Beautiful Mind

Dirty hands

2012-01-24T18:18:00.001+02:00

Today was hard. It was also bleak and ugly. I've struggled to keep my chin up, and to continue believing that, behind it all, the sky is still blue.
Insipid and rancid, are the other adjectives that fritter away at the raw edge of my mind.
Alex and Colette have just left. They came to pick hard-green-velvet figs from the overladen tree at the back fence, there by the veld.
My hands are now horribly tacky with the hideous fig milk; we filled a green Woolworths packet with the milky-sticky fruit.
I fetched a ladder from the storeroom. Alex climbed up and into the heart of the tree. She's one determined French woman.
We walked around the garden, and past many of Steffen's touches. He's very much here today. But not.
Another storm threatens on the immediate horizon, the umpteenth today. I long for it to break loose.
I'm sitting by my window on the garden. Time to make coffee and read. I was given an unexpected respite today, I'm probably squandering it with procrastination. But, I suddenly remember while typing these words, I am human. Very much so.
I press a spade deep into the hard earth packed around the kilometer-long tap root of my procrastination; I shovel out more questions than answers.
Alex left me a bottle of green fig preserve on the kitchen table. The green baby globes in the murky bottle are from my tree.
It's very hard work making green fig preserve. Alex does stuff; she gets her hands dirty.
Maybe it's time I threw myself into the fray...and got my hands dirty?
The storm-chilled breeze cools my arms, and ironically the first hard drops fall as the thunder becomes more muffled.

Hardus

2012-01-23T15:42:00.001+02:00

Inside me the pressure of all that I need to do thrusts my insides hard against my outside; I don't know how I'm going get everything done. It's an awful feeling. Yet, like a living-dead circus animal, I plod methodically on, ticking one item at a time off my enormous to-do list.
It's a sticky, clammy, hideously humid day that makes my outside want to go inside; pressure all round, everywhere.
A storm hovers on the periphery of the afternoon, also on the edge of life, but - very worst of all - there's an unexpected week-old cyclone breaking at my heart's epicenter; most painfully of all is that the storm's deadly silence is deafening.
I rip off my limbs and self-cauterize the endless, sliced and jagged nerve ends as fast as I sever them.
I WILL get back to me.

[The photo is Steffen's, and the vegetables are the garden's.]

Heart's in Hartwater

2012-01-21T22:12:00.001+02:00

Why's my heart in Hartswater? Because life is stranger than fiction; and when you open yourself up to it, adventures will grab you by the throat and drag you off kicking and gleefully screaming.
I live out of the box.
Minutes before getting into bed I'm perfectly at peace on an idyllic Saturday summer's night. Crickets in un-rhythm.
Frogs.
The trickle of the fountain at the back of the house.
Cat paws rapidly on a wooden floor.
Wind in the branches, billowing the curtains and snuffing out the tsk tsk tsk of stars calling to foolish man on broken-perfect earth.
My heart's content. And happy. Even excited.
I see a face in my mind's eye.
A week it's been.
Most unlikely of places.
22.

Character and superior quality

2012-01-21T14:36:00.000+02:00

That last day of last year I walked from Delphino's, beneath the imposing St Blaize lighthouse, and along an almost main street of Mossel Bay. I was a road below the one I should have been in. (But I always maintain that the only way to find yourself is to get lost.)
The sun was blazing. My legs and arms were summer holiday bare, baking. The sky was cobalt. The ocean a deep blue, and extremely inviting. I remember, sharply and clearly, like it was this morning. And I was happy, with a spring in my blue and white slip slops.
Dirk picked me up in that 'wrong' road.
We had only met four years ago on the 'Net, swooping words, songs and poetry, never physically. By sheer coincidence we happened to both be in the town at the same time.
We had a marvelously long and lingering lunch, with cocktails and champagne, at the Cuban Havana's. We caught up, the connection was as if forever. Kindred souls.
At lunch he decided to begin a blog dedicated to good food and poetry, intermingled with exceptional photographs, which was born days later: 'Pomegranates & Poems' (www.pommegranatespoems.blogspot.com).
At lunch he shared some song words of Lize Beekman and promised me her cd, 'Ek het jou lief'. It arrived here before I did.
Sitting outside now, about to taste my first plunger of Sabie Valley Pure Farm Coffee, the words from Lize's 'ek was al daar' wafts outside from the darker, cooler indoors and caresses me just as the breeze caresses the fine blonde and brown hairs on my arms. Arms still brown from the holidays.
I'm reminded that life is about incredible connections with other human beings. Dirk is one of those incredible human beings, a man who has only love and goodness to offer our world; my life's enriched because of him. I'm looking forward....

Life is also enriched by the finest arabica coffee, I maintain. I grab the foiled coffee bag from inside and read the packaging:
"Along the Hazeyview Sabie road, nestled among the beautiful indigenous forests of the Lowveld, lies Rivrbend Farm, the home of Sabie Valley Coffee.
"This 100% pure arabica coffee is grown on the misty mountain slopes of the majestic Sabie Valley. After it is hand picked and sundried, it is roasted and packed by Tim and Kim Buckland who pride themselves on its freshness, character and superior quality."

Only and hour and a half's drive away at most, I know where my next exploration and road trip is going to be to. But for now it's to my desk and to wrap up the thesis for my masters: Damocles' sword.

Snapshots from The Artist's Way: Simply throbbing

2012-01-21T13:57:00.000+02:00

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

- Henry Miller

I took these photos in Cape Town on 3 January.
First Derick and I visited Knead in Muizenburg for breakfast, the newspapers, and the morning pages. I loved the art deco coffee shop-bakery-surf shop-in-one experience.
Then we drove to Kalk Bay and easily, despite it being the height of season, found parking directly across from Kalk Bay Books.
There I bought a copy of Peter Godwin's 'Mukiwa'.
Looking at Derick in the photo, I believe we were both immersed in the beautiful day, in being alive, in books, and a rich world "simply throbbing with rich treasures and beautiful souls".
Now, 1700 or so km away, I open 'Mukiwa' and see the inscription, reminding me of the beautiful souls surrounding me, that I inked in there: "Thinking of Zim Alex, with Pretoria Derick, and anticipating Dutch Jesse - at Kalk Bay Books on a perfect day! Tuesday, 3 January 2012"

However, on the other side of my coin, I remember my 'manicness' those few weeks at the end of, and at the beginning of the year.
In retrospect I was completely spent, the mere carcass of an ashen firecracker fallen back down to earth, but desperately seeking meaning.
Alone at home, here beneath the billiard-table verdant mountain (Imemeza in Siswati, for 'place of shouting') and at the very edge of Waterval Boven, I am back at me, and with Him. I live here for a reason. I live here because I have chosen life

Snapshots from The Artist's Way: Height of stupidity

2012-01-21T13:30:00.000+02:00

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information with.
With our own eyes we see, and with our skin we feel.
With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand.
But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.

- Sophy Burnham

(Photo by Torquepics; Ronelle took this outside Mossel Bay while I was there at the very end of last year. Thistle; I love thistle.)

Snapshots from The Artist's Way: Paying attention

2012-01-21T10:57:00.000+02:00

My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
In a year when a long and rewarding love affair was lurching gracelessly away from the centre of her life, the writer May Sarton kept 'A Journal of Solitude'. In it she records coming home from a particularly painful weekend with her lover.
Entering her empty house, "I was stopped by the threshold of my study by a ray on a Korean chrysanthemum, lighting it up like a spotlight, deep red petals and Chinese yellow centre.... Seeing it was like getting a transfusion of autumn light."
It's no accident that May Anton uses the word 'transfusion'. The loss of her lover was a wound, and in her response to that chrysanthemum, in the act of paying attention, Sarton's healing began.

- Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way (and photo by Steffen Fischer, recently taken in his Dalecross garden)

Window on the world

2012-01-19T08:22:00.000+02:00

When I was younger, and a lot dumber, I thought I had to search for the world. I have since learnt, from reading Buddha and the Desert Fathers, that in fact the world will come to you. If you wait, if you're still, if you sit in silence. It's a lot easier, and a lot less energy consuming.
Every morning I sit at my window with hazel eyes large and kid-like with expectation: so what is going to happen today?
I make few plans, definitely not a single-year, nor a five-year one, and I'm not even sure what's coming next month.
But I have never been let down, the world comes to me. Always. Without fail. I expect the best, and that's what my plate receives.
In my light blue, fine striped pj bottoms I sit here with two cats in my lap, my coffee on the sill, and watch the dairy truck pass, the birds in song, the garden tap trip, the red-chested cape robin and sharp yellow weaver stick-leggedly play in my paradise.
And the world comes to me, and I am in the world.
And I am filled with the fruits of the Spirit: Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.
I am blessed.
I give thanks for the gift of this day, and for being alive [no full stop, ever]

Warrior of light

2012-01-19T08:06:00.000+02:00

The rain has stopped and a bright orb is visible in the thick bank of silver-gray cloud that's enveloped my part of this wonderful world since Monday.
It's rained non-stop and the evacuation of the tourists in the nearby Lowveld began yesterday as rivers broke their banks.
For me this was a glorious time celebrating my favorite weather, but especially a time of focus and dedication - from dawn until dark - of breaking the back of my work for the current edition of the newspaper, also my eliminating my list of admin-related tasks long neglected, and my dedication to becoming more streamlined, to simplifying my life, and eradicating debt from my life forever.
[That felt like the longest sentence I'd ever written, hopefully it's readable?]
I have to thank my father for his love and for his help, and that he has turned his expert focus on to me; I have the best brains in the business on my side. And, of course going without saying, divine assistance.
I am living this year differently, I can feel it. And more aware than ever I am of my failings and weaknesses - thank you to everyone whom has the balls to hold up the mirror to me, so that I can see my true reflection, as ugly at times as it may be. Thank you for your guts to be honest (I'm not scared); the truth inherently sets everyone free.
I need to thank Steffen for the more than two incredible, fantastic years he has shared with me; he has emerged from his cocoon an upright, steadfast, God-man who is changing his world, and the world at large, into a better place with each step forward he takes. Fly you, FLY, on eagle's wings...!
Steffen, I am honoured to have had my path cross and then intertwine with yours; I believe that despite our small-world self-centered needs, you are learning that you serve a much greater purpose on this planet: it's a story of love, and dedication, to the greater good.
Steffen, you are indeed a warrior of light. Thank you.
I am blessed [no full stop intended]

