Made of negative ion

I took a clapped-out Southern Line train, with its ripped up seats, deeply scratched perspex windows and the monotonous graffiti found worldwide, to Kalkbay. I didn't - even for a single minute - allow the clackety-clack of the steel-on-steel to dull my senses during the 50-minute peak-hour train ride: I was alert to my possessions, to my pockets, to the zips and pouches of my backpack.

But , I only headed southwards after scrutinising the tide times, choosing, too, to get there before the December tourist hordes would begin (quite understandably) to clog and choke the southern peninsula, not noticing the fresh-minted menus now gleaming with inflated seasonal prices.

My destination was the Brass Bell restaurant; it's a jumble of an old-school place (starting out in 1939 as a city council 'tea-room'), almost indecipherable, that with eight different dining locations, protrudes haphazardly into the ocean. It's quiet there mid-week, especially in that magical, hazy  space between late afternoon and early evening now that the days linger for so long.

I checked the timing of the tides because I have a favourite seat at a favourite table where, at high tide, the surf has been known to furiously smash against - and batter - the windows. While you stare, blink, eat, jerk your head back, stare again. Because this was in the week of a blue moon, the tides were more passionate, more rage-filled than during a normal full moon.

I wanted to be as close to the ocean as possible, to gulp in deep its tangy salt air, it’s ozone and the negative ions, which Nature creates in heady abundance when water, sunlight, air and our Earth's inherent radiation meet. Negatively charged ions are good, very good. So are the places they're found in: they are most prevalent in natural places and particularly around moving water or after a thunderstorm. It's that taste in the air.

I've always been drawn to the ocean; it's where I charge my batteries and seek intimacy with my Creator. In Cape Town, there are two oceans: the Indian and Atlantic. Thinking of oceans, I'm currently reading British writer Amy Liptrot's autobiographical The Outrun, which is intricately entwined with the ocean; she grew up on the Scottish Orkney islands and returns to them, to both heal and to find herself, after she's left battered and broken by life in London.

She writes about the interconnectivity and borderlessness of the ocean:

"By swimming in the sea, I cross the normal boundaries. I'm no longer on land but part of the body of water making up all the oceans of the world, which moves, ebbing and flowing under and around me. Naked on the beach, I am a selkie slipped from its skin."

As for the Brass Bell, I know that the day must come, most likely soon, when a gleaming-eyed consortium of developers makes the right offer on the property. Then, before you know it, it'll be all open plan with lines smoothed out, all chrome and plushness, all expensive but perfect for the in-crowd. 

Skyline of my content

Summer's here, and with its arrival please welcome The Wind.

Just like The Mountain is huge and begs disbelief, as is the ferocity and rage of the south-easter, hereafter known as The Wind.

When it batters and bashes like this I'm less inclined to venture outdoors, choosing to remain within the vortex of my flat, deeply cocooned. I have a dread of leaving. Even though as human beings we quickly adapt to conditions, on every level. Sometimes I only leave here to forage, for food and wine and anonymous conversationless company. Like to Jamaica Me Crazy, or to Cafe Ganesh in Obs. 

Even now, as I sit at my desk by the window, which is one large sliding door, it's pummelled and pushed and resented.

It's 15 days away from the summer solstice, on 22 December. This was the Woodstock skyline at 20h00 last night. Looks can be deceiving: it might have looked like a fabulous summer's evening, but it wasn't. The south-easter raged against Cape Town for the entire day and late into the early hours of this morning. 

At the end of a jumbled day internally, I craved people. People that I didn't know. I walked from work, in Lower Gardens, to my local, Jamaica Me Crazy in Roodebloem Street. The views of the harbour bathed in the golden early evening sunshine, and, in the far distance, of the Hottentot's Holland mountains - from the high-level road through University Estate lifted my spirits. 

I took the pic through the bathroom window; you'd be excused for thinking there wasn't a breath.

Chilled white wine, a chicken schnitzel, a second glass, a chocolate brownie and ice cream: I splashed out. 

I spoke to no-one but the waiters, but nevertheless enjoyed the smoky company of the gregarious crowd; JMC remains a special, cosy place to me because there's not a pretentious bone to the place, nor to the people who frequent it.

Despite the wind, which had not even slightly abated, I opted to walk home: I was right, there wasn't a soul on the moody, wind-swept streets; it was a pleasure to walk, it's downhill all the way home anyway. But, I won't do it again in the dark.

