Mnemosyne Genos Sculpture

Artwork for the rare eccentric who loves ancient history and modern sculpture Artist's Bio: When I was in primary school my family lived next to the largest air-force base in the country. Impala and Mirage jets regularly, annoyingly, screamed north, taking Death and Destruction to unknowable enemies in far-away places. But, occasionally, a demigod would appear. A spectacle worthy of running outside and staring awestruck at the sky: the mighty C-130 Hercules. A man-made thunderstorm. The deep thud thud thud of its massive engines reverberating through the marrow of your bones. At the end of the runway and bordering our suburb lay open veld. It was fenced all round with shiny razor-wire loops, decorated at rhythmic intervals with signs bearing skulls, crossbones, and the words DANGER GEVAAR INGOZI. Beyond this fence, amidst scraggly bushes and trees lived a lone statue. It was of a lion in recumbent pose, resembling the logo on Lion matchboxes. A steep embankment meant that seeing it from the road was quite difficult. You needed an elevated position, like a seat on a school bus (not those yellow American ones, but a bare metal box on balding wheels). One specific seat enabled maximum statue-viewing ability. Claiming it often meant getting trapped by the friend who transformed every human interaction into an opportunity to complain about how she had no friends. I debated whether I should inform her it was her obvious yearning to be liked by everyone that made her so unlikeable. I can't recall if I did. The statue lay alongside a long stretch of road that provided enough distance for the bus driver to accelerate joyously. This meant that each pass only gave me a few seconds of intense observation to extract as much information about the lion as possible. Every hard-won fragment contributing to an ever-evolving replica in my brain. Most people I asked about the statue either had no interest in it, or were unaware of its existence. A few knew something from hearsay. According to some, the statue was a grave marker. Others suggested that it was the only remnant of a farmhouse that once stood there. The most intriguing rumor was that it was the creation of one of the laborers who built the first of the new suburb's homes. Every night he would scale the fence and construct his beast on forbidden land from stolen cement. Where the sculptor was benign, the lion was created to guard the new suburb.