Travels: Fresh winds, a warmer sea, some snow and a battered novel

I've done some travelling. It's been good for my head. As a result, I've had my most energised and productive week, since getting back to campus on Monday, in years.

In my first week of vacation, I work up on the first Wednesday morning, went online, hired a car. I collected it at 12h00 the same day, then left Cape Town by three without a plan in place nor with an accommodation booking made. Liberating.

Ten days later after driving 2,500 km, I returned the car. I'd spent one night in Hermanus, two nights in Nature's Valley on the Western Cape's border with the Eastern Cape, before driving on to Grahamstown.

For three days I was at the 44th National Arts Festival and, just, in time to hear that the small frontier (at least still so in my mind) city's name had been changed. Then, just after a snowfall, I drove to Hogsback where I spent a few days before winding back home via Port Elizabeth, the Karoo, and a night in Roberston.

Winter cold; blazing hearths; lots of braaing of meals, almost every evening, and even quite a few mornings.

Despite the winter cold, interrupted weirdly by some balmy days, I relished my time in Grahamstown, the seat of my alma mater Rhodes University. Everywhere I walked I could tick off emotion-rich events that had taken place all over the city; it was also where I was intellectually emancipated, a process heightened by the fact that I'd just been vomited out of an involuntary two-year stint in the apartheid state's army.

I took the above photo one night, late, on my way back to my basic accommodation. It's the Anglican Cathedral of St. Michael and St. George at the intersection of High Street and Hill Street, Grahamstown.

Throughout the road trip, I was reading Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-93, by one of my favourite writers, Paul Bowles. I also picked up a battered 1973 Penguin edition of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent for a mere R10 at the Red Cafe in Grahamstown's High Street.

Bottleneck

When things get hectic, especially for extended periods, I forget to look up. If you're not going to look up, how on earth can you inspire on the holiday blue of the sky?

The photo was my first 'look up' after my chairing of a 'state of the media' event in the Fugard Theatre, at the Open Book Festival, on Saturday. It's a cold photo (taken just around the corner from the Fugard, while walking up Buitenkant street), and as many of mine are, absolutely devoid of people; there is, however, if you look carefully, one seagull whose name is Jonathan Livingstone. Lee introduced me to him far back in March 2012, in Mpumalanga of all places, far from the sea, but he'stravelled far and wide, with me.

In the screen of my tablet, as I type these words, I clearly see my unshaven face; my dark and bristling jaw, except for the grey on the chin, accentuates the lines around my eyes and makes me look older. Which means I look my real age.

Also in the screen I can see, less clearly though, the kitchen counter that's piled with dishes and the untidiness of just over two weeks. That I hate. Between leaving for Grahamstown on 5 September - then almost immediately to Joburg - and today, I've been in a life-bottleneck of note, not unlike the confluence of the buildings in the pic, where very varied strands of life (every one a different architectural style and period) converge and heighten blood pressure, stress levels.

Neverthless I swoop and swoon on the currents of the words-and-sentences-and-paragraphs of the writers and their work, from all across the word, that I flailed myself with over the last five days of the festival. And, like Jonathan, I squawk in joy and aliveness.  

To hell with the dishes, and the un-made bed, also my ragged jawline and the lines around the eyes, I'm drunk with words and writers and life. And the sky's a holiday blue. 

New Street razor blade

What good is it if I can't be honest.

That's not a question.

The typed up posts hovering on the edge in Blogger that I may not even dare push 'send' on, because they will startle (dear reader).

So I sit, again, pent up with words-and-my-truth in a Cape Town coffee shop processing my travels-thoughts-desires-fears-truths to Grahamstown and back, then straight afterwards to Johannesburg and back. To New Street and back, To hell and back.

Gutsless I am.

This is Charles Bukowski stuff. 

This is Hunter S. Thompson stuff.

I shall never 'succeed' as writer as long as I censor myself.

Succeed is in inverted commas because I don't give a fuck about succeed in a worldly sense (I'm in the world but, unarrogantly, I'm not of it).

New Street becomes Prince Alfred Street; along that jugular have I slid the razor blade of my life.

I'm in a week of bleakness; my heart desires to burst and splatter from my chest cage; my jaw muscles are swolen hamster-like with stress-and-pressure.

It's a beautiful day, most un-Springlike.

The rain comes, as does spring

The days, the weeks, the months are flying rapidly by; spring has come early this year and I'm astounded that bar a few more (possibly freezing) cold spells, we are through the so-called 'worst' of winter.

