Away. Away. Away.

And then I found myself here, in the quiet, in the place I've longed to be. And I'm a contradictory mix of bliss and fear and joy and, and... It's beautiful and the silence is interrupted only by birds twittering, rain falling on the roof (it's rained, a lot!), the occasional donkey walking past and the even more occasional car. I can feel my soul slowly unwinding.

I am blogging as myself, elsewhere, keeping this blog as its semi-anonymous self. I like this place, this haven I've created, but I wanted to be able to blog for everyone I've left behind without losing the anonymity of this one. Anybody who's interested, please put your e-mail address in the comments and I'll happily send you the link.

Online shopping and a lot of chocolate biscuits

I have just completed my online shopping for the trip to the Great Wide Open. Normally, grocery shopping doesn't hold huge appeal to me although, if you were to ask me to choose between clothes shopping and food shopping, there is no contest. Take me to the nearest food shop please. Shopping for my great adventure, though, was not a chore. Although, the slowness of my connection/their site did make me say some choice things that I am (possibly) not proud of.

I'm new to online shopping, and after my experience this morning, I should probably best avoid it. While I admit to being a bit of a hazard - in the ooo-look-at-that-let's-get-one-even-though-we-don't-need-one variety - in the grocery shop itself, something about online shopping brings out the compulsive shopper in me even more! There's just so much there. I know, I know, it's all in the shop too, but as I said above, I'm not the hugest shopping fan, to put it mildly. My loathing of hundreds of people ambling down aisles, stopping in inconvenient places etc, saves me from over-spending time and again.

In the real shops.

Online, that slightly hysterical claustrophobia doesn't exist. I'm in my lounge for goodness' sake, I can look out of my window at my furiously flowering, beautifully purple, potato bush, and behind it, the mountain. While I buy another packet of chocolate biscuits.

This shop, not only absent of the fraughtness of Other Shoppers, but also for my great adventure was, I must admit, highly enjoyable.

And one can never, ever, have too many chocolate biscuits really, can one?

Getting stuff done

Sunday, late afternoon, after a weekend of getting things 'sorted out', readying for my trip into the Great Wide Open. Seven weeks it'll be. Seven, full, weeks. This entails much planning. It's funny, though, the routine grocery-buying, salary-paying, getting enough hand cream, tampons, dog food for two months, suddenly takes on a silvery sheen, a shuddery excitement.

The Big Black Dog is coming with me, she's getting old, I can't leave her. I also can't deny  her the joy of living in a place where she will be free to roam, lead-less, her lungs filled with clear, fresh, air, the sky above her stretching further than she has ever seen.

That sky.

But still, regardless of the silvery sheen on it all, there is much still to be done, I just can't do it now. It's Sunday afternoon, I still suffer (twenty years later) from Sunday Aftenoon Blues, a hangover from boarding school. The dread of going back, hearing the doors lock behind you, leaving the weekend looking forlornly at the closed hostel door.

These Sunday Blues, however, are a lighter blue. More eggshell blue than royal blue, because I have six more working days until I am off for 60 days. Sixty. With that, I give a happy sigh, and get back to my sorting out things, the huge blue sky doing somersaults in my head.

Looking ahead

I was doing well there, for a bit. Getting a post out every day, every second day, and then I faltered. I feel like I have nothing to say, I kept opening new blog posts, even giving them a title and then, breath bated, I sat. Then I berated myself and said: "Shiny, if you have nothing to say, then you'll just have to bloody write about having nothing to say." Feeling suitably shamed by my own beration (is there such a word?), here I am.

I'm counting days until I leave for the great Karoo expanse. I shall be there for almost two months, blessed with large tracts of time during which I have no commitments. None. I plan to do a large amount of sitting on the stoep, maybe drinking beer, maybe reading, maybe watching the donkeys amble by (yes! there are donkeys), maybe chatting, maybe being still and listening, but definitely breathing. Large lungsful of clear Karoo air that make my heart swell.

