This season's office wear

"Do add this to the blog to show how we townies dress for and arrive at appointments with serijas clients," said motoring editor Alwyn yesterday afternoon, just before we took the Nissan Nevara for a test drive - for the newspaper - up and down the nearby mountains, and past the ancient stone circles and ancient roads.

Alwyn Viljoen: +27 82 458 9332 +words on wheels that work, on air and in ink+

Green tea & morning pages

It's morning pages and green tea time. Sitting on the couch, on the patio, watching the morning mist evaporate off the foothills behind the house, I can feel the impending winter brush past.
Despite scorching hot days like yesterday, the mornings are chilly.
Last night, on my way back from Nelspruit, the car was occasionally filled with the wonderfully cloying reek of the first veld fire, a winter smell.
As the long grass continues to go to seed, transforming from emerald green to lion tawniness, the fires will become more regular, then at winter's height, ferocious. Nevertheless, for me, it's the smell of winter, of Africa, of my youth.
Mika, the African Blackfoot Cross, who -literally - arrived on my doorstep in the final thunderstorm of last summer, has curled up on my lap. I sense she will be spending more and more time there in the coming months, despite that a wood stove is now installed in the kitchen.
The bowl of green tea was piping hot, now it's almost insipidly cold. It's time to write my morning pages, to reflect on the passing seasons, life's passing seasons too. Although one day my tree must too be bare and winter stark, I'm aware, right now, of being at my prime.
Even so, I fear not death, in fact I relish it with joy and wonderment. Often, when I'm worn out, I smile and excitedly look so forward to going home.

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National skyline: The Crane

While our national bird is the blue crane, our national skyline is the crane, especially in the light of massive investment in infrastructure because of the soccer world cup here later this year.
These photos were taken from Sandton City shopping centre's roof parking.

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Harem's place

Friday saw me visit my friend Harem's home in Parkhurst, Jozi. Again I left his presence centred, energised and with fresh perspective.
He left his home in the forest towards the end of 2008 after it burnt to the ground in one if the harshest forest fires in years.
But, like the phoenix he has risen.
He inspired me to gardening again, this a week after I purchased a South African gardening book at Exclusive Books in Mandela Square, Sandton.

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To the woods..

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau

Berlin Forest, Kaapsehoop: Dusk. I'm living deliberately. This is 'the' month, my turning point. Time is of the essence.

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Disillusioned

"Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch." - J. B. Priestley

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Fat Bastard on Benmore

11th Street, Benmore: Summer dusk, January's seen its ass; rooftop garden's; African sunset; pavement potholes; Fat Bastard chardonnay; partner with & in Kawayi Sushi Bar; barefoot boys & leg hairs in cross-legged sushi enclave; Japanese mini flag & dusty, plastic pastel twolips; tipsy but not tart.
Three months, to the day, since last here. Just as long is our togetherness. Happy togetherness; universe willing forever togetherness.
Good night & gud luk!

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What J.D. Salinger Taught Me about Literary Use of the F-Word

Posted by Roy Peter Clark on Poynter Online Writing Tools:

When I first heard of the death of reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who was 91, the news reminded me of the first time I used the F-word.
The year was 1956. I was 8 years old. One of the Masterson brothers told me a joke, and he thought it was so funny I ran home to tell my mother. She didn't laugh and made me repeat it to my father. Things did not go well.
I know exactly where I first encountered the F-word in print. I was a freshman in high school, and the book was called "The Catcher in the Rye," a work still on many banned-books lists, not just because of the F-word. I now own six copies of the book, including my high school edition in which I underlined each use of the F-word and other obscenities.
I consider "Catcher" a true gift from Salinger, a literary legacy I can still savor, in spite of my subsequent disillusionment with the author's eccentric isolationism, disdain for his readers, and weird attraction to girls a fraction of his age.
Salinger used the F-word in a perfect literary context for me at that time of my first reading, about 1963. During his pilgrimage around New York City, young Holden Caulfield bumps into the word as graffiti in the stairwell of his little sister's school and again in the Egyptian tombs of the Museum of Natural History.

