Flaneur; my back to the wall

It's with my back to the wall that I can watch the world. While remaining as unnoticeable as possible. To blend in. I'm not one for attracting attention. But I'm rather tall. That's why the wall.

It is the most perfect day to have chosen to leave the house.

Driving up the road instead of down, even though it's slightly longer and uphill, I choose it for the momentary glimpse of the Ocean. Looking down while swinging right my breath is taken away in wonder. Every time. I live here!

It's the same reason that I take the M4 to Umhlanga, then Durban, instead of the much speedier freeway that cuts through happy-making swathes of sugarcane. The slower drive with windows wide open and endless glimpses of the mighty Indian. Whether reduced rain sky vision, or universe-wide cobalt skies that suck my very eyeballs out of their sockets and to the end-and-over-the-very-edge of my earth.

I love this subtropical city of sunshine, shorts and slip-slops no matter the time of year.

Gateway is Saturday packed, and airconditioning cool. Just below the ridge Umhlanga 'village' simmers on the Ocean edge; it's all that's between me and the containered ships awaiting entry to Durban harbour before heading back up Africa's eastern coast to Europe through Suez or striking out towards India, China and Japan.

With my back against the wall sipping coffee and typing notes, I can see as far as I want.  My only limitation is me. Me.

Home alone

I've not left the house for a few days now.

The black cat sits on a pile of books by the window; she's tightly hunched against the coolness and the greyness of the day. She's black-smooth-velvet against the deep-dark green of the tree that reaches, grabs more closely daily for my window.

My tea steeps on the bedside table; the fat Penguin edition Paul Theroux I'm currently reading - My Other Life: A Novel - is a little further away, right under the desk fan, I'd have to reach out of my way for it. Its contents, what I've read so far, are coursing through my veins, deliciously steeping in my brain juices. 

I bought the handsome secondhand copy for a mere R20 at the Ballito SPCA charity shop from a faded but bright and chirpy older woman; she blossomed beneath the genuine downpour of my praise for the large book section, it's varied amd fascinating contents, and low prices. 

Midmorning yesterday the heatwave unexpectedly broke: Gale force winds drove a cold front, much lower temperatures and eventually, late last night, rain, up the coast from the Eastern Cape.

The storm seemed to gather and rage around my wooden upstairs room battering the walls and windows, but not flustering the cats. I'm still held captive here, reluctant to leave. My warden, kindly and generous, allows me to pretend that here in the eye of my storm reality no longer exists.

While in reality my cheese has moved, I'm resisting change, and will soon starve...despite the kindness of strangers.

When they flow

It's become a favourite place: the hard plastic garden table and two white chairs at the edge of the garden, between the pool and the eastern wall, up against the fern fronds and elephant ears, beneath the low hanging trees. Lee covers the table with a sarong he bought on Durban's beachfront for R50. It, the sarong, reminds me somehow of Mozambique, probably because of its colours. The cotton is soft and cool, soothing. I sit here now.

Summer's being rather quickly nibbled around its edges by the autumn rat; the hardly noticeable changes tend to catch me by surprise. Shadows falling for longer and far earlier, an unexpected early morning chill, the blue of the sky much deeper, the sun more mellow. Aah the passing of time I think to myself as I finger The Pulse. 

The sun rays have not yet pierced the pool whose leaf strewn surface I shattered with delight much earlier. Towelling myself off bare--foot on the paving my focus was on the steaming tea mug on my table: strong with the bag intact, sweet and milky; the coffee's finished. The seasonal changes are not that obvious in this subtropical paradise. 

I've been mired in fear and self doubt, my words had dried up, my skeleton's been protruding. Wasting away I've been deadly close to self comprimise. That's why today I make my plan.

I took the photo on my back porch in Waterval Boven. I was there for over a week for a smidgen of work that bought me some of the mobility-freedom I so crave. It was an interesting time of hovering introspect, not unlike a fat green fly on shit. And of being sick. I regret neither. 

The leaves are already turning 600 kilometres to the north, and the veld grasses have gone to seed. Soon the burning will begin, then the sweeping fires as winter deepens and green dies down to tawny lion coloured. But not here.

Autobiographical prose?

He's lying on his bed now wearing just a pair of sleep shorts; an arbitrary pair of sleep shorts. 

He sat aimlessly on the large faded red leather couch downstairs. Choked on Twitter. Ignored the disconnected Tv. All that was constant was his aimlessness, his hard-clenched jaw.

He walked purposefully upstairs, the wood creaking unconsciously beneath each rubber-heavy tread of his slip-slops. Made-in-China. He was saying goodnight wordlessly to the house and to his lover in the room below. Grimly. Steadfastly. This could have been the script for a suicide walk. But it's not.

He had contemplated a walk on the road along the coast edge. There the verdant vegetation, on both sides of the road would have sucked his night focus upwards and into the star crusted night sky, and his night hearing to the bashing and sliding of the ocean below. 

Instead he walked into his room, removed his old black vest, swiped cursed flees off his ankles and kneeled at his bedside. Where he quickly, unceremoniously prayed. God I can't do this on my own; this is a space that I do not know. I don't know where to next; I'm at my end.

The black cat with the snub, short nose watched him in silence. As he got up clawing at his ankles and searched for the almost empty bottle of plastic-tacky insect repellant, before lathering it on his hairy legs, his hairless ankles and his long, slender feet. 

Crickets and frogs, raucous, outside. The cranky whirr of the dilapidated fan. The welcome wind rolling, flurrying through the house; it was a sticky, ugly 33 degrees centigrade today.

Sitting down on the double bed he slipped the case off his iPad, touched it on, opened Safari and deleted the entire block-full of words that had failed to describe his blog. He replaced them with one semi-sentence. At the top.

man with a beautiful mind.

He remembered, again, that the putting down of words is therapeutic. And that they are for no-one but me.

Summer will end

Summer will end and the leaves will turn again.
I favourited those words on Twitter the other day thinking that winter was some vague concept, especially in this subtropical province that hardly knows what winter is.
I'm slowly sipping on a glass of feisty, fruity wine. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Last night was the first time this summer that l pulled the duvet around me against the cool then cold of the night. It was wonderful. Normally with both windows open and the fan on, I sleep naked, with nothing over my body, nor on my skin.
Leaving gym - I went there for my sanity, it was an intensive day on the couch in front of my iPad - I veered off into Umhlanga. To break what little routine I have.
My life currently appears stagnant, even to me. Flat and squalid in the doldrum waters of right now I'm sensing that I won't be let go until I consciously change tack. Forever.
Oh nothing major; merely facing my single greatest fear. Commiting to following a dream- the dream of my life - which is of course unattainable. Certain death then. Of the soul; I wink.
Umhlanga Rocks village has a Joburg feel about it. Tonight I welcome it.
Chicken and rice, low GI bread,  and salad. At home.
Dreams, well at least mine, will entail drops of blood appearing, excruciatingly, on my forehead.
That sure beats being the living dead.
"Please bring me the bill; thank you."