Notebook scribbles in-between food-wine-conversation from two years' ago

14/11/02: H's flat (no. 8) in Tamboerskloof, Samantha Court it was, I think in Burnside Road.

Slept here again last night. This time it was awesome. Another sumptuous meal. Yup, another one.

Thinking of the poet Roy Campbell and the writers Laurens van der Post and William Plomer in their early days - about what writers they were destined to become. All three deeply influenced me. Also thinking of Richard Rive and other African writers and journalists of their time - I would like now to become my time. 

Also thinking of Kerouac and his Beat poet mate Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, whose writing and life stories I adore; have just started reading Douglas Brinkley's 'Jack Kerouac Windblown World (the journals of Jack Kerouac 1947 - 1954).'

And then, crazily, and whom I've not yet begun to properly read, my mind catapults to Charles Bukowski [days later I was to discover and buy his biography at the Globe bookstore in Prague; it held me riveted].

H, over his amazing meal last night, loaned me Haruki Murakami's 'After Dark.'

Have spent most of the weekend with H in the most unsexual sense, from my side at least: his rank breath (halitosis?), rough and cracked heels and ugly feet, the yellow-brown nicotine stains on his lower front teeth freak me out. That's while his gorgeous apartment and incredible style really do it for me - also his kindness, compassion, hospitality and generosity on countless levels. But just not sexually.

He hands me a copy of the visually minimalist and awesome travel and style magazine Cereal. I'm impressed... might be a bit of what my friend Mia is trying to pull off with her mag. I need to take my 'hat' off to her more than, perhaps, I have thus far.

All of this I've procrastinated  with instead of completing my empathy conference paper for Prague; my flight from Cape Town is at 17h00 on Wednesday. Yup, just less than 2.5 days to get my ass into gear. I have no idea what this is about, except to not beat myself up and to acknowledge that I'm severely under pressure and that I'm exhausted, burnt out, done, and that - despite everything - I have done the best that I can with the tools I have at my disposal - or so I like to think.

That I've gone through a small breakdown, and a break up. I also regret my half-hearted attempt at the teaching development programme I partook in as part of my lecturing contract. However, it's too late right now to ponder all of that.

Jardin Majorelle: A Special Shade of Blue in Cereal Vol. 7. in Rue Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakesh. I've been there, was inspired there. Many Decembers ago, while starring in a completely different life movie to this one. December 2006.

Dear Jack...

From my window on the world, where I sit in silence and staring every day in awe at The Mountain, I've learned so much. About myself. About the world. Thus I strive even more towards a simpler, more streamlined and minimalist existence.

Yesterday, while it bucketed down and The Mountain and most of the city remained hidden from view, I sat in a simple but favourite coffee joint in Mostert Street re-fashioning my personal vision and constitution, so to speak. It's a work in progress so I won't delve deeper into it now, other than to say that anti-Beat Jack Kerouac features prominently in it; Kerouac and Ginsberg have influenced me enormously.

Interesting (from Doglas Brinkley's 'Jack Kerouac: Windblown World' (Viking: 2004)):

"With a ferocious intensity, Kerouac began keeping journals in 1936, as a fourteen-year-old boy in Lowell. His obsessive habit continued for the rest of his life. Long, detailed passages, usually produced daily, are ornamented with poems, drawings, doodles, riddles, psalms, and prayers. "I resort to these diary-logs in order to keep track of lags, and digressions, and moods," Kerouac noted as he began writing On the Road. Kerouac's modus oprandi in these handwritten journals is one of voluntary simplicity and freedom, of achieving sainthood by being lonseome and poor, with empathy for every sentient creature. Early on, Kerouac wanted no part of the postwar scramble for monetary success: "It is beneath my dignity to participate in life." To Kerouac, the "most ringing sound of all human time" was Jesus' refrain "My kingdom is not of this world."

Tomorrrow evening I leave for Prague.

A cherry-flavoured Beacon fizz-pop tastes like my childhood.