Self-love in the time of the virus

It's the quietest I've seen the Sea Point promenade, on Wednesday afternoon, a mere day after the City of Cape Town had closed down most public amenities because of The Plague.

The last time I experienced the public swimming pool empty, closed was during The Drought of 2017/18.

I'd decided to take the MyCiti bus from Woodstock at 4pm to Queens Beach, at the end of the 105 Sea Point route.

So as to get outdoors and to deeply breathe in the reek of the icy and plankton-rich Atlantic Ocean.

Not to mention the luxury of being able to see - unhindered by buildings, humans (except for the odd tanker or Robben Island on the horizon) - The Ocean.

To feel unconstrained by the city, knowing that I'm on its very edge; it's that definite line found almost only in ports, not in landlocked and seemingly endless cities like Johannesburg.

To bask, also, in the autumnal sunshine.

Especially as no one knows yet if the city, if the country, will be going into lockdown anytime soon; my guess is that it's likely.

I am, thankfully, rising again to the sunbeam-filled surface from the tentacles of the mental health issues that have been dragging me deeper and deeper into dark depths.

This while having my joie de vivre excruciatingly squeezed out of me, not unlike toothpaste from a tube.

Dark and grim days.

Was increasingly difficult to motivate leaving my bed, never mind being in contact with friends, nor posting a single pic on Instagram for example; street photography used to be an endless joy. 

The noose tightens so gradually that you're not aware of it, just as the temperature of the water in the pot is turned up so slowly that before you know your once lively, chirpy frog is cooked.

A visit to a Jungian psychiatrist for an hour on Monday, 2 March and an hour later my updated meds bought, swallowed, and down my throat.

That a mere chemical imbalance in my brain can so easily unhinge life.

Three weeks later and life is dramatically altered. I give thanks.

(And cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to be homeless with the triple burden of being on the streets, hungry, and disabled by depression and unable to treat it.)

Looking closely at the photo to the left, taken on the same walk, at Three Anchor Bay - where the suburbs of Sea Point, Green Point and Mouille Point merge - you'll see a  homeless man with his trolley burdened by all life's possessions, pushed into the shallow water.

Doing what I don't know. 

Self-love and a healing process, like me?

Perspective

Devil's Peak from the Woodstock writing desk of my content: It's the MOST beautiful day in ALL the world; summer gets closer and closer, the days get longer, much longer.

Listening to Heinrich Schütz's, Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, SWV 386: In essence, all glory to God. Seems pretty apt as I post this photo.

On another note, which reminds us that Mordor is never far away, the Chilean Government has just recently announced that they are suspending this year’s UN Climate Talks, They were scheduled to take place in Santiago next month.

They have blamed the suspension on the protests that have been wracking the country’s streets these past few weeks. 

"But instead of derailing it, the protests get at the very heart of what global climate talks should be addressing: the huge and expanding gap between the rich and poor, the fact that so many people are denied their basic rights, and an economy that prioritizes big business and polluters over the needs of everyday people." - www.350.org

Inequality fuels the climate crisis, which in turn fuels inequality. This is a vicious cycle that must be broken... but in our lifetimes? It's a struggle to not let oneself be overwhelmed by negativity and cynicism. 

Nevertheless, I continue to sign the petitions.

Brutal, honest and blunt: Charles (bloody) Bukowski

Not one died. I know now - after being away two years in a row at this time of the year - that my flat-full of plants can survive at least two weeks without and spoonfeeding. Summer would be a different story.

Rutter's Requiem: III. Pie Jesu. I turn up the volume, rewind, play, rewind, and play again. One of my favourites. Takes my heart up somewhere high; maybe, rather use the word lofty, Charles? Spotify; I'm on a three-month free trial; so far so good.

Maybe I'm buzzing these last two weeks because I've a muse in my life who doesn't yet know he's a muse. Intensely blue and beautiful eyes. Germanic features. A goofy smile. A highly disciplined mind that also burns with an intense brightness, and superb intelligence.

Much happened, actually, and without me necessarily consciously aware of it at the time, during those potent two weeks in my Mpumalanga hideaway. It's a reminder of why I must overcome the initial resistance to leaving these overflowing, intensely distracting and luring fleshpots of Cape Town.

Every morning I had time with God in the front room of the house, which used to be a verandah. It's where the sun rose over the koppies and trees in front of the house, at about 08h00 this time of the year, and poured like liquid apricot over my head, shoulders, lap, then pages, finally my legs.

Morning birdsong. Also, sometimes the believe-it-or-not comforting sound of a chainsaw - confirmation that this is a deeply rural setting, not the city - in the near distance. Also, sometimes, a train en route to Maputo screeching (steel-on-steel) in the valley's shunting yard, in this town famous for its rail origins.

It's warming up, my hands are no longer chilled and sore from the cold; yesterday and last night were icy. Today's temperature has risen by a sharp 5 degrees; that's what I love about Cape Town: the cold fronts have a passionate arrival, but then just as quickly move northwards, and westwards, to torment the rest of the country, quite often dumping snow on the mountains between us and the rest.