Blue sky memories

2012-01-17T12:43:00.000+02:00

It's approaching 39 degrees centigrade in the Cape today. The heat wave is moving northwards across the African sub continent.
It was in Cape Town at the beginning of the year that I tanned dark brown without evening trying to, beneath the clear cobalt sky.
Unlike where I live, Cape Town's climate is a mediterranean one. It's a winter rainfall region that I often visit to soak up the moisture so lacking here in the winter, when we are parched and tinderbox dry, when the vegetation changes from the luminous green of central summer, to lion tan and khaki of winter.
My thoughts have, unhappily for now, been on the winter. But that's still far away, relatively speaking of course.
But today I've woken late. I forgot, unusually, to set my alarm. I also got back home to Waterval Boven last night, and didn't get do and see that which I wanted to do and to see.
Wind is buffeting the eaves, whistling through and into the open bits; fine but hard rain is slanting against the home, and water again chortles in the tin gutters.
The summer garden is lush and verdant green.
Mika is curled up tight against my right leg as I sit in my favourite chair by the window in my studio. It's cool enough for me to be wearing my finely striped baby blue pyjama pants and a zipped up to my throat jumper.
The wind whistles like it would in a novel.
The lush pomegranates hang the branches low, the one looks ready to break. The tree will get hard hit again by frost in the winter. Valiant has pruned the wild olive round, I'm not sure that it pleases my eye, nor my sensibility. Manicured and suppressed, I was once that, while being readied by a bad state for the army... and to die for my country.
But it's a beautiful day in my eyes and my destiny is, more than ever, in my hands.
My thoughts are intertwined with the memories of the blue skies and bare legs of just-born January; and of Derick and Jesse, of Martin and Joe, of Ruan and Chad, of Alex and Alex, of Vi and Vince, and Ulrich and Kyle, and then Hardus. People who touched my life and soul.
In safe and good hands are they, I pray, as I fall into the vortex?

I bow down before You

2012-01-11T11:15:00.001+02:00

Memories of mauve flowers and sunburnt legs, and my overflowing notebook, remind of my road trip and the crazy times in Cape Town, especially the walk along Sea Point's promenade; it's there I received my wings.
The view in front of me is my peaceful, happy and contented present. I have consciously chosen it.
The uplifted arms and open, receptive palms, taken on the promenade, represent freedom and new beginnings, also flight. And a combined stance of forgiveness, release, humility, thankfulness and worship.
I bow down before You [no full stop, ever

Storm

2012-01-10T08:03:00.001+02:00

It's a morning storm, most welcome, and in from the west. The electricity has tripped and I've unplugged the ADSL. Marvelously terrifying thunder and lightning, just to put everything, and me, into perspective.
Water chortling trough the tin gutters; I could wake to, or sleep with this sound anytime.
I, on the other hand, have felt so barren and dry these last few days.
Just a week and a bit ago I was traveling through my soul's rest, the Karoo, on my way to Mossel Bay, then Cape Town.
It was between Graaf Reinet and Aberdeen that I stopped to breathe in the dry, hot air and imbibe silence. Also to take these photos.
Now to make some good coffee, to switch off my phone, and to meet my maker in morning pages.

Morning pages

2012-01-06T08:23:00.001+02:00

Three thousand, seven hundred physical kilometers and this circle within The Circle is closed.
Then, later today, I return to my home.
A journey begun, and ended.
A year begun, and ended.
A new year begun, and in retrospect of my road trip, I know a vastly different life chapter begins too.
New relationships with souls too; wonderful, loving, creative and healing souls.
Support-and-love-structures have been put in place, not by me: I'm dazzled by the texture, color and intensity of the high definition vista before me; there's an immensely deep, calm pool of water at its epicenter.

I'm back in Joburg.
Lying on the couch I enter the pages (morning has broken, blackbird has spoken).
I return to my secret garden.
All across my country the national roads are filled with sun-kissed and lithe holiday bodies.
The holidays are over, thank God I'm almost sad to say.
Thank God.
(We journey so that we can look into the mirror, while holding up the mirror for those with balls enough to look into their own abysses.)
How on earth can I walk on water if I don't get out of the boat?
I choose to live my life getting out the boat every single day, every day.
While the risks are immense, I'd rather drown than be the living dead.

Sea. Point.

2012-01-03T05:23:00.002+02:00

5am. Seapoint, Cape Town.
I wake with a jolt, on my back, and know that I must have been snoring. Self conscious; I'm a guest in a double volume, open plan loft apartment: feeling exposed.
I lie, frozen, for at least 20 hour-long minutes; the rat of my mind fritters, rips, tears away at all my larger-than-life worries.
Anxiously I eventually pluck up the courage to go to bathroom where, in the dark I knock over an electric toothbrush.
In the moment that I move from the toilet to the north-facing window, it, is, the, dawn.
I stand at the moment, at the window, breathing in sea air and moonlight, listening to my happiest sound of them all, especially here: shrieking seagulls.
Three small/bars/through/the/blind/slats /of/moonlight on my bare upper arm.
In that moment, the realization, of my exhaustion of the world, that I need to go home. It's the only place I rest, from the world.

Cape Route 62

2012-01-01T12:25:00.002+02:00

Lunch first. Then the road.
Mossel Bay. Then Cape Town, the fairest Cape.
I hesitate, looking for an excuse not to leave, not to begin.
Then Ronelle, standing in her kitchen making a salad, spurs me on by giving me perspective:
"The stable tires the horse more than the road," she says, with her beautiful blue eyes boring into my soul.
The house is 83 years old. What age will I be when I die?

Harbour of my content

2012-01-01T12:11:00.002+02:00

Ships are not made to remain in harbour.

After this welcome rest, at the end of my tether / last year, I know that it's back into the turbulent ocean, and the storms, I must return; that's where growth and soul stuff happens; scared I am not, although weary (and wary) I might be. Although I have found the eye of the storm, my challenge is to remain therein; I am my worst enemy.

This afternoon I leave the Mossel Bay (harbour) and drive the 4 hours left to Cape Town. I'm taking Cape Route 62, with anticipation.

The photo was taken by my darling friend, Torquepics, who has again made space in her 'summer home' available to me to lay down my head and to unburden my heart.
Coffee. The finest Cape champagne. Pizza. St Blaize lighthouse. Endless stream-of-conscious conversation (from the minute I arrive to the second I leave) about all that is The Source; which is where our separate journeys join, and blur, and love, and tears, and bleed.

For Him I lay down my broken life. To Him I return the words, the photos, and dedicate my heart. In the humblest, most simplest sense I am 'proudly' nothing.'

Tea. View. Soul. First day

2012-01-01T11:51:00.001+02:00

Sitting at a blonde wood table drinking green tea, and procrastinating amongst my unwritten words and taken photos.
To put finger to screen is a difficult concept that I pussy foot around.
I stagger under the weight of my thoughts, my unwritten words, my taken and untaken photographs, and the desire to express myself...to me.
I stagger under the enormous burden of my un-lived life; it's the one I'm taking a lifetime to morph into.
Before me is the Indian Ocean.
Behind me is the continent, Africa.
Above me is the cobalt sky.
Below me is dry sea sand earth, also blonde; this is a winter rainfall region, and although the earth here is parched, I am not in a / my drought.
This is only the beginning (no full stop)

Penultimate. And man-on-a-rock

2011-12-31T07:43:00.001+02:00

Mossel Bay, Western Cape: At the dusk of the penultimate day of the year, beneath the historical St Blaize lighthouse, I slated my thirst with a pint of draught.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Looking, again, for meaning in the ocean, I wondered about the Portuguese galleons that rounded this African coast over 500 years ago, searching here for fresh water, and planting their stone crosses on the coastline as they explored trade routes and underwrote paler sections of my nation's turbulent, angry, racial history. This mostly on the soft sand betwixt the crashing Indian Ocean waves and the hard, harsh and beautiful edge of the continent.
All this while a parallel, darker history was underwritten and bled into the land, but above the ocean, and thousands of kilometers inland.
I've just woken, before these words frothed and foamed through my brain, and down my neck, and along my arm, down through my thin fingers, and on to the screen.
Now that they free, and gone from me, I'm going back to sleep. If the truth be told, I'm burnt out and exhausted after a crazy, very hard-long-year.

Hole in the beach

2011-12-31T07:16:00.001+02:00

I went to the beach yesterday to be alone, to stare into the ocean, to breathe in deep it's tangy-salt-air.
There I met a wonderfully crazy bunch of people, all communication students together at one time, now in the media world - tv, social media, blogging and even a magazine journalist.
Before I knew it I was in the deep end, literally, with sea sand everywhere, helping with the hole before the tide came in.
It was wonderful to relax and laugh with strangers, to be light and free and whimsical.
And the sea goes on...

First light

2011-12-30T04:34:00.002+02:00

It's dawn, Graaf Reinet.
As the only petrol attendant, red dressed, hoses down and then sweeps the Total garage forecourt, I settle down in the driver's seat to sleep.
I cover my eyes with my soft, olive green sleep t-shirt which smells of me, in a good, cool-on-my-face way.

Lootsberg Pass (1787m above sea level)

2011-12-30T03:35:00.002+02:00

The wind at the top of the Lootsberg Pass buffets the car.
I'm sitting at the look-out point; all I can see is a single pin prick, headlights, as an ant-car crawls upwards towards me; it's far away.
Beautiful Graaf Reinet is 60 or so km in front of me, ugly Middleburg lies 40 or so km behind me. Between me and one of my favourite Karoo towns, the magnificently restored and preserved Graaf Reinet, is the Plains of Camdeboo, one of the richest sources of dinosaur fossils on the planet.
Aeons ago this would have been a massive inland sea teeming with prehistoric plant and animal life.
Eve Palmer's 'The Plains of Camdeboo', a Karoo classic - about this region - which deeply influenced and impacted me, has been reprinted, and only last night did I finger a copy while prowling Sandton's bookshops.
But I've done 785km since leaving Jo'burg at 5pm, and it's now 3h31. I need some sleep, which I'll get in this car, 60km from here, while passing two gravel road turnoffs to Nieu Bethesda, and Helen Martin's Owl House.
A cold, choppy wind is blowing despite it being mid-summer. I know only too well how the temperatures can drop here in the winter.
Over there, and I bet you can't see it, is the peak of the Compassberg, he second highest peak.
Despite the cold and pitch black, I need to pee. And to then drive, so that I can sleep, in the car.