Moisture

Wake, yesterday, at dawn / first light to hear birdsong, a rare sound to discern in Woodstock, and one of my great regrets of living here; then the feint sound, almost soundless like the blood pulsing through your ears, of lightly falling rain.

05h30.

Lie still with eyes closed listening to it rainfall, in this moment, now, it is wet and nothing else is of concern.

Every now and then a car will squelch across tarmac down below on Albert Road. 

So grateful it's a Sunday, that I can relax / immerse myself into this. Thank you God. I take a picture from my bedroom window towards the harbour, impossible to see it's giraffe cranes, nor Robben Island. Nor The Mountain. 

The drops falls harder now... I don't want this moment to end. Especially since we are at the start of what headlines have described as a long, hot summer. We're a winter rainfall region experiencing the harshest drought ever. 

Rain. I soak up the moisture, the calm, the quiet.

Last Friday

Friday afternoon saw me take a central line train back from the Pentech station - on the outskirts of our Bellville campus - to Cape Town.

I prefer, under normal conditions, a train over all other modes of transport.

But there was not a window left intact on my carriage; I sat, nervously, with my daypack still on, tight between me and the seat.

I'd also put my mobile phone on silent, then stuffed it in between my stomach skin and pants belt. I'd also made sure that I'd left my laptop at work.

Even though I was acting out of instinct, only yesterday did I read a piece highlighting what I already knew, that Cape Town’s rail commuter service is troubled, crime-ridden and appears to be fighting a losing battle.

But I didn't know that the line I was on is the most fraught one on Cape Town's failing rail infrastructure. It's what Metrorail has "described as Cape Town’s most dangerous line - the lines that service Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain. It runs all the way through to Bonteheuwel and Langa."

Even before reading the piece yesterday, I'd decided before I got back to Cape Town on Friday that unless absolutely necessary, I'd never take a chance on that line again. Many of our students don't have that option, nor does the majority of the people serviced by that line, by Metrorail.

Watching the bleakness, the ugliness of the landscape through the empty window frame, exaggerated because of the drought, I remembered some of Italo Calvino's words in Invisible Cities:

'The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.' 

Calvino conveys the notion that while some cities are dream cities and other cities are nightmare cities, they are but ultimately all the same city. Cities run on only two feelings he argues, namely fear and desire.

My Friday afternoon underscored this sharply to me: Cape Town is undoubtedly the epitome of both a dream and a nightmare city. 

Except that here, for me, the fear and the desire often stick through its thin and brittle skin, in my face, because it's so close to the surface, not unlike the jagged bones of a broken corpse.

All of this, I believe, is especially obvious to someone who's continually on foot in this city and unprotected by the safe bubble of a car. 

Someone like me. 

The Friday before last

We had rain this week, on Wednesday and Thursday. Not much, but enough to increase my heartbeat.

Today, as I type these words, Woodstock is bathed in rich, bright sunshine and The Mountain is stark, huge before me in the sky. The south-easter is rushing over the top of Table Mountain and storms, batters the few trees and tall palms in this suburb that's sparse of nature, vegetation.

My orphan orchid is alive with three large beautifully speckled flowers; another orchid, also taken home with me for care from somewhere that I forget, is bursting with unopened buds; even now as I look up at the plant I'm expecting it to reveal itself while I blink. It'll be the first time since I took it in that this one will flower.

In between work and marking I've put on a machine wash, guiltily, because of the drought, even though I've got my washing down to a once every two weeks event. The news about the lack of water in the city as the so-called rainy season draws to an end has not been good, although I'm not sure how much of the negativity is a result of politicking. Irrespective, it's not looking good and water is being rationed.

Also, there are still hundreds of metres of razor wire around my university's campuses and heavily armed private security at its entrances. Even so, today, there was an arson attack in the Engineering building.

My plants are thriving in the warmer spring weather.

Tonight I'll get myself off to an art movie at the Labia. I'll take a cup of steaming and aromatic gluhwein and heavily salted popcorn into the cinema with me; it's a Friday night ritual.

Last Friday. I wrote this the Friday before last but forgot to post it.

Beach urchin

It's silent in my home. Except for the strong and constant wind, outside, tearing at the building as if it were a flag or an old sailing ship at sea.

The Mountain is stark and large, also reassuring, against the morning sky. It fills my vision.

The windswept streets of Woodstock are quiet and whimsically sparse as if they were in a typical Western before a shoot-out, sans tumbleweed.

