Bus Ride

I have just been on a long bus ride.
I rode one way by day and one way by night.
Part of me had been looking forward to it, the reward being friends waiting on the other side. The other part of me is travel weary, and even one travel bag is too much for me. I am earth bound these days, and my footsteps are heavy.

I had a couple of good thick books for company , and a bottle of water. As it turned out I had a television as well, relentlessly turning out Morality Plays, like in the Middle Ages. I  tried to zone out and read, or look out the window, but television is intrusive by nature and penetrated my consciousness. And so I watched segments from my seat.
I was tempted to tell the girl in front of me that I am not, because she might not have been aware of the fact, a double amputee. I still have both my legs and they are extra long ones. I sighed instead and groaned, I think, but she still lay back in her seat,  as far as she could, leaving me in a perfect position to see the mousy brown roots of her auburn hair. I could have rested my book on her middle parting, and, in fact, it was difficult not to.

I was the only person reading on the entire bus. Books have definitely gone out of fashion. Cell phones are  in, and with a little or a big screen, they provided enthralling reading and general entertainment for everyone around me, for the six hour duration of my trip.
I felt completely put out.
My reading material didn't help I suppose.
It dealt with Womans' Troubles, and I did try to get excited about  the virtues of 'the Dark Goddess', the reclaiming of the 'Crone' and the 'Wild Woman Within', but it was hard. The moral tone of the films being shown, just added further to my feelings of conflict.
The story on the screen of Jesus, as a waiter in some diner on an American back road, in the middle of a hurricane, didn't help in any way either. There He was, Jesus, doling out toasted sandwiches and advice on how to avoid Hell, all with a beautific smile, and an apron.
No,it didn't help, not in any way at all.

I was traveling my own highway towards my 49th birthday, due to be celebrated in two days time, and the countryside (I have traveled that road too many times) somehow held no interest for me. Change  was blowing through me, and  I was restless, trapped between a reclining seat and a television set.

A young boy got on and sat next to me in Swellendam. He was unkempt, but I am a chatty passenger, which is probably, to some, the most dreaded kind. Anyway I ascertained by and by that he was at a 'special' school and was having a birthday the same day as me. He had been quick to tell me about his ADHD problems and how he was two grades behind where he should be.
I think I went on a bit too much about the awful school system and how I feel about education and learning and incorrect judgments being made on children. I wanted to tell him, basically, that he was wonderfully good enough, no matter what, but I got lost in the telling of it, I think.
I hope I redeemed myself by eventually saying something like, 'we all get where we need to go in the end anyway'...or something like that.
I hope so, and I got to my destination eventually too, and to the embrace of my friends.

The return trip was by night and I took the very front seat with a wide spread of window. I tried to fill both seats with my books and bag and water bottle, but I had to eventually give the seat next to me up. A rather large lad took it in the end and I spoke to him as well, even though I didn't really want to. I realized that I am a bit of a compulsive talker.

He got out at every stop to smoke with loads of others. I looked down at them all,standing in a loose ring, stamping their feet in the cold and conspiratorially sharing cigarettes. I would have liked to join them, that happy band of disparate people, united in their comradely addiction, hugging themselves and flicking ash around.

I don't get out the bus if I can help it.
I like the neon glow of petrol stations at night, with their gleaming  metal motor vehicles, pausing for thought during a long journey. I like the idea of junk food on a journey too, but, like smoking, I don't do it anymore, and could hardly endure the returned lad and his brown paper bag of chips and a burger.

My little birthday boy was not on the return bus, although  we had parted with the cheerful assumption that we would see each other on our return.
I was sorry.
I had joked and told him that we would both be a year older when we saw each other again.
I was sorry I had missed him, but more than glad to get home.

Call back the past

I have always loved history.

In fact, I loved it so much that I chose it as a third 'learning' subject for matric – and the truth was, of cause, far from the history books of South Africa in those days.

I know that there remains a gap between what is truth and what isn't, when it comes to History.

Nevertheless, the past still holds, for me, an allure, which the present, simply does not.

I have always been intensely enamoured with the Victorians, the Edwardians, the Georgians, and their Poetry and Literature. I have a penchant for those in this group of people who lived, or at least desired to live, outside the frontiers of the conventions of the day.

I day dreamed my way into some of their bohemian lives. As a young woman, I sometimes wore coloured stockings, and eventually a bob, and Victorian shawls and brooches, like some D H Lawrence heroine.

I have always allowed all sorts of characters from the past , to crowd out my reality, at will.

The truth is, I suppose, that I don't much like 2011.

Its too lonely for one thing, with the technology of the day masquerading as closeness, but in fact bringing distance of global proportions.

I long for long letters, and languid days of company and conversation. I long for the time before telephones and emails, and definitely for the time before the dreaded cellphone, which has become the intrusive soundtrack of humanity, with its beeps and buzzes and bizarre tunes.

Still, with no time machine at hand I must, it is the only way, seek solace in film and books and old maps and photographs.

Here in Knysna I've been reading books about the old life. From my wide white wooden verandah I look out at the lagoon and try and imagine it all.

The mysterious George Rex, in his day, with his misty imagined past (who really knows the truth), had this whole beautiful stretch of blue and green world as his idyllic playground. There was no other European here for a while, until the ships came sailing , braving the devastating sand bar, to tie themselves to an island, that would later be claimed by a family of blonde, Nordic Thesens.

I do try and imagine it all – the winding road to George, through dense forests bursting with elephants, in which lived communities of forest dwellers, that hardly ever saw the sun.

