I'm equally infuriated and intrigued by this city of mine, [[Joburg]]. I'm caught constantly trying to reconcile the mess that is this city. On the one hand it's a totally inconsequential place. The world largely ignores this place, a dry and sprawling blob of concrete right at the bottom of Africa with inconsequential GDP. Who really cares about Joburg on a planetary scale. On the other hand, it's vastly important to the cultural fabric of the world. And no, I'm not talking about cuisine or music (we're not [[Delhi]] or [[New Orleans]] after all), but rather the ethical culture of the globe. [[Mandela]], even as he fades from the popular imagination somewhat, was after all released back to his people at the [[Orlando Stadium]] in Soweto, Joburg. [[Apartheid]] was fought, and defeated, in no small measure by the city of Johannesburg. And for me, someone who regularly leans over into cultural determinism, the defeat of Apartheid has conditioned the world and it's governance in countless ways. Yet Joburg irks me still. It is annoying and beautiful. Vastly intriguing and infinitely frustrating. I've lamented, almost on a weekly cadence, the sprawling nature of this God damn place (an Apartheid legacy for the ages) and it's reliance on the automobile. The great cities of the world are, after all, the great _walking_ cities of the world. New York, Tokyo, Delhi, London. Walking cities. Not so Joburg. Fragmented and disjointed, somehow the city churns along. Even attracting in the order of 5000 new comers a day apparently. But it has pockets of infinite depth and wonder. Pockets like the [[Laternenfest]] held this evening at the [[Deutsche Internationale Schule Johannesburg]]. The school itself is a wonder, but the event was scintillating, bringing young kids, theirs families and their friends together in a simple (and the simplicity was key here) celebration of light and music. For me, it was one of those moments, where time temporarily stands still and the universe conspires to deliver a set of circumstance that yields magic, but _only_ to those there right at that time. An outsider, peering in, would see a ordinary but happy event, but none of the magic. The video below, for example, tells but just a fraction of the story (and yet, it's still good) ![[VID_20211112_191500.mp4]] [[Joburg]], the grim city with broken infrastructure where millions go hungry, but also with [[Jacaranda trees]] in full bloom in the North, drives me mad. The baffling contradiction between it's pockets of magic and utter "kill-me-now-ness" is right at the heart of my love/hate relationship with this city. Yet it is still my city. It is still my city with a magical pocket in the form of colourful CBD. No, not the Sandton one. The "town" one. The one where, on the outskirts of the CBD - in [[Braamfontein]] (it's own special (walkable!) city pocket) - a friend of mine hurriedly remarked to a colleague the other day: "stop the naartjie man." The "naatjie man" is a guy who pushes around a cart of fresh produce along the streets and pavements of braam and the parts of the core CBD, providing and nurturing it's inhabitants with naartjies and cabbages and bananas. All from the rickety wooden and steel contraption that always looks to be in it's last days, and yet always survives. Much like the city itself. The naartjie man, and his area of trade, is one of those pockets of magic in this otherwise frustrating city. This is still I think, all things considered, a great city. A city redeemed by the naartjie man and his cart and the Laternenfest with it's lights. A city redeemed but only just, with it's demons threatening every single golden sun rise to run over the entire damn city with chaos and darkness.