I've the flat sliding door wide open so as to welcome in the warmth and glare reflected off of the shiny and also rusted corrugated iron roofs of Woodstock.

Just before heading 'home' late in June I'd serendipitously picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski's novel Women lying, literally, across my path. He's another favourite writer of mine.

I'd started reading the work immediately but had somehow been revolted by his coarse but awfully impactful writing. I had thought it would make great reading for the two-hour flight to Joburg and back again. I decided against it. I wanted to get it back to the library ASAP.

I've picked it up again and am devouring it. I'm ready for its nuggets now. I'm learning much, also laughing lots, making pencil notes on the pages, turning the corners to mark fascinating pages. I will get my own copy though, maybe even later today. That's if I even venture out.

Bukowski is revoltingly larger than life character, which is why he constantly has to appear in his own writing (there's nowhere else to put him); though he makes no effort at all to pull punches about himself.

Breathtakingly brutal. Repugnantly honest.

(The days are lengthening.)

Brisk

Walked across the city after a day cooped in a convention centre.

Streets, of winter, relatively quiet.

I then walked up the pedestrian avenue, a broad knife's edge between the back of Parliament and the Company's Gardens; it felt bleak, ugly, unusually so.

There are always many homeless folks around because it's a free space, and understandably a space within which to find respite from a harsh city.

This late afternoon they were especially conspicuous to me because many were already covered like mummies with their blankets against the cold and night.

The nights must seem endless to them.

Was almost sorry I walked that way.

Then, I looked up and saw the Centre for the Book in the descending gloom. And took a photo.

Before walking on to the Kimberley Hotel bar for a glass of wine that became two.

Even as soon as I took the first sip I was sorry that I'd dropped in there, that I'd not gone on home. I suppose, though, that I just did not fancy being more alone than I already was.

Not that I sought company.

Lower Main Road, Woodstock

Winter nudges closer. With it, the welcome change for me in the less harsh light. Also, are interesting and unusual cloud formations. This is as increasingly hostile cold fronts push up from Antarctica and ravage the Peninsula, before sweeping northwards and eastwards over the country, quite often bearing snow.

Even closer to home, it's also that time of the year when the odd, slender and sleekly-black millipedes escape my pot plants and haphazardly crisscross my floor going God alone knows where. At first, I put them back where I thought they belong. Then I realised that I know nothing about the behind-the-scenes machinations inspiring their actions and that, rather, I should stop meddling. Because I'm quite helpless, but nevertheless in awe, before the 'algorithms', formulas and miracles that wire our magnificent world.

It's not unlike how I've, also, let go of my fear and dread around the climate change spectre; it's really too late, I believe, to effect change, although I'll do my best, and trust somehow I do, that everything is exactly as it's meant to be. And I don't mean that fatalistically, but rather faithfully. (I strive with all of my might to not let my heart be troubled, worrying has never got me anywhere.)

From my writing table, as always, the handsome charcoal and white Edwardian facade above the District Six Meat Market on the corner of Lower Main road and Devon street draws my eye. As is often the case, on the electricity wires rigged between the old silver-painted street poles, a haphazard flock of dark-jacketed pigeons perch as if at a convention for serious-minded undertakers.

A seagull brilliant white, in contrast, with wings widespread soars in sheer gracefulness across my window view, quickly followed by another one, its partner?

Then an unexpected gap in the hum of the traffic, which is just as suddenly filled with a seagull shriek. Followed by the deep attention-grabbing clarion call of a minibus taxi as it scavenges the streets for passengers; these are the most informal bottom feeders of the city's transport system, often dangerous, always effectively uber regular.

I reign my gaze back inwards:

This is my sixth year in Woodstock. I'm happy here, much more so than I believe I would be elsewhere in much of Cape Town. Woodstock - harsh and rough, but real - is certainly not the bourgeois suburbia of the Southern Suburbs, nor of the Atlantic Seaboard. Well not yet at least... but make no mistake, they're working (hard) on it.

I'm still alive

Sitting in a small pool of warm light on my mattress on the floor.

Surrounded by quiet and by books, my May Day reading, and a bottle of cheap red wine and a tumbler.

I bought the plonk last night at a garish yellow on the street bottle store in Rondebosch; a friend coerced me into going with her in the rain to her favourite and extremely cheap Italian restaurant

Because they don't have a licence you're encouraged to buy whatever booze you want with your meal at the dodgy store next door. Which we did. She was so proud, like a child, of how cheap the wine was, R39 for this bottle, which she strongly recommended, that I felt compelled to buy it.

And then to drink it, over a flickering candle, just her and I alone in the restaurant, as the rain came down on a busy, even turbulent Main Road: minibus taxis honking and plying their trade in the dark, last minute pre-public holiday shopping at Pick 'n Pay and the fast food joints, people scurrying frantically between shops and across the busy road as if it was Friday night, students darting mostly alone into the liquor store to get their cheap booze for wherever they were heading, or for whoever they would soon be romancing.

