We do it all the time, or I do. I think we all do. We in a situation that isn’t quite how we thought it might be: Please excuse my Africaans ‘we’ without the ‘are’ bit. A think switch. Perhaps it’s in the translation. I just hear it and adapt, even me, the English language corrector. And there’s another switch, because language conjoins and evolves and there are words, phrases, commas and hyphens which, even now, confabulate me. Once, they were sediment to my lift of words. Now, the ground is uneven, soggy and beneficent, once I think switch. New growth appears, like spring green shoots, leaves I cannot name, leaves seeking the sun, just like me.

In this turmoil, and it is turmoil, I have opinions. They’re like rocks in an ocean of fire. I don’t know much, but I do feel it, the war cry, the rise of fear, the way many think it will never really come to anything. I am no longer a linguist because language changes by the minute. I don’t want war, not for anyone. I don’t support oppression, domination, all those things. But, in the skinny place of me, with a voice, and I do have that, I do have a choice, a think switch, and that will be my thread of connection.

When you go down to the streets, the reality of life lorn, life lived, life downed and shunned and ignored, meet someone. We have marched too long ignoring, eyes averted, fear driven, those of us who own things, homes, jobs. Time to connect. Do we ever actually look at another? Do we?

Language changes, shifts, twists, commas skitter off like trips, but we are are all humans looking for connection. And it does take a think switch. Black, white, coloured, mixed race, gay, lesbian, trans,bi,queer.

In the turmoil of my teenage years, I found safety and fun with those who made me think switch, and, I confess, I was firstborn, white, middle class and protected from everything. But, over life I have made my own shifts. And whenever I sense a roadblock, an old way of thinking rising like a twangle over flowing water, I recognicise.

That’s a made up word, by the way.