After a week of fantastic spring weather that saw the inhabitants of this city flock in what I call 'champagne weather' to its coastlines, forests, parks, botanic gardens and mountains, the rain is again hurtling against roofs and windows. While The Mountain and city remain well hidden beneath a voluptuous elephant-grey duvet.

It's within this moodiness that I thrive: on fire-full hearths and the Cape's finest red wine, on Arabica coffe and toasted chocolate and almond croissants seeped in Belgium chocolate. This is the Cape's secret season.

Right now, like identical beads on a necklace, the days seep into each other while pressure and stress tenderise my shoulder muscles: even so I love my life, also the city that has adopted me, and a 'job' that embraces me, dances closely with me.

I'm happlily teaching an extra two evening classes, but they sap any remaining spare time that I had. The extra work is part of my now much shorter-term plan to completely free myself from debt's chains. My life is more streamlined and simplified than ever before - I'm champing at the bits as I sniff the hints of freedom in the air.

In the first week of September I'm savouring a trip to my alma mater, Rhodes University, in the Eastern Cape's Grahamstown. In fact, I cannot wait.

I'm also waiting to hear about a trip to Prague and the Czech Republic in early November; although it's going to stretch me intellectually - long story - I am embracing stretchment (new word). I am especially excited about seeing new shapes of noses, eyes, eyebrows, shades of skin, bone structures and lilting languages that are in such contrast to the ones on the streets that spiral and network around me right now. I long to taste other flavours, to look at a different sky and to plug into a history so startlingly different to my own.

Life is moving so fast right now,  that I savour these valuable coffee breaks - on my own and with myself - beneath the rain and away from the distracting knocks on my office door.

It's a beautiful day; life is beautiful. I am alive and blessed.

  

Port Edward

Lent broken with a glass of dry red, it's going down singing hymns.
Easter Sunday was wonderfully overcast, very grey and wet. Bed was the best place to stay, especially after 8 months of relentless challenges and stress, with very little room and space to rest, to regroup.
This Holy long weekend has been just that - a respite. In grace.
Baking in the autumn, sub tropical-sticky sun I'm again starting to look ahead... and my mind is whirling. First response was fear and insecurity at the task ahead, while my second - and ordered - response was one appreciating the just how much, and the great quality, of the water that has passed under the bridge.
Sun on my skin, salt air in my lungs, sea sand scrubbing toe and feet skin... joy. Great joy. (The sexiest is the pale skin, out of bounds and out of sun sight...those stories will come at another time.)
Despite the eight month 'respite', and having produced the worst, longest and most meaningless string of words (under pressure) ever, I know that mine - in the humblest sense - is the path through the forest strewn with words.
Best of all, here on the KZN / Eastern Cape border, Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown are NOT far away. In this year I will be back...

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Cold front

These pics are from dusk on Tuesday as the cold front hit Grahamstown and ripped through the city. I've been chasing it the whole day, for 1000km now. Just behind it, sometimes driving through hail, I finally drove into its eye outside Warden in Free State. For the next hour my car was lashed by rain and a howling wind; I loved it.

1000km is a lot of thinking time: if Highway Africa was the journalistic 'mountain top' experience, then my journey today has been the slide back down into the valley of reality, implementation and the grind of challenges. A community newspaper in SA in a recession, also while they're becoming extinct in the rest of the world, is frontier territory.

I've just stopped at Steers in Ermelo for coffee, fast food and to stretch my legs. I've got another 2hours minimum to go before I'm home and can sleep...albeit in the very battleground itself.

Grocott's Citizen Journalism Centre launched

In the same year Nelson Mandela was released, as a first year journ student at Rhodes, I walked into the editor's office at the Grocott's Mail - SA's oldest surviving independent newspaper - and asked Jill Joubert (who had a lit fag perpetually hanging from her mouth) if I could work for the newspaper. For free. I needed experience, especially as only 80 of over 200 journ students would make it into second year.

Tonight, many years later, the mayor of Grahamstown cut the ribbon at the opening of the new Grocott's Citizen Journalism centre that will see the paper and its website open to the citizens of of the area... they will be able to directly impact the content of the paper, whether by submitting a story and pics at the 10 PC stations in their main street office, or via sending sms's and mms's directly to their uniquely 'home-developed' Nika Content Management System (that I had the privilege of test driving this afternoon) that will see the content delivered straight into the news editor's in-box.