And then, hopefully, I'll be showered with inspiration to write and I won't feel like I'm dragging myself over here by the scruff of my neck.

So very, very, excited

I am three days short of a month of the date that will take me to the heart-swelling, inspiration-inspiring place that I long to be. For seven weekd. Seven! That would be thirty three days until I go, give or take. I can hardly contain my joy. Short, simple, truth.

Enormous sky beckons

Whinge, whine, moan, groan. Good grief. Enough already Shiny. Enough. I'm stopping now.

In much happier news... My plans for escaping into the Karoo, to the place that makes my heart swell, are coming along. There was a slight hiccup a couple of weeks ago that, momentarily, looked like it might upset the whole apple cart and not allow it to happen but, in the manner of a pitbull, I refused to let go, and it now looks like I'll be going for six weeks.

Six weeks.

Fresh air, open sky, nothing to do but contemplate the fresh air, the open sky. Bliss. I'm also hoping to give the trashy novel I wrote last year during NaNoWriMo a good working through to see if I can make it readable and, perhaps, publishable. I also have wisps of another story flitting about in my head and am contemplating doing NaNoWriMo again this year to try and capture those wisps.

It seems silly not to, when I'll be out there, in the fresh air, under the enormous sky, in the place where inspiration flaps around me...

Oh, I am SO excited. I've been waiting months to write this post, the one where the dream, finally, is forming into reality.

Getting back into it

I am starting today. I know, I know – I keep saying this. I keep promising myself I’ll write more regularly, I’ll write every day, or every second day, or twice a week. And then I don’t. I must, though, to recover some modicum of sanity, to practice, to get myself going. I just must.

Various Real Life, admin stuff has messed with my escaping the city for two months plan. I’m fighting for it, though, making other plans, getting the ducks in a row. At this stage I’m looking at a month, maybe a little over that. I have to rely on various other people, which makes it frustrating. Luckily, I’m blessed with lovely ‘other people’, making it a little less frustrating.

So, in the meantime, I need to get into a rhythm of writing. Hopefully I’ll be here again tomorrow, with something more interesting than a Me-Me-Me Pep Rally.

Writer's block and some Very Good News

Having been relegated to staying home, firstly by an op and recovery and then by pure, common-garden anti-sociability, I found myself not having anything to write about. That's a blatant lie. I was still thinking of things to write about, I was just not writing them. I don't know why but the writing's just not coming. Writer's Block? Of course I've heard of it but surely you have to be a Real Writer to get it. Nope. Apparently not.

This city is making me claustrophobic.

So. Here I am. Trying to open the channels. To write again. But I feel like I have nothing to say. How many words can one write about that? One hundred and eight, apparently. Yes, I just hand-counted them.

On a very positive note, with regard to opening up those writing channels and curing my claustrophobia, our plans to head Karoo-wards, where my heart swells and my lungs fill with air, are very much coming to fruition. Come October, we'll be heading inland to bask under huge blue skies and sit on the stoep doing nothing (and, hopefully, writing a trashy novel) while donkeys amble by on the dust road. Bliss.

500th Post: An announcement

Five hundred posts. 500. This is my 500th. It should be memorable then, shouldn’t it? I have chosen it, therefore, to announce the plans that I’ve been mulling over, talking about, polishing up. G and I are hoping to go and live in that heart-squelching place in the Karoo, the one that makes my entire being smile, for two months from October.

The seed was sown after our last visit in September. I’ve always loved it, and the city has been feeling crushing for a while now. The vast, open Karoo sky, blue in the day, scattered with a billion stars at night gets my creative juices flowing and, hopefully, will allow me to write. Well, that’s the plan. To write or just to be still for a bit, in a place without pollution and hooting cars and city-harangued people.

