trip that never ended, it divided itself continually, forever; the dead Jack Kerouac would have been envious, for it was a road trip across/in/over/towards/ a world of more.

    Many texts make up the narrative that you will read in the following pages for the text is a game, a game that may take you a few hours to play, or it may take 6 months, it is a game in which you may be captured and ensnared and enthralled, or it is one which in which you cast the pages aside for they are superfluous and inconsequential, dull. This is not marketplace fiction which has a form and a story; it will not move in a linear fashion from the beginning to the middle to the end

    The text is a mishmash of words sewn into a narrative that has a beginning and a middle and an end, and yet it has no beginning or middle or end, these are merely days and dates, denominators of time, locating you in a space that is recognisable, familiar, or not; and as time is a by-product of 2 or more events, 1 thing happens then another, the journey of time is measured through this medium of space, special events for if there were no events then the journey would fall away, the time that it takes to read the book, maybe the life that is lived before you die, this is the time of the journey. It is a pastiche of many words, some inconsequential and others valuable, a plagiarism of the internet and the printed, some of which are rendered as they are, unchanged, others of which are distorted, messy. And so you yourself may decide on the veracity of the action, the reliability of the facts, the verisimilitude of the road; what is the authentic? there is no unimpeachable hold on truth, you can interpret the words, the metaphor, the exhilaration, the elation and the delight - for it was a dream.

    good-night-good-luck

    6H00 IN SOMEWHERE, AND MANY HOURS LATER

    SOMEWHERE ELSE

    SO

    GOING SOMEWHERE? ON A ROAD TRIP TO NAMIBIA

    There are many stories that are written about Africa

    Stories of the land - that vast open space

    Stories of people - THE HOMOGENOUS PEOPLE– Africa has over 900 million people who are all starving and dying and emigrating and complaining and … . But always Africa, it is stressed time and time again (time, does it mean distance or does it mean infinity or does it mean space)

    Stories of Africa, that Special Space – Africa, it is in my blood, my soul, I cannot leave Africa for it has crept into my heart

    One cliché is banal - A thousand clichés are moving

    SO this is a road trip in which we are enclosed and unoriginal and trapped and more like a river than a story, there will always be one event that comes before the other, nothing can ever occur simultaneously, but this is not literature for there is no beginning and no end, there is no continuum, there is no story, there is only space, the white spaces that exist between the black letters, the faster I move the shorter time becomes, if I could travel the speed of light, time and space would shrink to nothing (this is something that I must accept as I am unable to process the mathematics of it, I accept most things for nothing is provable, verifiable, the truth) the road trip of a life time, the faster I move the less I change, and so I move fast for I fear change, the vehicle moves at 120klm per hour and then it stops and then we drive a movement again

    We are ENCLOSED in a vehicle, the rhythm is smooth on the tar, outside, in the heat, the friction between rubber and tarmac make sparks fly, upwards, the small fires burn the sound waves, the sound patterns; but sometimes the rhythm is juddering as the wheels turn on gravel, small stones make mosaics in the air as they are thrown forward by movement, the stones fly upwards and then they descend, they mark out a picture on the road, an animal, a tree, a flower, an expressionless painting, we move, the vehicle moves in a continuum, one event precedes another, what is your name, the beginning cannot exist prior to the end, what is the end, what is your name, we are

    ENCLOSED

    We are UNORIGINAL, you slip out of my life, the life slips out of you, if I could reach out and touch you, reach out and touch, reach out and touch you somewhere along the line, life slips out, if I could slip out, slipped, slippery, somewhere along the line we are

    UNORIGINAL

    We are TRAPPED in the space that is life, there is no air to breathe, life is movement, movement to pass the time that moves slowly, or it moves fast, we travel a light year to a star, the star that is eternity, heaven, but the star has burnt out, it does not exist, we are travelling to the past, we watch the past pass us, or can we make it yet to the future, there is no now, it is always gone, just a second ago, a nanosecond, this is an hallucination that is called a word, that is called speech, the dream that I interpret, what dream, what is a dream, where is the beginning we are TRAPPED

    Time is a RIVER for the river flows from the beginning, the source, to the end, the sea the RIVER flows always downwards (Moon River wider than a mile I'm crossing you in style…) somewhere on one side of the river it is 6h00 on the other it is another day, a day that is broken into hours, 12 hours in a day, 12 is a sacred number, there are twelve joints on four fingers Time is the most artificial of all our inventions - a planet turning on its own axis is no less arbitrary than a calculation based on the growth of trees

    On the Road, we'd dig the whole world with a car like this because, man, the road must eventually lead to the whole world

    DAY 1

    1 December

    Getting Over the Border/Getting There/

    Getting to Another Country

    we climb into the Land Rover, I sit on the left hand side, you sit on the right, you take the steering wheel between your hands, ten fingers wrap themselves around a black circle, fourteen joints, there is no time for you need all of your fingers, fourteen joints, not twelve, your feet glide easily from one pedal to the next, the left foot is on the clutch, it eases out, the gear lever glides smoothly from one oiled medulla to the next, the muscles in your naked calves flex then relax then flex again, the small hairs are a slow crawling spider that opens its 8 legs wide then closes them again, then opens them, then closes them, infinitely flexible/infinitely inflexible, Land Rover's radically updated product line was launched in 1983, initially only the long- wheelbase One Ten was available and it was sold with the same engine line-up as the preceding Series III model 2.25-litre petrol and diesel engines, the lines of the map that I hold are red and yellow and blue, the map is a paper map, a map book, 2007, a book made from trees, the red lines are the highways, the blue the gravel roads, the yellow, no-one will know what they are until they are travelled, lines are smooth on the page, like your legs are smooth, the lines move across the pages, they arch, they go somewhere, like your legs go somewhere, a line and a leg run into eternity