That was last night.

Now, from all of the seven or so kilometres away from the Mouille Point lighthouse I know myself to be, I hear it's mournful foghorn sounding right across the city bowl; Moaning Minnie she's known as; I'm strangely comforted and snuggle deeper into both myself and the futon.

Then suddenly - it's the grinding of steel-upon-steel that makes strangers to my home lookup wide-eyed ("what's that?") - another train screeches-and-grinds to a long-lasting halt on the iron tracks in front of my building. It's the dangerous no man's land that separates Woodstock from, firstly, the highway into town, and then the harbour. The train is either going to the city's main station, not far away, or 180 degrees in the opposite direction to Simonstown.

Curious about the fog I pad across the flat to my front window. It's silently, and wonderfully, not slowly, seeping across the city and into the suburb.

Down below, Argyle Street, directly in front of me, remains a brightly lit artery on the x-ray sheet before me. Brightly lit for now, and very pretty.

I wince from the pain in my back and chest; my ribs were cracked when I was mugged at Easter.

Psychogeography of paths less taken

This is the secret path that I take back from UCT's Upper Campus at the end of every Friday, as day bleeds into the evening. The walk down the mountain slope from campus each week is a treasured time for me.

The path is verdant in its spring beauty. Cloying scents hanging in the heat-heavy air from blooms I don't yet know, the wonderful heady reek from the wild jasmine, orange and yellow nasturtium flowers and in stark contrast their perky and pretty pond-round green leaves.

Orange butterflies, some white-winged ones too.

I love to peer into the gardens and sometimes open windows of these big old houses that belong to another era. They back quietly onto this pathway.

Hardly anyone uses the path. I'm grateful for the peace, the quiet, the solitude after the busy, rowdy campus. And it's good to be wearing shorts.

What's also good is my sense of accomplishment at the end of this particularly productive day; it's a sense that's never guaranteed even if a full day's work lies behind me. The sense of productivity is an erratic one. It's also one I never take for granted.

The path ends in the exclamation mark of the bustle and honking minibus taxis on Main Road, Rondebosch:
Students buying groceries in Pick 'n Pay for the weekend. Also cardboard boxes full of booze for the night.
Strategically placed beggars - at the shopping centre entrance and hovering-like-flies outside McDonalds, Nandos and KFC - are jovial and overflowing with the weekend vibes.
Working folk stamping their feet, wanting to get home to their families.
Countless delivery scooters and bikes parked on the pavements, but revving and ready to drop off takeouts bought via mobile phone apps.
End of day traffic exacerbated by the heat.
Exhaust fumes from aggressively blunt and blundering Golden Arrow buses, exacerbating the heat.

***

Today, Sunday, as I type these words I'm naked (from the last few days' heat) at my desk. I've not worn any clothes since Friday night. It's a summer sun outside, not a spring one. It has bleached what should have been bright morning sunshine from both the day and from Woodstock.

Summer is here early and is pushing at Spring's envelope, which I resent.

Too hot. Too much sun. Too dry. Too uncomfortable to negotiate if one's mostly on foot as I am. This is not my favourite time of year.

However, on Tuesday night I leave for Hannover, Germany on a lecturer exchange where I look longingly forward to the autumnal dankness of northern Europe.

The complete change in scenery, also the thrill of the psychogeography - the intersection of psychology and geography - excites me. 

I thrive, always, on my psychological experiences of cities, especially ones I don't yet know. It not only illuminates and reveals to me the forgotten, discarded, or marginalised aspects of the urban environment I'm losing myself in, but simultaneously - like a mirror - allows me the not always satisfying opportunity to reflect, to look backwards over my shoulder at the urban environment I've left behind me at home. 

Main Road, Obs

I got to Observatory just before The Night got there; we met on the unusually quiet Main Road. The streets, alleys, were more or less deserted and I knew that I had time enough to get in and out before the usual Friday night crowds ravaged the drag.

I was, other than the owner and his staff, the only patron in the venue. For now at least. Even the music was hardly audible when I walked in. Bliss.

Cafe Ganesh.

It's unique, off-beat and eccentric. A true melting pot that seamlessly blends all colours while ensuring that not a single soul loses its individuality.

Simple, sumptuous Afrocuisine. Fantastic music. Foreigners, and folk from all over the continent.

Took my usual candlelit table next to the tiny alcove that is the bar. It's the best vantage point from which to watch the passing parade; also the light from the bar, with my candle, provides enough light for me to write by. While, simultaneously, keeping me inconspicuous in the shadows.

I overheard a writer talking about another writer. Then he spoke, loudly, about himself: That he'd thrown up his university position because the institution stole his soul and the wasteful hours clashed with his writing time. Even so, it seems that his newfound freedom had come at a cost: I gathered that he was struggling. Of course, which now, he had all the time in the world to do.