Want to read more: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=176855
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East meets West

Jozi's HEARTland: Steffen (his pic) and I wolfed down a shared pizza and two enamel bowls of 'slap' chips last night while waiting for Zimbabwean writer-in-exile ("The Road to Lindele"), Ike Dube, to join us. Creative, passionate juices were flowing all round. We happily mopped them up with the Highlands Herald... old fashioned newsprint still has some uses.

Gibbous Moon celebrations ... Greatness Shines!

My friend, Cape Town based journalist Andrew October, wrote this morning: "I guess that just being awake... and indeed alive... to watch the setting Wolf Moon over the Atlantic Ocean is reason enough to share this with the world. The Gibbous Moon in grey was photographed two nights ago at 75%, while the orange setting Gibbous Moon was captured this morning at 04H50 from Clifton (both handheld). The Moon will reach its maximun fullness tomorrow morning at 08H18.

 

Jozi sunset & dope smoking All Star intellectuals

Ko'spotong (grab & run munchies; Kitchen Open till 01:30am!!!) Newtown (Johannesburg): Viewing dusk through a Carling Black Label, I'm still chuckling at the call I received this afternoon from the local municipality's legal department. Emakhazeni Local Municipality's Daniel Mkhonza called to let me know that they will be consulting attorneys tomorrow about the fact that, in the last issue of Highlands Herald, I published who the new youth manager at the municipality was going to be.
"Surely it's part of correct journalistic practice to verify information that you have obtained," he said to me.
In an incredulous tone: "Information, for one, about a new youth manager, and secondly not even second hand, but straight from the apparent new youth manager's mouth. I smell a story brewing!"
Ha-ha! But no mention from the municipality, of course, about the councillor I publicly accused of corruption. Then again, maybe I've got my priorities wrong.
Either way it's a cool, almost autumnal evening, in Gauteng province.

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J.D. Salinger, Author of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' Is Dead at 91

New York Times: J.D. Salinger, Author of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' Is Dead at 91
J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most
important American writer to emerge since World War II but
who then turned his back on success and adulation, has died
in Cornish, N.H., where he lived in seclusion for more than
50 years, his son told The Associated Press. He was 91.
Mr. Salinger's literary reputation rests on a slender but
enormously influential body of published work: the novel "The
Catcher in the Rye," the collection "Nine Stories" and two
compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional
Glass family: "Franny and Zooey" and "Raise High the Roof
Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction."
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na


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Blackout

Perfect blackout. Laptop battery dead, mobile soon flat. Not a light on in the entire town. The last of the awful, noisy generators died a while ago.
Pouring rain.
An insect snaps, crackles and pops in its last flame.
Pouring rain.
Perfect peace.
When last did I go to sleep in perfect peace, quiet and absolute darkness?
The worst, rowdiest storm of the summer took out the electricity at about 15hOO.
Karneels, a well-known but not respected nor loved stray cat noisily marks his territory outside, despite the rain. It's no use chucking a bucket of water over him tonight.

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Rusted, but happy heart

Mine's a vastly uncomplicated and wonderfully uncertain life compared to exactly three years ago, when I purchased this house in Waterval Boven.
I'm also a simpler, somewhat quieter and humbler human being.
I also have many more lines around my eyes. I never ever thought I would write these words, but I have to admit that I quite like them.
Compared to the sterile loft space I owned in the city, this is a real home I live in now.
For example this rusted, barbed wire heart I bought on the side of the road in Belfast on Friday is quite at home here in the kitchen. And the floorboards have been repaired; there were big holes in the floor from termites. Some of the old tiles came off the wall with the repairs - what an opportunity to paint the surface!
I wish you could see the meals coming out of this kitchen, prepared by an incredible heart that's anything but rusty. A very generous and kind heart too.
Just had the largest thunderstorm of the summer rage through here. Rain flooded the garden, the river, and also came in under the back door and - unusually - through the kitchen windows.
Right now it's coffee time.
On that note, I've asked that He put His yoke on me so that I can be less busy, also to have my pace slowed down to a pace unlinked to the world. I do believe that my prayer is being answered.
I've also asked for more travel opportunities. Patiently I wait...