Dark heart

2011-12-29T23:42:00.002+02:00

It's about 100km still to Colesburg and I'm at a Checkpoint Charlie arbitrarily in the middle of nowhere.
It's a sickle moon above a flat, wonderfully bland landscape. All beneath a star studded sky.
I have a definite sense of traversing the very - dark - heart of my country.
Green light, and we go.

Road trip: Kroonstad

2011-12-29T20:04:00.002+02:00

I'm sitting cross-legged with the false cold in the quietest part of the Steers on the side of the highway, just outside Kroonstad in the Free State.
203km into my road trip from Joburg to, indirectly, Cape Town.
I don't want to be distracted: not by people and the electric-sexual-nomadness of these crazy places that are so like border posts.
Transience and faces-from-other-places-that-I-don't-know has an inherent eroticness for me that I can explain, later.
Fuel. Coffee. Eat. Think.
I've had to be disciplined to sit down and write. I have two million excuses not to, the too-cold air conditioning is one of them.
I bathed deeply in preparation for this road trip. I always do. The anticipation of who knows what. Like, for example, I know that I want to be in Mossel Bay tomorrow morning sometime. But it's 1000km away. I will have to sleep; deliciously I wonder where.
In the bath I looked at my feet. I shaved my legs; every week I do that (it's a habit from my 'cycling' days).
I have packed light; this is a writer and photographer's trip, and the destination is irrelevant even though I have one.
I have a bag containing some clothes, some toiletries, a book, a gardening magazine and the last, but fat, Mail & Guardian for 2011. And, for old time's sake, an empty, brand new spiral bound A4 notebook with a charcoal cover. It's for my morning pages.
I also left my pc behind, and have only my cell phone, my iPad and my lean bag of camera equipment. Oh ja, and my fast-beating heart.
Leaving behind a dark, wet and moody Joburg, the sunny, bright and friendly Free State embraced me: mealies, grain silos, flat earth, sunflowers.
Large Afrikaans men sunburnt in their shorts, socks, paunches, mustaches, bald pates, ugly sunglasses and Mercedes Benz's.
I feel at home here. I was spent two years of my youth in the army here: Tempe, Bloemfontein.
I've read Denys Reitz's 'Commando', and anticipate volume two of his gripping Anglo Boer War trilogy. His true story. It's above the fireplace in my bedroom at home.
I also had an intense personal relationship (yes, my word choice gives it away) rooted in Senekal, a Free State village-town off the beaten track.
I love the flatness and the light, it's an unusual bright-pure-light that smacks of the surreal.
I've also read Zakes Mda's novel based on the Apartheid racial-barrier-blurring events that, unbelievably, took place in Excelsior, which I visited and explored during its drought in 2004. Fascination.
But now I must pay my bill, empty my bladder and head towards historical, practical Colesburg, across the Cape border. Then, where to sleep?
400km to that decision, and a fork in the road. Literally.

Falling out of me

2011-12-29T06:40:00.002+02:00

I've sat with a few new people these Christmas holidays. Our paths have crossed, but I adamantly don't believe in coincidence. As random as it all seems, it's minutely orchestrated, every hair-thin-vein-and-quiver-of-the-butterfly's-wing-and-beat.
The key themes of these coffee times has been loneliness and aloneness, and pain.
They have my heart: I see their pain / I feel their loneliness / nothing is straight forward.
Trust me, life is not easy, and even having said that, I'm going to underline it - life is very hard.
I have done it all:
I've been to the edge and back.
I lived like a king, and thought I was.
I played the palace fool, which I was.
I trod on hearts, while numbing my own.
I thought the world was mine to do as I please/d with, when in fact I lived in hell: proclaiming without knowing it - "I'm the king of hell, bow before me". And hell it was. Mine.
The cars, the houses, the cash, the credit, the debt, the planes, the toys, the CDs, the noise, the 'friends', the filth, the porn, everything the king could wish for. And more. But much less.
The king would have done anything in his power to have avoided staring into his abyss.
His own abyss, the pain. The pain of the emptiness, and the meaninglessness, and of the pain of it all.
But all that time I thought I was alone, up until I fell out of me (because the bottom was gone).

Fast-paced

2011-12-29T01:28:00.002+02:00

I unexpectedly sold a car today. One I have owned for over 9 years; that I have travelled the country hither and thither in, 222 000km to be exact; a battery of countless road trips to some of the remotest places in the country.
I have driven out my broken heart in it. I have driven away from broken hearts in it. I have cried in it. I've had sex in it, also made love in it; in a previous lifetime. Hardbody.
Tonight I had coffee at my favourite Seattle, the one at Mandela Square, Sandton.
I walked around and through the square, soaking in the randomness, taking photos of my mood's projections and savourings, peering between Nelson's legs.
Paging through books at the other Exclusive's, I advised and directed a woman to Steve Biko's 'I write what I like', which she bought.
I then had dinner with Steffen at Ocean Basket. With a glass of dry white, and afterwards, an ice cream and chocolate syrup.
The deal with the car is that I need to drive it to Cape Town. I sold the car late this afternoon. I might drive it the 1490 km to the fairest Cape tomorrow.

Christmas chili & "pretty little buttercup"

2011-12-24T21:28:00.003+02:00

I've just walked to a Portuguese restaurant in Melville. I'm very grateful its open, nothing else is.
I'm starved...and I've ordered a large Black Label draught.
Despite being warned of the danger of walking, and alone, by a well meaning acquaintance, I was so marvelously alone in the streets...hardly even a car.
Freshly Ground - from 6 years ago in my memory - is playing loudly and a drunken, bloated-face man is singing along - Dooby Dooby Dooby. It's so marvelously Christmas for the drunken, and broken, like me.
A political conversation between two young black guys, one with out-the-box shiny spectacles, passionately and un-sporadically blasts me from the dimly lit corner (aaah they are in advertising I am able to easily eavesdrop) to my 'write'.
I have chosen to spend Christmas alone, not even with family. I am open, and free.
And despite all, I'm sitting in the light.

I need a life

2011-12-24T00:12:00.002+02:00

There was a storm.
Cool breeze on my nakedness woke me with ice-cold.
Listening, now, again, to the wind through branches and leaves...and through the branches, twigs, leaves of my mind.
Then I remembered the yellow flowers I photographed this afternoon in the tired-sadness of my self-imposed self-exile-from-self.
I need to get a life.

Madeira breeze

2011-12-22T11:46:00.001+02:00

Rumbling, rumble-thunder, sprinkler irrigation, doves in the weeping willow.
The 'quiet' before the/my storm.
Black eyes teeming with sugar cane, fishing nets, Atlantic storms/sunsets, and an ancient, battered-but-beautiful coastline.
Soft, dark and fascinating face hair, much softer than mine.
You look like my picture of Allen Ginsberg; but Allen is dead.

Open Letter to Naspers about the closure of The Boekehuis in Jozi

2011-12-05T18:30:00.001+02:00

Dear fellow writers, publishers, readers and buyers of books, and Boekehuis fans and supporters

Naspers has informed Corina van der Spoel, the manager of the Boekehuis, that it plans to close the shop at the end of January, because it is not profitable. For the reasons outlined in the open letter to Koos Bekker below, we are very distressed about this, and we plan to publish an open letter to Mr Bekker in the Mail&Guardian next week. Would you consider signing it? If so, please respond to Boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za today, Monday 5 December. Please send this on to others whom you think might wish to sign the letter too.

Thank you!

Mark Gevisser

Maggie Davey

Michael Titlestad

______________________________________

Open Letter to Koos Bekker, CEO, Naspers

Dear Mr Bekker

As writers, publishers, readers, and buyers of books, we are deeply distressed that Naspers is considering shutting down the Boekehuis in Auckland Park. While we understand Naspers' financial considerations, we cannot emphasise enough the importance of the unique space it has created for cultural and intellectual activity in Johannesburg.

Firstly, the Boekehuis public readings and discussions have become among the most important gatherings in the Johannesburg literary calendar. As such, they have done much to promote not only literary talent and ideas, but the profile of both the bookshop itself and Naspers. There are no comparable forums in Johannesburg, and the loss of Boekehuis is a blow against the culture of reading and debate, which is so crucial to the well-being of our democracy, particularly given the steady erosion of book culture in South Africa.

Secondly, in the era of on-line commerce, the Boekehuis staff have set the bar for selecting publications of quality and worth for South African readers. Bookshops, where people of all ages who care about reading can gather and browse - and buy books too, of course - are at the core of the kind of civil, deliberative culture that we believe South Africa so urgently needs. And when they are as beautiful and welcoming as the Boekehuis, all the more so.

For these reasons, we would urge you to reconsider your decision.

BOEKEHUIS Bookshop* PO Box 563, Auckland Park, Johannesburg 2006 South Africa Tel: 011 482 3609 cvanders@boekehuis.co.za *Voted in 2006 by the Independent Booksellers Federation one of 50 unique bookshops in the world

Verbatim: exciting possibilities for new life and freedom

2011-12-04T09:59:00.000+02:00

In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in "muchness" and "manyness," he will rest satisfied. Psychiatrist C. G. Jung once remarked, "Hurry is not of the Devil, it is the Devil."
If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture - including our religious culture - we must be willing to get down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In their writings, all of the masters of meditation strive to awaken us to the fact that the universe is much larger than we know, that there are vast unexplored inner regions that are just as real as the physical world we know so well. They tell us of exciting possibilities for new life and freedom. They call us to adventure, to be pioneers in this frontier of the Spirit. Though it may sound strange to modern ears, we should without shame enroll as apprentices in the school of contemplative prayer.

The above is taken, verbatim, from my battered 1984 copy of Richard Foster's 'Celebration of Discipline,' which I'm re-reading for the umpteenth time.