I'm grateful it's not Saturday morning with the usual throngs heading towards the Old Biscuit Mill amidst the shrill, often piercing whistling of self-appointed car guards parking their short-term investments.

I know that it will be good for me to get outside today.

My street urchin of an orchard has three magnificent and hope-inspiring blooms, that have all opened in the last week. Another orchid, that I rescued from someone's sun-beaten patio, is in bud. It's not flowered before under my care and I'm curious as to what the flowers will look like.

I'm on the couch surrounded by the books I'm currently reading, nothing's really holding me, also an empty coffee cup with a sludge of coffee grounds at the bottom; they escaped the French press.

I'm thinking of walking into town, I need to stretch my legs, then on to Nerona's at the top end of Buitenkant street for a chicken salad and chilled glass of chardonnay. And a change in scenery.

I'm hoping that the wind won't be blowing there.

I think back to last Wednesday's dawn walk along Muizenberg's long stretch of beach; I'm sorry now that I didn't take a chance - despite the cold - to swim and to jump-start myself alive again.

When an owl calls your name

Then in the last of the dusk, with bats silently on the wing, the icy wind stilled, the traffic on the main road that is the peninsula's spine lessened, we walked home in the descended peace alongside the demure lagoon.

I'd missed the last train back to the city and would spend the night here. In a house filled with passionate art, unfinished canvasses on easels, candles and books.

Muizenburg has not an uptight nor pretentious bone to it, although that's not always been the case. Yet, even while I'm told that danger lurks in its streets, I don't feel even slightly threatened, nor at risk. Perhaps it's the heady combination of red wine and the joys of an old and robust friendship that flood my veins, arteries, making me more unhindered than I should, perhaps, be.

I'm excited for the change in my routine that this welcome but unanticipated night in Muizenburg will afford me: other smells, sights, sounds; the moon too is different; another bed; foreign coffee.

While I'd left Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita' at my bedside, I had brought along his 'Speak, Memory' for the train ride (I'd finally gotten to Nabokov). Even so, once in the house, Kleinboer's 'Midnight Missionary' grabbed my attention and although I'd been resistant to reading it for years now, I took it to bed.

Also Ryk Hattingh's 'Huilboek'. Hattingh had died earlier in the day of a heart attack, in New Zealand where he and family had relocated to. Merely two week's ago he'd visited SA to collect an award and prize money for this, his latest novel. The novel, in Afrikaans, he had written in-between working as a cobbler and locksmith in Auckland.

My friend, she'd worked with him, recounted stories from his life, their life moments together; this was in-between fielding calls from the small circle of friends who were also recounting shared tales in-between expressing their grief, their loss.

This as my lids slid lower and bed beckoned.

When an owl calls your name...

Salt spray

With a water bottle, my notebook, pen, and my day pack hugging my back I took the southern line train to Kalk Bay late on Tuesday afternoon.

I read for most of the almost hour-long journey, a relaxing and favourite train ride of mine, despite the bad, sad state of our railways

Cappuccino and a slab of carrot cake over my notebook. This while sitting right up against Olympia Cafe's shopfront window. I was avoiding the icy chill of the cold front, which had dumped snow on the mountains in the country's interior.

To sporadically look up from my notebook and cake - with cappuccino foam on my upper lip or nostrils - at the colourful fishing boats in today's quite and docile harbour is another priceless joy.

Then, the only person in the shop other than the bespectacled manageress who peered over the top of her frame when I greeted her,  I wondered around Kalk Bay Books; they've normally got an array of unusual and difficult to find fiction and non-fiction carefully chosen and exhibited on the handful of tables on the shop floor.

On my last visit there were at least six titles I had scribbled on my list and would loved to have purchased. But I didn't have enough money with me for even one. This time, with money in my pocket, there wasn't a single edition of anything that caught my eager eye. That was a first for me.

Then, taking the coastal path between the ocean and the railway line, I walked the approximately four kilometres to Muizenburg: I needed the change of scenery, the tangy saltiness of the Indian Ocean in my nostrils and lungs, also to feel the adolescent summer sun on my skin. Also, the time to process things, me and my life, which walking briskly always seems to coax.

It was good to unwind and to consciously shrug off the anxiety that has been dogging my ankles like a persistent street dog for days now.

I was walking towards a carafe of red wine with old friends in a bohemian bistro/bar in quiet but for the skateboarders York Street: Oroboros. Friends of many years and much water under the bridge; another of life's priceless gifts.

