The final frontier

Walking to the printing unit to put myself in charge of a good R5000’s worth of book print run, I walked past the botany department where I used to have my linguistics 2 lectures in second year in 2002

digression #1: I’ve always been lucky with numbers when it came to the year and my education level coinciding – I was in std 6 from 1996 and so on, matric in 2000, and my university education always ran parallel too, first year in 2001, second year in 2002, et al…

I remember the venue was pretty small, and I was just getting to know the people in my class who were taking ling for the enjoyment of it, not for the easy (phonetics, easy, right!) first year credit.

digression #2: Rhodes has this habit of always putting you in a lecture venue that in no way links to your chosen field – as a young BA student I attended the majority of my lectures in venues such as Zoology Major, Chemistry Minor, and – in this scenario – Botany Minor. Never had one in Arts Major, strange.

So as I walked past, I noticed this little wooden ‘blockade’ effort that forced people to walk into an alleyway in single file, and prevented motor bikes and car from shortcutting from the road above (there was one at the top of the alley too). While a small annoyance, it’s an obstacle I had to pass, and queue to pass, countless times over the weeks of 2002, and often enough in my other years.

It’s gone.

The top blockade remains, but one of the wooden poles of the bottom blockade has disappeared – thus, you can now walk straight through the two poles that used to demarcate a no-walk area. Their very use was to establish this zone. Now you can walk straight through.

This freaks me out, and I think I know why.

Space has always been quite an abstract concept in my view. That’s the space around you, hon, not the big black stuff (whole ‘nother post altogether). I am afraid of heights because I feel like some higher being must be very pissed off that we’ve had the audacity to build upwards. Petronas Towers, Beacon Isle Hotel, it doesn’t matter how high or low, we’re just not supposed to be there. Consequently, the idea of elevators also leaves me cold. We’re tempting fate, we are.

Which is why I still walk around the invisible blockade. I know it sounds crazy, and I don’t believe in superstition (although I don’t walk under ladders). It’s akin to the idea of bungee-jumping. I feel you have NO right to complain when the rope snaps after you’ve flung your puny mushy unprotected body off a bridge. You’re just not supposed to be there!