Morning. Ink. Blood

2011-12-04T09:46:00.000+02:00

I'm sitting by the window with a fat black cat on my lap.
A dog, as always, is yelping in another street, and birds (assorted) are also tweeting, twittering. All against a background of deep Sunday morning silence...and sporadically the shriek of my neighbour's grinder. But because he's a good man, I can find it in me to forgive him.
It's heading towards year end, I carry an annual amount of heaviness, tiredness and black rings beneath my already dark eyes. I'm heavy and slow. But next week this time I expect to be done, to be on summer holidays, and to be resting. The anticipation is what drives me.
In the meantime though I need to oversee the birth of one final edition of the paper for 2011. In particular there are three stories weighing heavily on me as they percolate in my mind's storm eye.
I live this newspaper, we are intertwined, we are inseparable. Ink runs in my veins, blood is with which the words are printed on the paper.
I am growing intensely: as human being, as writer, as journalist, as photographer. Growing too, I pray, in humility, simplicity, kindness, love. My needs are less.
What more can a man ask for? Except, perhaps, to know God much better, more intimately?
This, more than anything, do I seek (no full stop)

High rise / tom cat

2011-11-28T03:20:00.001+02:00

I wake with the persistent mewing of Karneels the stray tom cat whose on the prowl and wants to do a break-in and entry. He knows I'm here, but plays me.
I listen to the wind in the high-rise blue-gum trees as they whisper messages to me in the dark. And I pray for ears to truly hear with.
I pray to hear the ancient sounds, creakings and pain messages of the earth, so that I know what to convey to the world. Cop17 begins tomorrow in my country, Durban; as climate change seems, in my immediate eyes, to convulsively ratchet up.
I wake with the extreme anxiety of the news story I'm working on; the one that's taking me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to confront both my fears and my ghosts. I don't always have confidence to be the lone voice in the wild; what if I'm wrong.
But, tonight, I believe the message in the soaring twigs, leaves, limbs and branches is that I must trust my instincts and intuition.
So it's back to the chair at my desk, putting down the words, until my backside becomes bony and beads of blood form on my forehead.
Tonight I'm heavy with the too many stories I know of too many people, that I don't have enough time-life to write down.
High rise, they begin to flow from my nostrils, earholes and the back of my throat, also from the cracks in my skull. Like the gushing overflow drain in a massive, deep seated Victorian bath designed for an ancient time when water was not an issue.
It's 3h18 am and I'm typing in the dark.

Dark heart

2011-11-25T16:32:00.001+02:00

My heart is dark today, and has been for most of the week.
Sporadic, chaotic and uncentered describes me.
But I took a positive step, towards the light.
And now I'm lying on my bed having just, again, picked up my battered copy of Richard Foster's 'Celebration of Discipline'.
He writes: "Superficiality is the curse of our age...The greatest need today is...for deep people."
I'm going outside to harvest a bowl of apricots, it's the first time in five years that my dwarfed tree has borne fruit.
There is hope. Always.

Own life

2011-11-06T23:14:00.002+02:00

In bed with a book and with my own life, responsible to no-one but me and God.
It's honest and raw and real.
Crickets, no frog-croak.
Jozi; between the three phallic symbols I grew up beneath: Brixton and Hillbrow, then Ponte. How else could I have turned out but me?
What I do know is that this city is, right now, the most happening city - in the most unhappening way - on the African continent.
Crickets, no frog-croak.
Bought two books today at Arts on Main:
One: Writing the City into Being, by Lindsay Bremner, and
Two: Portrait with Keys, Joburg and what-what, by Ivan Vladislavic.
It's blooming Jacaranda time, and the blossoms that go plop beneath the rubber tyres on black hard tar, are deep mauve-blue this year. Not the same every year.
Tonight I feel strangely light and free. It's because I have fire in my spirit, I am publicly standing up to a bully, and because I'm finding my voice. My own
And I thought just now, fondly of Rob. I wanted to phone him and ask him if I could come around for coffee. But I don't think he is free to receive me. Nor do I think he would have coffee. Nor is he free.
But I am.

Croak

2011-11-03T23:23:00.002+02:00

Jozi: Siting up in bed, this is way past my bedtime. I'm beyond exhausted, but, unusually, my head won't switch off, at all.
I'm in the upstairs room of one of my favourite places to stay, except that through the wide open summer-night window I can distinctly hear a one-frog band rasp-croaking way too loudly.
Waiting for the small piece of sleeping tablet to kick in, because I need a rested brain. And I need to hey back to centre. It's been a harrowing week.
I'm working on a story that I need to get as near to perfect. It's about a schoolyard bully, but a fully grown one. One that has threatened to break my legs. Both of them.
The story is to be my lead for the November issue. Although we're a few days late, I made the decision to take the pressure off myself - it's my paper after all - and to delay it further, while I get more meat into the story pot.
And because of the intimidation, to tell you the truth, I've taken a bit of a hammering...so my aim is carry on telling the truth, even if my voice quavers.
And, in the background, I thoroughly enjoyed the three intense days of the Power Reporting African Investigative Journalist Conference.
As a direct result of it, I've some great collaborators backing me up.
And now to turn in.
Night night world.

HOWLING at the moon

2011-10-30T20:28:00.002+02:00

Some straightforward messages were driven home to me. This as I sat on the edge of my seat through the screening of Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein's 'Howl' last night in Hyde Park.
Authentic, is what I've realized I'm not; I still edit and stylize my public media persona, and even more condemning, do the same to my stream-of-consciousness-into-stream-of-words.
In the mewing of Ginsberg, "I don't want my daddy to read my words".
Allen Ginsberg has got balls. In fact, he must have the biggest balls I've ever come across.
It takes balls to be true to yourself, to be true to your words, to be true to your writer's voice.
'The Write Practice' blogger, Joe Bunting, asked Ted Dekker how long it takes for a writer to find their voice.
'"It takes four to five novels," he said. So if the average novel is about 80 000 words, then you have to write 320 000 to 400 000 words before you find your voice.
That's about 1000 blog posts.
Or 400 newspaper columns.
Or 80 short stories.'
I arrived at Hotel Lamunu in Johannesburg's Braamfontein yesterday afternoon. I'll be staying here until Thursday. Jozi's 'inner city' has been dramatically reenergized, resuscitated over the last decade and more. It's not the apartheid-artificial city I innocently got acquainted with in the eighties. This is a beyond incredible city that many miss out on because of outdated and repeatedly trundled out bad publicity.
Thanks for triggering me Allen, even 60 years after howling the world out of its McCarthyistic horror, suburban smugness and complacency.

Sinking in

2011-10-28T19:15:00.001+02:00

Just got home from Kaapsehoop; suddenly so glad to be here, I was going to drive the few hours to Johannesburg, but suddenly drained and too tired.
What a few days! We've been on deadline, not that we're off it.
An unusual month this has been. I wonder if extraordinary would be a better word?
I've made a big mug of sweet, strong tea and I'm sitting outside in the dark listening to frogs and crickets and watching a sickle moon set on the western horizon.
I'm not going to do a thing tonight, but early to bed, very early up, and then through to Jozi for about a week with a power reporting investigative journalism conference I'm attending.
I'm looking very forward to my accommodation in Braamfontein of all places. And after all of these years that have passed...

AM

2011-10-27T06:09:00.001+02:00

It's 5h30 am and I'm sitting by my favourite window drinking tea.
I have spent hours here; it's the one beneath which I lay (because there was no furniture) on my back - in a daze of nervous recovery during the very first week that I had moved here from the corporate world almost 5 years ago; just watching the winter clouds in a cobalt sky make superstitious shapes that didn't predict my future.
I'm just back from walking through the garden, like every morning, breathing in deep, nay gulping in deep the rich mountain air.
Today it's laden, saturated with the energy, power and life of last night's first big (hail) storm.
And then my heart's delight, the yellow arum lilies (Zantedeschia pentlandi) that pop up, like daffodils in a
European spring, from the lawn, grasslands, woodlands in the region.
And the fat black cat on my lap.
I'm drawing strength and centeredness in silence and solitude, while knowing I'm never alone: 'Be still and know that I am God.'

Golgotha

2011-10-25T21:56:00.002+02:00

I’m undeniably a morning person.

Even so, I love it at night, when my fingers swan – in perfect peace - across the keyboard.

This plays out in a pool of warm light directly under my yarmulke-like coal black lampshade that’s not far from, nor many centimetres above my skull.

Although I’m in the light, but against the dark, cool background of the house and garden (energy saving), I’m neither trapped nor held prisoner here.

I love that I’m alone, but beneath a mountain.

I love that I’m at peace, but with gut-stirring coffee.

I love that I can clearly hear the crickets and frogs (and the cats having sex – they’re certainly not making love), but that it’s extremely unlikely the phone will ring, or ping.

‘You are loved (Don’t give up)’ is my message for today, especially after yesterday. It came in a serendipitous message on a postcard from God.

Have you ever received one of those?

Pushing snowballs up the mountain against the heat of summer

2011-10-24T14:00:00.002+02:00

I’m double bent against the awful wind. And against the day. And against the work I need to do. As well as against my thesis. It feels as though there is no progress whatsoever, that the colour is bleached from today, and from my life. And that I’m living on the awful outskirts of my Apple’s imaginary Instragram lens.

That is twilight zone.

But we are human beings and from life experience we know that this, too, shall pass. That tomorrow will be a better day.

“[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Chasm

2011-10-24T13:49:00.002+02:00

I want to reach out across the Internet to you, because I don’t know any other way.

I want to take your hand in mind, and for things to be different.

I saw the pain in your eyes, and I know you see the pain in mine.

My heart, and its intentions are pure.

How do I reach, out, across your abyss?

I’m so busy retching into mine.

Double bent

2011-10-24T12:48:00.001+02:00

In stark contrast to yesterday morning I began my day outside on the lawn. After harvesting a handful of fresh strawberries straight from the garden, I filled a plunger with the finest pungently arabican coffee, and got on with my morning pages and week 1 of The Artist's Way.
It was a magnificent dawn. But the day has got much hotter and very gusty, almost unbearably so, and again I've pulled down the blinds and shut the curtains to the unusual heat.
I'm bent double over my laptop and my research project on the bed.
My mind is bent double too, most unhappy with the acrobatics its being asked to perform. It's low I'm confidence today.