Relatively speaking

How do two-and-almost-a-half months pass without me putting down a single word here? I shy away from here; the desire to remain invisible usurps my desire to be creative, to celebrate life via words and photos: a terrible and constant tension exists within.

I'm long-time returned from Uganda, it was an enormous success on countless levels; I've not written a word about it. Neither here nor anywhere else. Nor have I written a word since in terms of the story ideas that were flourishing in me and my notebooks while I was there, and on the flights back.

Today, I weakly resist bleakness overcoming me... it's the same bleakness inherent in the photo, above, that I took on 27 May. It was the city hall, the side of the library, the autumn trees on a bleary winter's day when the days were drawing in.

Today: It's a magnificent sunny day and the roofs of Woodstock are bright with summery sunshine, there's - unusually - not a breath of air. A woman wearing taut shorts and sandals, her oiled hair glistening (noticeable from even from this far and from this high above) in the sunlight, walks languidly up off one of the roads off Lower Main. She has a plump child fast asleep on her back, tied to her in reverse-Kangaroo style by a bright and cheerful pink blanket. I long to be next to her and her child, feeling the warmth of the late-approaching summer on my face,  on my skin.

Instead, I'm indoors with winter and wearing pyjamas suited to the cold of the last long week; winter is in my heart: I'm again working from home because my university where I teach has been beset by violent student protests, a minority of a minority; there's been attempted arson and the cars of staff have been vandalised. Last night, in the darkness where deeds like these take place, the doors to my department were pulled off their hinges and offices broken into: stuff stolen, glass broken. I've been on campus only three times since 1 September, choosing instead to teach via means other than the luxury of a classroom.

Then there's Trump, Brexit, climate change, the oceans soggy and overwhelmed with plastic, greed, capitalism, consumerism, the extreme and strangling corruption that pervades swathes of our government: billions of rands that could be exchanged for free tertiary education, also that the lives of countless disadvantaged folk could be transformed. Not to mention our deep, cloying and hooded Drought, which stands behind us all with his shining, razor-sharp scythe.

Then, I look upwards so as to count my blessings: I've six buds on an orchid that I rescued from the side of a street dustbin two years ago; before me and up right up tight against my retinas is the magnificent and inspiring Devil's Peak; not to mention that I had an awesome night's sleep in a warm bed; also I'm most gratefully not in the likes of storm-torn Puerto Rico or earthquake-ravaged Mexico City and still have a roof over my head.

It's all relative.

I'm still capable of compassion, kindness and generosity to those less fortunate than me. I can still choose to smile.

Also to make the choice to immerse myself in the miracle of this very day... because the past does not exist and I sure as hell have not an iota of control of tomorrow.

Meat Bomb

Thursday last week: On a beautiful winter's day that feels as if I, with a tiny bit of effort, could climb up somewhere, high, I would see to the edge of the earth, even beyond; it's one of those champagne days where the very ozone bubbles and sparkles.

I had a 9h00 appointment at a travel clinic in town; I did not even feel the prick of the needle that was inoculating me against yellow fever, nor did the malaria tablet regime seem anything but straight forward.

That was followed by a quick breakfast and both excited and anxious thoughts about my upcoming trip.

Then a languid and stop-start minibus taxi ride along the Main Road vein to UCT. Then my favourite: the long, taxing but magnificent walk from where the taxi spat me out in Rosebank - across the street from the Baxter Theatre - all the way up The Mountain and to the doors of the library. It's in here, right now, and in peace, because it's still the vac, that I type these words. This is a calming space that motivates me to work, also to browse the shelves.

I've long wanted to read W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, which I've just searched for in the cool and windowless basement, which holds the dead quiet treasure chests of the literature section. Ironically, this is the one library section I have no reason to visit while currently studying what I am. But both my spirit and will are weak.

"In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work."

I had to put Sebald's book down after the titillating first paragraph; I have to work and can't be distracted, despite how much I desire right now to be just that.

I'll be leaving for Kampala, Uganda on the 15th or 16th of next month. That's where the winner of the non-fiction Koffi Addo Writivism prize for nonfiction will be announced during the course of the writer's festival. On the last night, Sunday the 17th. My story, Meat Bomb, is one of the three short-listed stories.

Right now: Spurts of rain slash my bedroom window as I work on my bed, as I mark assignments, as I re-read the above and berate myself for what feels to me like insipid and lifeless words. Despite the rain I know it's having no impact whatsoever on the terrible drought we're in the middle of, despite that this, Winter, is supposed to be our rainy season. We're each allowed 87 litres of water a day: I shower every second day and strive to wear my clothes for much longer so that I only put the washing machine on, once, every two weeks.