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Mthethwa: 'A friend of a criminal is a criminal'

Mail & Guardian: "We are of the view that a friend of a criminal is a criminal," said Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa on Thursday afternoon in Pretoria after the ministry announced that the police have arrested one of the suspects who threatened to rob and kill Soccer World Cup tourists on e.tv last week.

Click here for the rest of the story.

www.mg.co.za

Charges against French journalist dropped

Mail & Guardian this morning: Charges against French journalist Sophie Bouillon and her boyfriend were dropped on Thursday morning, after her story of alleged police brutality in Johannesburg caused a stir in the media.
Speaking to the Mail & Guardian on Thursday, Bouillon alleged the "nonsensical attack" on her and her boyfriend by Johannesburg metro police officers had been informed by xenophobic prejudice.

Click here for the rest of the story.

www.mg.co.za

Subpoena against e.tv 'infringes media freedom'

Mail & Guardian: Issuing a subpoena against eNews to identify criminals interviewed on air about their plans to target the Soccer World Cup infringed media freedom and freedom of speech, the South African Press Council said on Thursday.
"The police, using laws that existed under apartheid, are seeking to circumvent the journalists' right to report without fear and the public's right to know by issuing this subpoena," said council vice-chairperson Bewyn Petersen in a letter published in Business Day.
He was responding to Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa's move to subpoena two eNews journalists to reveal the identity of the men who made their criminal intentions known in an interview aired last Friday.
A source linked to the story has since committed suicide.
"When the story broke I found myself hoping that e.tv would resist the pressure from the police ... I am dismayed that I have not seen anyone in government, including the opposition, oppose this action.
"If the police are successful, it may prevent journalists from having access to similar situations in the future and may even endanger their lives. Should this happen, we will lose one of our most fundamental rights -- the right to know - and it is our right to decide for ourselves," Petersen said.
E.tv has declined, on legal advice, to say how it plans to respond to the subpoenas to reveal its sources. Its news editor, Ben Said, and reporter Mpho Lakaje have to appear in court on Monday if they fail to comply.
The channel said on Tuesday that a man found dead in Soweto was a go-between who had put the reporters in touch with the self-confessed criminals who were interviewed.
It implied in a statement that only he had known their true identities.

Click here for the rest of the story.

www.mg.co.za

French journo 'brutalised' by metro cops

The Mail & Guardian reported on Thursday: South African police are investigating a case of police brutality aimed at an award winning French journalist, after her ordeal made headlines in France.
Sophie Bouillon alleges that she and her Zimbabwean boyfriend, Tendai, were pepper sprayed and manhandled by Johannesburg metro police on Friday night after being stopped in downtown Johannesburg. The couple was arrested and held overnight at the Hillbrow police station, before being released on Saturday morning.
They will appear in court on Thursday morning on charges of driving without a valid drivers license, interfering in an arrest and resisting arrest, but Bouillon is confident that the charges will be dismissed.
Her damning account, which she at first only emailed to friends, was picked up by the French media this week and appeared in French daily Liberation among others on Monday. It has been well read by the French public, some who were outraged by the "level of violence" in South Africa. Her friends had also posted her version on Facebook.
The latest incident for South Africa follows the so-called "Kill-a-tourist-day" incident where a British actress Victoria Smurfit, who starred in Ballykissangel, told the Irish Mail on Sunday she "came within inches of death" when a gunman opened fire on her taxi while holidaying in Cape Town. The 35-year-old actress claimed the attack was likely to have been a gang initiation ceremony dubbed 'Kill a Tourist Day', but South African police denied this. The article also appeared in the UK's Daily Mail.

Click here for the rest of the story.