Contract

2011-10-23T15:44:00.001+02:00

So, today, I'm at that point Robin* wrote of.
I had another crazy early hours of Sunday morning a-cross-country-bolting homewards from the city.
Now, mid-afternoon and my sleep caught up, lying naked-for-the-unusual-heat pressing down on the house, I'm there.
There where he said.
All the blinds, and curtains, are shut against the heat, so as to cool the airflow through my home.
I'm alone. Completely. In my weekend craziness I've done everything I can to severe ties, many in fact. And good ones too, some of very best; and some of the worst. But severed they are, for better or for worse.
This is a good sign: Pressfield in The War of Art writes that Resistance is its most awfully powerful when the prize is the greatest, and attainable. I suppose it's the equivalent of the darkest hour being just before dawn.
Judging by the (unusual) wind howling from the west and over the edge of the escarpment, a storm must be coming.
"The only way to lift your life to the next level...is to assume real leadership over your life."
"The moment you look in the mirror and say to yourself, from the deepest place within you, 'For my life to change, I must change' - that's the moment you'll grow up and walk through a doorway that will lead you to your best life."*
So I have picked up my tattered, battered The Artist's Way after exactly a decade, and commit myself again, from today, to it's process.
I also commit to no alcohol for the 12-week period. As much as I enjoy it, it takes me nowhere that's good. And beneath it's benign dictatorship I relinquish all responsibility, exactly as the structure of this sentence underscores.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow's* words scratch my ear drums and chalk squeakingly across the flip-chart of my mind:
"We fear our highest possibilities.... We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments, under the most perfect conditions, under times of great courage. We enjoy and even thrill in the possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments and yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities."
Steffen, yesterday, with big green eyes liquidly welling over, had the courage - over carrot cake and a short-te-mocha at Seattle - to hold up the mirror.
I didn't like what I saw.
Thank you.
I pray for wisdom and understanding. Also for courage and inner strength.
And for much, much less, even none, pride and arrogance.
And for a simple, streamlined - but good - life.

Top man

2011-10-16T17:53:00.001+02:00

The rain patters on my empty stomach searching for the 6; I allow the storm darkness of the late afternoon to gnaw and fritter away / like city rats at a once fresh and pre-packed steak thrown out of a restaurant's back door / at my peace and contentment.
It's unusually Sunday-black, not -blue.
Thunder gargles faintly in the distance, almost too soft for me to believe it's real. But that's Mozambique's direction, so I know it is. The ferocious storms come from East. So does my Jerusalem light.
I'm questioning my choices, of these last three weeks.
Storm. Now I'm in the eye, but for the real time one; I'm watching two years of relationship photos on my mind's eye screen.
Rain patters on the roof, that's seen countless ructions. And survived.
When some/thing/one was so good that newbies pale into insignificance, why does it end.
Above the local grill I hold you up against the light and see the holes, but the journey is compelled. (You don't know that, I do. I swallow hard; from this cup must I drink?)
Change the subject.
Ok.
The overwhelming message for my writer this week has been to wake the f*ck up and smell the roses, it's time to be true to your voice; so says mr Bunting, the artist's way, dear Robin, and instinct's gut.
Authenticity.
I suppose authenticity had been my theme these 3 weeks. The courage to be who I am, no matter how much it stinks.
ying$yang

The cat sat on the mat

2011-10-09T10:06:00.001+02:00

bipolar ambition:
I'm struggling to complete the pages.
I root out even more pride and arrogance; forgive me please. I want NONE left.
Then suddenly I'm centered:
dappled morning sunshine
slow motion
across silent moss
on a rock
at the bottom of a garden.
that's as minute
and meaningful
as I wish
my life could
be.
small b.

Secret garden

2011-10-09T09:09:00.001+02:00

Dalecross. Morning pages at the bottom of the garden. Another garden. Another space of peace, restoration, bird song, and a cape robin's wings beating--in--slow--motion in the undergrowth.
It was a tough week.
4am Saturday morning was a turning point; I cannot befriend both Him and the world. I know where my peace, productivity and sanity lies.
I know that my choice was again the correct one; in the early hours of this morning I dreamt of the snake in my life, and how I killed it. With both hands.
It's a magnificent Sunday morning. Coffee anyone? (Just one condition. Get me at the bottom of my secret garden...)

Give yourself up to the moment

2011-10-07T14:20:00.002+02:00

I just found a new secondhand bookshop, a bit pricey but a good selection of, among others, South African fiction.
I'm at 44 Stanley street in Jozi; as the unseasonal, chilly weather finally starts to lift, people around me, at the courtyard cafes, appear to be wholeheartedly embracing both summer and weekend.
I've wolfed down a sandwich and a cappuccino while my iTunes does it's own iThing with the selection of iFriday pm tunes, all thus far appropriate.
Bare legs, bare arms, in the shade of a beautifully barked tree.
"give yourself up to the moment / the time is now / lets make this moment last" tunes iTunes in stereo (such an old fashioned word).
But in all innocence.

Short mocha, no cream

2011-10-04T17:03:00.001+02:00

In the last few days I've been into places I last frequented a long time ago. I find myself surprised at how decayed they are, how out of date they seem.
I've also walked into perfumes trailing behind people; they are scents I last smelt many many years ago. I trip over them, headlong into the jumble of time- and place-memories interwoven in them. Seemingly arbitrary. It's a bit like taking an unexpected slide through a time warp, bang into the past. They also emphasize the passage of time.
I wonder at what point it is that I become the one that others measure the amount of decay by? Just curious.
Does one know that one has become the living dead?
Progress. What is that? Soul wisdom I believe.
Seattle Cresta, nostalgically having a mocha.

Boekehuis, Melville

2011-10-03T16:31:00.001+02:00

I'm grabbing some time out in one of my favourite Jozi book shops. Walking around I pick up a copy of Spaces and Places Johannesburg (Gerald Garner) which I've coveted for a while now, but can't afford. In it he describes Boekehuis:
Situated next to the offices of Media 24, this bookshop has a wonderful collection of South African books and it regularly hots book launches and talks by authors. So famous is the Boekehuis that it was voted one of the 50 most unique bookshops in the world by the International Booksellers Federation. It occupies an old house with Oregon timber floors and pressed-steel ceilings and best if all, includes a coffee shop here you can browse through the books you intend to buy, or start reading the ones you have already bought!

Thoreau and the Art of Life

2011-10-02T12:33:00.002+02:00

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) thought through our potential as human beings to live complete lives - lives that encompass joy, adventure, reflection, natural beauty, meaningful work, and relaxation. He thought and wrote about nature, about love and friendship, art and creativity, spirituality, aging and death, simplicity, wisdom. He tried to live his conclusions. He was deeply devoted to the craft of writing. From these roots emerged a powerful an contradictory body if work that continues to inspire and confuse us. [... from the inside cover of Roderick MacIver's book]

Artist's way

2011-10-02T11:26:00.002+02:00

Ten years ago I began working through the intensely personal twelve week ‘course’ contained in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Earlier this year I picked up a mint copy of her follow-up to this course in discovering and recovering your creative self, The Vein of Gold. But I’ve not been able to get further than the introduction. I believe I need to go back to The Artist’s Way.

Today I have picked up my wonderfully tattered and scribbled all over edition, and am about to recommit to a new process of discovery. It’s time, I feel.

Julia: ‘I learned to turn my creativity over to the only god I could believe in, the god of creativity, the life force Dylan Thomas called “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” I learned to get out of the way and let that creative force work through me. I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard.’

I have a decade’s worth of hardbound exercise books containing thousands of pages of my ‘morning pages’ lying around the house.

Tear stained windows

2011-10-02T09:40:00.002+02:00

It's essentially the first rains of the summer; I missed the downpours, lightning and thunder in my Waterval Boven on Thursday and Friday, but last night while eating out in Melville all hell broke loose.
Nothing nicer, cosier while sharing a good meal, wine, and company.
On this marvelously slow-paced Sunday morning I'm lying in my pajamas on a long couch beneath tear stained windows. The rain is rattling against them, gusts of wind sometime drives the downpour harder against the glass, causing me to pull in closer towards myself.
Cocooning.

He's dead

2011-10-01T18:21:00.003+02:00

Allen Ginsberg has just died, and his biography I've been reading intermittently for the last year, is dead too.
My eyes are glassed over with see-through mercury, and I don't know what next.
The last light through the me-and-a-bit high window into this unblinded first floor bathroom (the one with the large, beautifully faded Persian) is lifeless ad gray, against the lifeless now-olive green of the weeping willow. I'm not alone in my tears.
I will get out of the bath and mechanically dress, then walk to Melville to be anonymous amongst people I'll never know. That's where I wrote Two Pink Stripes maybe 5 years ago. In the street window of a restaurant and bar now closed. While drinking European draught and eating a meaty beef burger and fine, good fries. Often.
But I wish I was by the sea; I dedicate this photo (thanks Greg) that self-tweeted me, to Allen. He's dead, but we've just met.
Thank you.
And I choose a simpler, vastly more streamlined life. Without the s/trappings.
Living, but writing down the bones.

Reflection

2011-09-28T18:21:00.001+02:00

Like a well known ancient Greek I'm staring into my own reflection in a pond. And yes, although I've grown to love, and accept myself, its been a decades-long process. And a healthy one at that.
It's dusk, and from the ridge where this wonderfully enveloping house commands a view to the north and east, I can see the cityscape, close-by. Especially the angry pimple-red head of the Ponte building.
I've spent two hours reading in a naturally lit upstairs bathroom (the one with the large, wonderfully faded Persian rug) that casts a gentle eye over the garden below.
And now for an hour-long full body massage.
It's been a truly pressured day, despite my pj bottoms and tussled hair, he same for week, month and year. Foundation work, I call it.
Looking forward, but shy. I hope she respects my silence.
It's a welcome gift from someone close to me, whom I deeply care for.
Thank you.

Persian carpet in the bathroom

2011-09-28T00:27:00.001+02:00

Three hour's drive and I'm in another world from mine. I need this, and to be in the city of my birth. Perspective too, I need. And to strategise with me about Life Inc.
Sixteen past midnight and just into bed. After a piping hot shower and soap I don't recognize. But like. And to stand in front of a different mirror and other lights, to see me in a new light. Looking for decay, and stress and for more lines around my eyes. To pull im my stomach to see that they are only less worked muscles.
To be in the city, not the mountains or in the lowveld's bush, or among it's people, often slow-dripping with dourness.
It's a magnificent old, well built and spacious double story art deco home constructed on a ridge T-junctionimg into Johannesburg's Berea and then CBD. Magnificent view.
My first security alarms in years, in the distance.
And now my lids seek welding shut.
And my brain to percolate while I sleep on tomorrow's challenges.
It's a new chapter.
Night
--
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Listen to the wind

2011-09-18T20:42:00.001+02:00

I've been lying in the bath since three this afternoon; listening there to the wind blowing hard, and reading.
It's now six-seventeen, dark outside and the buffeting wind's suddenly died.
There's some silence; there's water trickling through the old bath's overflow; every now and then a change in the breeze allows me traffic sound from the highway 2km away.
It's filled with people cursing the weekend's end, while they rush between Mozambique, Nelspruit, Lowveld and back to Gauteng, sub-Saharan Africa's economic powerhouse.
Back there to work and treadmill lives.
Leaving behind lovers and loved family members, animals, homes, fights, assaults, quite possibly a murder. Great memories, even appalling ones. Vast amounts of noise, and alcohol. But back to my bath...
I'm in an interesting phase, what I'm reading confirms that, also that I'm heading somewhere else:
'I celebrate myself,' Bill Morgan's biography of poet Allen Ginsberg;
'Freedom (the courage to be yourself),' by Osho;
'Leadership wisdom from the Monk who sold his Ferrari,' by Robin Sharma;
'A guidebook to the Camino de Santiago,' by John Brierley;
'Thoreau and the Art of Life,' edited by Roderick MacIver; and 'Creating a garden with Keith Kirsten'.
My mind is whirring. As soon as I got remotely bored, I picked up the next.
Now to jump out and nakedly stride into the nearby kitchen to fill a glass with chilled sauvignon blanc ('Fat Bastard'), then back in to shave my legs. I maintain that it's a hangover from my cycling days.

