tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29078581716759299592024-02-19T07:29:03.233+02:00 beautiful minda writer's notebook:
"write a little every day, without hope, without despair" - isak dinesen
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.comBlogger1112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-30694320808826387302023-09-23T13:29:00.019+02:002023-09-23T13:41:17.331+02:00Two years & a new season<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmX9MAeM8YrJuL-9VspDFKcW58M_pgq5hKvIDMVjoeSPCtTwhSevY95VCIXLmll71291axYZDONktnsrXJRGB0RKh7_7gsQqcviM0iXd8ujFlU7rmUtWgjeP-YQS-FnJ1ZH17Dx-e0nRbg74cxVv4_knZ1Ug1loRTu2aq3gU_PjMdE6V0tPuC9X87PfE/s4032/IMG_3446-EFFECTS.jpg" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Muizenberg, Cape Town" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmX9MAeM8YrJuL-9VspDFKcW58M_pgq5hKvIDMVjoeSPCtTwhSevY95VCIXLmll71291axYZDONktnsrXJRGB0RKh7_7gsQqcviM0iXd8ujFlU7rmUtWgjeP-YQS-FnJ1ZH17Dx-e0nRbg74cxVv4_knZ1Ug1loRTu2aq3gU_PjMdE6V0tPuC9X87PfE/w640-h480/IMG_3446-EFFECTS.jpg" width="640" /></a></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Today is the Spring Equinox in the southern hemisphere; as </span><a href="Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) · Twitter https://twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">Robert Macfarlane </a><span style="font-family: arial;">writes on X (formerly known as Twitter), it's a day of brief poise & pivot when the Sun’s light falls equally on the northern & southern hemispheres. </span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It is the first day of summer here, the last of summer in the north (where the Harvest Moon is due towards the end of next week). </span></p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A good day, says Macfarlane.</span></div>Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0Muizenberg, Cape Town, 7945, South Africa-34.0898847 18.495859-62.400118536178844 -16.660391 -5.7796508638211535 53.652108999999996tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-31717387127659024612021-09-03T13:59:00.000+02:002021-09-03T13:59:04.350+02:00EAT THE WORLD<p><span style="font-size: medium;">"Lauren Beukes is probably one of South Africa’s greatest contemporary writers, and besides being hilarious and unapologetic, she has great advice on doing great work. One big piece of advice she keeps on repeating is to EAT THE WORLD. That is, gorge yourself on all the strange and beautiful and interesting things the world has to offer. Then twist it up like a ‘koeksister’ and serve it right back. Get skin in the game, eat the world." </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">- Pierre du Plessis in his (awesome) <a href="https://thisispierre.co/train-naked" target="_blank">Train Naked: A guide to a meaningful life and work that matters.</a></span></p>Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-73593847630194680522021-09-02T20:59:00.004+02:002021-09-02T20:59:46.643+02:00having sloughed a skin (yet another)<p>It's been well over a year. (Like well over a year.)</p><p>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.</p><p>[What fucking freedom.]</p><p>So much so that I couldn't remember the exact name of this blog; I started it in 2007. Go figure.</p><p>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.</p><p>[What fucking freedom.]</p><p>Don't think much about or of sex. </p><p>My lesson: the eye desires what it sees, forgets what it doesn't. </p><p>Wanker.</p><p>[What fucking freedom.]</p><p>I've been here for 18 months now. I'm not going anywhere.</p><p>My digital footprint is even smaller than when my old life abruptly ended. A glass of champagne to that.</p><p>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.</p><p>Mostly nameless. On the far north-eastern corner of a Karoo village in the middle of nowhere.</p><p>[What fucking freedom.]</p><p>*</p><p>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.</p><p>* </p><p>Tonight was different. Starkly, wonderfully so.</p><p>I've counted three moths. Alive. One a pale glistening green. Miracle. </p><p>Yesterday there were no moths. For months there have been no moths. Winter. Deep winter.</p><p>Today was 24. Tonight is 8. </p><p>Life.</p><p>*</p><p>Miniscule green buds on my starkly naked but lithe <i>wit stinkhout</i>. 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. </p><p>It has survived the pandemic until now, one less casualty. So has Die Kliphuis. </p><p>One more glass of champagne to all of the above.</p><p>* </p><p>Olive is outside. She will sleep next to my pillow again tonight. If she returns.</p><p>* </p><p>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. </p><p>* </p><p>Tonight I will not sleep in long johns, nor with the electric blanket on.</p><p>* </p><p>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.</p><p>*</p><p>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.</p><p>* </p><p>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?</p><p>* </p><p>Olive is learning about moths. Olive is feisty and independent like her namesake.</p><p>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.</p><p>* </p><p>What's a night without moths, doos wyn and my favourite music on Spotify?</p><p>Winter.</p>Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-25251747879134486372021-09-02T20:23:00.000+02:002021-09-02T20:23:42.029+02:00Karoo storm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm reading "Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche" by Bill Plotkin, Thomas Berry and wanted to share this quote with you.<br /><br />"The individual soul is the core of our human nature, the reason for which we were born, the essence of our specific life purpose, and ours alone. Yet our true nature is at first a mystery to our everyday mind. To recover our inmost secrets, we must venture into the inner/outer wilderness, where we shall find our essential nature waiting for us."<o:p></o:p></div>
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"Nature depends on us to embody our souls. The world cannot fully express itself without each of us fully expressing our selves; diminished human soul means diminished nature. Just as nature longs for the embodiment of our souls, our souls long for a world in which nature can embody itself fully and diversely. When, at long last, we gaze into our own depths, we see the same kind of enchantment and resilience we see in undisturbed nature. And when we journey far enough from the routines of our civilized lives — in space or in cultural distance, far enough, that is, into wilderness — we see reflected back to us the essential qualities of our deepest selves."<o:p></o:p></div>
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"When we truly enter the outer wild — fully opened to its enigmatic and feral powers — the soul responds with its own cries and cravings. These passions might frighten us at first because they threaten to upset the carefully assembled applecart of our conventional lives. Perhaps this is why many people regard their souls in much the same way they view deserts, jungles, oceans, wild mountains, and dark forests — as dangerous and forbidding places. Our society is forever erecting barriers between its citizens and the inner/outer wilderness. On the outer side, we have our air-conditioned houses and automobiles, gated communities and indoor malls, fences and animal control officers, dams and virtual realities. On the inner side, we’re offered prescribed “mood enhancers,” alcohol, and street drugs; consumerism and dozens of other soul-numbing addictions; fundamentalisms, transcendentalisms, and other escapisms; rigid belief systems as to what is “good” and what is “bad”; and teachings that God or some other paternal figure will watch over us and protect our delicate lives."<o:p></o:p></div>
