“You are immortal: you have existed for billions years in different manifestations, because you are life and life cannot die. You are in the trees, the butterflies, the fish, the air, the moon, the sun. Wherever you go, you are there, waiting for yourself”
Don Miguel Ruiz

I wasn’t always this mellow, I used to be a ‘rowe bliksem’ (or rough rebel, for the lack of a better translation). I was on a weed run, meaning, I was going to buy some). Back then, everything cannabis was illegal. Anyhow, In South Africa, there are these ‘entrepreneurs’ that have fruit stands on street corners. There you can buy loose cigarettes, peanuts, chips –Crisps for some...), lollypops and sweets (or candy) and many of them sold dagga (cannabis).

As I handed the man his money and listening to his speech that this batch of Mary Jane (cannabis) was ‘good shit’, I saw a woman approaching my dagga vendor. She was in her middle forties, but time and hardship wasn’t kind to her. Her face was wrinkled and sun-flecked, crow’s feet rivered from the corners of her eyes to her worn cheeks. She looked about seven to eight months pregnant. I am not sure, I am not a doctor, I am a writer. She bought dagga too.

It shocked me, as I have never seen a pregnant woman buying herself dagga as most pregnant women do not drink, use drugs or smoke dagga to avoid harming the foetus. I did not give her a dagga-while-pregnant is a sin speech. It was in public and would have humiliated us both and the vendor, it might have called attention to the cops and then, sometimes, your gut tells you that it is not right to dictate opinions to someone you have never met before.

We started talking, actually resonated, became friends, buddies even. She invited me to come have a smoke with her and her husband, and I did. I was friends with her for years until I moved away from that neighbourhood, the child was born, perfect. I never gave that lovely woman a speech about being pregnant and smoking weed. Which is strange as I tend to warn people of things that might be potentially dangerous.

There is a lesson in this somewhere. Maybe that we, humanity, are beings of randomness and chaos. We sometimes don’t talk to people about what we see as wrong. Weird lesson, but that is what I am sticking to it.

Or, sometimes we choose not to judge or hand our justice out to people. Yes, maybe that.

Allen Wolfie Simpson © 2026

Here is one of the songs by my band, Chrystovarr D’annan. Just because. Listen to it, download it either for free or if you feel giving, pay for the download anyway.