Moisture

2011-09-14T10:30:00.001+02:00

Bang, bang...bang. I awoke with the wind roaring over the edge of the escarpment at 2h37am. The blinds were clattering and the doors banging. Stumbling around the house closing doors and windows, I wondered whether the first rainstorm of the season was coming.

Currently we’re living in a tinderbox after the harsh, dry winter. Everything, except my lemon trees, are a tawny lion colour. I’m having to use the sprinklers in the garden every second day, or lose the seeds that have been planted, as well as the new shoots.

Getting back into bed I pulled the covers over my head savouring the scent of rain on the air, and let sleep take me back home.

It’s overcast today, but still the rain has not come. But I trust.

Reborn 'steam' of consciousness

2011-09-13T20:23:00.001+02:00

The dwarfed apricot tree is too large to call a bonsai, nevertheless it is always the first to bear leaves. Bright green young leaves shiny with the promise of the rapidly approaching summer.

Spring doesn't last long in these parts; in the batting of an eyelid it's summer (within a week of the first snow in 11 years, I was wearing shorts).

This morning I'm sitting shirtless on a rickety old wicker couch outside the backdoor. Although we had heavy black frost this winter, the first banana tree is sending up a green tightly bound green spear into the heavens. I'm wondering how many of the banana plants have survived. They grow well here in the summer, but I'm about 10 kilometres away from where they would be ecstatic, even in winter.

From where I'm sitting I see my first bumble bee of the spring, they are anyway rare here. Bees are a good omen for me. Then it’s gone from sight.

I've been travelling, mostly under pressure with work, for the last three weeks. I need to savour my solitude or else I will not regain my centeredness. That's why I'm about to switch off my phone and write a letter to God.

A black and sturdy 4x4 soldier ant beach buggy's over my bare knee.

Birdsong; water and air scratching through the hose pipe; the gurgle and tumble of the washing machine in the laundry room; the old lady next door throwing stones into her plastic garden bucket as she colonises the veldt behind her house and mine (will she make it to the mountain before she dies?); catchy pop music from the distance, just other side of the abyss.

It's back: The bright yellow and black zebra stripes of the bumble bee ecstatically hovering against mauve French lavender; so next season. (I'm glad I won't be slavering on the edge of any catwalk... been there, done that, and died.)

But I’m reborn....

Coffee

2011-08-21T09:25:00.001+02:00

It's a beautiful day. Spring in all it's glory has, again, arrived. I have a large plunger of coffee next to my bed; the aroma of fine, dark roast arabica is wafting through the house and waking all of my imaginary guests.
The laptop on, funny enough, my lap is nicely warm in anticipation of all the work I still have to do today for our September issue newspaper, which will print later this week.

Beautiful mind

2011-08-16T20:17:00.000+02:00

On Saturday afternoon I was walking around the garden in just a pair of shorts and my armpits were sticky with summer.
Because it was the fifth day of great weather I dipped my guard by naively believing that winter had seen its arse. Spring comes early to this part of the country; it has been here even earlier than this, so my thinking was reasonable.
Three days later and I'm already in bed, on top of an electric blanket, next to a heater. Two cats are tucked up close.
Winter's back in full force: it's icy outside and snow began falling in Dullstroom, a mere forty or so kilometers away (if you take the scenic backroad), last night this time. It last snowed there 11 years ago, and in case you you're not batting an eyelid, just a reminder that this is Africa.
These pics were taken by my friend Colin Mann. He lives in Dullstroom with his family, all of whom were out until late last night building snowmen and having snowball fights. His daughter's school was closed today, they've never seen snow before.
I'm also in bed because I feel burnt out and need to recharge my batteries.
I'm working under a lot of pressure at the moment; the newspaper is growing, I have many other ideas for a wide range of projects, and I'm exploring the concepts of 'location independence' and 'digital nomadism' (more about this another time).
I'm also failing to get to my writing, journalism and photography passions. Because learning about business, and publishing has, necessarily, consumed my last two years. Rightly so, because journalism remains a mere ideal if it does not make business sense. I know that my writing too remains an ideal if it cannot support me. Sustainable idealism is, I believe, what transforms the world into a better place. It's also real. Sustainable idealism is neither of the valley nor of the mountain top; rather it's the midline of the graph, but with the best of lessons ingrained from the troughs and peaks. From heaven and he'll. As I said, it's real. I'm in a place of my life where real works - materialism, superficiality and pretentiousness sounds my alarm and sends me in an opposite direction.
Everyday I attend a funeral, for my ego.
I ask forgiveness for any pride or arrogance that might surface in me.
I pray for humility. I seek streamlined simplicity. I choose to live differently.
I choose to love. Anyone who is living that choice knows that it's not an easy choice; but that while it's the only choice, it's a choice nevertheless.
I seek to live in the world, but not to be of it.
I need no more than to have been vaguely remembered for having a beautiful mind.

Secret garden

2011-08-09T17:03:00.001+02:00

Today I decided I'm going to start a gardening blog. I'm also, but linked to the blog, going to start writing a monthly gardening column for the newspaper. I'm still deciding on a name for it; I have a few ideas though.
I've just taken this photo of the collection of succulents on an old blue gum stump at my back door. The late afternoon sun is perfect lighting.
Although blue gums are persona non gratis in SA I love them. I always have. I've always tended for the loneliest, quietist places in the remotest parts of the country; often in those spaces I've discovered eucalyptus-family specimens. I love their scent on the wind, also their pungency when I've crushed their leaves and breathed it in deeply. That is the scent that drives a desire in me to explore Australia. I can't wait for that day....
I'm sitting on the porch, in just a t-shirt and shorts. Earlier today I had just shorts on and eagerly lapped up the sunshine of an almost-perfect almost-spring day.
I've watered the garden with two sprinklers over the course of the day; in fact they're still on even though the sun will be behind the hills within 15 or 20 minutes and that, soon, I'll need more than a t-shirt to keep out the chill.
I'm oozing simple satisfaction.
And I suddenly remember that on 1 August I have owned the newspaper for two years now.
I'm all over the place like a jackdaw (we don't have those in SA), maybe I should take a walk. And give thanks for the day, and my life, as the sun slides over the edge of today.

Backyard

2011-08-08T19:13:00.000+02:00

Tonight, as dusk wrapped itself around me like an old and comfortable scarf,
I knew that spring was close, that nothing could hold it back.
It's the first time in a long time that I was able to remain on the porch
reading, even in the poor light, long after the sun had set behind the hills
behind the house.
I nuzzled into the couch, pulled the book nearer and sipped on my wine.
Satisfaction.
And a sense of new beginnings, which is what August's 'eight' is symbolic
of.
Eventually, because I could not pretend to ignore the pinkish light, I ran
indoors and grabbed my camera.
The seasons are changing; this I know because since the weekend I've had the
urge to change the house around, moving furniture hither thither. Also the
desire to open windows and doors, and to breathe in deeply.
My head, in a good way, is all over the place. My thoughts, not unlike the
furniture, are rearranging themselves. And moving out of the way for new
ones. They're popping up all over the place.
I'm choosing to live out of the box, because I've never been able to bear
cubicle life.
But before manifested in reality, they have to be clarified in my brain.
And I long to travel. And to streamline my life.
It's Monday night...

Underlined advice

2011-08-02T14:09:00.001+02:00

John Brierley writes in a note to the 7th edition (2011) of his "A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago":
"The one piece of advice I would pick out from the first edition and underline is simply this, 'There are no guarantees in the life of a pilgrim and we are well served by developing an attitude of gratitude for all learning experiences found along the path.'"

Rough or smooth

2011-08-02T14:04:00.002+02:00

It's a beautiful day outside. Although a winter's day, I know this season has seen it's ass, is on its way out. I'm not up long in the morning before the first light touches, like a lover, the eastern sky.
But I'm sitting next to a heater in my bedroom, where I come to regularly during the day to sit in silence and breathe. I have a 'daily hours' regime (in the best sense of the word) that sees me unlock from the world, and from technology. It's part of my desire to simplify and streamline my life. To live.
On that note, the pilgrimage guide I ordered online arrived last week after a slight delay. But I've been so busy that I couldn't even open it. I'm doing that now. I'm yearning to be on foot on the road to Santiago.
The book is John Brierley's 'A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino de Santiago'.
In the intro he writes:
"This guidebook is dedicated to the awakening of human consciousness. It was born out of a midlife crisis and the perceived need for a time to reflect on the purpose and direction of life. We have a sacred contract, a divine function and reason why we came here. Pilgrimage provides an opportunity to delve deeper into that purpose and the time to reorientate our life towards it's fulfillment. We have been asleep a long time, but alarm bells are ringing for young and old and there are signs that we are collectively waking up. There is a new yearning to break free from our self-imposed imprisonment.... May your journey be blessed along your chosen path - rough or smooth, long or short - whichever route you take, know that you are loved and your destination is assured. God speed Ultreia!

Sunday bloody Sunday

2011-07-24T13:25:00.002+02:00

It's Sunday and I don't want to be working, but while my procrastination is the reason that I am, I continue to procrastinate, on and off.
I've loosely segmented my time into 90 minute blocks; in that time I'm incorporating everything I need to do, including chores: to break the monotony I'm blogging, tweeting, doing a wash, watering the garden with two sprinklers, writing up my university notes, preparing for the laying out of the August newspaper tomorrow.
And taking out the time to enjoy one of my lemon trees, which is having a bumper citrus season.
The citrus yellows and oranges are so wonderfully and starkly in contrast to the bleak overall lion tan colour that pervades our winter landscape; this is a winter rainfall region so everything is tinderbox dry and frosted out, completely bleached of colour.
Despite tasks and the mundaneness of the day-to-day, I strive to remember that today is an integral part of the life adventure. In every moment I seek the passion, romance and adventure that is life lived fully, and in the moment.
Or else I'm as good as dead.

