Preamble – by Frederik van Bart
”Of human baggage we don’t ask release,
but to dance and sing in the
resonances of the seasons; stops and starts in the mind.
Flow with the wind and await its
stillness which is always there somewhere and
hear the empty spaces of nescience (not knowing).”
– Frederik van Bart
Download The Dorpshuys by Etienne van Bart here:
Click to access the-dorpshuys-2026.pdf
How does one name a baby? What is the first thought? Does the designation emerge out of an emulsion? Do the letters pull towards each other across the water tension of an alphabet soup? Perhaps a vision quest, but someplace regular, like beside a pool where you sit on the shade of the bleached body-corporate umbrella and think about your life, the lineage of worms and bacteria that brought you here to this unworkshoppable premise.
The nameless child. No name is brave enough, the heritage is made-up, exaggerated. There is no shelter of a grandparent’s name. The permafrost melts and tragically there are no ancient diseases, no long-toothed mammals, just ice-blue melt, mocking the being that up until now has been a loose cellular construction, unrestrained by walls, just sensation. Without the pigskin to hold it, there is just a massed crowd, silent, watching, expectant. They wait for the name.
The child is older now and has no pronouns. This person has realised that by nodding, and asking enough observant questions, one can be unnamed for years. Often confused with others, but not with affront or protest. Without a silhouette to break it, the horizon runs on, uninterrupted. Then, one warm evening on a hotel rooftop in southern Johannesburg, something divine turns this being over like a stone in the surf. The name arrives in a light that brings with it a logic as inescapable as gravity. “I’m Him” are the only words that make it into the Notes app.
His head is spinning and he has to sit down. Words are plastic, a tangible melange.
“I am Jesus Christ.”
A tennis journey of generations (short story)
I recently sat down to pen a long short story about my journey in African tennis. Mystically, the flamboyance I once saw as a youth at tournaments, has returned in the form of a maverick genius from Nigeria, Usman, plying his trade in the Cape – whose coming marks a resurgence of that raw flair that once inspired my journey into grassroots tennis; a resurgence that encompasses multiple generations in a unified tangle of magical coincidence.
You may download the story here:
The Zen Olympiad 