This was overheard and gathered while I, myself, seemingly oblivious, was hunched over the page. Especially his haggling over the house wine prices was revealing. A sure giveaway. These additional insights into a man who's writing I deeply admire were indeed grist for another writer's mill.

I am most at home in this unpretentious establishment, drag (Main Road, Obs) and surrounding suburb.

*

However, what shook me the most last night while walking to Obs from Woodstock, was when I passed the home - where I've spent countless hours and shared as infinite conversations, meals and wine - of a now estranged and formerly best friend.

And his partner, we were all extremely close.

There was a 'sold' sign on the wall.

Seeing it there was like having a nail driven into my heart. I also knew then that there was no coming back from the edge of the abyss that was all that remained of our relationship.

The worst is that I still have no idea what happened to us, which is almost a year ago.

*

The days are getting longer. Despite the cold, summer is marching southwards, towards us.

“WRITE A SENTENCE AS CLEAN AS A BONE”

Writer James Baldwin would have turned 94 yesterday if he was still alive. 

I've often turned to him for writing advice, he was very good at providing it via the countless interviews with him over the years.

He has taught me to 'use every experience':

"One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. 

"Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

-from “Autobiographical Notes,” in the Collected Essays from Library of America

*

I took the photo last night while waiting for my bus in Darling Street, after my extremely good value chicken vindaloo curry at the Eastern Food Bazaar nearby. 

The main focus of my photo is the masterpiece of art deco building on the corner of Darling and Parliament streets: the Old Mutual Building (officially The Mutual Building). 

The building (take a look at these photos) "is often used often for movie shoots and now fully converted into an apartment block, known as Mutual Heights, rather than as corporate offices (it’s like stepping into a little piece of New York)."

The original design of the building, according to Wikipedia, "is attributed to Louw & Louw (Cape Town architects), working with Fred Glennie (best known at the time as a mentor to architectural students) – Mr Glennie is personally credited with most of the detailed work but Ivan Mitford-Barberton was also involved with some internal details as well as with the external granite decorations."

Then, when home, I gratefully crashed into bed and finished the last (increasingly bleak) pages of Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky.

Southern Tip: Zen and the art of road tripping

The Southern Cape coast has always powerfully and mysteriously fascinated me, thus drawn me to it.

It's big sky country: the southern ocean is expansive, never-ending. There's nada in your way, a definite sense that nothing stands between you and the world's end

It's the awesome, even overwhelming sense of being at Africa's tip: it is this far and no further.

The next stop, southwards, is Antarctica, about 6,900 km away.

To put that into perspective, bear in mind that the African continent measures about 8,000 km from north to south.

#

I had no idea where I was heading as I left Cape Town that midwinter's afternoon of my spontaneous road trip. It was the end of June. Merely days from the winter solstice, and this far south, the days were short.

There are only two main routes out of the city, the N1 or N2.

Thinking that I would head into the semi-desert Karoo - seeking breathing space and solitude - I began making my way towards the N1, which begins within sight of my bedroom window in Woodstock.

I was still uncomfortable in the hired car, also anxious. We were still strangers then. That would, naturally, change over the next ten days: The Zen of Hire Car Relationships.

I didn't get to the N1 - this national route runs from Cape Town in the south to the Beitbridge border post at Zimbabwe in the north over a distance of approximately 1937 km. Exactly when I saw a claustrophobic back-up of traffic en-route to the highway I shot awkwardly, abruptly down a side road. And decided to take my chances on the N2, whose source is also not too far away from home.

The N2, on the other hand, extends from Cape Town - along the Garden Route, through Knysna, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban - to Ermelo. It is the main highway along the Indian Ocean coast and languidly stretches for 2,255 kilometres. The longest numbered route in SA.

Far out of the city, or so it seemed for someone who mostly travels on foot, and on the N2, I hit another traffic snarl, just before Sir Lowry's Pass: freedom and expansiveness were so close, but the end of my patience was much closer. 

I saw it as further confirmation that I was due for a road trip, alone. 

Another spontaneous, sharp right turn off the beaten track at the Gordon's Bay sign. 

At that moment my mind was made-up; I'd take the quiet and less-travelled, much slower and spectacularly scenic R44 route along the coastline. Travelling beneath the Kogelberg, on the coast edge, towards Hermanus I'd see how far I got before dark before I felt content to stop. 

Rooi-Els, Pringle Bay, Betty's Bay, Kleinmond. 

Then another right turn on to the R43 past Fisherhaven, Hawston, Vermont, Onrus, Sandbaai, to Hermanus. 

#

I always pack books with me on my travels. Never too many though, as I want there to be a vacuum for the books that I'm sure to collect along the way.

I'd recently been gifted Henri Nouwen's The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom (1996, Doubleday). I had not yet even opened the sun-bleached hardback. As always it was meant to be and proved to be, invaluable company, even now.

As always, when you get yourself out of your own way - by slowing down, stopping, also pausing to (truly) listen, began a journey within a journey:

Work Around Your Abyss

There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes. 

Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it.

 
There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal.