Shell of St. James

I've mostly secluded myself in the flat and my bedroom since getting back. It's in preparation for the onslaught of humanity that I'll be inundated by with for the next university term. There'll be no respite except at night, but that will be an anxious respite in the swirl that is lectures, preparation for those lectures, marking, one-on-one contact with people, endless admin, work on my doctorate. While I dread this now, I know that by tomorrow morning when I wake, I'll be straight back into the flow and rush of it all.

Late yesterday in the fast approaching and moody dusk I escaped my bed and pile of books, the growing pile of dishes littering the kitchen counter, to Nic and Mike in Obs: to drink wine with them, to sit by their fire, to enjoy the two needy dogs, some pages of my book, for a hot cooked and tasty meal, to disappear (down the rabbit hole) into their large-screen gateway into Netflix, Google Earth, YouTube, which is more than I ever allow myself at home.

After a quick walk in the park with Nic and the dogs, also to pick up some vegetables for supper at Obs Spar, the rain came down. It's been a week since the last downpour I'm told. It used to be the other way around: known as the Cape of Storms, I remember the rain coming down for - often - a week at an end, then a mere clear day or two betwixt the next onslaught sent from Antarctica. Now, we're most grateful for any crumbs we might have from Nature's table; last night's train hopefully filled a mug.

At 22h30 I slunk back home despite being offered the couch; I much prefer my own bed and to wake in my own space, alone, silent, centered. 

My body is rested after this three-week vacation, my mind not so much.

I've received two sets of related good news: firstly, a few weeks ago, I heard that a non-fiction short story I'd written was long-listed in a writing competition. As I got back to Cape Town, I heard that it had been short-listed, which came with an invitation to attend and speak at a writing festival in Uganda. Here, in late August, the winner will be announced. This was a welcome answer to two of my intentions I broadcast earlier this year; to travel more, in particular within my continent; to write much more as I feel a heart's urge to shift from a lifetime of journalism to nonfiction and fiction writing.

I'm alone again today, at my desk in silence, and in deep inner peace. The ticking of my pomodoro timer app, the aroma of dark blend Italian coffee and chocolate biscuits, the company of my silent but flourishing plants, the phone on airplane mode, Devil's Peak, Table Mountain and Woodstock bathed in bright winter sunshine whenever I lift my eyes from the keyboard.

Despite my anxiety at the busy-ness and stress of the next few months, I'm deeply grateful for my apartment, my warm bed, my hot shower, my job, my life in Cape Town, my handful of friends, my books, the opportunities to travel, to write, and the desire to strive towards constantly simplifying and streamlining my life in this the second and calmer half of my life journey.

Another intention I aim to broadcast is my determination to walk, alone (and to be open to whatever life puts across my path) the full length of the Camino des Santiago. This is an ancient 800 km (500 miles) pilgrimage between St. Jean Pied-du-Port in France - across the Pyrenees, and westwards across Spain approximately 100 km (60 miles) south of the coast - and the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. It'll mean passing through Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, and many smaller villages and towns. I've held this desire for a few years now, that is to walk this 'way of St James' as a personal spiritual retreat.

The sun, suddenly, is gone and there's a smattering of fat raindrops across the window at my desk; I can distinctly make out the sheet of rain that's heading across the city bowl and this way. I instinctively shiver and pull the heater closer.

The scallop shell (of St. James), often found on the shores in Galicia, is the symbol of the Camino de Santiago; it also acts as a metaphor: 

"The grooves in the shell, which meet at a single point, represent the various routes pilgrims traveled, eventually arriving at a single destination: the tomb of James in Santiago de Compostela. The shell is also a metaphor for the pilgrim: As the waves of the ocean wash scallop shells up onto the shores of Galicia, God's hand also guides the pilgrims to Santiago."

Tentacles

The walks out of the town at the end of the day without my phone, forced to be alone with my mind and whatever was offered up by Nature, in its winter beauty, provided both clarity and vision. Especially at this, the halfway mark of the year.

A year that has sped past. I'm regretfully preparing for an even speedier second half. Again, mostly alone I slammed on the brakes - reading, gardening, bathing, watching the birds in the fountain, sitting by the fire - at my humble place in Mpumalanga province.