(www.mg.co.za)

To the flame

Tonight I'm a lonely moth contemplating winter. It's far away, but not that far away. The first light doesn't wake me up that early anymore; the brilliant December wide-eyed glare has passed with the midway mark. The sun is headed north to wake up the daffodil bulbs, to seek pure white skins.
I'm sitting in my underwear on the couch outside, just one dim light on and a moonlit, moody glow behind some angry cloud.
Crickets, lots of crickets, frogs up close. Mosquitoes, but not so bad this year..they got nailed by last year's bitter winter. Hooray.
Yeah I know: I've not blogged for almost 2 months now; sorry for me.
I need a holiday. I've taken, I'm taking strain. But it's good. For the first time in years I'm truly challenged; challenged where I want to be challenged.
[As I typed those words I heard an owl hooting somewhere close by, in the veld behind my home; calling my name. It sent a moonlight-gentle shiver down my spine and into my gut.]
Best of all I'm writing, almost hang-up free.
Also, most unexpectedly, and from an egoless perspective I'd never dreamed of, a prayer has been answered. I find myself at the cutting edge of journalism (very few, close ones only, will know - truly - what I mean).
In gratitude I go down on one knee... .


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Go west young man...

Serra on my lap, I'm drinking a coffee with condensed milk.. it's my first coffee alone in 3 days. Having switched all the outside lights off, I'm sitting in the dark on the back porch; the very last of the half light has faded to black velvet.
It's a perfect frog & cricket evening, except for muffled country music wafting up from the camo-capped neighbour below.
While I'm in almost-perfect peace, I know the family and friends in the street below are in shock, mourning the dark-headed young man who drowned in the river this afternoon, just before the hail storm.
As I warmed up Louis' braai meat for supper - on almost stale rolls with happy & excited cheese from friday afternoon care of Angel Bear - the newly hung curtain rail ripped from the wall. Now to hang it up again with gusto, while exposed, in full light, to the street.
All of this while my heart travels at give or take 120km/hour westwards to Johannesburg, and another world.
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King's bloody Corner

On one side I'm up against the plate glass window of King's Corner at Seattle, Milly's. My other book end is five days of heart gnashing, blissful intensity that could easily withstand a nuclear implosion.
I would be lying if I told you I wasn't sore. [I hadn't even gone inside after you left when Faith slunk around the corner; but she is not at all well & there's gunk oozing out of one eye; she wants to bite me & Mika.]
After you left I spent time appreciating our new home: I touched, I remembered, I loved, I photographed.
Without bathing, I left for Seattle; I didn't want to be alone then, as much as I wanted to be alone.
What I need right now is to sit in the eye of the storm, while sun burnt strangers at this crossroads swirl noiselessly around me, while I write. [How do I even begin to process the ragged, bloody-raw bliss-fullness of my nerve ends?]
This is whole-hearted, God-centred stuff... thank God. And you.

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'Death': For Pearl van Wyk

TEXT WRITTEN BY A PRIEST IN 1918:
'Death means nothing at all…I have only slipped away into the next room, I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name; speak to me in the easy way we always used; put no difference in your tone; wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh, as always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile; think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without trace of shadow in it.
Life means all that it was ever meant; it is the same as it ever was…there is absolutely unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well. Nothing is past, nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before.'

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i carry your heart with me

Sitting alone, I'm eating chocolate mousse cake, and drinking cafe mocha, but for two.
I'm surrounded by couples who no longer notice each other, whose eyes constantly peel off other relationship's clothes. Hungry eyes as Sixties jazz is piped through bookstore speakers; it's a moody Sunday afternoon.
I've been looking forward to Christmas since last year; this time it arrived without fanfare; slipping in through the back door it didn't even disturb the flies. Gaudy-expensive decorations - primary colour red, keywords 'passion' & 'sizzle' - glitter cheaply in the un-spontaneous sunshine.
A good corporate woman at the next table wades through a file thick of emails. She's proud of dedicating all seven days of every week to her career; it shows on her smug, self-satisfied slave-face. (A slender apple core on her table stains itself brown from green and looking back, I've no doubt, on orchard days. My bet is that it was organically grown, just like the once-were-fir-trees that are now printed emails. A whole thick file full.)
It's my turn to have my clothes peeled off: this by a hungry-looking, wolf-like faced young guy over there. Smashing his 'sexy' facade, he reeks of the neediness scratched across his smooth face.
On Thursday night an 80-year woman (riddled with bed sores) died from kidney failure in a provincial hospital ward for one. Next year April she would've been married for 50 years. Last week I'd visited her and prayed that she wouldn't be staying long; '7 score and 10' is a long time to keep on smiling.
'Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage,' croons some velvet-voiced sixties dude (ha-ha, imagine!) over the same speakers (surely this can't be good for book and mag sales?).
If I wasn't in love I'd probably have slit my wrists in the sterile, extraordinarily expensive toilet next-door.

