having sloughed a skin (yet another)

It's been well over a year. (Like well over a year.)

Since I typed a word on here. Since I considered the dimensions and appropriately eye-catching colours of a photo. To add to the mix.

[What fucking freedom.]

So much so that I couldn't remember the exact name of this blog; I started it in 2007. Go figure.

Was so damn good to try to type what I thought the (my) blog's name was into google; no recognition; what a compliment; just the now-famous name for the film that inspired in me its name. And litres of other trash. No instant recognition. On any level.

[What fucking freedom.]

Don't think much about or of sex. 

My lesson: the eye desires what it sees, forgets what it doesn't. 

Wanker.

[What fucking freedom.]

I've been here for 18 months now. I'm not going anywhere.

My digital footprint is even smaller than when my old life abruptly ended. A glass of champagne to that.

Two, maybe even three, fucks given to how many site hits, how many people read anything here, four fucks given if you even remember my name. Because I don't.

Mostly nameless. On the far north-eastern corner of a Karoo village in the middle of nowhere.

[What fucking freedom.]

*

Couldn't be happier. Nor more relieved than I already am. My back faces you, it faces humanity. The fact that a back faces anything is a wonderful contradiction in terms. Another glass of champagne to that.

* 

Tonight was different. Starkly, wonderfully so.

I've counted three moths. Alive. One a pale glistening green. Miracle. 

Yesterday there were no moths. For months there have been no moths. Winter. Deep winter.

Today was 24. Tonight is 8. 

Life.

*

Miniscule green buds on my starkly naked but lithe wit stinkhout. It's in a pot in my study. I didn't have the balls to leave it out in the ice, snow, deep frost, the minus tens of the winter. Despite it being indigenous; despite that, I did do my homework before buying it at the very (and wonderfully) gay Kliphuis koffiehuis (& fledgling nursery) in Graaf Reinet. 

It has survived the pandemic until now, one less casualty. So has Die Kliphuis. 

One more glass of champagne to all of the above.

* 

Olive is outside. She will sleep next to my pillow again tonight. If she returns.

* 

My hosepipe was stolen during the week I was away. I hope that, like the small gate that was stolen a month ago, that it will miraculously reappear. So much water, so little hosepipe. 

* 

Tonight I will not sleep in long johns, nor with the electric blanket on.

* 

Tomorrow I will bolt out of the house to see if there's any sign of bud life on the three giant pear tree skeletons in front of the house.

*

Two microwaved potatoes. Smattered with butter, salt, pepper, paprika, mayonnaise. Add a tin of tuna. And three old tumblers of wine. Doos wyn, i.e. wine from a box. Don't be a doos, that's what lockdown taught me.

* 

The first of anything to flower in the garden was my jakkalswater. Eye-searingly yellow flowers; Athol may have planted it in the zen garden in front of the step. Or, perhaps, Sheila?

* 

Olive is learning about moths. Olive is feisty and independent like her namesake.

Olive Schreiner. Who's buried on Buffelskop with her baby, dog, and much later her husband, just outside of Cradock. 109 km from here. Around the corner.

* 

What's a night without moths, doos wyn and my favourite music on Spotify?

Winter.