This conference has been an incredible meeting of dynamic, creative minds from right across the world. And every one of the delegates seem to have their hearts in the right place.

The virus is in my blood. What's the big deal?

"I am Beauty Mbewe from the Malawi Institute of Journalism. I'm a 49-year old woman, almost 50 now, and I've been living with the virus for 18 years now.

"Journalists always focus on people in the last stages of of their life. Why don't they document the lives of people like me. People don't believe me when I tell them I'm positive. Document lives like mine.

"I've been taking antiretrovirals since December 2005, they are working well. Ask me about how I live: I don't live with pain, like someone with arthritis would, for example. The virus is in my blood. I don't even feel it. What is the big deal?

"My husband died 8 years ago, that's how I got infected. I have three kids, all of them I've seen through university. Who would've looked after them? That inspires me to keep going.

"I'm a normal human being and I'm going to live for the next 50 years... ."

Phelps House

It's a magnificent spring day (that has the potential to turn into a scorcher) in Grahamstown as Highway Africa 13.0 gathers momentum. Right now there's no where else I'd rather be.
I'm also looking forward to wandering through the City of Saints' streets and allleys, also to enjoying some coffee time with me.

Is it me Lord?

Right now I'm on a bus half way between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth. It's an ugly afternoon with the colour bleached out of it, which pretty much matches my emotional state. We're on our way to visit the new 2010 soccer stadium in Port Elizabeth, where we will meet the 2010 managing committee's CEO, Danny Jordaan, also (as guests of MTN), celebrate the opening of the Highway Africa segment of the 4-day conference.

This morning I attended the 09h30 mass at the magnificent Grahamstown Cathedral, something I had never done whem I was here as a student. The mass, an Anglican one I believe, lasted close on two hours. The mass was mostly sung (3 choirs!) and what added incredible emphasis was that the cathedral was filled to overflowing with all the pupils of St. Andrews private boys school. They only attend mass once a term, and their singing was enough to prickle my flesh.

Road trip: Highway Africa 2009

Aliwal North: Although right now I'm sitting on the Eastern Cape side of the Orange River - in heat reminiscent of summer's end, spring's very beginning - hurriedly downing a Windhoek Lager and a chicken schitzel, this road trip actually started 800km ago late yesterday afternoon.

I'm on my way to Grahamstown for the Digital Citizen Indaba that starts tomorrow morning and runs until Sunday afternoon. It's followed by the 13th Highway Africa Digital Journalism conference that opens with a dinner on Sunday evening. Funny enough, and I wonder why (has it got anything at all to do with the 2010 world cup soccer?), the dinner is being held at the 'splinter nuut' soccer stadium in Port Elizabeth, 120km away from Grahamstown.

Tonight - I admit it might be ambitious - I'm aiming to sleep in the artist's forest village of Hogsback. It's in the cool and misty Amatola Mountains of the old Ciskei apartheid-homeland (maybe they were also just trying to be creative in their very own special way). Hogsback is 49km along a gravel road from Cathcart.

I first scoured these backways of the Stormberg region (and have been passionately in love with them ever since) as a long-haired, over-principled and vegetarian journalism and English Literature student at Rhodes University. These particular wanderings began in the very same year that Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island. I remember well the celebrations at my so-called 'English liberal' university.

'The trees are in their autumn beauty...'

Those are the first words of my favourite poet, William Butler Yeats' 'Wild Swans at Coole', which first enthralled me in high school, then in my first year at Rhodes. Those words always come to haunt me every autumn as the leaves start turning, as the wind begins to whisper of change and as the sky's summer blue makes an initially hardly noticeable transition to cobalt, all heralding winter in the south.

Lying on a blanket at the bottom of my garden, writing my morning pages and having quiet time I had a suprise visit from a yellowed, velvet soft leave from the peach tree above. In that moment a life time of autumns fluttered past my eyes: army days, walking with Linda Marais in the park at Albert's Farm, Hampstead Heath, Emmarentia Dam, Grahamstown, Nature's Valley, Nieu Bethesda (contemplating the end of a relationship), Easter time in Philipollis and then Port Elizabeth, also Schoenmakerskop... walks along the ocean with my long hair tousled, salt air on my lips, in my eys, gulped deliciously deep into my melancholy lungs.

All of that memory, and much more, was released through the frail but beautiful yellow leaf on my page. My life. And to know I'm going to die in my eightieth year... to happily know.