What a delight to be able to be familiar and more deeply in love with all the locations you wrote about in you metal sojourn. I grew up in Carletonville and remember how proud I had felt that I grew up in the town with the richest gold mine ... in the world! whether it was true or not. The glitterous prospects of being a child in a place where one reads names of metal on every street on a bicycle to school, whether primary or high, never really materialised into anything shiny as far as I could tell. But it did not matter. Three decades later I found myself in a bind of blackbelt training on personal development with a new generation of mine workers in the room. Their looks did not change from the men on the streets of my childhood. But they were blackbelt communicators, honest, straight-forward, tough, no-shit people who would shout out: Get Real! It brought a new face to my Carletonville. Pure gold. There in the halls of confronts 80-90's style RSA, I felt utterly and demonstratively real with men who knew the under-earth of wealth, barely saw the sun, and shrugged off concepts injected with politics, such as race. That deep below, your life depends on the Other. That was true for every Other. And therefore that is where you Get Real!
What a delight to be able to be familiar and more deeply in love with all the locations you wrote about in you metal sojourn. I grew up in Carletonville and remember how proud I had felt that I grew up in the town with the richest gold mine ... in the world! whether it was true or not. The glitterous prospects of being a child in a place where one reads names of metal on every street on a bicycle to school, whether primary or high, never really materialised into anything shiny as far as I could tell. But it did not matter. Three decades later I found myself in a bind of blackbelt training on personal development with a new generation of mine workers in the room. Their looks did not change from the men on the streets of my childhood. But they were blackbelt communicators, honest, straight-forward, tough, no-shit people who would shout out: Get Real! It brought a new face to my Carletonville. Pure gold. There in the halls of confronts 80-90's style RSA, I felt utterly and demonstratively real with men who knew the under-earth of wealth, barely saw the sun, and shrugged off concepts injected with politics, such as race. That deep below, your life depends on the Other. That was true for every Other. And therefore that is where you Get Real!