This too shall pass

2011-07-19T23:16:00.002+02:00

From the minute I woke this morning I put my phone off. My thesis has to be in by the end of the month, no later. I’m running very behind, also with what I need to deliver for the August edition of the paper. So I stayed in bed with my laptop, the cat, and the heater on, until I couldn’t bear it any longer.

Then I showered and drove to Nelspruit, 93km away, where not only is the climate considerably warmer and different, but where the chances are good that I will be able to recover from my bout of cabin fever.

I’ll carry on working on the thesis now, then I’ll go to gym. Then I’ll drive back home, go to bed, and the whole sorry saga will start over, again.

What’s providing me with ample hope though is the fact that every day, as we move closer to spring (which effectively arrives in August in South Africa), there is more light, and where there is light there is hope.

This too shall pass. And in the meantime I will do whatever I can to romanticise my life, so as to remind myself that even during the doldrums (at the ass end of winter), life is in fact an exciting adventure to be experienced to the full.

I choose to live fully, deeply, intensely... I WILL suck the marrow from the bone of life. I WILL.

Loiter on the fringes? No!

2011-07-14T13:10:00.002+02:00

How can people who are conditioned to a life of distraction and indulgence be moved to live at their best, to be artists of the everyday, to plunge into life and not loiter on the fringes? – Run with the horses, Eugene H. Peterson

New every morning

2011-07-12T21:01:00.002+02:00

I'm reading 'Run with the horses' by Eugene Peterson, which is not something I thought I would've enjoyed reading. But I'm intrigued.
I've done much examining of my past recently by looking, often painfully, in the mirror.
"...look at the wild ass in heat out in the wilderness, sniffing the wind for the scent of a mate - no matter who - unrestrained and purposeless except for one thing, the satisfaction of desire.
"That is what you look like...dominated by appetite and impulse, your lives are empty of commitment, purpose, continuity. You are frantic and busy, rushing here and there, wherever there is the slightest suggestion that you might satisfy something or another.
"We don't daily find a time apart from the crowd, a time of silence and solitude, for preparing for the day's journey. 'A very original man,' says Gary Wills, 'must shape his life, make a schedule that allows him to reflect, and study, and create.'"
Two worlds constantly, horrifically collide. By choice I'm in the world but not of it. Sometimes, when my back is to the window - my window onto the street, the world - and as I stare in silence and with aloneness into the fire, I know that to walk the straight and narrow path is (never past tense) a difficult decision that requires an hourly recommitment. Even so I don't always pull it off.
But only so many times can I ask myself after hitting my own head with a hammer, why does it hurt.
I consciously choose life and aliveness over numbness, even if my nerve ends are bloodied and mangled: I acknowledge and examine my pain, knowing that it's the price of being wonderfully, gloriously alive.

Dutch cheese

2011-07-12T16:40:00.002+02:00

It has been an unnervingly beautiful today; only now has a cold breeze picked up. And a large Dutch cheese of a moon is already visible on the eastern horizon...

My heart has asked it of me

2011-07-09T11:55:00.002+02:00

This week I also finished reading Paulo Coehlo’s The Pilgrimage, which is his novel about walking the Camino de Santiago. Here’s an excerpt:

‘The Road you are travelling is the Road of power... the journey, which prior to this was torture because all you anted to do is get there, is now beginning to become a pleasure. It is the pleasure of an adventure. You are nourishing something that’s very important – your dreams.

‘We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our life we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t our soul dies, and agape cannot reach it. A lot of blood has been shed in those fields out there; some of the cruellest battles of Spain’s war to expel the Moors were fought on them. Who was in the right or who knew the truth does not matter; what’s important is knowing that both sides were fighting the good fight.

‘The good fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us. In the heroic ages – at the time of the knights in armour – this was easy. There were lands to conquer and much to do. Today, though, the world has changed a lot, and the good fight has shifted from the battlefields to the fields within ourselves.’

The reason I have decided to walk the Road is because my heart has asked it of me.

Step 1 - Camino de Santiago de Compostela

2011-07-09T11:37:00.003+02:00

Last year I set my mind on walking the Camino De Santiago; step one in the approximately 4 week journey of about 780km has been taken: On Wednesday I bought a guidebook: Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino De Santiago http://t.co/eSH4R0O

"The Camino de Santiago de Compostela, also known in English as The Way of St James, is a collection of old pilgrimage routes which cover all Europe. They all have Santiago de Compostela in north west Spain as their final destination. For more than 1000 years pilgrims have been walking along the Camino de Santiago.

The main Camino route is the Camino Frances. This part of the Camino de Santiago traditionally starts in St Jean Pied de Port and finishes in Santiago de Compostela about 780km later, after travelling the breadth of Northern Spain, (In Santiago you can collect your Compostela). However you can start anywhere and even continue past Santiago to the sea at Finisterre. Finisterre was thought to be the end of the world in medieval times."

Be on guard

2011-07-09T11:14:00.001+02:00

Well over four years ago I escaped my hell life in the city; in my former life I had I traded my health and energy for the fleeting rewards of a life that my career had brought me. In doing so I had traded my soul for a fat bank account and the trappings that had come with it. I'm again at a place of discontent, but I've recognized it. I'm searching for the next step in my expectant hope of finding inner harmony and lasting peace.

Pic: I took this photo last Sunday of a mural that for me symbolizes hope; it - the mural that is - can be found at 12 Decades Johannesburg Art Hotel on the east side of the city and part of the Maboneng Precinct.

Journey

2011-07-09T10:47:00.001+02:00

My prayer today, and every day, is for wisdom and understanding.

Carrot cake

2011-07-08T08:27:00.002+02:00

It's cold; although normally quickly over the second 'half' of winter is harsher than the first.
But on a happy note, the jasmine bush in the far western corner of the garden always flowers early in August; it's pungent scent has been my first sign of spring since a child.
I'm still In bed having my quiet time; I'm about to write my morning pages (as inspired by Julia Cameron in The Artists Way about a decade ago), and trying to sip on a bowl of steaming mint and green tea.
My old, faded-pink single electric blanket is on 2, while the sun is in my face and backlighting Mika.
This morning the sun appeared over the trees at the far edge of the park across from my home at exactly 7h12; yip the nights are getting shorter.
Frost, like icing on a carrot cake, is lying thick and white on the yellow, dead lawn.
As I stare at this scene while scratching my stubble, contentment seeps through my being...and it's Friday.

Hope

2011-07-07T10:46:00.001+02:00

Spitting in the wind

2011-07-06T20:05:00.001+02:00

Recently, and for the first time in my life, my notion of 'without end' ceased. Up until then I had a sense of my life being endless, that all my dreams still had time to be realised.

Now I'm aware of the race's cut off time. I'm also aware that I don't want to be in a race, that I'm seeking harmony, simplicity, inner peace, happiness, joy and contentment.

I've realised that I was born on autopilot into striving...and from day one I've been striving for all the wrong things.

Now I want to begin living. Rather late than never. But the transition, mentally, is not an easy one to take. Nor is it a transition encouraged and rewarded by 'our' world.

Life is as fleeting and surreal as a dandelion flower.

In Ecclesiastes (1:11) wise King Solomon wrote that "nobody remembers what happened yesterday. And the things that will happen tomorrow? Nobody'll remember them either. Don't count on being remembered."

He also wrote that he had seen it ALL:

"Call me 'the Quester.' I've been king over Israel in Jerusalem. I looked most carefully into everything, searched out all that is done on this earth. And let me tell you, there's not much to write home about. God hasn't made it easy for us. I've seen it all and it's nothing but smoke—smoke, and spitting into the wind."

So what exactly have I been striving for, and why, I wonder.

What I do know is that it has been empty, stressful and has kept me from living in the moment. It has always been about tomorrow, not right now. What I can surely tell you from my limited personal experience is that tomorrow never ever comes.

Invent YOUR world

2011-07-06T19:39:00.002+02:00

Invent your world. Surround yourself with people, colour, sounds, and work that nourish you. – SARK

And, on that note, Robin Sharma writes that there is no such thing as objective reality, or the ‘real world’. There are no absolutes.

Revival. Joburg.

2011-07-05T09:50:00.001+02:00

There's a revival about Johannesburg, my city of birth, that's taking place in my head.
I moved away, but not completely, four years ago. The distance between us has meant I'm able to return with an appreciative heart.
It's an incredibly creative, passionately alive and uber-productive city.
In the last few days I've re-experienced Jeppestown, Kaserne and Braamfontein. I feel enormously at home here again... an at homeness thats accompanied with longing.
On Friday night I drove past the nursing home, known always to me as the Mary Mount, or the Kensington Clinic, where I was born.
There I came into the world on the rim of the city's most magnificent skyline, and remain unalterably influenced by the two phallic landmarks - Hillbrow and Brixton towers - synonymous with Joburg.

Gray

2011-07-05T09:13:00.002+02:00

It's a wonderfully cold and bleak European morning in Africa; the sun is nowhere to be seen.
I'm sitting in the corner at Post in Juta street, Braamfontein listening to soothing classical music on my iPhone - anything to block out the uncharacteristic, deeply intruding heavy metal/rock belching from speakers I can't seem to find - while writing my morning pages.
I'm thankful for the sheer unusual beauty of today, for my music, for the peace and contentment of my soul...also for the hot air massaging my calves from the fan heater under my table.
I'm looking forward to travelling in home's direction....