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Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-74773355773778370292020-04-05T22:05:00.000+02:002020-04-05T22:05:15.885+02:00The lockdown diaries day #10: True north <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A week ago I sliced the fleshy tip of my right index finger on one of the plastic and foil blister packs encasing my meds. <br /><br />Seven days’ later I’m refilling my week-long plastic pillbox. <br /><br />That’s how I know that the first week of the lockdown has passed. It’s also why I’ve not gone mad: Without enough meds to last the lockdown I’d have been climbing the walls here. <br /><br />I’m typing by the light of three candles. <br /><br />It’s lush and green here. This summer has seen very good rains, this last week too; I know what the Karoo looks and feels like in a drought.<br /><br />I’ve been here for exactly two weeks. Unplanned and in no way intended to preempt the shutting down of the country at midnight on 26 March. <br /><br />By sheer and most fortunate serendipity I’ve been able to stay put in one of my ideal life geolocations, a place that inspires my heart to strum and sing.<br /><br />When I arrived this time the poplars, which have always tugged powerfully at my heartstrings, were in their shimmering summer glory. <br /><br />The last week has seen their gradual turning to autumn; I’m excitedly anticipating each of the tree's sharp, bright and passionate yellow transformation into trembling skyward flames. <br /><br />These trees were the first image to be deeply burnt into my mind’s cornea when I first pilgrimed to here 22 years ago. <br /><br />It was also autumn. <br /><br />I was deeply in love, then. With two people simultaneously. And, somehow, in a relationship with both (it’s a long and painful story). And neither knew about the other. Well, for a while at least. I had no idea how to let either of them go. Because I was young, inexperienced and had not yet grown balls, nor integrity. Although now, and in hindsight, it’s obvious whom I should have held onto - with <i>both</i> hands and <i>all</i> of my heart. <div>
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Oh, for the wisdom and understanding that comes with hindsight.<br /><br />Often planted as windbreaks along farm boundaries poplars make good screens and provide protection. <i>My heart could have used some at the time.</i> They’re especially striking when planted in clumps, which creates an atmospheric woodland effect. <br /><br />The next time I came here, not long after the dawn of the millennium, I was in another relationship: dangerously enthralled by a cruel flame; in a deeply co-dependent space, my heart was a bruised and battered one. I knew that I get out. But how? A week later, knowing for my sanity what I needed to do, I drove out of this fertile valley with a heavy, dreading heart. While it what obvious what needed doing I needed, however, <i>the evidence</i> to underscore my instincts and suspicions before I could do it. <br /><br />In spring and summer, the oval to diamond-shaped leaves of the poplar are shiny healthy green, with a pale silvery underside. While the leaves drop in winter, they are most striking in the autumn. That’s when they transform into a brilliant yellow that demands attention. <br /><br />While poplars have long been symbols of courage, victory, fertility, youthfulness, abundance, protection and endurance, I’ve chosen instead to illustrate this post with a pic I took of the dramatic peak that’s visible from most of this village, while it was still legal to move around. Its name also oozes symbolism: <br /> <br />The Compassberg - <a href="https://deims.org/dc3a8d19-8377-4c89-a0e5-8b265174688f" target="_blank">the highest peak in the Sneeuberg range and resembling a compass needle towering 2 502 metres high</a> - is near the village of Nieu Bethesda, 55 km north of the town Graaff-Reinet in the (my favourite) Eastern Cape Province.</div>
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I'm home.</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-63634499072900727222020-03-22T22:08:00.000+02:002020-03-22T22:08:20.920+02:00Just OK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One day at a time.<br />
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I've so much time on my hands, suddenly.<br />
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Unable to focus though; as much as my mind spins around in circles so do I physically circle my apartment (living room to the kitchen to bathroom to bedroom and back), as well as scrolling through social media and the news sites, and reading the books I was so contentedly ploughing through just over a week ago. That was last week and in another world.<br />
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Now they, the books and most other things, too, seem unreal, and out of place. And, like many things before now, quite simply irrelevant.<br />
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Unable to focus and while I see, at least if I squint my eyes, that this time as a gift so as to get things, I can't get my sorry ass and mind to seat themselves at my writing <br />
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Got to walk for an hour on Kommetjie beach at sunset yesterday, to again breathe in deeply the ocean and fresh air, the exhilaration of the southern hemisphere ozone.<br />
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To, also, pretend that everything was just ok.<br />
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Tonight it's chilly, wintry and the South-Easter is raging, not unlike when everything was just ok.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-62010830179965777242020-03-21T12:30:00.000+02:002020-03-21T12:30:19.938+02:00Self-love in the time of the virus<br />
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It's the quietest I've seen the Sea Point promenade, on Wednesday afternoon, a mere day after the City of Cape Town had closed down most public amenities because of The Plague.<br />
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The last time I experienced the public swimming pool empty, closed was during The Drought of 2017/18.<br />
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I'd decided to take the MyCiti bus from Woodstock at 4pm to Queens Beach, at the end of the 105 Sea Point route.<br />
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So as to get outdoors and to deeply breathe in the reek of the icy and plankton-rich Atlantic Ocean.<br />
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Not to mention the luxury of being able to see - unhindered by buildings, humans (except for the odd tanker or Robben Island on the horizon) - The Ocean.<br />
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To feel unconstrained by the city, knowing that I'm on its very edge; it's that definite line found almost only in ports, not in landlocked and seemingly endless cities like Johannesburg.<br />
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To bask, also, in the autumnal sunshine.<br />
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Especially as no one knows yet if the city, if the country, will be going into lockdown anytime soon; my guess is that it's likely.<br />
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I am, thankfully, rising again to the sunbeam-filled surface from the tentacles of the mental health issues that have been dragging me deeper and deeper into dark depths.<br />
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This while having my <i>joie de vivre </i>excruciatingly squeezed out of me, not unlike toothpaste from a tube.<br />
