The year I crossed the mountain

While it’s still January, let me say this about 2010. It wasn’t a happy year: loss ran through it right to the end. Mostly other people’s losses, but the kind that undermine faith and hope. That being said, it was the year I fell in love – twice.

The first time I lost my heart, it was the spectacular, leg-buckling kind that happens without warning, soaking everything in glory. I got on a plane, flew east, and got off at Mumbai. Incense was burning at the customs desk, next to a little plastic model of Ganesh. My knees gave a little preparatory wobble. The next day, just before dawn, I dragged open the curtains in our room of faded gentility at the India International Centre, eager to see what Delhi looked like by daylight. The sky was the same colour as the sandstone the Mughal emperors and Lutyens fancied for their monumental buildings, and as the heavy curtains swished aside, all the leaves on the tree outside the window took flight, resolving into green and turquoise parakeets.

So you could say that India had me at “hello”. I’m still trying to write about the tiny slice of India (Delhi and Agra) and Indian life I encountered in two short weeks, and I’m still failing. One reason it’s so hard to describe is because everything encountered with any of the senses – sight, smell, sound, taste and touch – is amplified. Whether it’s heat, dust, food, drink, fabric, colour, ancient buildings and tombs, new industries, the sights and smells of poverty, infrastructure that seems held together by string and prayer, cricket, traffic, temples, gods – all these things, no matter how prosaic, seem to be on sensory steroids. Except for the people, who I mostly found to be gentle, patient, courteous and pragmatic.

I walked through my Indian days in a state of blissed-out radiance. While (more…)

An uncommon garden thriller

I wrote this story, my first but hopefully not my last krimi, for Wordsetc* just over a year ago, after visiting my parents on their Eastern Free State smallholding. Having just returned from another trip home, I thought I’d post this here as a tribute to my mother’s unbelievably beautiful garden(s). The narrative and characters are fictional, but everything garden-related is true (click here for more photos).

Poppy

The poppies were not the usual blood-red, but a rich purple, which warmed to deep pink as the early morning light struck them. Looking closely, Marian thought that they looked fleshy, the petals delicately wrinkled like ageing skin.

“Want to see something special?” asked Lena, Marian’s oldest friend, and the creator of the early summer garden all around them.

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped forward and gave a grey-green bud-husk a tweak. It came away between her thumb and forefinger, revealing crumpled petals that immediately began separating, like skirts unfurling.

“Watch,” said Lena. “This is the most amazing bit.” And indeed Marian could see that the agitation of the petals was not all their own doing – as the stamens came into view, the women could see two – no, three – bees, throbbing with ecstasy and opium, the little pollen sacs on their legs already swollen to bursting.

“How do they get in?” asked Marian, fascinated.

“I don’t know. It’s one of those mysteries of Nature. Whatever time of day I do it, there are bees inside the poppies. They can’t resist the drug.”

Marian knew there was a reason Lena had asked her to come (more…)

A New England Halloween

In the last few years, spooky Halloween parties, costumes and events have become Hot Stuff in South Africa’s urban and even booky centres. For me, it has two meanings: it’s the time in the Christian year set aside for remembering the dead — and it’s the quintessentially American festival.

Over ten years ago, I spent a year at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke in Western Massachusetts, and thanks to a wonderful extended family whose members lived in beauty spots in Maine, Vermont and Rhode Island, I got to experience the magnificent pageantry (both botanical and cultural) of a New England fall. Here are some extracts from the diary I kept at the time:

“I am extremely lucky to be treated to a long, dry, crisp fall. The trees stand swathed in the most gorgeous panoply — cloth of gold, scarlet brocade and rubies — almost breathless with the weight and pomp of their leaves. The countryside is so brazen with colour — jewel-blue water, blonde and pink marshlands, the trees an endless procession of lemon, gold, copper, flame, vermilion and crimson, the occasional silver slash of a birch — that it causes a sense of dislocation. Seeing so much red and yellow where I am mentally primed to see green, I feel the way I once did when, checking colour proofs in my former life in publishing, I discovered that the printers had mixed up the cyan and magenta inks.