- Henri Nouwen (p. 3)

#

I took the photo from Gearing's Point, over Hermanus's old historical harbour. It was shortly before the sun disappeared behind the mountains and few people were about in the sharp breeze. I pointed the lens in the direction I intended heading the next morning.

'The trees are in their autumn beauty'

Hello Sailor Bistro, Obs: I watch a woman in the window seat who's, in turn, watching passersby in the street.

She carefully, methodically and with an iron discipline lifts her latte to her lips; this so as not to draw attention to her shaking, trembling hands.

She's in the late autumn of her life.

I instinctively know that she's a kind person. Feeling nothing but tenderness towards her, I extend peace and love from my mind to hers.

Beautiful, gracious woman what, if I may ask, are your thoughts?

My road to Mecca

While I was gone only one plant died.
The rest survived the thirteen days without supervision.
Every day since returning I've watered, checked and prodded at the sandstone plant pot on my kitchen counter.
Ever hopeful.
Today, two tiny and fragile green shoots.
At last!
The drought, the death is over.
Life again.

I'd given up hope. Was wondering what my purpose was.
I don't believe that I've written a meaningful word since Meat Bomb last year.
Even my empty-feeling and sporadic blog posts petered out in January.
Right now I'm so filled with words and emotions that I'll explode: there'll be meat, gore and unfulfillment splattered everywhere as if I'd taken a pistol to my brain.
An exploded hand grenade of words; the most dangerous hand grenade of them all.

Last night, at the Fugard, I watched Athol Fugard's (how apt) The Road to Mecca. It unfolded on a one- and simple-set stage: Helen Martin's house in Nieu Bethesda, in my beloved Karoo.
Last night, in the gallery at the theatre, was my turning point: always keep lighting candles against The Darkness, which even leaks and oozes into us from the chimney.
Also, paint and paste your life full of colour and glitter, even if your hands are ruined and are made arthritic during the process of grinding multi-coloured shards of beer bottle glass. That's before then crushing them fine in an old-fashioned coffee grinder because you have nothing else.
Let your light and your freedom shine, despite how dark and constricting your jail cell might appear to be.

Also. I've fallen in love over the last three weeks. In the most unexpected way.
Not only does he guard his emotions to the point of expressionlessness, but he landed back in Bangkok three hours ago.
He's petrified of being hurt, again. I'm petrified of not risking to fall in love. Because life is short and love doesn't come around that often.
Perhaps our paths will never cross again, even though this country is his home.
Perhaps I'll never know how he truly feels, if he even feels. But, that's not the point: I loved when I could, and - in the moment - gave fully, freely and passionately of myself.

Getting older doesn't necessarily by any means mean less pain. But, I have - at least - learned to let someone walk across the open palms of my widespread hands. That as opposed to clenching them shut and trying desperately to control and to hold on. At all cost. Like I used to do. When younger and less alive.

He is free. I am free. My heart is wide open to life.

Again, exactly because my nerve ends are bloody raw and jagged, I know that I Alive.
Alive with a capital A.

Bosham

Sunday morning. I'm sitting with my first coffee. After having completed my Pages. My notebook is on my lap and I'm in my favourite place: on my old and comfortable wicker chair that's thrust up between my sunbed and against the full-length window, my plants.

My gaze: Over Woodstock and Devil's Peak, along with The Mountain, all of the way over the City Bowl and to Lion's Head, which just makes it inside of the far right edge of my vision's frame.

Blue sky and bright-golden sunshine; I should get out today. And take the bus to Hout Bay. So as to walk, barefoot, the sandy length of one of Cape Town's less populated, and least pretentious beaches. To feel sea sand and ocean between my toes, against my skin.

Against the peace and stillness of this morning, which is the same quiet and contentment that overfills me, BBC3 is playing; it's the least intrusive of the bouquet of radio stations that I allow, quietly, into my space.

Yesterday, despite the south-easter doing its utmost to put me off leaving the flat, I made it out and in-between things ended up walking 10 km; I also made it to the 6pm mass at St. Micheal's in Rondebosch and took communion. It caught my attention that there was neither a black or brown face in the entire congregation, very few youths too.

By chance, and as I'm typing these words a bell is chiming. I believe that it belongs to Woodstock's St Agnes's Catholic Church.

**

Every day, for inspiration, I read a short chapter of Natalie Goldberg's 'Writing Down the Bones'; the words are what pierced my consciousness today, especially since the concept of 'freedom' emerged strongly in my morning pages:

'There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it. It is not getting sidetracked, thinking you shouldn't write any more [about whatever your writing obsessions are].'

It feels like I've not written a single meaningful word since returning from Uganda in September. Nor, I believe, a single meaningful blog post, which are in any case rare. My toxic perfectionism gets so badly in the way. Of many things.

**

The bell is still tolling and it's piercing me in a wonderful way that I cherish.

**

Despite the sunshine's warmth and brightness, also the cobalt sky, my heart yearns today for the far north, which is where I spent three precious weeks spread around Christmas and New Year.

