When they flow

It's become a favourite place: the hard plastic garden table and two white chairs at the edge of the garden, between the pool and the eastern wall, up against the fern fronds and elephant ears, beneath the low hanging trees. Lee covers the table with a sarong he bought on Durban's beachfront for R50. It, the sarong, reminds me somehow of Mozambique, probably because of its colours. The cotton is soft and cool, soothing. I sit here now.

Summer's being rather quickly nibbled around its edges by the autumn rat; the hardly noticeable changes tend to catch me by surprise. Shadows falling for longer and far earlier, an unexpected early morning chill, the blue of the sky much deeper, the sun more mellow. Aah the passing of time I think to myself as I finger The Pulse. 

The sun rays have not yet pierced the pool whose leaf strewn surface I shattered with delight much earlier. Towelling myself off bare--foot on the paving my focus was on the steaming tea mug on my table: strong with the bag intact, sweet and milky; the coffee's finished. The seasonal changes are not that obvious in this subtropical paradise. 

I've been mired in fear and self doubt, my words had dried up, my skeleton's been protruding. Wasting away I've been deadly close to self comprimise. That's why today I make my plan.

I took the photo on my back porch in Waterval Boven. I was there for over a week for a smidgen of work that bought me some of the mobility-freedom I so crave. It was an interesting time of hovering introspect, not unlike a fat green fly on shit. And of being sick. I regret neither. 

The leaves are already turning 600 kilometres to the north, and the veld grasses have gone to seed. Soon the burning will begin, then the sweeping fires as winter deepens and green dies down to tawny lion coloured. But not here.

Autobiographical prose?

He's lying on his bed now wearing just a pair of sleep shorts; an arbitrary pair of sleep shorts. 

He sat aimlessly on the large faded red leather couch downstairs. Choked on Twitter. Ignored the disconnected Tv. All that was constant was his aimlessness, his hard-clenched jaw.

He walked purposefully upstairs, the wood creaking unconsciously beneath each rubber-heavy tread of his slip-slops. Made-in-China. He was saying goodnight wordlessly to the house and to his lover in the room below. Grimly. Steadfastly. This could have been the script for a suicide walk. But it's not.

He had contemplated a walk on the road along the coast edge. There the verdant vegetation, on both sides of the road would have sucked his night focus upwards and into the star crusted night sky, and his night hearing to the bashing and sliding of the ocean below. 

Instead he walked into his room, removed his old black vest, swiped cursed flees off his ankles and kneeled at his bedside. Where he quickly, unceremoniously prayed. God I can't do this on my own; this is a space that I do not know. I don't know where to next; I'm at my end.

The black cat with the snub, short nose watched him in silence. As he got up clawing at his ankles and searched for the almost empty bottle of plastic-tacky insect repellant, before lathering it on his hairy legs, his hairless ankles and his long, slender feet. 

Crickets and frogs, raucous, outside. The cranky whirr of the dilapidated fan. The welcome wind rolling, flurrying through the house; it was a sticky, ugly 33 degrees centigrade today.

Sitting down on the double bed he slipped the case off his iPad, touched it on, opened Safari and deleted the entire block-full of words that had failed to describe his blog. He replaced them with one semi-sentence. At the top.

man with a beautiful mind.

He remembered, again, that the putting down of words is therapeutic. And that they are for no-one but me.

Summer will end

Summer will end and the leaves will turn again.
I favourited those words on Twitter the other day thinking that winter was some vague concept, especially in this subtropical province that hardly knows what winter is.
I'm slowly sipping on a glass of feisty, fruity wine. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Last night was the first time this summer that l pulled the duvet around me against the cool then cold of the night. It was wonderful. Normally with both windows open and the fan on, I sleep naked, with nothing over my body, nor on my skin.
Leaving gym - I went there for my sanity, it was an intensive day on the couch in front of my iPad - I veered off into Umhlanga. To break what little routine I have.
My life currently appears stagnant, even to me. Flat and squalid in the doldrum waters of right now I'm sensing that I won't be let go until I consciously change tack. Forever.
Oh nothing major; merely facing my single greatest fear. Commiting to following a dream- the dream of my life - which is of course unattainable. Certain death then. Of the soul; I wink.
Umhlanga Rocks village has a Joburg feel about it. Tonight I welcome it.
Chicken and rice, low GI bread,  and salad. At home.
Dreams, well at least mine, will entail drops of blood appearing, excruciatingly, on my forehead.
That sure beats being the living dead.
"Please bring me the bill; thank you."