The colours blaze right through October and into November, and a few tardy maples are still wearing party dresses as Thanksgiving approaches. On top of the gorgeous parade by Ma Nature, fall encompasses two holidays I love: Halloween and Thanksgiving. (more…)

In Tearing Haste…

This is both my state of mind, and the book I’m currently reading, a delight and a dote (more in a minute).

My personal haste led me to wash my cellphone (in my jeans pocket) on the hot cycle of my washing-machine this morning — I’ve hated that phone for so long, a terrible fate was inevitable. But the loss thereof does rather kibosh one’s life. BUT I have been meaning all day to make an NB announcement — if you’re in Cape Town, do saunter along to the Book Lounge to hear the gifted Ingrid Anderson read from her second collection of poetry, launched by blessed Modjaji tonight. I will be MC-ing, and standing in for various far-flung questioners, and Ingrid is a visitor to our fair city from the distant hills of KZN, so come along and help roll out the red carpet.

The other thing that came as a pleasant surprise this morning was not so much a carrot as a rose by Judy Croome, for my beloved fruitbasket. The generosity of local readers and bloggers never fails to amaze me, and I’m very grateful.

Finally, for the Patrick Leigh Fermor fans out there, (more…)

Henrietta Rose-Innes’s Homing: a review that’s also about editing

I’m still thumping the ol’ “we-ain’t got enough editing” tub, and would like to thank Litnet for giving me yet another platform, this time on their Big Book Chain Chat. But I also wanted to at pay at least glancing tribute to Arja Salafranca’s preceding piece on short stories, given that the participants are part of a chain.

I’ve been thinking a lot about both short stories and editing, partly because the two most perfectly crafted examples of literary fiction I’ve read so far this year have been collections of short stories: Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Henrietta Rose-Innes’s Homing. Neither of them lose any of their impact, integrity or exquisite gravity through being short story collections. No novel I’ve read this year — and I’ve read some glorious, sparkling, witty and imaginative ones — comes close to the quality of the writing in Daniyal and Henrietta’s books. For stories that fingerprint the melancholy of the human condition, for narrative that carries not an ounce of excess, for lines that flow like water, you can’t do better. Daniyal’s stories are essentially musings on loneliness; HRI’s are ultimately about connection, no matter how frail or interrupted.

You can read (more…)

Purgatorio and Paradiso

Remember the last really bad break-up you had – the one that was a long, grinding time coming? The heartache, the hacking apart of practical arrangements and established habits, the mind-boggling costs, the sheer bloody leg-in-a-gin-trap awfulness of it?

That’s how I feel about moving. I’m miserable and grumpy for months before it happens, the actual move is open-heart surgery while simultaneously hauling weights, my nerves jangle with regret and terror for ages afterwards.

I’ve moved twice this year. The second move has taken me from the narrow beat between Obs and Rondebosch I’ve trodden for thirty years – a huge wrench. The fact that my last move coincided with the death of the much-loved kitty upstairs in circumstances of mind-boggling callousness by one set of neighbours and total indifference by others meant that my usual moving neuroses were amplified by two things guaranteed to render me instant fruitcake: the needless agony of an innocent animal and betrayal of trust.

So all the time I was settling into my new Paradiso, (more…)

The cold reality of freelance life

All those nice, enthusiastic folk who attended the Professional Editors’ Group workshop out in Franschhoek a few weeks ago, I have a short, sharp bout of icy water for you. Want to be a freelance editor? DON’T. (Remember me bragging about never having to wear pantihose or sit in rush-hour traffic? Hubris, and now the gods are punishing me.)