    NAMIBIA

    the no people desert sand …..

    the no people darkness of granite plains …..

    the no people whiteness of the beaches

    the no people green of the rivers

    no people … the no people …. .on the road …..

    the no ending road … the road ….. no

    Michel Butor said: to travel is to write, because to travel is to read. To write is to travel, to write is to read, to read is to write, and to read is to travel. To translate is also to read, and to translate is to write, as to write is to translate and to read is to translate. So that we may say: To translate is to travel and to travel is to translate. To translate a travel writing is to read a travel writing, to write a travel writing, to read a writing, to write a writing, and to travel. But if because you are translating you read, and because writing translate, and to translate is to write, to write to travel, to read to travel, to write to read, and to read to write, and to read is also to read, and even more, because when you read you read, but also travel, and because traveling read, therefore read and read; and when reading also write, therefore read; and reading also translate, therefore read; therefore read, read, read, and read

    I miss you at this time of the early morning; I know your timing, your space, the sun rises in the dark, the alarm clock is alive, your waking is an event

    [Technology, this method of communication is fast, events and matter do not change between the time they are sent and the time a reply is received, technology creates a promise, the potential for quick speech, but this text may never arrive; and yet it can happen at any instant, it is perpetually imminent, immanent, a promise that may be fulfilled]

    What does Butor say? What does he mean? Why? Why is this a passage, if it is at all, for to read is to communicate, to read is to speak, to read is to receive a reply, a textual reaction, to travel is to receive a response, to travel is to write, to write is to reply, to translate is to understand, to understand what? We need people to speak for to speak is to listen, to listen is to write, to write is to speak, to listen is to hear, to hear is to touch in no time at all we were back on the main highway the road from Upington to Sendlingsdrift is straight and hard, the wheels of the car throw up the dust but the road is made of tar so the dust is that dust that the wind has moved from the sides of the road to the middle of it, a white line divides the road, look to the left and look to the right, it is a military road, a road for armoured cars and tanks, now there are no armoured cars and tanks on the road, now there are new vehicles that test their speed on the road, it is well maintained and that night I saw the entire state of Nebraska unroll before my eyes … an arrow road, and that day I saw the whole of the Kalahari unfold as a blanket unfolds in the summer, hot, and that day I saw the pylons that bring in electricity to four worlds, they sing a white noise that is drowned by the loud ringing kloo-ee, kloo-ee kloo-ee, kloo-ee of the martial eagle that spreads its feathers as it preens on the metal wings of progress, the blue sky is bigger than anything in the world, wide, expansive, it covers the land (and me), but it cannot protect sleeping towns, no traffic and the union pacific streamliner that fell behind us in the moonlight … unreal with dream like rapidity as we roared ahead and talked … and we did not talk for to talk is to imagine that there is something to say, a text, and there is nothing to say in the vast wide openness of the road, it strangles the sound of the voice as it steps under the wheels it was time for us to move on…. we are a seeking generation, we want god to show us his face and god did

    GOD DID

    On the Road, we'd dig the whole world with a car like this

    because, man, the road must eventually lead to the whole world.

    THEN - then - THEN

    Land Rover planned a series of rolling improvements, a spin-on cartridge oil filter instead of the older, harder-to-change element type and under-piston oil jets the movement of the car under me, the movement of steel, this car led to the whole of the world and the only people for anyone are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the same space, month/ year/hour/second the ones that burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centre light pop and everybody goes Awww

    We drive a car that blazes a violent electric moon, the smoke that rises from the tarmac as the wheels follow its curves make smoke- plumed serpents, electrify the air, the torque is a cloud held to a ceiling by crooked lines of smoke, there is movement on/along gymnastic engineered bridges, the ride is a ride on wheels of steel horses, we live in a monstrous age of mechanized industry that lurks perilously in the night, it is beautiful, a superior aesthetic, we are the time of the machine. Nature is made by man - Layout: 4-cylinder, in- line Power: 68 bhp (51 kW) @ 4,200 rpm Torque: 114 lbf·ft (154 N·m) @ 1,800 rpm

    And the roads in Namibia are straight, the roads are wide, the roads are race tracks. During the second great war in Europe a famous, non-European, General (G is a capital G for Generals are Generally important) noticed that the roads on the continent of Europe allowed the German troops, AUTOBAHN, to march in a movement that was exceedingly fast, they marched across the neighbouring countries so as to overwhelm them by surprise, and so he, the General that is, thought that his warring nation, or even his nation not at war, should build the same roads, for a road is power, powerful, power is healthy, and health is stable and calm and, healthy is home

    The roads in Namibia are healthy, good health, powerful - a healthy road is a healthy home

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