Such a different world!

The approach of summer makes me long for old Africa anyway.

I dream of tents and living simply, with a river running passed our camp, and the heat crackling with cricket sounds, just beyond the tree line.

I remember the smell of canvas in the coolness of the night, and the starry sky appearing again, as if it hadn't been there all the time, in the city.

I'm reading a book about Denys Finch Hatton – the real person, not Robert Redford.

What a world there was then, for adventurous types. Sure, he came from a privileged class, but there was a window of wonder at that time, and he and his friends, just caught the end of an Africa, which was vanishing at the hands of the Colonialists.

Denys, they say, had a great love for Africa, and planes, and bohemian women. He, said Beryl Markham, invented charm and so, luckily, could indulge all three, although with loves like that, one was surely going to kill him.

It's just that the world seemed to be so much more interesting then. Maybe because so much was as yet undiscovered, in a technological sense, and the very naivety of those past heroes pushed them on.

I probably just need to go camping again.

I remember us loading our old Cruiser, with tents and boxes, and taking to the road less travelled. We used to open the windows and let the dust blow in and over us.

We left behind houses, and our normal restricted life, which by necessity held us in.

In the past, there definitely were fewer boundaries, and border posts, keeping people out, keeping people in.

The world, it seems to me, used to be a more tolerant place, for a restless spirit like mine, although the price of loneliness, intrinsic to rootlessness, no doubt still had to be paid.

For now, I'll pace the verandah.

Bellissimo!

I have just been to watch 'The Tourist' with Angelina and Johnny Depp. I am particularly fond of Johnny, although, one doesn't really know him as such, does one, as he is always behind some mask or another. The 'Mad Hatter' make up, or crazy Jack Sparrow with four sets of extra eyes, or all emo like in Edward Scissors hands.

In The Tourist he presents his real face - I think - but without giving too much away - we don't really know that because....

But I digress. The real reason for me going all the way to George, to the Big Screen was.....Venice.

Glorious Romantic Enigmatic The Last Place To See Before You Die - Venice.

I have a bit of an Italian thing going on at the moment. It started a while ago, with my good friend Jamie, who I took a virtual cookery tour of Italy with. L fed the relationship when he bought me the 'Jamies Italy' cookbook for Christmas...and my food has had an Italian flavour ever since.

A good friend once commented that, no matter what our financial circumstances are we always have a good bottle of Olive oil . Its true, I have fed the family solely from our vegetable garden at times, but those veggie roasts were always a feast - because of olive oil. The Italians, naturally , know that, a couple of tomatoes, a medley of peppers, a zucchini complete with gorgeous yellow flower, a good glug of olive oil... Voila!

I have noticed that it is also a phase Hollywood seems to be going through at present. A lot of films are being shot in Europe. Bored, no doubt, by the pace and face of Manhattan and other city scapes they have swapped all that modernity for Tuscany, Provence or the ancient, cobbled, scooter driven lanes of the Old World. Like Venice.

Or Rome.

I watched Eat Pray Love the other day. I thought I was going to enjoy Julia Roberts (always been a fan) , but as it turned out it was Rome that captivated me. Rome and the Italian language, the gestures that accompany it, the food, arriabatta, carbonara, spaghetti, pizza, puttenesca,minestrone...tiramisu!

La Convivialita!

A language of foodie love making. Sensual. Indulgent. Excessive.

I have been teaching my son all about the Renaissance. Italy is conspiring to captivate me with its allure at every turn. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Donatello, Raphael...and on and on. We pour over photos of painted ceilings, that huge exquisite David, those multiple complex sketches of helicopters and other contraptions, way before their time in that one Italian mind.

I teach him Drama also and of cause it has to be Romeo and Juliet, and so am I thinking of passion, tragedy, and the masked balls .....

Italia is everywhere I look!

The last straw was a wedding.

Family of L made their way to Mossel Bay the other day. A wild girl women, once a rebellious family member, now a serene and beautiful, elegant woman was to wed. And her groom, complete with an entourage of brothers, sisters and children, was to fly in.

And of cause, they all are Roman, those to-be in-laws. When we met, the first thing I thought was that the children (adolescents) had skin like alabaster. They had dark hair, dark eyes, a little English and dispensed kisses, left, right, left....I was enthralled.

The wedding vows were on the beach, and we were all dressed in white, or the colours of the sand, and the gazebo wedding bower was strung with shells. A pod of dolphins blessed us all with some foamy surfing tricks, just as the vows were said.

There was a posse of paparazzi cellphones, and in some photos the Italian groom was strung with vine like seaweed and shells. I thought he might be like Neptune or some other Roman god.

Later in the Restaurant shack, tottering on the dunes, we ate seafood with a mussel shell, and the blonde bride and her dark haired man put on Swing and danced it for us, barefoot.

There was an orange moon that came up over a purple and turquoise sea and all, like statues holding cellphones aloft, recorded it all.

But not me.

I watched, from the shadows, attired also all in Roman white, while those children,with names like Renaissance painters, flitted like moths in cream and white lace and kicked off their shoes and danced ...

So, all this has been good for Steves Trattorio in Sedgefield. It's the closest I can get right now to Italy. It has da Vinci sketches on the wall and the most excellent pasta and pizza.

We drank wine there the other day with our meal and made plans to go. Dreamy plans to go to Italy. Soon. To trawl the galleries and canals in gondalas and to eat and be merry.

La Dolce Vita!