Twentieth Century gangrene

2011-07-04T09:41:00.001+02:00

Travel writer Paul Theroux in his introduction to Paul Bowles: Travels -
[Paul Bowles] was handsome and hard to impress, watchful, solitary, and knew his own mind, his mood of acceptance, even of fatalism, made him an ideal traveller. He was not much of a gastronome - as his fiction shows, the disgusting meal (fur in the rabbit stew) interested him much more than haute cuisine. He was passionate bout landscape and it's effects on the traveller, as "The Baptism
of Solitude" demonstrated, he was fascinated by the moods of the sky; and he was animated by the grotesque, wherever its misshapen form can be found.... Contemptuous of what passes for progress or technology, he speaks in one of these pieces about Columbo being afflicted with the "Twentieth Century's gangrene," by which he means modernity.
[Photo: Nelson Manda statue in Mandela Square, Sandton]

Bowled over

2011-07-04T09:30:00.001+02:00

Ever since researching my trip in 2006 to Morocco I've wanted to get my hands on the writing and life of Paul Bowles. He lived in Tangier for most of his life, dying there in 1999, and writing up until his end.
Friday saw me buy his Travels: collected writings, 1950 - 1993 at Exclusive Books in Mandela Square, which I've dipped into through the weekend.
At dusk yesterday I cruised two bookshops in Melville looking for more of his work, but only coming up with a 1985 collection of his short stories, Midnight Mass.
Books, I believe, always arrive just when they should. Thank you.

Warm inside

2011-07-04T09:19:00.001+02:00

Johannesburg: It's a cold and overcast winter's morning. I'm sitting at a gym while my car is being serviced; while listening to music on my iPhone I'm catching up on all those little things that fall into the cracks when life is hectic.
Life has been very hectic, ever since after Easter. A pattern of my life is receiving rest ahead of extreme and challenging periods, so I should've known this was coming. I really should have....
Right now what's coming is a strong, foam cappuccino.

Dusk

2011-06-19T17:49:00.002+02:00

I'm lying in bed watching the dusk creep up on and overwhelm the house. Perfect peace and quiet outside. Im going to prepare and light the fire that is a meter and a half from my bed, and pour a glass of chilled chardonnay. I don't have some red to match the fire.

Last light

2011-06-19T17:10:00.002+02:00

It's late afternoon and I'm lying in bed staring out the window.
Last light. Which is reflecting on the bare trees in the street, and on an aloe plant I have in a pot.
The wind has finally stopped thrashing the trees outside; there's no other sound except for the neighbour with the awful generator's wind chimes.
We will, symbolically, be reaching the longest night in the coming week; I pray that, afterwards, the light and the end of the storm will come quickly.
The dawn is at its closest at the darkest hour.

Red hot poker

2011-06-19T12:28:00.001+02:00

I'm trying to relax, chill, and to not work. Right now I'm sitting in a chair in the window with the black cat behind my head.
Between coffee (do you think I have a coffee problem?) and the bleak wintery view (it's an ugly day), I'm writing my morning pages as part of trying to make sense of the world.
Life is very hard at the moment. I'm trying to learn the lessons applicable to now ASAP so that I can move on to a nicer, better place. Please. Im asking nicely.
Nevertheless, I am able to appreciate the red hot poker that flowers in the dreariest time of the winter.
Happy Sunday...

Milly's Restaurant on N4 Toll Route gutted by fire

2011-06-18T10:49:00.002+02:00

Yesterday was a sad day... Milly's Restaurant, a well-known landmark on the
N4 Toll Route just outside Machadodorp (Entokozweni), was gutted by a fire
that started in one of its chimneys. According to the restaurant's manager
and owner, patrons and employees were safely evacuated. She said that it
took a short 15 minutes for everything to go up in flames.
I have spent many hours in this restaurant, either working or enjoying the
sunset over the water in my quiet time. I look forward to seeing the shape
and form of the phoenix that will surely rise from these ashes.
The Highlands Herald team uploaded the photos they took to their Facebook
page: www.facebook.com/hherald

Wednesday night's lunar eclipse

2011-06-18T10:42:00.002+02:00

These are photos - by Waterval Boven-based Gustav Janse van Rensburg (who often contributes the finest photos to the Highlands Herald) - of Wednesday night's lunar eclipse.
Taken on the edge of Mpumalanga's escarpment, not far from Waterval Boven, these photos emphasise the magnificence of our night sky, especially where there is so little light pollution, and where the winter night's air is crystal sharp.
Pics: Gusography (082) 753 3695

The fairest Cape of them all

2011-06-15T09:32:00.002+02:00

Tentative

2011-06-14T22:24:00.001+02:00

A tornado has torn through my life for close on six weeks. I tentatively type out a few words on a very neglected blog. They say consistency is what keeps fans and drives new readers to blogs. But I'm not here for 'the traffic', I'm really just here for me, and me is very human and at times exceptionally frail. Sorry I was gone, but I could not help it. And my story really isn't much of one anyway. And I don't care that that is so.

Durban botanic garden

2011-05-30T21:23:00.000+02:00

After two weeks spent along the golden coastline, I chose to say goodbye to Durban in a number of ways yesterday. One of then was to visit the botanical gardens, the oldest surviving one in Africa, for the first time.
I'm surprised and sorry that I've not been there before.
I'm a sentimental person and gardens always allow me to sense the pulse of a place I've visited, in particular a place that I've thrown myself into enjoying.
I met journalist Patricia Mackracken there; we had originally bonded in Maputo's derelict but grand botanical garden way back in 2006.
Yesterday we were able to celebrate how vastly improved our lives are since that meeting, which developed into a wonderfully batty friendship.
At the time we were both trapped in corporate prisonships more commonly known as 'a career'.
Life is a lot more beautiful. And I'm free.

Frost

2011-05-28T06:56:00.001+02:00

The grass outside is white with frost for a second morning in a row. The field in front of the house is glinting white in the first light; if you were from northern parts you'd be forgiven for thinking it's snow.
The sun has not yet risen, but I'm lying in bed writing my mining pages. I have lit the fire and it's roaring warmth is heating my body, mind and spirit.
The newspaper, except for a few tweaks, was wrapped by 21h00 last night, but with much fun and laughter; I am assembling a team of fine, good people.
It's another beautiful day in the heart of Mpumalanga.

Blackbird has spoken

2011-05-27T07:16:00.001+02:00

Morning has broken.
The first frost fell last night, but fortunately it wasn't a black frost.
The fireplace in my bedroom is a meter from my bed, I've had it roaring, cracking and popping since 5h30.
The sun has just blazed above the trees on my horizon; my bedroom faces due east.
My black cat, basking in the new light, is talking to me as if there is no tomorrow; this could almost be Narnia.
In 90 minutes we will see the first meeting of the entire team in our new, work-in-progress newsroom.
We finalise our June edition of the newspaper today. It should take the entire day. I am excited about it. By tonight it will ready for the printers in Johannesburg.
In terms of this space - my blog - I have been silent. I have been ill, I have been incredibly challenged, facing both personal and professional obstacles beyond my imagination. I stared into the abyss, facing fear and failure in the face. This time has been of my darkest.
Yet morning has broken and life is still gut wrenchingly beautiful, and my faith remains steadfast, thank God.
Happy Friday.

Saturday morning

2011-05-21T09:20:00.001+02:00

Thank You for the simple, deeply satisfying pleasure of sitting on a couch in the sun on a winter's morn, across from a fast-asleep black cat, while writing words, drinking coffee, and listening to the deep silence of a sleepy rural town.

When the wind blows

2011-05-15T14:47:00.001+02:00

The wind is gusting.
Something is rattling outside, it sounds like tin against a wall.
The neighbour's wind chimes are doing what they have done best for the last four and a half years.
The succulent propagated from Kaapsehoop and planted in a mug is flowering. The fine pink flowers remind that I live in a space of miracles.
I'm in the bath reading and telling the truth.
But I wish I was walking into the ocean.

False and real artists

2011-05-14T18:07:00.001+02:00

Its dusk and I'm re-reading Dorothea Brande's classic Becoming a Writer. I bought the paperback in Edinburgh way back in the September of 1989.
I'm loving one of her definitions of a writer:
"The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr, and one part boulevardier [most definitely my word of the day] is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd.
The grain of truth in the fin de siècle notion, though, is this: the author of genius does keep till his last breath the spontaneity, the ready sensitiveness, of a child, the 'innocence of eye' that means so much to the painter, the ability to respond freshly and quickly to new scenes, and to old scenes as though they were new; to see traits and characteristics as though each were new minted from the hand of God instead of sorting them quickly into dusty categories and pigeon-holing them without wonder or surprise; to feel situations so immediately and keenly that the wore 'trite' has hardly any meaning for him; and always to see 'the correspondences between things' of which Aristotle spoke two thousand years ago. This freshness of response is vital to the author's talent."

Playing with Instagram

2011-05-14T15:54:00.001+02:00

(see full image)

Pavilion view

2011-05-14T14:42:00.001+02:00

The photos are of Durban's Pavilion shopping centre at sunset, taken when I was on my way to Joburg late on Wednesday. The light enthralled me.
Today I've spent indoors. From where I'm sitting now I can see that most of the leaves have fallen from the pomegranate tree in the front garden, those that are left are yellow.
Leaves are also fluttering from the peach trees at the back and the grass on the mountain's no longer green.
It's a moody winter's afternoon, cool but not cold enough to light the wood stove in the kitchen.

Durban botanic garden

2011-05-14T08:24:00.000+02:00

After two weeks spent along the golden coastline, I chose to say goodbye to Durban in a number of ways yesterday. One of then was to visit the botanical gardens, the oldest surviving one in Africa, for the first time.
I'm surprised and sorry that I've not been there before.
I'm a sentimental person and gardens always allow me to sense the pulse of a place I've visited, in particular a place that I've thrown myself into enjoying.
I met journalist Patricia McCracken there; we had originally bonded in Maputo's derelict but grand botanical garden way back in 2006.
Yesterday we were able to celebrate how vastly improved our lives are since that meeting, which developed into a wonderfully batty friendship.
At the time we were both trapped in corporate prisonships more commonly known as 'a career'.
Life is a lot more beautiful. And I'm free.

Tea x2 for 1

2011-05-14T08:21:00.000+02:00

Fourno's bakery, Benmore: It's a magnificent Highveld morning in Johannesburg, with just a hint of winter in the air.
I drove into this city at midnight but was sitting here by seven.
This is the way I strive to begin my day more often than not. And always green tea before my coffee day begins.
And preferably, like now, brilliant morning sunshine massaging my back and shoulder muscles.
I have to be at university at 11h00; I'm striving to complete the research project of my MA by next month. It's a long story...very long.
Then I'm driving home; it's been a long time and I need to regroup and centre myself in the space that's mine - in the eye of the storm that's life.

Colour of the day

2011-05-14T08:19:00.000+02:00

Today my colour for the day was bronze. I could not believe my luck when this wonderfully old and tired bronze BMW pulled out in front of me as I entered this avenue of Plane trees in their bronzed autumn beauty. Of course you had to be there... ha-ha.