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Dark and grim days.<br />
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Was increasingly difficult to motivate leaving my bed, never mind being in contact with friends, nor posting a single pic on Instagram for example; street photography used to be an endless joy. <br />
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The noose tightens so gradually that you're not aware of it, just as the temperature of the water in the pot is turned up so slowly that before you know your once lively, chirpy frog is cooked.<br />
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A visit to a Jungian psychiatrist for an hour on Monday, 2 March and an hour later my updated meds bought, swallowed, and down my throat.<br />
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That a mere chemical imbalance in my brain can so easily unhinge life.<br />
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Three weeks later and life is dramatically altered. I give thanks.<br />
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(And cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to be homeless with the triple burden of being on the streets, hungry, and disabled by depression and unable to treat it.)<br />
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Looking closely at the photo to the left, taken on the same walk, at Three Anchor Bay - where the suburbs of Sea Point, Green Point and Mouille Point merge - you'll see a homeless man with his trolley burdened by all life's possessions, pushed into the shallow water.<br />
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Doing what I don't know. <br />
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Self-love and a healing process, like me?Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-83137991857290542412020-02-17T16:33:00.000+02:002020-02-17T16:33:19.469+02:00Current<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've many places across the city that I visit, regularly, so as to match a mood I may or may not be experiencing. Normally (whatever that is) it's a place/space wherein I seek privacy and to enjoy the silence of my own company. It's called recharging batteries. My challenge is that as I get older those baterries (of mine) require more charging than, when like a mobile device, I was 'new'.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-79278857918370086542020-02-16T16:40:00.001+02:002020-02-16T16:40:45.355+02:00Tumultuous<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the image that has been persistently <i>presticked</i> to the wall of my mind this last week.<br />
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It's the sight from my writing table at home and across Woodstock of the South-Easter waterfalling metric tons of cloud over Table Mountain to the far right of the pic, and over Devil's Peak larger than life - in the left half.<br />
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It's also symbolic of my emotional state the last one and a half months of 2020; perhaps I should not have been in bed and asleep by 21h45 on New Year's Eve?<br />
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However, another name for the South-Easter is the Cape Doctor; I'm (mostly) the eternal optimist.<br />
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One word? Tumultuous.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0Woodstock, Cape Town, South Africa-33.929413 18.449726199999986-33.955763999999995 18.409385699999987 -33.903062 18.490066699999986tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-12258255334702243542020-02-15T18:58:00.000+02:002020-02-15T18:58:16.802+02:00Timorous or bold?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmtjBvZbSHtLpsjw9mU-2BLfamabbbyX5SCVhWLPcTbjp3Fx2ZyWISs_97vV7WfhnU2CNQcwAQ_W1qSpIVFqp6_Rv9xEctXtxrN7HONt68lTr8vwR7CKIQx6Dzk6bpwfNNtmVYCW-m88/s1600/IMG_20200208_130412_397.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikmtjBvZbSHtLpsjw9mU-2BLfamabbbyX5SCVhWLPcTbjp3Fx2ZyWISs_97vV7WfhnU2CNQcwAQ_W1qSpIVFqp6_Rv9xEctXtxrN7HONt68lTr8vwR7CKIQx6Dzk6bpwfNNtmVYCW-m88/s640/IMG_20200208_130412_397.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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I'm not at all surprised about long ago it is since I've written here, it's more like a gut-wrenching punch to my guts. So much so that I - initially - think a string of posts must have been lost, somehow deleted, I'm deeply consternated. Then I come to my senses.<br />
Has been a bleak time.<br />
Not even a single photo nor mention of Swaziland, Hanover, Berlin nor England. Fuck.<br />
Listening: hey Google, play Annie Lennox on Spotify / thanks Google Nest.<br />
Is this what it's come to, while others are terrified indoors and hiding from the plague while the death count mounts.<br />
I bought a new bed yesterday, a proper adult one, and it arrived this morning. I'm not sure what to do with it. It's been just short of seven years of sleeping on a battered, extremely well-worn kingsize futon on my bedroom floor that ex-friends very kindly gifted me when I arrived in Woodstock mired in debt and on the very bones of my sorry ass.<br />
Reading a Kindle version of Artemis Cooper's Patrick Leigh Fermor biography, 'An Adventure'; I've just completed the last of the paperback trilogy of his travels across Europe when he set out on foot in the 1930s to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. The first one I bought at the Book Lounge in 2017. Then I bought 'Between the Woods and the Water' at the cosy Waterstones in Petersfield in December 2018 before, finally, as a Christmas gift to myself, the third volume - 'The Broken Road' - at the same Waterstones this past December.<br />
One paragraph in his biography struck a chord earlier today: "The pleasures of Paris at night were also becoming dangerously addictive. He had always resented going to bed, and revelled in the smoky world of tarts and nightclubs, all-night cafes, seedy bars and chance encounters." Other than the resenting going to bed part, that sums how I have been for most of my life, up until the last year and a half. I have shut down swathes of my life and crawled back into a shell that was last so prominent when I was growing up, that ended just before my moon began wondrously waxing. It's well past - well in my sex-orientated mind at least (it's a long and complicated story, that has enthralled many a therapist) - full moon and I live in the perpetual zombie/living-dead notion that it's waning big time.<br />
I have to end this self-isolation, but my relationship with God and my return to Catholicism are also intricately would up in my self-imposed status quo. <br />
Then, not much later, today, and totally related, the following also stopped me in my tracks, caused a sharp intake of breath:<br />
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The way we are living,<br />
timorous or bold,<br />
will have been our life.<br />
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- Seamus Heaney (great Irish poet and Nobel laureate!)<br /><br />Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.<br />
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(I need to do travel much more, but right outside of my comfort zone; or as my artist friend Harem strongly recommends: I need to live as if I'm starring in my own movie.)Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-72899728304341016852020-02-15T17:57:00.000+02:002020-02-15T17:57:02.295+02:00Monday, 30 December 2019: Isle of Wight, a draft just re-discovered <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWPFDqctnuOPGvUHhpBI41O3vLOLc0vg3__R7qw5kX1A-1XoNBpePp-F4rJHRWvPOZ7T3W8XWi4pE-j0dMoljZecvDa8qx3_orMBRI3JxIWQ_cbT4EJRETB3pRYqJfG4PNMpGzDZKzYfU/s1600/9C93CECF-ABBF-4E5E-90D4-C78673D0AEBC.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWPFDqctnuOPGvUHhpBI41O3vLOLc0vg3__R7qw5kX1A-1XoNBpePp-F4rJHRWvPOZ7T3W8XWi4pE-j0dMoljZecvDa8qx3_orMBRI3JxIWQ_cbT4EJRETB3pRYqJfG4PNMpGzDZKzYfU/s640/9C93CECF-ABBF-4E5E-90D4-C78673D0AEBC.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
