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.

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.

Blood of the gods

I'm fondly remembering the drive along Chapman's Peak that we took early in December.

It was from Hout Bay to Noordhoek, before we stopped, again, at the Lighthouse Pub and Grill in Kommetjie; it's a favourite and calm place where I feel that I'm suitably far from the city.

Summer was in full bloom that day and there was not a single thought in anyone's head of the winter. Understandably so as we'd not even reached the climactic summer equinox.

Endless days overflowed with sunshine and light.

The peninsula was tinderbox dry, fires threatened the landscape, the sky so blue and without end, that it seemed possible to see all the way to Brazil, even to Antarctica if one but only stared long and hard enough.

Water restrictions and summer holidays were on the air.

Last week it rained. The first time in ages. With eyes closed, I breathed in deeply the distinctive 'wet road' smell of rain on hot tarmac.

There's apparently a word for that scent -Petrichor - that describes the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. Derived from the Greek, it's a combination of "stone", and "īchṓr," which was the very fluid that flowed in the veins of Greek mythology's gods.

It was during the rain that I had a sense of the approaching autumn and, hopefully, the winter downpours that I so clearly remember. And yearn for. Although one can't take anything for granted these climate change days. We hope it's merely a drought that will soon come to an end. However, I have my doubts: not only was it reported in 2016 that SA is experiencing its worst drought in 100 years, but in January it was confirmed that we're now breaking global temperature records once every three years. I dread that this might be our new reality going forward.

I come alive in the wet and moody weather that can see Table Mountain disappeared for days in an elephant-grey shroud.

Today, too, has just a hint of autumn in it, also, the days are undeniably shorter; I'm grateful for less light and that it's duskish when I wake.

The wind's gusting and Woodstock has a shininess about it; it looks bright and unusually beautiful: my hood.

During the last two weeks, words, not unlike big fat raindrops have flowed from me. I experience gratefulness at that: I'm a less parched than before, less parched than last year.

Please, may it be the last of my drought?

Rain 1

The winter Rain has (hopefully) arrived. It slashed my bedroom window on Wednesday night and obliterated the harbour and distant Robben island from my sight.

My sigh was one of deep relief.

The weather in Cape Town has been horribly upside down because of the El Nino effect AND climate change. Record temperatures. Records are being broken in the worst possible sense:

March temperature smashes 100-year global record

Great Barrier Reef: 93% of reefs hit by coral bleaching

Florida wakes up to climate change

Greenland sees record-smashing early ice sheet melt

2015 smashes record for hottest year, final figures confirm

SA is under the tyranny of its worst drought in a century and 2015 was the driest year ever. I tentatively hope we're at the tail end of it, well of this session of it.

It leaves me horribly unsettled about now, and the immediate future. The long-term one is a foregone fuck up; I believe that it's just too damn late.

Perhaps, selfishly, I'm grateful I don't and won't have children... I could not 'gift' them this.

It's Earth Day.