The moodiness, moisture, cold were in stark contrast to the drought and tinderbox dryness of home; in the last week it has finally hit home to everyone: it's almost a guarantee that Cape Town will be the first major city globally to run out of water.

Bosham, which I spent an afternoon exploring, for the first time, is a coastal village about 2 miles west of Chichester. In West Sussex. Inhabited since Roman times and, like much of the area around Chichester, it is believed to have played a significant role way back in A.D. 43 when the Romans invaded England.

The Friday before last

We had rain this week, on Wednesday and Thursday. Not much, but enough to increase my heartbeat.

Today, as I type these words, Woodstock is bathed in rich, bright sunshine and The Mountain is stark, huge before me in the sky. The south-easter is rushing over the top of Table Mountain and storms, batters the few trees and tall palms in this suburb that's sparse of nature, vegetation.

My orphan orchid is alive with three large beautifully speckled flowers; another orchid, also taken home with me for care from somewhere that I forget, is bursting with unopened buds; even now as I look up at the plant I'm expecting it to reveal itself while I blink. It'll be the first time since I took it in that this one will flower.

In between work and marking I've put on a machine wash, guiltily, because of the drought, even though I've got my washing down to a once every two weeks event. The news about the lack of water in the city as the so-called rainy season draws to an end has not been good, although I'm not sure how much of the negativity is a result of politicking. Irrespective, it's not looking good and water is being rationed.

Also, there are still hundreds of metres of razor wire around my university's campuses and heavily armed private security at its entrances. Even so, today, there was an arson attack in the Engineering building.

My plants are thriving in the warmer spring weather.

Tonight I'll get myself off to an art movie at the Labia. I'll take a cup of steaming and aromatic gluhwein and heavily salted popcorn into the cinema with me; it's a Friday night ritual.

Last Friday. I wrote this the Friday before last but forgot to post it.

Beach urchin

It's silent in my home. Except for the strong and constant wind, outside, tearing at the building as if it were a flag or an old sailing ship at sea.

The Mountain is stark and large, also reassuring, against the morning sky. It fills my vision.

The windswept streets of Woodstock are quiet and whimsically sparse as if they were in a typical Western before a shoot-out, sans tumbleweed.

I'm grateful it's not Saturday morning with the usual throngs heading towards the Old Biscuit Mill amidst the shrill, often piercing whistling of self-appointed car guards parking their short-term investments.

I know that it will be good for me to get outside today.

My street urchin of an orchard has three magnificent and hope-inspiring blooms, that have all opened in the last week. Another orchid, that I rescued from someone's sun-beaten patio, is in bud. It's not flowered before under my care and I'm curious as to what the flowers will look like.

I'm on the couch surrounded by the books I'm currently reading, nothing's really holding me, also an empty coffee cup with a sludge of coffee grounds at the bottom; they escaped the French press.

I'm thinking of walking into town, I need to stretch my legs, then on to Nerona's at the top end of Buitenkant street for a chicken salad and chilled glass of chardonnay. And a change in scenery.

I'm hoping that the wind won't be blowing there.

I think back to last Wednesday's dawn walk along Muizenberg's long stretch of beach; I'm sorry now that I didn't take a chance - despite the cold - to swim and to jump-start myself alive again.

When an owl calls your name

Then in the last of the dusk, with bats silently on the wing, the icy wind stilled, the traffic on the main road that is the peninsula's spine lessened, we walked home in the descended peace alongside the demure lagoon.

I'd missed the last train back to the city and would spend the night here. In a house filled with passionate art, unfinished canvasses on easels, candles and books.

Muizenburg has not an uptight nor pretentious bone to it, although that's not always been the case. Yet, even while I'm told that danger lurks in its streets, I don't feel even slightly threatened, nor at risk. Perhaps it's the heady combination of red wine and the joys of an old and robust friendship that flood my veins, arteries, making me more unhindered than I should, perhaps, be.

I'm excited for the change in my routine that this welcome but unanticipated night in Muizenburg will afford me: other smells, sights, sounds; the moon too is different; another bed; foreign coffee.

While I'd left Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita' at my bedside, I had brought along his 'Speak, Memory' for the train ride (I'd finally gotten to Nabokov). Even so, once in the house, Kleinboer's 'Midnight Missionary' grabbed my attention and although I'd been resistant to reading it for years now, I took it to bed.

Also Ryk Hattingh's 'Huilboek'. Hattingh had died earlier in the day of a heart attack, in New Zealand where he and family had relocated to. Merely two week's ago he'd visited SA to collect an award and prize money for this, his latest novel. The novel, in Afrikaans, he had written in-between working as a cobbler and locksmith in Auckland.

My friend, she'd worked with him, recounted stories from his life, their life moments together; this was in-between fielding calls from the small circle of friends who were also recounting shared tales in-between expressing their grief, their loss.

This as my lids slid lower and bed beckoned.

When an owl calls your name...

