Two years & a new season

Today is the Spring Equinox in the southern hemisphere; as Robert Macfarlane writes on X (formerly known as Twitter), it's a day of brief poise & pivot when the Sun’s light falls equally on the northern & southern hemispheres. 

It is the first day of summer here, the last of summer in the north (where the Harvest Moon is due towards the end of next week). 

A good day, says Macfarlane.

EAT THE WORLD

"Lauren Beukes is probably one of South Africa’s greatest contemporary writers, and besides being hilarious and unapologetic, she has great advice on doing great work. One big piece of advice she keeps on repeating is to EAT THE WORLD. That is, gorge yourself on all the strange and beautiful and interesting things the world has to offer. Then twist it up like a ‘koeksister’ and serve it right back. Get skin in the game, eat the world." 

- Pierre du Plessis in his (awesome) Train Naked: A guide to a meaningful life and work that matters.

having sloughed a skin (yet another)

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

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

[What fucking freedom.]

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

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

[What fucking freedom.]

Don't think much about or of sex. 

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

Wanker.

[What fucking freedom.]

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

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

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

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

[What fucking freedom.]

*

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

* 

Tonight was different. Starkly, wonderfully so.

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

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

Today was 24. Tonight is 8. 

Life.

*

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

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

One more glass of champagne to all of the above.

* 

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

* 

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

* 

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

* 

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

*

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

* 

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

* 

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

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

* 

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

Winter.

Karoo storm

I'm reading "Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche" by Bill Plotkin, Thomas Berry and wanted to share this quote with you.

"The individual soul is the core of our human nature, the reason for which we were born, the essence of our specific life purpose, and ours alone. Yet our true nature is at first a mystery to our everyday mind. To recover our inmost secrets, we must venture into the inner/outer wilderness, where we shall find our essential nature waiting for us."

"Nature depends on us to embody our souls. The world cannot fully express itself without each of us fully expressing our selves; diminished human soul means diminished nature. Just as nature longs for the embodiment of our souls, our souls long for a world in which nature can embody itself fully and diversely. When, at long last, we gaze into our own depths, we see the same kind of enchantment and resilience we see in undisturbed nature. And when we journey far enough from the routines of our civilized lives — in space or in cultural distance, far enough, that is, into wilderness — we see reflected back to us the essential qualities of our deepest selves."

"When we truly enter the outer wild — fully opened to its enigmatic and feral powers — the soul responds with its own cries and cravings. These passions might frighten us at first because they threaten to upset the carefully assembled applecart of our conventional lives. Perhaps this is why many people regard their souls in much the same way they view deserts, jungles, oceans, wild mountains, and dark forests — as dangerous and forbidding places. Our society is forever erecting barriers between its citizens and the inner/outer wilderness. On the outer side, we have our air-conditioned houses and automobiles, gated communities and indoor malls, fences and animal control officers, dams and virtual realities. On the inner side, we’re offered prescribed “mood enhancers,” alcohol, and street drugs; consumerism and dozens of other soul-numbing addictions; fundamentalisms, transcendentalisms, and other escapisms; rigid belief systems as to what is “good” and what is “bad”; and teachings that God or some other paternal figure will watch over us and protect our delicate lives."

The lockdown diaries day #10: True north

A week ago I sliced the fleshy tip of my right index finger on one of the plastic and foil blister packs encasing my meds.

Seven days’ later I’m refilling my week-long plastic pillbox.

That’s how I know that the first week of the lockdown has passed. It’s also why I’ve not gone mad: Without enough meds to last the lockdown I’d have been climbing the walls here.

I’m typing by the light of three candles.

It’s lush and green here. This summer has seen very good rains, this last week too; I know what the Karoo looks and feels like in a drought.

I’ve been here for exactly two weeks. Unplanned and in no way intended to preempt the shutting down of the country at midnight on 26 March.

By sheer and most fortunate serendipity I’ve been able to stay put in one of my ideal life geolocations, a place that inspires my heart to strum and sing.

When I arrived this time the poplars, which have always tugged powerfully at my heartstrings, were in their shimmering summer glory.

The last week has seen their gradual turning to autumn; I’m excitedly anticipating each of the tree's sharp, bright and passionate yellow transformation into trembling skyward flames.

These trees were the first image to be deeply burnt into my mind’s cornea when I first pilgrimed to here 22 years ago.

It was also autumn.

I was deeply in love, then. With two people simultaneously. And, somehow, in a relationship with both (it’s a long and painful story). And neither knew about the other. Well, for a while at least. I had no idea how to let either of them go. Because I was young, inexperienced and had not yet grown balls, nor integrity. Although now, and in hindsight, it’s obvious whom I should have held onto - with both hands and all of my heart. 

Oh, for the wisdom and understanding that comes with hindsight.

Often planted as windbreaks along farm boundaries poplars make good screens and provide protection. My heart could have used some at the time. They’re especially striking when planted in clumps, which creates an atmospheric woodland effect.

The next time I came here, not long after the dawn of the millennium, I was in another relationship: dangerously enthralled by a cruel flame; in a deeply co-dependent space, my heart was a bruised and battered one. I knew that I get out. But how? A week later, knowing for my sanity what I needed to do, I drove out of this fertile valley with a heavy, dreading heart. While it what obvious what needed doing I needed, however, the evidence to underscore my instincts and suspicions before I could do it.

In spring and summer, the oval to diamond-shaped leaves of the poplar are shiny healthy green, with a pale silvery underside. While the leaves drop in winter, they are most striking in the autumn. That’s when they transform into a brilliant yellow that demands attention.

While poplars have long been symbols of courage, victory, fertility, youthfulness, abundance, protection and endurance, I’ve chosen instead to illustrate this post with a pic I took of the dramatic peak that’s visible from most of this village, while it was still legal to move around. Its name also oozes symbolism:

The Compassberg - the highest peak in the Sneeuberg range and resembling a compass needle towering 2 502 metres high - is near the village of Nieu Bethesda, 55 km north of the town Graaff-Reinet in the (my favourite) Eastern Cape Province.

I'm home.