Voorslag days

That's why I ended up last night, in the dripping dark of Pennington: I was looking for Umndoni Park at Sezela, where the controversial 1920s SA poet, Roy Campbell and as equally controversial (for different reasons to Campbell though) author William Plomer (of Turbott Wolfe fame), and Laurens van der Post, collaborated on jointly producing their short-lived magazine 'Voorslag'.
The Campbell's lived in a bungalow - separated from a sandy beach only by a railway track - lent to them, I think, by the then well-known SA painter Edward Roworth.
"The house," wrote Plomer, had a verandah on three sides, and was built on a seaward slope overlooking the Indian Ocean. There was little or no garden: the house stood in a clearing in the bush, a step led down in front to the railway line and a path of deep, dry, white sand through the bush to the beach, only a few yards away. It was just an ordinary Natal house of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, with a corrugated iron roof and boarded interior walls covered with shiny khaki varnish. At a short distance from the house was a rondavel, a round, one-roomed dwelling, which as adapted as a guest-room for me."

Since Easter I've been researching an article I'm writing about these three, and especially focusing on their South Coast.

I could have cut and pasted Plomer's words into this blog post, but I got a thrill from retyping his words - I'm a big fan of the man - and it's a brilliant way to get under his writing skin.

I got caught at a country restaurant, and pub, probably the only one in Pennington, last night so I never ventured further. But I did get a feel for the place; I did get some writing done, and I enjoyed the first rain here in exactly a week of brilliant and sunshine-filled days.

Seeking to love maturely

You can see it's an old book.

I don't smoke. Although I like the taste of cigarettes in someone else's mouth:

"Love - a short word that means so many different things. Everybody wants it; far from everybody can give it. Yet we all think we know what it means. Is it something natural we don't need to think about, or is it an art? Erich Fromm...discusses its different forms, from the most natural in mother-love to the most impersonal in love of God; from romantic love, with it's endless possibilities of self-deception, to the steady assurance that mature love alone can give. To practice the art of loving is more difficult than ever under today's pressures; but Dr Fromm is convinced that 'Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." [From the very foreword, indeed...]

I have within myself committed to perceive my new relationship as an opportunity to explore the art of loving; I have much to learn, and trust me, it ain't gonna be a walk in the park. I'm also very, very bored with playing the same relationship CDs over and over.

Someone that I can't remember, but whom I'm sure is famous (not that I care), said, once, that the unexamined life is not worth living. I constantly, and anally (some learned ones might say), but also at great self pain, constantly examine mine. I'm committed to living my best life, in THIS lifetime.

Namaste: I bow to thee, and honour the very highest in YOU

The art and craft of / off my beaten track

Random bar and restaurant in the dark, and dripping rain of Pennington, on KZN's South Coast:
"No under 18's allowed in main bar or in the gaming area. By order [in italics] management"
A black and white cat, unfazed by me, hovers in my space; I just know we're cool, with, each, other. I don't even have food, yet, to be begged.
An empty dark-brown milk stout bottle stopped rolling the floor of my car when I stopped driving; I bought it in Amanzimtoti after a random gym session: milk stout is good for lactating women, also for filling a tummy while simultaneously taking off that emotional edge one sometimes feels while contemplating the universe and, simultaneously, staring into the abyss; I'm not an alcoholic, but I have altogether stopped my mood enhancers (haha, what do you call yours?).
Ok, let's get to the punt (that's Afrikaans for point): I've thankfully gone off my beaten track.
I'm also reading Lonely Planet's 2005 edition of their Travel Writing, which I got for Christmas, in London, in December 2006 just before I threw up my life as I knew it. I read, very sadly, parts of it in Marrakech before chucking it up (the manual that is); but dropped it once (later) in the bath as I fell asleep (the only time I've ever done that).
"What makes a wonderful travel story? In one word, it is place. Successful travel stories bring a particular place to life through a combination of factual information and vividly rendered descriptive details and anecdotes, characters and dialogue... The best travel stories also set the destination and experience in some larger context, creating rings of resonance with the reader."
I'm also, simultaneously [am I the only person on earth that uses this word?] reading Erich Fromm's - 1957 - "The Art of Loving". About which I have one query: why the hell is this brilliant book not a firmly set set-book at schools across our planet (because no-one has a clue about loving, after they've fallen into it).