Returning from two nights in the back yard of Knysna, I’m acutely aware of how I don’t quite fit in there. I don’t quite fit in here either. Woe is me.

I felt more authenticity and sentience in the smile of a local lady in a coffee shop in Knysna, than I did in the rambling good intentions of the friends I met in the mountains. I was relieved to leave the dirt road to the forest retreat and mount the one to the real world, where the Bee Gees plays shamelessly over the radio and I get to sit on an ergonomically designed toilet. Who knows what sins I might be committing whilst sipping a flat white or flushing a loo. I commend the efforts of my friends in the up there – I really do. They intend to create a better world, one seed planted at a time. But I found the whole environment to be draining and honestly, I was bored by the conversation. I get that I have opted for a convenient existence. And I don’t condone my mindless living. I just wonder if there’s not a more integrated (less annoying) way to live mindfully.

I don’t actually think this is where my contention lies. I think I am agitated by the heat and my dirty car and finger nails. I might need to reflect on my weekend post shower – I’m a little fickle in that way. I’m also dying to know what the fuck permaculture* means.

It’s fascinating to see how much we are shaped by our environment. And if ever I believed in the fate of temperament, I think my mind has changed profoundly. These people were all alike; in the way they moved, their language, even their ideas were the same. I could almost predict the words out of their mouths. The world they live in has sanded away at their oddities, so much so that they conform to this body; this large living organism that lives and breathes and functions as one, sans distinctiveness or personality. Ironic. It happens in the cities and it happens in the mountains. Although the mountain people have more noble pursuits, have leapt over norms and questioned conventions and have found a place of acceptance outside of a bigger corporate. That’s what we strive for at the end of the day. Acceptance. And with acceptance comes conformity in some way or another. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, just a boring thing. Many of them are doing incredible work. Maybe I feel guilty and my consciousness is doing it’s best to put out certain notions – notions that might lead to penultimate conviction and thereafter, radical change.

I could go back and forth like this until the end of time. Let’s see where I stand in a few years time or when the weather changes.

*now know what permaculture means