Brutal, honest and blunt: Charles (bloody) Bukowski

Not one died. I know now - after being away two years in a row at this time of the year - that my flat-full of plants can survive at least two weeks without and spoonfeeding. Summer would be a different story.

Rutter's Requiem: III. Pie Jesu. I turn up the volume, rewind, play, rewind, and play again. One of my favourites. Takes my heart up somewhere high; maybe, rather use the word lofty, Charles? Spotify; I'm on a three-month free trial; so far so good.

Maybe I'm buzzing these last two weeks because I've a muse in my life who doesn't yet know he's a muse. Intensely blue and beautiful eyes. Germanic features. A goofy smile. A highly disciplined mind that also burns with an intense brightness, and superb intelligence.

Much happened, actually, and without me necessarily consciously aware of it at the time, during those potent two weeks in my Mpumalanga hideaway. It's a reminder of why I must overcome the initial resistance to leaving these overflowing, intensely distracting and luring fleshpots of Cape Town.

Every morning I had time with God in the front room of the house, which used to be a verandah. It's where the sun rose over the koppies and trees in front of the house, at about 08h00 this time of the year, and poured like liquid apricot over my head, shoulders, lap, then pages, finally my legs.

Morning birdsong. Also, sometimes the believe-it-or-not comforting sound of a chainsaw - confirmation that this is a deeply rural setting, not the city - in the near distance. Also, sometimes, a train en route to Maputo screeching (steel-on-steel) in the valley's shunting yard, in this town famous for its rail origins.

It's warming up, my hands are no longer chilled and sore from the cold; yesterday and last night were icy. Today's temperature has risen by a sharp 5 degrees; that's what I love about Cape Town: the cold fronts have a passionate arrival, but then just as quickly move northwards, and westwards, to torment the rest of the country, quite often dumping snow on the mountains between us and the rest.

I've the flat sliding door wide open so as to welcome in the warmth and glare reflected off of the shiny and also rusted corrugated iron roofs of Woodstock.

Just before heading 'home' late in June I'd serendipitously picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski's novel Women lying, literally, across my path. He's another favourite writer of mine.

I'd started reading the work immediately but had somehow been revolted by his coarse but awfully impactful writing. I had thought it would make great reading for the two-hour flight to Joburg and back again. I decided against it. I wanted to get it back to the library ASAP.

I've picked it up again and am devouring it. I'm ready for its nuggets now. I'm learning much, also laughing lots, making pencil notes on the pages, turning the corners to mark fascinating pages. I will get my own copy though, maybe even later today. That's if I even venture out.

Bukowski is revoltingly larger than life character, which is why he constantly has to appear in his own writing (there's nowhere else to put him); though he makes no effort at all to pull punches about himself.

Breathtakingly brutal. Repugnantly honest.

(The days are lengthening.)

Long & winding road

I'm back in Cape Town. Three weeks, about, have passed since my last post here. At the start of the uni vac, I'd been invigorated into believing that just maybe I'd be able to write a post every day, especially since most of the time I'd be alone, in my home space in Mpumalanga, far away from the countless distractions of this city's fleshpots.

It was not to be. I was busier than ever, just with different things to do in a starkly different place.

I was there, mostly alone, for two weeks.

I managed to work in the garden. And to remember what it feels like to walk barefoot on the wet lawn, something I once took for granted. No longer, since I'm living on the sixth floor of an apartment block.

I also realised how pale and insipid my skin was, untouched by the sun. I lay on the lawn reading, turning over like a rotating lamb spit so as to absorb vitamin D all over my body.

Tingling with life, I relished lying there in the winter sun and walking barefoot around the garden and in the house.

I did mostly complete my daily three-page Morning Pages sessions which I've been doing regularly since April 2002 when I was gifted Julia Cameron's The Artists Way.

Also took long walks at the end of the day and on the outskirts of the town, along the road past the hospital towards where the tar peters out, close to the escarpment edge and where the forests begin. I walked at this time, and on the outskirts, to minimise my possible exposure to people.

The veld was lion coloured and in many places had been scorched black, as is natural at this time of the year.

*

I've just poured myself a glass of red wine.

It's Friday evening: chilly, moody and wintry, also I've gratefully airplane-moded my phone. A reprieve, for sanity's sake, and for my peace. I'm swimming calmly in a pool of warm light at my writing desk. Devil's Peak has been disappeared into the winter's night; there are only the orange lights of Woodstock between me and the dark smudge - above the last line of street lights - that was The Mountain.

*

I made a roaring fire outside every single night of the two weeks that I was there, but for one night. I sat outside until the flames were scorching embers, before I braaied meat, eating straight off the grill. And drank wine. And read. And thought. And turned out the lights, so as to savour the red-heart embers and the southern sky diamond-packed with stars.

While there I got even more to grips with the monk, Thomas Merton. I've been lured to him many times over as many years but never took the bait. I'm not sure what this time around inspired me to search for his bestselling 1948 autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain at the uni library, which I still have in front of me despite having finished it before I headed northwards for my simple house, 1,800 km from where I sit.

Merton has inspired me both as a writer and a writing contemplative.

"And you began to get some of the feeling of the bigness of America, and to develop a continental sense of the scope of the country and of the vast, clear sky, as the train went on for mile after mile, and hour after hour. And the color, and freshness, and bigness, and the richness of the land! The cleanness of it. The wholesomeness. This was new and yet it was old country. It was mellow country. It had been cleared and settled for much more than a hundred years.
When we got out at Olean, we breathed its health and listened to its silence (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998: 219)."

More about Merton later.