The lines between: notes from a knife's edge

Seven weeks ago, this morning, I was walking on a long sandy and wet beach. Nature's Valley.

The sand dune 'cliffs' in the distance was on a magnificent lagoon fed by the Groot River. It is the border between the Western and Eastern Cape provinces. Borders - transient, blurred - always draw me.

The Otter Hiking Trail more or less ends here. It's where, 43 km later, bedraggled but mostly enlightened hikers emerge after four-and-a-half days: Know thyself.

"The Ancient Greek aphorism 'know thyself" is one of the Delphic maxims and was inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek writer Pausanias. The phrase was later expounded upon by the philosopher Socrates who taught that:'The unexamined life is not worth living.'"

*

Seven weeks have passed, in a blur. Except for the first two weeks back on campus, it's not been a pleasant blur. Bewilderingly unpleasant.

A swathe of much-needed rain moves, now, across the city bowl. The first drops smatter my window. The gloom deepens.

Against the window, splattered, the still-fresh and bloodied corpses of two flies that had been the size of juicy-plump currants. I killed them earlier. I've still to wipe their bodies and gore off the glass.

*

Snapshot: Last year today, this week and weekend, I was in Kampala, at the Writivism festival.

*

I'm not sure if I'm depressed, or if I'm just totally empty from being poured out. In other words, the void and emptiness that (I think, as this is new territory) between having one's worldliness drained from you, before, He fills the void. 

I have less and less ambition, which is intricately linked to ego, but which terrifies me because it has been entwined with my very fibre for my lifetime. A gardening term comes to mind: Potbound? It's the process of being strangled in and by your own life. The void is all that appears to remain.

Naked. Empty. Unsure. But, knowing I cannot go back/wards, 'cos I've seen through all of that (the bling of it all).

However, when one peers more closely, that void is in fact filled with nutritious potting soil, compost. Spring is around the corner and new, exuberant growth is what's promised.

I'm reading HJM Nouwen and Andrew Murray and they are screwing me up big time.

Meat Bomb

Thursday last week: On a beautiful winter's day that feels as if I, with a tiny bit of effort, could climb up somewhere, high, I would see to the edge of the earth, even beyond; it's one of those champagne days where the very ozone bubbles and sparkles.

I had a 9h00 appointment at a travel clinic in town; I did not even feel the prick of the needle that was inoculating me against yellow fever, nor did the malaria tablet regime seem anything but straight forward.

That was followed by a quick breakfast and both excited and anxious thoughts about my upcoming trip.

Then a languid and stop-start minibus taxi ride along the Main Road vein to UCT. Then my favourite: the long, taxing but magnificent walk from where the taxi spat me out in Rosebank - across the street from the Baxter Theatre - all the way up The Mountain and to the doors of the library. It's in here, right now, and in peace, because it's still the vac, that I type these words. This is a calming space that motivates me to work, also to browse the shelves.

I've long wanted to read W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, which I've just searched for in the cool and windowless basement, which holds the dead quiet treasure chests of the literature section. Ironically, this is the one library section I have no reason to visit while currently studying what I am. But both my spirit and will are weak.

"In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work."

I had to put Sebald's book down after the titillating first paragraph; I have to work and can't be distracted, despite how much I desire right now to be just that.

I'll be leaving for Kampala, Uganda on the 15th or 16th of next month. That's where the winner of the non-fiction Koffi Addo Writivism prize for nonfiction will be announced during the course of the writer's festival. On the last night, Sunday the 17th. My story, Meat Bomb, is one of the three short-listed stories.

Right now: Spurts of rain slash my bedroom window as I work on my bed, as I mark assignments, as I re-read the above and berate myself for what feels to me like insipid and lifeless words. Despite the rain I know it's having no impact whatsoever on the terrible drought we're in the middle of, despite that this, Winter, is supposed to be our rainy season. We're each allowed 87 litres of water a day: I shower every second day and strive to wear my clothes for much longer so that I only put the washing machine on, once, every two weeks.