Breakfast at Tiffany's

Where I'm staying now is about 400 metres from Tiffany's, a quiet beach known only to locals.

I woke straight from my dreams - tendrils and wisps of them still haunt in-and-around-and-through-me - pulled on clothes, avoided a mirror, and walked against the early morning chill, down the wooded and aromatic path, to the ocean edge.

Morning pages: My creator has met me at the pages and now we're to walk together through our secret garden.

How blessed am I!

Three minutes to midnight

A small brown leave spirals down and plops on to the surface of the pool; I'm transfixed. For one second I experienced meditation.

Sitting shirtless and dusty in my secret, dark and cool corner of the garden I'm watching my tea steep. I'm resting from my garden work.

The house is on show this afternoon; in essence it's been for sale since three seconds to midnight on 31 December.

Barefoot I've swept mostly dead leaves into papery rustling piles. I''ve just heard the distinct cry of a fish eagle; I almost didn't notice, but when I did I really did; I'm suddenly conscious again. Fully.

My best though has been peacefully shuffling around - in the sun and on my backside - pulling weeds from between the pool paving. Also very therapeutic. And exacting in its focus.

My mind's stream of conscious trickled down an explainable (well, to me at least) gully to mulching, both mentally and in the horticultural sense; it then sloppily gurgled to London's Hampstead Heath, in particular the untamed,  wild western heath of which I have countless memories, and experiences from when I lived and dreamed in London; I imagine that my imagination has been triggered by Theroux's novel 'My Other Life', which so far seems to largely be about his London writing life. And the fact that winter's eeking into spring in the far north and that soon the Heath will be transformed too. From the delicious and rotted history of centuries, new and abundant life will spring forth from its coffee-thick-mucky mulch that so intrigues me, and that contains the seed of so many men.

The truth that has set this family free oozed from this cracked suburban surface three seconds before midnight. Painful. Very. But a clean break at such an important pinnacle on everyone's calendar.

The emasculated alpha male was forced out at the dawn, of the first, with his poison. He went across the road. A year for change and truth. Time to sell the house.

I am merely, and most happily, a traveller; albeit my pack is still weighty.

Rule of thirds

Yesterday this time I was at the beach, Tiffany's in Salt Rock. A scorcher of a day, I was grateful to be in the shade at the exact point that vegetation meets beach. Clutching a slithery-wet-cool bottle of milk stout and smoking for a change, I comprehended the world, the most beautiful world, from the rule of thirds' perspective: shadow, beach, ocean / sky.

Right now I'm sitting at a table sipping a cafe in the perfectly peaceful eye of the storm that is Christmas shopping frenzy on 22 December. Words and calmly tuned into the still, quite voice within. Despite the maelstrom.

'Be still and know that I am God.'

Amidst the hurry, flurry, noise and spending I'm at one with my Creator. Needing some space and desiring to be alone, I've come to Gateway in Umhlanga knowing it would be packed. In my anonymity, despite the crowds, I'm enjoying my time alone with Charles.

Here he has perspective. Here he is free.

On another note: Charles, after having not stepped into a Catholic Church since he was, ironically, confirmed in the Church in 1983, and after a long, winding and deeply intensive journey since then, is again embracing his Catholic roots. That's despite Pope Benedict's repulsive homophobia; Charles is still grappling with that one.

A surge of people enter the mall through the automatic glass doors just behind where I'm sitting - on a red chair - at a tiny round table that's the colour of full cream milk. It's the breeze that enter with them that gently seeks my attention. Like an old friend.

Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere is something else: the weather service warned of extreme discomfort, humidity and heat along the coastline today. It's 31 degrees centigrade.