I walked as far as I could along the seafront. Up until the fading light and my exhaustion caused me to turn back.<br />
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Then the long walk back to the ferry terminal where I’d arrived in bright and unusual for this time of the year winter sunshine earlier in the day.<br />
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Both esplanade coffeehouse’s I’d passed on my walk out along the coastline were closed in time with the fading dusk by my return walk and my regret at having walked so far. I also regretted having not stopped on my way out; it was that human thing of wondering what was around the next 'corner' of the coast that drove me forwards. In fact, I more than regret not stopping, I'm angry at myself.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkv3M2X8yt9wapx9853B_6HiLEb9queKIutSdwc2NgnjHgAdouK6Nb9_2izB3JPUuRL9c3XlPejFbmfDGBayB7R6wTuAM5_RyKm2WtLvKzs98zVAkT1iGwD0HmtCuo9YvIVfnyZ7ZuxMs/s1600/41CEA86A-D13A-4B06-83AA-15D595BDC67B.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkv3M2X8yt9wapx9853B_6HiLEb9queKIutSdwc2NgnjHgAdouK6Nb9_2izB3JPUuRL9c3XlPejFbmfDGBayB7R6wTuAM5_RyKm2WtLvKzs98zVAkT1iGwD0HmtCuo9YvIVfnyZ7ZuxMs/s400/41CEA86A-D13A-4B06-83AA-15D595BDC67B.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
Ryde, Isle of Wight. Just off the coast of Southampton and Portsmouth.<br />
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I was last here in 1986, that’s 33 years ago, wtf!<br />
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Was too tired to walk the mile-long historic wooden pier back to the ferry terminal, which is unusual for me... so I forked out the one pound seventy for the short ride.<br />
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What a blast from the past: It must have been a very old former underground tube train that had been put out to pasture here on the isle.<br />
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Only two carriages long. And very low on the tracks. The extremely comfortable seats with their springs sprung, well worn and sat out; the decor, colour scheme and furnishings taking me straight back to the London tube trains I obsessively haunted in 1986 and '87 as I trod the fine and sexual line between boyhood and becoming an adult.<br />
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Within four minutes I was at the terminal and within another four minutes relieved to be sitting on the much more clinical and sterile and (I suppose) practical ferry. Within another 13 minutes, we were disembarking at the Spinnaker near the Gunwharf Quays where everyone has that glint in their eye as they cruise the ‘premium retail space’. Portsmouth.<br />
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Then another train back to Petersfield, Hampshire.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-20927898052063183632019-11-04T10:16:00.000+02:002019-11-04T10:16:03.759+02:00Perspective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf2_hopE5s4NECaAq569s0Bkzc2GMN10HS-d_txtcC3iBc5oUlS0DmXu6L_dEnx_7wVziZrOrvYNyxEscihVIftLmWvMXPzie4-ZmxqFlSmdsjDsC7ZZPIJ1gIr9lj36neRXTeWGMTz98/s1600/IMG_20191104_094636_610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1048" data-original-width="1600" height="418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf2_hopE5s4NECaAq569s0Bkzc2GMN10HS-d_txtcC3iBc5oUlS0DmXu6L_dEnx_7wVziZrOrvYNyxEscihVIftLmWvMXPzie4-ZmxqFlSmdsjDsC7ZZPIJ1gIr9lj36neRXTeWGMTz98/s640/IMG_20191104_094636_610.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Devil's Peak from the Woodstock writing desk of my content: It's the MOST beautiful day in ALL the world; summer gets closer and closer, the days get longer, much longer.<br /><br />Listening to Heinrich Schütz's, Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, SWV 386: In essence, all glory to God. Seems pretty apt as I post this photo.<br />
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On another note, which reminds us that Mordor is never far away, the Chilean Government has just recently announced that they are suspending this year’s UN Climate Talks, They were scheduled to take place in Santiago next month.<br />
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"But instead of derailing it, the protests get at the very heart of what global climate talks should be addressing: the huge and expanding gap between the rich and poor, the fact that so many people are denied their basic rights, and an economy that prioritizes big business and polluters over the needs of everyday people." - www.350.org<br /><br />Inequality fuels the climate crisis, which in turn fuels inequality. This is a vicious cycle that must be broken... but in our lifetimes? It's a struggle to not let oneself be overwhelmed by negativity and cynicism. </div>
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Nevertheless, I continue to <a href="https://act.350.org/sign/peoples-climate-summit/" target="_blank">sign the petitions</a>.</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-27053756755917171152019-11-02T13:03:00.001+02:002019-11-02T13:03:34.727+02:00Black & White and Green & Gold<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The arrival, last Sunday of what has now been a week-long cold front: endless downpours roaring and thrashing their way through Woodstock... even the dumping of snow somewhere in our province. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It was a wonderfully moody coffee-drinking-and-book-reading-filled Sunday afternoon.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Now, as I type these words at exactly 13h00 today, Cape Town erupts in a cacophony of hooters and sirens: South Africa is the 2019 world rugby champions!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">As trite as it may sound, this country needed something, this, some good news for a change; the last decade has seen the barrel scraped of its last dregs. There's almost nothing left.</span></span>Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-10352466611470119932019-11-02T12:37:00.000+02:002019-11-02T12:37:13.127+02:00Between storms <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTd1SyRHwduso8Cg8rUD6M3f_9K-uu7q3C_Dpm8xqn1QKDkOJoPSsxnMLvtludH0IHlLxYH59A7J_uB1MrjKUUOeX0eeugZOjkr0yvm-i3axPXz3CwCYcN0M0gVwLBzOMRuxVcqi10xqA/s1600/IMG_20191026_161540.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1378" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTd1SyRHwduso8Cg8rUD6M3f_9K-uu7q3C_Dpm8xqn1QKDkOJoPSsxnMLvtludH0IHlLxYH59A7J_uB1MrjKUUOeX0eeugZOjkr0yvm-i3axPXz3CwCYcN0M0gVwLBzOMRuxVcqi10xqA/s640/IMG_20191026_161540.jpg" width="550" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Between storms: It was a magnificent day, last Saturday, to enjoy Cape Town after having been away for so long, and to end it with a long anxiety-fee walk through the Company's Garden... </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Wasn't it a Zen master who said that if you sit still for long enough (on a bench in a garden), the world will surely come to you, or, ha-ha, at least past you?</span><br />