I'm back in Cape Town, which despite being greener than when I left here almost three weeks ago, is still limping along drought stricken. It's the rainy winter season here and there's hardly been any rain. I've noticed that the narrative has changed: at first, it was about when the winter rains arrive, now it's about the fact that this is our new reality - our climate has changed, ours is a drier, bleaker future. What frightens me is the pace at which our winters have been transformed: in the four years here I've watched the tap being closed, tighter every year so far.

Monday I'm back at university and who knows what the next few months hold; I'm slightly apprehensive, anxious. I'm well rested though. But apprehensive, anxious. For the last two years we 'lost' the fourth quarter to student protests for free education. I'm on the students' side. But the violence unsettles me, also the incredible pressure it puts on the lecturers and the students themselves. It's a time spent treading water and feeling helpless and overwhelmed.

This afternoon I'm in limbo: on my bed surrounded by books, which I hop between - "hither and thither, restless as mosquito larvae swimming across a stagnant" pond (Derek Jarman in Modern Nature) - and coffee cups, a french press, my laptop too. I'd like to get out into the bright winter sunshine before tomorrow's cold-front arrives, although at the same time I'm reticent at the thought of showering (we're allowed 87 litres of water each daily) and dressing and bussing.

To go where to achieve what?

I must resist my negative state of mind; I must remind myself of all that I have, of how blessed my life is. My heart is wide open to life.

My Western Front

From the promenade at Queen's Beach, Seapoint.

I was at my desk and feeling guilty for, mostly, being at it and indoors for the whole of that day. 

At 4 pm I couldn't anymore. 

I showered and then took the bus at 16h30 to the far side of Seapoint: Queen's Beach to be exact. 

From there, hugging the coastline, I walked with a bounce in my stride all of the way to Camps Bay. 

From just before its main drag, I watched the sunset, which was showing itself off. Then, dunk, it was gone.

Had fish 'n chips, grilled calamari and a carafe of white wine at Ocean Basket while scribbling in my notebook; this while intermittently observing the Camps Bay Saturday evening strip get busier as people, many of them tourists, emerged for drinks, cocktails, dinner. This as the clammy but exhilarating reek of the icy Atlantic seeped upwards from the beach, then crossed Victoria road, leaking into the restaurants and shopfronts. 

Then, away from the lights and madding crowds, I decided to walk back to town,  this time over Kloof Nek. Out of breath from the climb and over the saddle that separates Table Mountain and Lion's Head apart, straight into the bright lights and rowdiness of the city bowl. This sudden transition, not unlike flicking a light switch, from the relative darkness, silence, and obscurity above Camps Bay in the lee of the Twelve Apostles. It was like walking onto a brightly-lit stage before a packed to the gills auditorium.

Strode down Kloof Street, a fast-flowing steam of raucosness for its pulsating length, where my instincts warned me to be alert and on guard.

Just in time, I managed to catch the last 102 home to Salt River from Darling Street at 21h20. Alighting from the bus at Salt River Circle and into the hushed darkness among the softly catcalling prostitutes on Lower Main, before walking the last stretch home in the metallic light along the facade of the Biscuit Mill, still disgorging restaurant goers, still on gaurd and scanning the road, before a quick right into Mill Street, an even quicker sh'rt right into Bromwell.

The Three Feathers was already in darkness with its gates bolted, my contentious back Street quiet, me the only one on its length, before bathing in the bright security lights at the back of my apartment block. Elevator upwards, then the darkness and familiar homely scent and silence of my apartment. With its, always, jaw-dropping view over Woodstock, with Devil's Peak almost invisible as a mute hunchbacked backdrop.

Clinging to the edge of Bantry Bay, just after Seapoint, the view that most miss.

To bed with Adam Feinstein's biography of Pablo Neruda, wherein I'm approaching the end of his life and the first signs of the prostate cancer that took him from it. 

Just over 16,000 steps, my muscles strained with exercise and tiredness, almost exactly 11 km later, all's quiet on my Western Front.

Let them eat meat

Fruit cake and coffee with evaporated milk, in bed, while reading a Paris Review article about young novelist Édouard Louis and his writer's rage. A rage that saw him write his first novel at 19, and published at 21. In 2014. Not only published at 21 but because it's a best seller, he's been published out of poverty at 21.

The point about the poverty is an important one. Not only because it raises other issues for the young writer as he's then, almost, sucked into the world of "cocktail parties and dinners" that he had dreamed about when he first arrived in Paris - "but more and more I realize you can see the literary world as a school of submission. You always have to shake everyone’s hand, in what can be seen as a quiet celebration of the bourgeoisie" - but, also, because it was his and his family's own poverty that politicised him into writing what he has, and in the style that he does.