For you, my love, from YOU:

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

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Renaissance Stadium, Cape Town

These are photos I've just received of the first lighting of the 'Renaissance' Stadium in Greenpoint. They are from my Cape Town-based friend and journalist, Andrew October. From this perspective it looks like an incredible work of architecture.



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Night of a 1000 Stars

It's a magnificent evening in the Lowveld, there's not a breath of air stirring and a festive atmosphere reminiscent of the coast during the summer holidays. In support of the Cancer Association, it's the Night of a Thousand Stars where some of Nelspruit's finest restaurant's have closed off an entire street and have magnificently decked tables to cater for a 1000 people. The food, thus far...sumptuous!

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Name Changes: What the hell were we thinking, were we thinking at all?

There's been vociferous resistance to the latest of town names in Mpumalanga gazetted for immediate change. These include changes to the names of Belfast, Machadodorp and Waterval Boven.
In fact, out here, its the very first symbolic step towards the demolishing of the Apartheid laboratory-bred separation anxiety experiments that still keep our towns and townships viciously apart.
While the battle lines were originally drawn along lines of colour and so-called "separate development" (early, original policies of the Apartheid state), it also perpetrated silo-societies living shoulder to shoulder, but with deep foundations of mistrust, fear and suspicion.
All of these, especially poverty and horrendous crime, were easily pushed under the hideous old carpet chucked out of the madam's big white house over there in the normally substantially much better-off town: "Thank you for your thrown out mat madam, here outside the town and under it's threadbare luxury we'll be out of sight, certainly out of mind!" (Who the hell did they think we were kidding?)
The town and township phenomenon is downright evil and will never ever contribute even an iota towards a normalised society in our country. It's a Frankenstein experiment gone horribly wrong.
PS: Waterval Boven has, in a riling twist for many, been renamed Emgwenya after it's 'former' township. I believe I'm one of the very few to see the humour... .

The local changes:
Belfast to eMakhazeni
Waterval Boven to Emgwenya
Machadodorp to eNtokozweni
While Dullstroom's name has not changed, the proposed future name of Dullstroom-Emnothweni (meaning "place of wealth") is expected to be gazetted in the near future.

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I went into the woods...

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." ~Henry David Thoreau

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There's a fire raging in my heart

I'm unable to sit at my desk for another second; both my mind and heart are elsewhere, there's an internal restlessness that stubbornly refuses to accept that the mundane tasks associated with living in 'the valley' are acceptable today. I'm craving the 'mountain top' experience of the past weekend.

Opting for great coffee, and an environment different to this one - all distractions for my busy mind - I head for Seattle Coffee at Millys.

The valley between here and there - like my heart - is moody with fire and reminiscent of a brooding storm, or winter. I'm damn grateful it's early summer and now the season of new beginnings.

I sense that now it's time to leave the cave and to enlarge my 'territory' ...adrenalin gorges my veins and arteries; my burning, pumping heart is evidence of someone certainly not the living dead.

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39 protesters refused bail

The 39, not 35, Siyaththuka service delivery protesters arrested on Tuesday have all been refused bail, even the woman with the baby. Arrangements are to be made with the police for the baby to be fetched by family. The case is postponed until next Thursday, 22 October.
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Mpumalanga Unrest: Privately owned bulldozer set alight

This Belfast businessman - Oumar Kone - is the owner of this bulldozer that was set alight last night on the R36 skirting Emthonjeni township, outside Machadodorp, at about 21h30. His company, Di Kone Transport & Plant Hire was hired by the local municipality to move waste in the adjacent rubbish dump. He says he has been ruined by this incident, that all the money he had invested in this machine was now lost.
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