<br />Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-74711100362640990542019-11-02T12:22:00.000+02:002019-11-02T12:22:31.335+02:00Into the storm<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5IRH90sPs4inlu0SWQ_69GqZqR14lLpUXECgDQWFSS1tuIR2oi_yXNuSAmvRQM4E5-dMIZCgg8D_Hg9wJetbl_ysxqcWWV8HQ38brGuS0VfymxcO4fAR4NbMEhfofbLZPqKW1O-_pXc/s1600/IMG_20191025_172846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5IRH90sPs4inlu0SWQ_69GqZqR14lLpUXECgDQWFSS1tuIR2oi_yXNuSAmvRQM4E5-dMIZCgg8D_Hg9wJetbl_ysxqcWWV8HQ38brGuS0VfymxcO4fAR4NbMEhfofbLZPqKW1O-_pXc/s640/IMG_20191025_172846.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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"What am I doing here, what is the point of these
smiles and gestures? My home is neither here nor elsewhere. And the world has
become merely unknown landscape where my heart can lean on nothing. Foreign –
who can know what this word means?"<br /></div>
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- Albert Camus, from Notebooks, 1935-1942<o:p></o:p></div>
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Because of the weather, the plane could not land at its first attempt. It took another restless, anxious twenty minutes of circling above the storm and the peninsula before the second, successful attempt. You can run but you can't hide... somewhere along the line, there's a landing. Or an Icarus-like fall from the sky because your fuel is up.</div>
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Into the storm: fat, wind-swept droplets spattering my lenses. On the unprotected walk from the back of the plane and into the safety of the airport. I relished gulping in deeply the fresh, bracing ozone-filled air.</div>
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Home. </div>
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Every single one of my rescue orchids but one had flowered in my absence. A shot of joy to my heart not unlike adrenalin.</div>
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Stale air.</div>
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The winter weather of my content.</div>
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To unpack for a Friday evening alone at home on the couch surrounded by books, a frosted wine glass and, also, roasted & salted plump peanuts and raisins instead of leaving the flat for a restaurant meal, or to refill the kitchen cupboard.</div>
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While the storm raged against the glass like a plague of fat flies trying desperately to get in..</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-78085107943427974052019-11-01T15:14:00.002+02:002019-11-02T12:07:20.708+02:00No-man's land<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHvWEGxTceJG7-IzxeHuru0lWFH0TbzMkdeQHA2ruM8Z4tucBhoF0CpnWG6m49ZMkw4O8jm7YTD8lONjsTiEVebPtRfQLFxWNpibcZgEfYspHnFxaTZfLPzay-y2oLV5nKp48PqXJrUdc/s1600/IMG_20191025_143616.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHvWEGxTceJG7-IzxeHuru0lWFH0TbzMkdeQHA2ruM8Z4tucBhoF0CpnWG6m49ZMkw4O8jm7YTD8lONjsTiEVebPtRfQLFxWNpibcZgEfYspHnFxaTZfLPzay-y2oLV5nKp48PqXJrUdc/s640/IMG_20191025_143616.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
I leave Durban for home on Friday. But only after being warned by weather reports and the pilot of the storm we'll be flying into.<br />
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Entering the plane is for me the welcome entry into the no man's land between worlds... "the area between opposing armies and trench lines".<br />
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Consciously entering the time capsule of the plane, where my body and mind is locked in and buckled up, followed by my instant body-wide relief as the wifi and my ability to make calls is cut, just like that.</div>
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That is the moment when I'm at my most relaxed and deeply immersed in my happy place of mostly solitude and silence.</div>
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Except for the noise in my head.</div>
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It's a time for processing and introspection as I'm left with nothing but my emotions and thoughts and, in turn, my reactions to those.</div>
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I've been away for a month and it's time to join the dots, which some may call staring into the abyss; I no longer fear the abyss and welcome gripping its edge at every opportunity.</div>
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Two worlds, often more.</div>
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Rather the noise in my head, than the world's... at least mine goes silent with time and reflection.</div>
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Heading home and into the perfect storm.</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-16468203620594841002019-11-01T14:48:00.000+02:002019-11-01T14:48:00.698+02:00Blue sky illusions <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDWQVy57-5FervJeU1XdB_u69E74vEci0pU_nIUpXL1nye9C3IMEc0cdnr0NpNKqpHQOJ-OpHz3laweU3zH3eiYhp7tYqI3QRVcS6qC3s47cmhS317_AZoCDLr6MI9V1lepwRwwoaoGDo/s1600/IMG_20191024_121110.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDWQVy57-5FervJeU1XdB_u69E74vEci0pU_nIUpXL1nye9C3IMEc0cdnr0NpNKqpHQOJ-OpHz3laweU3zH3eiYhp7tYqI3QRVcS6qC3s47cmhS317_AZoCDLr6MI9V1lepwRwwoaoGDo/s640/IMG_20191024_121110.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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From Mpumalanga province and it's sweltering bushveld to subtropical but drought-stricken KwaZulu-Natal and Durban.<br />
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Durban. Childhood-friendly and childhood-embracing Durban.<br />
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For a conference on the very edge of the Indian Ocean, and a gobsmacking view from the 11th floor of a hotel that was always on my horizon as a kid, but seemed impossibly accessible.<br />
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Friendly, expansive people. If that's what's called 'provincials', then I'm much happier in the provinces, and with them.<br />
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Finished the 'paper; with an hour and a half to go before presenting it; I'm no longer one for stress, not even when it's self-perpetuated. I'm not that gung-ho student working through the night on caffeine or booze anymore, thankfully.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJEZR-i9xdqE4C84dKAvswO0_KXH29kJ99rrX4TBwGveD7uuCSd3Nf9y32v5Wi5-thOoXHGJ01TES7Cr7mNg-BgWtSqT1et1Eu5BSXa4djCsvY1opdeDoNhMHt3zpDoWV5fMyZWJ45bX0/s1600/IMG_20191024_120737-EFFECTS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJEZR-i9xdqE4C84dKAvswO0_KXH29kJ99rrX4TBwGveD7uuCSd3Nf9y32v5Wi5-thOoXHGJ01TES7Cr7mNg-BgWtSqT1et1Eu5BSXa4djCsvY1opdeDoNhMHt3zpDoWV5fMyZWJ45bX0/s400/IMG_20191024_120737-EFFECTS.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
Then, but only then, could I relax, walking kilometres along the beachfront, on golden sea sand and in the pleasant water of this ocean, which is so different to the ocean I tentatively experience at home: icy, frigid and reeking of plankton and seaweed.<br />
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Here not only is the air different and laden with subtropical exotics but is reminiscent of growing up barefoot, with bubblegum and ice cream splattered on the scorching tarmac, seagull shit too, in what was a (seemingly) safe and secure world. For sum. Most definitely not for all.<br />
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Sunshine. Seagulls. Summer. Sea and sand.<br />
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Long walks down going nowhere piers and (seemingly) endless horizons.<br />
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Colour blue.<br />
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No thoughts of the climate crisis, sharks, SPF50, Isis or Trump.<br />