I'm reading about Louis as a small airplane buzzily trails an advertisement banner (which I don't bother to read) back and forth across the bright blue sky above the city bowl and as the woman next door gets -breath-less-ly- fucked against the wall that divides our two apartments.

In just over three years I've only heard sex next door once before. However, often, daily, her heels click-and-clack across the tiled floors as she prepares for work, for which she always promptly leaves by banging shut and locking the front door at precisely 7 am. Peace then again reigns. I can't help but wonder if she's wearing those high heels right now? I've only set my eyes on her once before, a man was trailing her into her flat; she briefly turned at the door and momentarily caught my eye; I have no recollection of how she looks. Nor of how the man looked that trailed her into her flat.

It’s a quite and calm Sunday morning. After the welcome string of cool, sometimes moody autumnal days this last week,  my guess is that everyone's rushed off to the beaches, both the icy but more pretentious ones on the Atlantic seaboard, also the warmer and much more down to earth ones on the Indian seaboard. That leaves everyone and everything in-between quiet and calm, as it should be: 31 degrees today, 36 tomorrow; while I dread these death throes of summer, what comforts me is that they are just that, summer's death throes.

Just how, exactly, did that traumatised child become the assured and beautiful young man who gazes so calmly from the author photo on the book jacket?, questions novelist Neil Bartlett writing about Édouard Louis in the Guardian last month. “Whom did he meet, once he had escaped to the city, and how? Who was it who helped him save and repossess his life – and who inspired him to write this well?” Those, too, are my burning questions.

I hunker even more deeply down into the Paris review piece despite feeling guilty about reading, which for some bizarre reason I associate with not working. That bizarre reason - despite the fact that I'm inspired, that my mind is whirring and clicking with the satisfaction of being exposed to new ideas, perspectives - is because reading has always been such an intense pleasure, also such a wonderful escape, that I feel guilty at the luxury thereof, that it seems impossible to associate with work, with studying.

Back to Louis, who makes a strong case for his having written a political novel, also for not being apolitical: "All authors are political, even if they don’t realize it. Being apolitical merely reinforces the status quo, supporting the powerful over the weak." 

He maintains that many writers "don’t want to know how to speak about politics because they’re from the bourgeoisie," and because "they’ve been protected from the rough edges of political change." On the other hand, the people he writes about are "ceaselessly marked by the consequences of political choices". 

"My mother would say, Under Mitterand, we always had meat on our plates. Even if I could show her that Mitterand wasn’t as generous to the poor as she thought, the point is that when the government reformed its policies—on welfare, for example—we felt it in our stomachs. Today I can complain about the government all I want, but political decisions won’t determine the amount of food on my plate tonight." 

Louis's writer's fire reminds me of Frantz Fanon's fire: Lewis Gordin in What Fanon Said (2015), writes that throughout his book, Black Skin, White Mask (1995), Fanon struggles to hold the fire at bay, the result of which "is an ongoing heat that occasionally bursts into flame".

Louis: "Politics isn’t a question of words, he says, it’s a question of meat [on your plate]. I try never to forget that."

How would I describe him after my relatively brief introduction today? Hungry, angry, brilliant & beautiful... and a writer that I'm going to keep my attention focus upon.

Blood of the gods

I'm fondly remembering the drive along Chapman's Peak that we took early in December.

It was from Hout Bay to Noordhoek, before we stopped, again, at the Lighthouse Pub and Grill in Kommetjie; it's a favourite and calm place where I feel that I'm suitably far from the city.

Summer was in full bloom that day and there was not a single thought in anyone's head of the winter. Understandably so as we'd not even reached the climactic summer equinox.

Endless days overflowed with sunshine and light.

The peninsula was tinderbox dry, fires threatened the landscape, the sky so blue and without end, that it seemed possible to see all the way to Brazil, even to Antarctica if one but only stared long and hard enough.

Water restrictions and summer holidays were on the air.

Last week it rained. The first time in ages. With eyes closed, I breathed in deeply the distinctive 'wet road' smell of rain on hot tarmac.

There's apparently a word for that scent -Petrichor - that describes the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. Derived from the Greek, it's a combination of "stone", and "īchṓr," which was the very fluid that flowed in the veins of Greek mythology's gods.