Okay, I’m in shock as I write this, and not quite rational. Normally, I love my working life. But one of the things I hate is the grinding anxiety that starts in the last week of each month, as I start checking and re-checking my bank account to see if the invoices I sent out the previous month have been paid yet. Then the nagging starts: “Dear XX, I note that my invoice sent many weeks ago (attached, see dated copy of sent mail) has not yet been settled. Please…”

A few minutes ago I received this absolutely terrifying response, re a big invoice, one I was banking on to cover the costs of moving: “Sorry, we have no record of having received this.” I know they received the original: they asked me to rework the invoice to fit the company’s bureaucratic requirements (something they themselves could have done — it involved adding the company’s VAT number). But I did so immediately, and resent. It’s all in my Sent Mail. I thought it a bit odd that I didn’t receive an acknowledgment, but then I often don’t get one when resending invoices. In this particular case, it means I can’t (so they say) be paid for another 30 days. I am literally frozen in horror, envisaging my cheques bouncing.

(more…)

Strange Fruit Basket

Taking the opportunity to let you all know I’ll be reading — at last! it’s been postponed so many times! — from Strange Fruit at Off The Wall at Kalk Bay Books this Wed evening. This feels very special to me: I’ve read at the CTBF, the Book Lounge, Folio Books, the National Library, Wordsworth Books (Gardens branch), and even the Aquarium, but I’ve not yet had the chance to really properly introduce my little heartfruit at KBB, a place very dear to me. So I am very much looking forward to this, although we are well into the Season of Bookish Frenzy, and I’m up against Ingrid de Kok, Breyten Breytenbach and the Great Wall of China. But if you can resist these sirens (I’m cross to be missing them myself), please come and hear me read.

I’ve been meaning for ages to compile some of the comments that old school-friends, academics from furrin parts, fellow poets, total strangers, and some amazing booky folks sent me after reading Strange Fruit. The staggering thing was how many folk have actually READ the darn book. Hell, there must be at least two dozen of them. Two computer crashes in the last eight months wiped out almost every single mail, alas. I have taken this as a sign that the universe feels this correspondence — which sometimes had me in tears (the good kind) — should remain private. But to everyone out there who has read my poems (and not just out of love and loyalty, although that’s good too), and taken the trouble to say something, or write a note: I am grateful. I find myself fumbling to say what your words mean, and what the whole business of putting on (gingerly, with trepidation) a Poet’s Hat feels like. So I will revert to what in my family is known as a Reel Pome:

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Thank you, Dylan Thomas (click here to hear him read it). And while I don’t write necessarily just for lovers, the lines “… for the common wages/ Of their most secret heart” say it much better than I ever will. To those who have dropped coins of the heart into my poet’s hat: thank you.

Why I am a feminist # 48387, or: Yes, I DID write a cricket book, dammit

There are many very serious, often ghastly reasons I’m a hardline feminist — and among those reasons are the hundreds of thousands of women in this country who are killed, maimed or assaulted by husbands or boyfriends who largely go unpunished, as we learned from Lauren’s recent horrific news.

Today’s reason is infinitely more frivolous, but it sticks in my craw nonetheless. Ever since finally publishing Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket, I’ve been struck by how hard it is for folk to get their heads around the fact that I co-WROTE it. Not edited it, not even ghosted it, although I did all those things too. There were three authors on that book, and I was one of them — even though there was no question of my being anywhere close to my co-authors in terms of expertise and international recognition. Half a dozen local writers could have done my job, whereas Bob and Tim were irreplaceable. But the point is, I got the job. (more…)

This one is for Ingrid (and all road-trip fans)

I’ve been banging my head against the proverbial, trying to write about India ever since my return over three weeks ago. Even the tiniest taste of India is too rich, too complex, too amazing (in the true sense of the word) to render into words. I am going to take the advice of wiser folk, who have suggested that I wait — for images to emerge from the hectic whirl, for my heart to disengage (not easy), for my head to finish processing the ravishment of the senses.

Instead, I’m putting up the short story Sophy kindly published in the recent issue of Imago. It’s only with hindsight — putting this together with my Alaskan story in Home Away — that I’ve realised my “America” stories are both road-trips. So this is for the queen of the local road-trip, Ms Ingrid Leonie Wolfaardt — who writes such grand posts about her travels.

Here it is:

Sniping in Savannah

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