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Just like when we were kids.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-42699831759889634242019-10-04T20:12:00.000+02:002019-10-04T20:12:27.941+02:00Evaporated place and/or Genius loci<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm5hEguiNZ6dBy-MX15XRzMZUHx4JDSuK2czyZ7cNxarg1TGvpDXyFqp9bscjYtpblFlzAiPGMJ519ykulDh4Kvd58p1jID3EljZr6K_SsTr64nSLtiwV7Fxf5VFMV-ddoxW0McyupAh0/s1600/IMG_20191001_195945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm5hEguiNZ6dBy-MX15XRzMZUHx4JDSuK2czyZ7cNxarg1TGvpDXyFqp9bscjYtpblFlzAiPGMJ519ykulDh4Kvd58p1jID3EljZr6K_SsTr64nSLtiwV7Fxf5VFMV-ddoxW0McyupAh0/s640/IMG_20191001_195945.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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I arrived here late on Tuesday afternoon, 1 October. The start of 'the residency'.<br />
I'm a 1,800 km from 'home' and where I work.<br />
Yet, I'm only now <i>really</i> at home. That is <i>home</i> without inverted commas.<br />
Also, I note, my last post on here was just over two months ago. Which was, also, about <i>here</i>. Also, between when I was <i>here</i> and now <i>here</i> again, I was <i>here</i>, too, a month ago. That's four times I've been home (i.e. <i>here</i>) thus far this year.<br />
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Here/home is both a geographical and physical space as well as an emotional and intellectual space. That's an awful lot of weight given to <i>place</i>.<br />
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Yes, <i>place</i>.<br />
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Andreas Vogler <a href="http://www.architectureandvision.com/av/download/vision/061123_PP_GeniusLociintheSpace-Age.pdf" target="_blank">writes</a> that "[i]n Roman mythology a Genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, "genius loci" usually refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or a "spirit of place".<br /><br />Václav Cílek makes a similiar point in his blog post of six years ago, and by the same title, <a href="https://cinestheticfeasts.com/2013/07/05/genius-loci-cilek-p-2/amp/" target="_blank">Genius loci</a>: that "[a] smaller place with which we resonate is more important then a great place of pilgrimage, where one is only a visitor." He calls this "a rule of resonance". I totally get him. I come home to my place of resonance for these among other reasons (more about this in posts still to come).<br /><div>
<br />My <i>place</i>. In the humblest and ego-stripped sense.</div>
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*<br /><br />
Other than a burglar alarm sounding outside, closeby and right now, and as unusual as this may be for here, it's perfectly peaceful.<br />
I'm writing this outside.<br />
Got here at about 16h00.<br />
The weeks and days between me leaving here a month ago and returning have evaporated like dew after the dawn.<br />
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I stopped at the Middelburg Shell Ultra City on the N4 Toll Route for a quick bite and a pee, also to celebrate that I'm over the halfway mark of the sometimes monotonous drive - even though it's only three hours from Joburg.<br />
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Then, another stop, this time at Milly's just before Machadodorp, for a ritual Seattle cafe mocha at a table I sat at for many years when I lived out here fulltime. And wrote fulltime for a living.<br />
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The further eastwards I drove from Johannesburg the icier and moodier the weather became, not that I was complaining. I had to put on more clothes.<br />
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Now, it's dark. And very moody.<br />
And cold, very cold, indeed icy like in the middle of winter.<br />
I predict rain, I pray for rain. The terrain here is still lion khaki and winter brittle, like a tinderbox.<br />
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The alarm has stopped.<br />
A dog barks every now and then, but languidly and in the far distance.<br />
A car or a truck, I think, somewhere in the distance too.<br />
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Birdsong. Peace. Quiet. Calm. As the evening draws in beneath a low-hanging elephant-grey sky.<br />
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A train's hooter - sharp, shrill, unexpected - in the shunting yards below the town. For me it's an always-welcome sound and a reminder of this town's fascinating railway history.<br />
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Today, 1 October, I've begun a writer's residency, in my mind and life at least. It's complicated.<br />
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I long for my bed. It will be my first night of full, deep sleep in a while. Thankfully I'd not packed away the electric blankets like I'd originally planned to when I left here a month ago.<br />
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Now to pack out some wood in my unique formula, with some charcoal, then to set the fire alight, to pour a glass of wine and to pull the throw tight around me.<br />
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It's good to be alone. With my thoughts. And with my God.<br />
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This is unexpected weather at this time of year: I'm wearing a tatty vest, two t-shirts over each other, a chunky pullover, my winter pyjama pants, socks, sandals. And the throw.<br />
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I'm extraordinarily happy despite my tiredness.<br />
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When I'd arrived I had locked myself indoors and in silence. So as to settle in and to decompress me. Thus to begin the process of meeting me, so as to be at peace with myself, and with this beautiful home, this <i>place</i>, which I so adore, in which I'm so at peace.<br />
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I'm stoked to be here.<br />
Alone.<br />
And beneath the radar.</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-53801197574532165502019-07-26T14:47:00.000+02:002019-07-26T14:47:36.637+02:00Brutal, honest and blunt: Charles (bloody) Bukowski<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitASLqdCim6vltNUUvMf_D06vkNe07wJmGCn2bZzRnjuBiM2HW_CnZnwgy_pKl3vCgqxRCb7lGS9XAFOVQAsnDR3oHES7CecqqXLNOkXExGjTrW5qOfD-petGlNk33yZ7YrgR4bQKZgY4/s1600/IMG_20190708_170047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitASLqdCim6vltNUUvMf_D06vkNe07wJmGCn2bZzRnjuBiM2HW_CnZnwgy_pKl3vCgqxRCb7lGS9XAFOVQAsnDR3oHES7CecqqXLNOkXExGjTrW5qOfD-petGlNk33yZ7YrgR4bQKZgY4/s640/IMG_20190708_170047.jpg" width="640" /></a>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.<br />
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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 <i>high;</i> maybe, rather use the word <i>lofty, </i>Charles? Spotify; I'm on a three-month free trial; so far so good.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <i>must</i> overcome the initial resistance to leaving these overflowing, intensely distracting and luring fleshpots of Cape Town.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Just before heading 'home' late in June I'd serendipitously picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski's novel <i>Women </i>lying, literally, across my path. He's another favourite writer of mine.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
Bukowski is revoltingly larger than life character, which is why he constantly <i>has</i> <i>to</i> appear in his own writing (there's nowhere else to put him); though he makes no effort at all to pull punches about himself.<br />
<br />
Breathtakingly brutal. Repugnantly honest.<br />
<br />