I have permission from work, we have a house provisionally booked, we’ve made lists and budgets and twirled ideas and dreams. The boxes are, slowly, being ticked. The next big one is for G to get permission from her work, to work remotely (oh, how delicious! Remotely! How it rolls off my tongue…) This is not as easy for her as me, she having been there less than a year, as opposed to my almost fifteen years at mine. Hold thumbs.

And so, there, with my 500th post, hopefully a long time dream will be turned into a big-skied-lungs-filled-with-air reality.

Soul music on a Saturday

Is there anything better than putting headphones on and feeling music coursing through your blood, through every cell of your body to each nerve ending, a soundtrack to life. The magic of hearing a song that makes your heart contract and your stomach do a somersault. I love it.

While in that magic place in the Karoo, the place where my heart swells-to-bursting, I heard a new band sing a new song (well, new to me) and loved it. I thought of them this week and did a bit of YouTubing, as one does. Yet again, the magic of the place followed me, throwing out this video, pumping hearts and all (headphones, top volume necessary. Feel it):



The complete joy of the song made me get G to drive with me, miles and miles through the blastedly depressing factory lands to get to the only place that had the only one of the CDs left in The City Beneath the Mountain and drive back, music blaring, windows open to our first Summer day's heat, and smile the smile of one who's found some music that hits the soul in one fell swoop. And there, in amongst it all, another song with perfect lyrics for my ever-expanding life soundtrack.




And then to our other ally, who came with us, for a cooling beer, where we drank the last bottle of that spring water brew from that magical place and began some serious plotting to get back there. Perfect Saturday afternoon of sunshine and magic and music to keep the deep red blood flowing through a strongly-beating heart with bass to kill for.

Hatching a plan

So, there I was thinking. Not an unusual thing for me, perhaps even “too usual.” I was thinking of the surrealism of it, the difference between this world I live in, here in the city, and the one I long for, there under the wide sky. Trying to rid myself of the feeling of suffocation that it is (has always) instilled in me.

The thing is that it is so hard to quantify. I do love it here, too, of course. I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t (or would I?)… It is beautiful, I am blessed with mountains and sea and vineyards and wonderful friends, what more could I ask for? To be rid of the claustrophobia, that’s what. I am trying hard not to be whingy and ungrateful, because I have so much to be grateful for. I’m just struggling with it.

I keep looking out of my window, like those sad penguins at the aquarium staring out of their glass cage to the sea beyond, and wishing for that big sky, that fresh air, that magic. The magnetism of that place seems to pull more each time I go there, until, at some point, it will become impossible to ignore. At some stage, I get the feeling that I will be pulled back there, even if I try to stay.

G felt it too. We’ve decided it’s time to hatch a plan, to get it right, to make it work. We're aiming for next Autumn, and I'm putting this in writing because, well, then it'll be more tangible.

An aside

Did you see what happened there? I went into the Karoo and the stories just tumbled out of me, are tumbling out of me. And I'm loving the writing, not having to force myself like I have been for the past few months, they're just there, pouring out, unstoppable.

I'm sitting in my lounge, in the House in the Middle of the Street, watching the sun set over the mountain and hearing so much city noise and missing the stillness of that place out there, under the huge sky, where the biggest noise is the hadedas coming home to roost in the evenings.

Across the road, through the gate, I have just watched a woman park her car on the pavement, get out, and place five tiny vases, each with a different, also tiny, bouquet of flowers in it, on a tray. The magic continues. The question is just how to keep it going...

Off to the Karoo

I’m so excited that I can hardly breathe. Tomorrow we set off in The Silver-Winged Unicorn to the vast expanse of The Karoo, one of my favourite places in the world. Two of my favourite people in the world, and I. We will stay in Nieu Bethesda where the air is clear, my heart squeezes in pleasure and the stars are sprinkled liberally in the night skies. A place where donkeys amble about on the dusty streets and there is no petrol station, no grocery store, no ATM. Bliss.

I hope to be inspired, to write.