Salt spray

With a water bottle, my notebook, pen, and my day pack hugging my back I took the southern line train to Kalk Bay late on Tuesday afternoon.

I read for most of the almost hour-long journey, a relaxing and favourite train ride of mine, despite the bad, sad state of our railways

Cappuccino and a slab of carrot cake over my notebook. This while sitting right up against Olympia Cafe's shopfront window. I was avoiding the icy chill of the cold front, which had dumped snow on the mountains in the country's interior.

To sporadically look up from my notebook and cake - with cappuccino foam on my upper lip or nostrils - at the colourful fishing boats in today's quite and docile harbour is another priceless joy.

Then, the only person in the shop other than the bespectacled manageress who peered over the top of her frame when I greeted her,  I wondered around Kalk Bay Books; they've normally got an array of unusual and difficult to find fiction and non-fiction carefully chosen and exhibited on the handful of tables on the shop floor.

On my last visit there were at least six titles I had scribbled on my list and would loved to have purchased. But I didn't have enough money with me for even one. This time, with money in my pocket, there wasn't a single edition of anything that caught my eager eye. That was a first for me.

Then, taking the coastal path between the ocean and the railway line, I walked the approximately four kilometres to Muizenburg: I needed the change of scenery, the tangy saltiness of the Indian Ocean in my nostrils and lungs, also to feel the adolescent summer sun on my skin. Also, the time to process things, me and my life, which walking briskly always seems to coax.

It was good to unwind and to consciously shrug off the anxiety that has been dogging my ankles like a persistent street dog for days now.

I was walking towards a carafe of red wine with old friends in a bohemian bistro/bar in quiet but for the skateboarders York Street: Oroboros. Friends of many years and much water under the bridge; another of life's priceless gifts.

Shell of St. James

I've mostly secluded myself in the flat and my bedroom since getting back. It's in preparation for the onslaught of humanity that I'll be inundated by with for the next university term. There'll be no respite except at night, but that will be an anxious respite in the swirl that is lectures, preparation for those lectures, marking, one-on-one contact with people, endless admin, work on my doctorate. While I dread this now, I know that by tomorrow morning when I wake, I'll be straight back into the flow and rush of it all.

Late yesterday in the fast approaching and moody dusk I escaped my bed and pile of books, the growing pile of dishes littering the kitchen counter, to Nic and Mike in Obs: to drink wine with them, to sit by their fire, to enjoy the two needy dogs, some pages of my book, for a hot cooked and tasty meal, to disappear (down the rabbit hole) into their large-screen gateway into Netflix, Google Earth, YouTube, which is more than I ever allow myself at home.

After a quick walk in the park with Nic and the dogs, also to pick up some vegetables for supper at Obs Spar, the rain came down. It's been a week since the last downpour I'm told. It used to be the other way around: known as the Cape of Storms, I remember the rain coming down for - often - a week at an end, then a mere clear day or two betwixt the next onslaught sent from Antarctica. Now, we're most grateful for any crumbs we might have from Nature's table; last night's train hopefully filled a mug.

At 22h30 I slunk back home despite being offered the couch; I much prefer my own bed and to wake in my own space, alone, silent, centered. 

My body is rested after this three-week vacation, my mind not so much.

I've received two sets of related good news: firstly, a few weeks ago, I heard that a non-fiction short story I'd written was long-listed in a writing competition. As I got back to Cape Town, I heard that it had been short-listed, which came with an invitation to attend and speak at a writing festival in Uganda. Here, in late August, the winner will be announced. This was a welcome answer to two of my intentions I broadcast earlier this year; to travel more, in particular within my continent; to write much more as I feel a heart's urge to shift from a lifetime of journalism to nonfiction and fiction writing.

I'm alone again today, at my desk in silence, and in deep inner peace. The ticking of my pomodoro timer app, the aroma of dark blend Italian coffee and chocolate biscuits, the company of my silent but flourishing plants, the phone on airplane mode, Devil's Peak, Table Mountain and Woodstock bathed in bright winter sunshine whenever I lift my eyes from the keyboard.

Despite my anxiety at the busy-ness and stress of the next few months, I'm deeply grateful for my apartment, my warm bed, my hot shower, my job, my life in Cape Town, my handful of friends, my books, the opportunities to travel, to write, and the desire to strive towards constantly simplifying and streamlining my life in this the second and calmer half of my life journey.

Another intention I aim to broadcast is my determination to walk, alone (and to be open to whatever life puts across my path) the full length of the Camino des Santiago. This is an ancient 800 km (500 miles) pilgrimage between St. Jean Pied-du-Port in France - across the Pyrenees, and westwards across Spain approximately 100 km (60 miles) south of the coast - and the shrine of the apostle St. James the Great in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. It'll mean passing through Pamplona, Burgos, Leon, and many smaller villages and towns. I've held this desire for a few years now, that is to walk this 'way of St James' as a personal spiritual retreat.