(The days are lengthening.)Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-42688198872132237682019-07-20T15:46:00.000+02:002019-07-20T15:46:31.068+02:00Long & winding road<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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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.<br />
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It was not to be. I was busier than ever, just with different things to do in a starkly different place.<br />
<br />
I was there, mostly alone, for two weeks.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Tingling with life, I relished lying there in the winter sun and walking barefoot around the garden and in the house.<br />
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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 <i>The Artists Way</i>.<br />
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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.<br />
<br />
The veld was lion coloured and in many places had been scorched black, as is natural at this time of the year.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
I've just poured myself a glass of red wine.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
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.<br />
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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, <i>The Seven Storey Mountain</i> 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.<br />
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Merton has inspired me both as a writer and a writing contemplative.<br />
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"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.<br />
When we got out at Olean, we breathed its health and listened to its silence (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998: 219)."<br />
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More about Merton later.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-42635592916836970832019-06-25T16:06:00.000+02:002019-06-25T16:07:52.602+02:00Women; and Charles B the poet of Los Angeles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Just walked past a battered copy, not unlike his face, of Charles Bukowski's novel 'Women', left behind by some or other lazy student on a shelf at the uni library.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_MailOriginal"><br /></a>
I grasped it, opened it to the introduction by Barry Miles, read two lines, then - promptly and gleefully -borrowed it.<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_MailOriginal"><br /></a>
I was introduced, quite randomly, to Bukowski in Prague in the dark, moody but Christmasy November of 2014.<br />
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Somewhere along the line, during the many hours I'd spent holed up in the city's (awesome) <a href="https://globebookstore.cz/" target="_blank">Globe English bookstore & cafe</a>, I'd come across and then left with Barry Miles' 2009 biography of Bukowski.<br />
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This volume I'd just as promptly devoured, hanging onto Miles' every word, even before my return flight to Cape Town had landed a day or two later.<br />
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I've been a fan ever since, especially savouring his short stories but still to acquaint myself with his poetry.<br />
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He's hardcore!<br />
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What follows is the first paragraph of Miles' introduction in the novel (Virgin Books: 2009) I've just borrowed, and again, I love every word, which both titillates and inspires me:<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"Charles Bukowski was the poet of Los
Angeles. Not the LA of ranch homes in the Hollywood Hills with the breathtaking
views of the glittering chequerboard of lights, the swimming pools, palm trees
and sports cars lined up in the drive, but the LA of tarnished dreams, of
dead-end jobs, of hookers and workers in the sex industry, of beaten down,
damaged, dysfunctional people. His people. He loved old Hollywood: the cheaply
built bungalows shaken by the freeways, dead palm trees and cracked sidewalks,
overflowing garbage cans, cars up on blocks, the neighbours' TVs blaring
through open windows, screams in the night and police helicopters circling
overhead. He loved the corner bars, the tawdry fast-food outlets, the sex shops
and brothels, the graffiti on walls and thick steel security bars on the shop
fronts and liquor stores. It was his city." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, it was his people and his city.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Both of these men, Bukowski and Miles, know how to write.</span>Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-45715665197153292092019-06-21T09:51:00.001+02:002019-06-21T09:51:19.854+02:00Brisk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Walked across the city after a
day cooped in a convention centre.<br />
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Streets, of winter, relatively quiet. <br />
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I then walked up the pedestrian avenue, a broad knife's edge between the back of
Parliament and the <a href="https://www.capetown.travel/six-reasons-to-visit-the-companys-garden/" target="_blank">Company's Gardens</a>; it felt bleak, ugly, unusually so. <br />
<br />There are always many homeless folks around because it's a free space, and
understandably a space within which to find respite from a harsh city. <br />
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This late afternoon they were especially conspicuous to me because many
were already covered like mummies with their blankets against the cold and
night. <br />
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The nights must seem endless to them. <br />
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Was almost sorry I walked that way.<br />
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Then, I looked up and saw the <a href="http://capetownhistory.com/?page_id=422" target="_blank">Centre for the Book</a> in the descending gloom. And
took a photo.<br />
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Before walking on to the Kimberley Hotel bar for a glass of wine that became
two.<br />
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Even as soon as I took the first sip I was sorry that I'd dropped in there, that I'd
not gone on home. I suppose, though, that I just did not fancy being more alone than I already was.<br />
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Not that I sought company.</div>
Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-5270816012172512442019-05-03T15:25:00.001+02:002019-05-03T15:28:26.137+02:00Lower Main Road, Woodstock<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Winter nudges closer. With it, the welcome change for me in the less harsh light. Also, are interesting and unusual cloud formations. This is as increasingly hostile cold fronts push up from Antarctica and ravage the Peninsula, before sweeping northwards and eastwards over the country, quite often bearing snow.<br />
<br />
Even closer to home, it's also that time of the year when the odd, slender and sleekly-black millipedes escape my pot plants and haphazardly crisscross my floor going God alone knows where. At first, I put them back where I thought they belong. Then I realised that I know nothing about the behind-the-scenes machinations inspiring their actions and that, rather, I should stop meddling. Because I'm quite helpless, but nevertheless in awe, before the 'algorithms', formulas and miracles that wire our magnificent world.<br />