Gone dreaming

I've been busy having something I would liken to a mid-life crisis I think. Mild anxiety with a strong urge to flee into the countryside where the air is fresh(er) and the sky is vast. In between mid-life-crisising, I have been having some fun, fretting about how I could possibly have become old enough to have a mid-life crisis, and attempting to do a lot of work to keep the wolves from the door.

Life, I guess, is what you'd call it. I keep having sudden moments of clarity, though, when I think that I'm sticking around too long, waiting for something to happen. It's not going to happen without a push and there's nobody in my vicinity who's going to make the push for me, so best I get myself going. Half the time I'm so tired that I have to drag myself out of bed, though, making the task of going to buy a firecracker, then light it, and stick it under my bum just too exhausting to contemplate.

I'm trying, really I am, and that's the most I can do. I'm trying to keep those clear moments at the fore, hatching plans, dreaming things, trying to catch the dreams and make them my reality. In the meantime, I'm trying to remain grateful for what I have which is, don't get me wrong, a hell of a lot, and I'm looking out of my turret across to the mountains far away there and dreaming. There's a woman in the building opposite who seems to be doing the same thing - I can see her leaning out of her window in the sun, just thinking.

The Karoo, desolation and spirits

I love the Karoo. It has a sense of enormity that is breathtaking. The sky goes on forever and you feel like there is just so much air. Like you can really breathe. Not that I'm saying I don't breathe here in the city. Of course I do, otherwise I'd expire (not being some superhero who can take in oxygen through my pores or anything), but it just seems easier there, in the wide expanse of the desert.

It was there, in the middle of that desolation, that I broke, and perhaps that has something to do with it. A chunk of my freedom is flitting about there, an angel flapping in those vast amounts of air, flitting around amongst the scattered clouds. Maybe it's her that I like to go and visit, to see her swirling high above.

Nieu Bethesda. Turning off the tar and driving along the dusty windy road towards it makes my insides squelch and my heart contract with joy. I can't explain it except that it just feels like I'm home when I'm there in that secluded little valley, once home to Helen Martins and still home to her house and garden filled with concrete creatures and owls.

Going into the house, you can feel the spirits flitting about it. Her story is not one filled with happiness and her decoration of her father's room is testimony to some serious childhood pain, but the rest of the house certainly gave me the feeling that this woman had joy in her life.

So, yes, although I only went to that little place in the middle of the desolate Karoo for the first time when I was 31, it just felt instantly like home and I' ve been back, but I long to go back and spend a proper amount of time there. Just breathing, and watching the clouds float by in that enormous, neverending sky. And stroking the velvetty noses of the donkeys there.

I wonder if I'll ever have my own donkey?

The floodgates have opened

I seem to just have so very many words in my head that want to tumble out now. It's great. I was really worried there for a while (many months). I thought I'd lost my Writing Voice. But now, it’s back, and the words are jumbling and stumbling and queuing to get out and I can’t get them out quick enough. So many things I want to write about and so many dreary-everyday things getting in the way.

Like work. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work (mostly) and feel like I do a very little bit of something that may help the world to be a better place, but, sometimes, just sometimes, I’d like to be in the middle of the Karoo, surrounded only by vast space, sky and air, alone with my thoughts and allowing them to just flow out. You know, to get rid of that queue in my head. They’re impatient those words, they’re crowding my mind, and the jostling is making me tired. In a good way though.

I need to write a post about the movies playing on the backs of my eyelids… I need to know if it’s only me that has their own drive-in cinema, installed in their head (I just can’t find the popcorn stand but, fear not, I won’t stop looking). I have things to say about childhood aromas – the smell of my grandparents… that kind of smell that invokes the feeling of being completely cosy. You know what I mean? When you are in bed in exactly the right comfy position, exactly the right temperature, perfectly fed, not thirsty, tomorrow is Saturday and you know you are loved… that feeling.

Oh, and so much more.

I will find the time, won’t I?