The sun, suddenly, is gone and there's a smattering of fat raindrops across the window at my desk; I can distinctly make out the sheet of rain that's heading across the city bowl and this way. I instinctively shiver and pull the heater closer.

The scallop shell (of St. James), often found on the shores in Galicia, is the symbol of the Camino de Santiago; it also acts as a metaphor: 

"The grooves in the shell, which meet at a single point, represent the various routes pilgrims traveled, eventually arriving at a single destination: the tomb of James in Santiago de Compostela. The shell is also a metaphor for the pilgrim: As the waves of the ocean wash scallop shells up onto the shores of Galicia, God's hand also guides the pilgrims to Santiago."

Tentacles

The walks out of the town at the end of the day without my phone, forced to be alone with my mind and whatever was offered up by Nature, in its winter beauty, provided both clarity and vision. Especially at this, the halfway mark of the year.

A year that has sped past. I'm regretfully preparing for an even speedier second half. Again, mostly alone I slammed on the brakes - reading, gardening, bathing, watching the birds in the fountain, sitting by the fire - at my humble place in Mpumalanga province.

I'm back in Cape Town, which despite being greener than when I left here almost three weeks ago, is still limping along drought stricken. It's the rainy winter season here and there's hardly been any rain. I've noticed that the narrative has changed: at first, it was about when the winter rains arrive, now it's about the fact that this is our new reality - our climate has changed, ours is a drier, bleaker future. What frightens me is the pace at which our winters have been transformed: in the four years here I've watched the tap being closed, tighter every year so far.

Monday I'm back at university and who knows what the next few months hold; I'm slightly apprehensive, anxious. I'm well rested though. But apprehensive, anxious. For the last two years we 'lost' the fourth quarter to student protests for free education. I'm on the students' side. But the violence unsettles me, also the incredible pressure it puts on the lecturers and the students themselves. It's a time spent treading water and feeling helpless and overwhelmed.

This afternoon I'm in limbo: on my bed surrounded by books, which I hop between - "hither and thither, restless as mosquito larvae swimming across a stagnant" pond (Derek Jarman in Modern Nature) - and coffee cups, a french press, my laptop too. I'd like to get out into the bright winter sunshine before tomorrow's cold-front arrives, although at the same time I'm reticent at the thought of showering (we're allowed 87 litres of water each daily) and dressing and bussing.

To go where to achieve what?

I must resist my negative state of mind; I must remind myself of all that I have, of how blessed my life is. My heart is wide open to life.

My Western Front

From the promenade at Queen's Beach, Seapoint.

I was at my desk and feeling guilty for, mostly, being at it and indoors for the whole of that day. 

At 4 pm I couldn't anymore. 

I showered and then took the bus at 16h30 to the far side of Seapoint: Queen's Beach to be exact. 

From there, hugging the coastline, I walked with a bounce in my stride all of the way to Camps Bay. 

From just before its main drag, I watched the sunset, which was showing itself off. Then, dunk, it was gone.

Had fish 'n chips, grilled calamari and a carafe of white wine at Ocean Basket while scribbling in my notebook; this while intermittently observing the Camps Bay Saturday evening strip get busier as people, many of them tourists, emerged for drinks, cocktails, dinner. This as the clammy but exhilarating reek of the icy Atlantic seeped upwards from the beach, then crossed Victoria road, leaking into the restaurants and shopfronts. 

Then, away from the lights and madding crowds, I decided to walk back to town,  this time over Kloof Nek. Out of breath from the climb and over the saddle that separates Table Mountain and Lion's Head apart, straight into the bright lights and rowdiness of the city bowl. This sudden transition, not unlike flicking a light switch, from the relative darkness, silence, and obscurity above Camps Bay in the lee of the Twelve Apostles. It was like walking onto a brightly-lit stage before a packed to the gills auditorium.

Strode down Kloof Street, a fast-flowing steam of raucosness for its pulsating length, where my instincts warned me to be alert and on guard.

Just in time, I managed to catch the last 102 home to Salt River from Darling Street at 21h20. Alighting from the bus at Salt River Circle and into the hushed darkness among the softly catcalling prostitutes on Lower Main, before walking the last stretch home in the metallic light along the facade of the Biscuit Mill, still disgorging restaurant goers, still on gaurd and scanning the road, before a quick right into Mill Street, an even quicker sh'rt right into Bromwell.

The Three Feathers was already in darkness with its gates bolted, my contentious back Street quiet, me the only one on its length, before bathing in the bright security lights at the back of my apartment block. Elevator upwards, then the darkness and familiar homely scent and silence of my apartment. With its, always, jaw-dropping view over Woodstock, with Devil's Peak almost invisible as a mute hunchbacked backdrop.

Clinging to the edge of Bantry Bay, just after Seapoint, the view that most miss.

To bed with Adam Feinstein's biography of Pablo Neruda, wherein I'm approaching the end of his life and the first signs of the prostate cancer that took him from it. 

Just over 16,000 steps, my muscles strained with exercise and tiredness, almost exactly 11 km later, all's quiet on my Western Front.