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It's not unlike how I've, also, let go of my fear and dread around the climate change spectre; it's really too late, I believe, to effect change, although I'll do my best, and trust somehow I do, that everything is exactly as it's meant to be. And I don't mean that fatalistically, but rather faithfully. (I strive with all of my might to not let my heart be troubled, worrying has never got me anywhere.)<br />
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From my writing table, as always, the handsome charcoal and white Edwardian facade above the District Six Meat Market on the corner of Lower Main road and Devon street draws my eye. As is often the case, on the electricity wires rigged between the old silver-painted street poles, a haphazard flock of dark-jacketed pigeons perch as if at a convention for serious-minded undertakers.<br />
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A seagull brilliant white, in contrast, with wings widespread soars in sheer gracefulness across my window view, quickly followed by another one, its partner?<br />
<br />
Then an unexpected gap in the hum of the traffic, which is just as suddenly filled with a seagull shriek. Followed by the deep attention-grabbing clarion call of a minibus taxi as it scavenges the streets for passengers; these are the most informal bottom feeders of the city's transport system, often dangerous, always effectively uber regular.<br />
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I reign my gaze back inwards:<br />
<br />
This is my sixth year in Woodstock. I'm happy here, much more so than I believe I would be elsewhere in much of Cape Town. Woodstock - harsh and rough, but real - is certainly not the bourgeois suburbia of the Southern Suburbs, nor of the Atlantic Seaboard. Well not yet at least... but make no mistake, they're working (hard) on it.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-64849458939293538322019-05-01T19:41:00.000+02:002019-05-03T11:11:14.324+02:00I'm still alive<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sitting in a small pool of warm light on my mattress on the floor.<br />
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Surrounded by quiet and by books, my May Day reading, and a bottle of cheap red wine and a tumbler.<br />
<br />
I bought the plonk last night at a garish yellow on the street bottle store in Rondebosch; a friend coerced me into going with her in the rain to her favourite and extremely cheap Italian restaurant<br />
<br />
Because they don't have a licence you're encouraged to buy whatever booze you want with your meal at the dodgy store next door. Which we did. She was so proud, like a child, of how cheap the wine was, R39 for this bottle, which she strongly recommended, that I felt compelled to buy it.<br />
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And then to drink it, over a flickering candle, just her and I alone in the restaurant, as the rain came down on a busy, even turbulent Main Road: minibus taxis honking and plying their trade in the dark, last minute pre-public holiday shopping at Pick 'n Pay and the fast food joints, people scurrying frantically between shops and across the busy road as if it was Friday night, students darting mostly alone into the liquor store to get their cheap booze for wherever they were heading, or for whoever they would soon be romancing.<br />
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That was last night.<br />
<br />
Now, from all of the seven or so kilometres away from the Mouille Point lighthouse I know myself to be, I hear it's mournful foghorn sounding right across the city bowl; Moaning Minnie she's known as; I'm strangely comforted and snuggle deeper into both myself and the futon.<br />
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Then suddenly - it's the grinding of steel-upon-steel that makes strangers to my home lookup wide-eyed ("what's that?") - another train screeches-and-grinds to a long-lasting halt on the iron tracks in front of my building. It's the dangerous no man's land that separates Woodstock from, firstly, the highway into town, and then the harbour. The train is either going to the city's main station, not far away, or 180 degrees in the opposite direction to Simonstown.<br />
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Curious about the fog I pad across the flat to my front window. It's silently, and wonderfully, not slowly, seeping across the city and into the suburb.<br />
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Down below, Argyle Street, directly in front of me, remains a brightly lit artery on the x-ray sheet before me. Brightly lit for now, and very pretty.<br />
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I wince from the pain in my back and chest; my ribs were cracked when I was mugged at Easter.Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2907858171675929959.post-83528852057435666812019-02-21T11:14:00.000+02:002019-02-21T11:14:29.186+02:00Panoptican<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Had dinner with a friend on the weekend. Caught myself staring into the fire a few times, and supper was a subdued affair, compared to our normal.<br />
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His father died unexpectedly last year. One of his coping mechanisms has been to throw all caution to the wind and to travel at short notice and with his now depleted savings.<br />
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After some wine, he told me that his hair was falling out and that he was extremely anxious about it. He had been looking particularly dishevelled of late, I hadn't realised exactly why. Stress?<br />
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After supper, he played at his piano and sang. That's when he came alive again as I know him.<br />
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My mug of tea is cooling, I'm not sure why I made it. It's a distraction. To fill the long spaces between me doing, accomplishing anything. Just as logging into the app every time, in case some stranger has messaged me. It's a distraction, from what I should be doing.<br />
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Not so much at the back of my mind, I dread that call that will alert me to my mother's or father's death. Of course, I may die before them but I don't wish that on them either. Statistically speaking, they will die before I do.<br />
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We are, all, essentially, alone. No matter what we try to fill our lives with, or choose as our distraction/s.<br />
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The south-easter is pummeling the city and thrusting a thick tablecloth of cloud over Table Mountain. With it, suddenly, is a smell of fire. It's tinderbox season now that it's late in the summer. The dryness combined with the ferocious wind fire on the mountain slopes is a real threat.<br />
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In the space that I find myself here at my desk at home, I also mourn the connection between me and once dear friends that have been unexplainably severed. As strong as the wind is, those memories and thoughts, their ghosts, are impervious to it and glue to me and my clammy skin on this insipid day.<br />
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What does, however, give me joy is the countless rusted, colourful tin roofs of Woodstock down below. It has become my hood, blissfully unpretentious. For now.<br />
<br />Beautiful Mindhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11880129448685851902noreply@blogger.com0