Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Lost for words

Languid Sunday afternoon.
Reading the newspaper on the couch in tepid sunlight even further dappled by overgrown trees-shrubs; they're clamouring slow-motion-at-the-cottage-pane-window to get in: hello and welcome; I'm bitten by a lethally striped mosquito on my forearm and calf.
Itching like hell.
The red Bodum plunger, still erect and yet to depress my Jacobs Krone, matches (perfectly) my opened red Leuchtturm notebook. Louis bought it for me in Berlin, last birthday. Although enormously less valuable than any of Bruce Chatwin's Moleskines, I've also inscribed its first page with reward of found and my mobile number. Sentimental value. And for fun.
Was listening, with interest before the attack, to a literature on SAfm interview with Marguerite Poland about her recently launched book taken captive by birds.
Worried about money; about the dark ink spilt around the swampy edges in my mind; about compromising myself with work that is not my work - yet prostrate with fear at doing what I love to.
I'm alone at home. Gratefully.
A lumbering and old but handsome Doberman is asleep and twitching at my feet; Sasha the blonde German Shepherd with wolf harking back three generations is much quieter in her sleep. Her back's turned to me; she's too far away to stroke, my desire to do so in not enough to overcome my inertia.
Especially as I'm bleakly contemplating my immediate future; I've struggled these last few weeks.
I've been, until now, lost for words.
Writing is therapeutic. I've always practiced that. Through most bleakness.
The start to this year's been particularly challenging for me; how to remain true.
Wolfed down the Sugarman documentary about the musician Rodriguez last night. So glad I never missed it after missing it on the art cinema beat.
Scratch my toe. Then scrunch my beard. Feel black deep rings beneath my eye pools; they seek-and-twist-and-twirl-drill into my skull the dark ink spilt.
At least words. At very least-most.

Two day's later. Today's a different day. My inertia is so stolid that I struggle to post Sunday's word, achieving it only now.
It was my crack of dawn plunge into a most perfect ocean, naked on all accounts, and the beach flowers, and the quality light that lifts my chin from the ground.

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Home alone

I'm back from my long walk along the ocean's edge and into the dusk. I needed quite time, alone time with me and my maker. I sought to be buffeted and torn at by the wind straight off the choppy sea. I sought to walk into the moody-rain-weather-storm that is forecast to arrive here tonight after its journey up the Eastern Cape coast, then today the Transkei and KZN south coast. The storm that's just begun to buffet this tree obscured and mysterious double story wooden house that I've so grown to love since I moved in here on 30 August last year. It's so different, and so is this world, to my home and former life in Waterval Boven.

The lights were on downstairs when I got back, wet with perspiration wrenched from me by the oppressive humidity. I could see the welcoming warmth of the home through the branches; there's no wall or fence separating the house from the street. And blonde Sasha came to the door, tail wagging, soft fur snout smiling.

The home, unusually empty and almost quiet, put arms around me. A sharp old fashioned click and the ancient blaring in the background hi-fi was off; silence, instantly, thank God.

Now, on the bed, I'm reading - in the warm light of my minimalist room - Dorothea Brande.