'Charles time'

The early morning is mine, I'm nurturing me:

My red and glass Bodum plunger is percolating with a quality 100% Arabica bean breakfast blend; the aroma fills the spacious and sunlit attic.

The body-length couch I have to myself and a teenage sphinx cat that's vibrating with life-contentment; we're sharing body warmth.

Despite the sunshine here on the lower slopes, the mountain is dark in cloud shadow and foreboding, more than hinting at the four day's rain that's forecast - hooray!

The house creaks and clicks from the sporadic gusts of wind that sweep the old suburb; it also whistles through the crack-wide open wooden frame windows; these are decorated chess board like with leaden cottage panes.

Other than wind sound a lawn mower hums bumble bee-like in the garden behind, a vacuum cleaner screaches across the downstairs wooden floors, I feel my heart beat against my left chest.

Altthough Natalie Goldberg's 'Writing Down the Bones' and a 1965 Claremont library print of Johannes Meintjies' 'Olive Schreiner Potrait of a South African Woman' entice me from the coffee table, it's my black-cover / red-bound 288-page morning pages counter book that will have my attention. And heart.

Peace and contentment reign.

[I took the photo in Newlands village on perfect day Saturday afternoon while walking home; all-in-all I walked over 10 km in sheer bliss at the day and joie de vivre.]