It was during the rain that I had a sense of the approaching autumn and, hopefully, the winter downpours that I so clearly remember. And yearn for. Although one can't take anything for granted these climate change days. We hope it's merely a drought that will soon come to an end. However, I have my doubts: not only was it reported in 2016 that SA is experiencing its worst drought in 100 years, but in January it was confirmed that we're now breaking global temperature records once every three years. I dread that this might be our new reality going forward.

I come alive in the wet and moody weather that can see Table Mountain disappeared for days in an elephant-grey shroud.

Today, too, has just a hint of autumn in it, also, the days are undeniably shorter; I'm grateful for less light and that it's duskish when I wake.

The wind's gusting and Woodstock has a shininess about it; it looks bright and unusually beautiful: my hood.

During the last two weeks, words, not unlike big fat raindrops have flowed from me. I experience gratefulness at that: I'm a less parched than before, less parched than last year.

Please, may it be the last of my drought?

The Scream

My new medication, of which I'm a mere five weeks into - for depression and severe anxiety (it's been my Achille's for 4.5 years) - is kicking in just in time for a new year: I'm motivated and passionate again, desire to write is revived, also to photograph and to generally just do things; I'm especially grateful that I'm less fearful of answering my phone and anxiously procrastinate less about replying to emails, texts, and Whatsapp messages.

How it's possible for a minute chemical imbalance in a brain has the capacity to severely disable a life never ceases to astonish me. My heart especially goes out to those who have no access to medical insurance and thus to psychiatric help, especially those doomed to live on the streets as 'mad'. And hungry. And cold. And often subject to hate, violence.

It's dusk and, below me, the comforting orange lights have gone on in the close-knit streets of Woodstock. Behind the suburb, moody and severe, Devil's Peak is reminiscent of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings.

The South-Easter has been raping, shredding, tearing at my apartment block for three days now. It's partly to blame for me having not left my space the entire day: naked, with a book in my hand I've moved between my bedroom, the living room, the bathroom; an empty blue tea mug, a favourite, is on the floor next to the couch.

It's there that I was reading New York-based Teju Cole's 'Known and Strange Things' (2016). I bought his highly recommended essay compilation on the advice (yes, I trust him implicitly) of Mervyn Sloman, the Book Lounge's owner. I'm reading a travel piece in it - 'Far away from here' (p. 227) - about a six-month sojourn he once spent in Switzerland. For me, the awesomeness of the piece is how he combines writing about travel and place with his passion for photography.

Because back home now I've avoided the City and most of the scenic parts of the Cape Peninsula, due to the summer crowds, the tourists. Which is why this piece of his triggered me, also because through it, he held up a mirror to me so that I could again see what I've deemed non-negotiable principles for me to live by. He writes:

'[The first] Baedeker was already able to state, in that early guide to Switzerland, that places like the Rigi, the Brunig, and the Scheideck were on "beaten tracks." By the 1880s Switzerland was estimated to be receiving a million visitors a year. Travelers tend to go where other travelers have gone, and perhaps this is part of the reason travel photography remains in thrall to the typical. When you do visit Zurich or Cape Town or Bangkok, they are very much alike: the amusement parks have striking similarities, the cafes all play the same Brazilian music, the malls are interchangeable, kids on the school buses resemble one another, and the interiors of middle-class homes conform to the same parameters.'

It's the worldwide suburban attitude, the commercialisation, the globalisation of the (in my eyes) failed neoliberal capitalistic system of our world, and the insatiable acquisition of things, that literally freaks me out and (most likely) plays a big part in reliance on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. The image that sums that for me sums up the response to this is Edvard Munch's 'The Scream.'

Cole, however, highlights that despite all the similarity this doesn't mean the world is uninteresting. 'It only means that the world is more uniform than most photo essays acknowledge, and that a lot of travel photography relies on an essentialism.' 

He likes Italo Calvino's idea of "continuous cities," as described in the novel 'Invisible Cities.' "[Calvo suggests that there is actually just one big, continuous city that does not begin or end: "Only the name of the airport changes."

Cole insists that 'what is then interesting is to find, in that continuity, the less obvious differences of texture: the signs, the markings, the assemblages, the things hiding in plain sight in each cityscape or landscape.' This, he says, is what outstanding photographers are able to do. 'And it is the target the rest of us chase.' Which is how I attempt, on every level, to live my life... fully, deeply, passionately seeking for that which is outstanding amidst the dreariness of the sameness: I choose not to live the 'fast food drive-thru route.  I don't often get it right of course, especially not without my meds.