Ripped and rippled / Cause and effect

A people-free day filled with sleep, books, silent words between desk and bed. 

Sale Christmas cake and a French press of coffee. 

Turn on the lamp in my corner on the world. 

Last night the lower slopes of Devil's Peak burned before my eyes. 

Today's the fourth flat-out day of howling, tearing, ripping, shredding wind; I adore the forced isolation. 

Tomorrow back to work after a month of conflicting emotions and time with people. 

New chapter. Varying irons in different fires; variously shaped pebbles launched not on the whim into ponds and puddles, let's see what comes back on the ripples.

A chapter of words and writing and related travel.

A year of sleeping alone. Future tense. Choice. Peace and freedom. 

Dusk through a dusty window; my kingdom for a few days away alone with my thoughts in the remote and dry-aired, big-sky Karoo, maybe on a farm called Klapperbos. 

Perspective before the rush and roar of the next 365.

Looking back (and forward)

I never finished this blog post on Wednesday, 5th November: Guy Fawkes day:

I took this photo of the twelve apostles on the winter day I arrived to live in Cape Town last year. It was the 3rd of July, the day before Independence Day, which has always been, symbolically, an important day for me over the years. It was also on 4 July 1995 that I threw up a job at a media house run by a dictator to go freelance as a journalist, a space I've more or less occupied up until now.

Taking the mycitibus between Camps Bay and Hout Bay and back on Sunday afternoon reminded me of this photo, also of the jaw-dropping and inspirational beauty of that stretch of coastline.

I leave for Prague this evening. Already, even though snowed under, I'm in a retrospective frame of mind. More than anything about this trip I'm looking forward to some perspective, from another continent, on my city and country, as well as a lens to look back at how I have lived, how I've occupied my 'new' life and work over the last sixteen months.

For one thing I know that I've burnt myself out, badly, also that I have seeped into a quagmire of listlessness and low-level depression; that I've taken too much on in the last four months and the result is that, again, I've (temporarily) lost my joie de vivre, that currently I'm a husk of myself.

Nevertheless I have to pack my and I've a flight to catch.

  

Heart most pliable

On the early evening of 31 March I began a blog entry with these words, "Sitting at a Iocked country gate...", and never got further.
It turned out a disastrous evening slopping over with wrong choices made in my Ego; and with disregard and disdain for those who loved and trusted me.
In retrospect, and that's why I'm posting this and the pic I took at the time - as a stark and brutal reminder to myself - that a life of love, gentleness, kindness and respect for ALL is the only life, is life.
It was also a reminder that I must not unnecessarily open doors...especially when I was warned in advance by my intuition, by my own damn-hard-earned common sense.
Keep dangerous doors shut, it's just not worth the grief and emptiness that comes not far behind the all too widespread seeking for instant gratification. (Keep it simple and streamlined I've learned; think before you turn the handle: where could this take you, and how long before you're back at this intersection and can make amends, and take the less obvious, but peace-filled path into the forest?)
But, it was one of the beginnings of my fall...since then, I am most grateful and humbled to write, my soul has been sifted and my former skin sloughed: the combination was excruciatingly painful (way beyond my descriptive skills), and not that the process is necessarily, nor completely done with me yet.
I am a better man for it; a humbler, kinder, and more loving and lovable one too, and that's while acknowledging, fully, my many, many fault-lines.
And with jagged-ragged-and-raw nerve ends I've stared into depression's inferno-abyss: I'll never be the same again; thank God.
My heart is pliable; which is probably my saving grace, and why I'm not dead (on every level).

11 February 1990

From: NELSON MANDELA'S ADDRESS TO A RALLY IN CAPE TOWN ON HIS RELEASE FROM PRISON 20 YEARS AGO TODAY

"...Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way. Universal suffrage on a common voters' role in a united democratic and non-racial South Africa is the only way to peace and racial harmony.

In conclusion I wish to quote my own words during my trial in 1964. They are true today as they were then:

'I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.'"

[The photo was taken by my Cape Town-based friend, and journalist, Andrew October: "Lightning storm lights the night sky over Llandudno, near Hout Bay, around 4am yesterday morning." ]