ELAND’S BAY I was unaware that my right thigh was being microwaved. Only later would I see the unusual splash of pink across my leg. It looked as if a master Japanese calligrapher, using a wide brush and red ink, had applied it. It was quite beautiful against the otherwise flounder belly white of my skin. As we drove across the baked landscape towards Eland’s Bay, the sun slanted through the driver’s window and etched my right quad with a precise and dangerous mark. It was one that my dermatologist could certainly use as ammunition to bolster her directive. [View Full Entry]

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EXTRA CREDIT This is for all the mothers who said to me, “Oh, maybe my little Muffie can earn some extra credit by showing your blog to her classmates at school.” Please share this with your children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces. Go flush. Or watch the water drain out of your bathtub. Here in South Africa the water swirls counter-clockwise, from right to left (I just checked in my kitchen sink). I forgot to check before I left the United States, but I remember being told that there, north of the equator, it rotates in the opposite dire [View Full Entry]

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CHAPTER TWO MARGARET Delia had expected to collect only a tiny corpse that morning. She and Finbar had been up all night. The Indian doctor at Boston City Hospital had shown no optimism. Not a spark. His eyes were like black marbles. His skin was darker than anything Delia or Finbar had ever seen. A shade beyond black. As dawn seeped through the kitchen curtains, Delia imagined kissing this little infant Margaret one last time. She wondered, in a way that made every organ in her small body feel as if it were being sliced, if they would let her hold [View Full Entry]

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ONE RAND, TWO RAND, FIVE RAND, ENLIGHTENMENT! Sometimes I don’t know where I am. Believe me when I say that this is a good thing. I think it’s a step towards enlightenment, but not the kind of enlightenment associated with Buddha or Shiva or Saint Francis of Assisi or even Bruce Springsteen. I haven’t felt the bliss purportedly associated with the attainment of universal consciousness, nor have I experienced any energy shooting from the top of my head. The enlightenment I am speaking of is the kind of enlightenment associated with being able to easily dif [View Full Entry]

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FINBAR Finbar Joyce’s back was as wide as an armoire. If he sat in front of you at a theater, the stage would go dark. His head was proportionate, sitting atop those broad shoulders like a magically balanced boulder. Thick brows shadowed the deep-set blue eyes and gave off an air of profound thoughtfulness, as if everything he looked at sent him into bouts of contemplation. So angular was his jaw that it appeared as if the mandibles were made from two carpenter’s squares. As a younger man his hair was red, but now it was a coppery gray, as thick [View Full Entry]

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CLICKED ON PHONICS Sometimes I wonder. I wonder what South Africa would be like for us if only Afrikaans and Xhosa were spoken. No accented English. Just the throat clearing guttural sounds of the old Dutch, and the clicking, wood on wood sounds of this local African language. If English were not universally spoken here we would no doubt resort to a little phrase book and muddle our way through. We have done so in countries that did not colonize this place, say France or Spain. This, of course, assumes that we could perform the comedy of reading the phonetic sentenc [View Full Entry]

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SMOKE, SMILEYS, SHABEENS AND THE MESSIAH In 1927 the first Township in Cape Town, Langa, was established when blacks, mostly Xhosa people, were removed from their homes and resettled here to make room for white expansion. Langa means sun in the Xhosa language. She stood amidst the swirling smoke, like an apparition. The earth below her was coal black, baked by thousands of fires and pounded hard by millions of feet. Behind her were low tin shacks, the walls leaning at impossible angles, the waves of corrugated metal glinting in the sun. Above, the [View Full Entry]

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KIRSTENBOSCH NATIONAL BOTANICAL GARDEN PLEASE, PLEASE, FIX THAT TYPO It is perhaps the longest running uncorrected literary error in history. I checked at the offices, with a number of people, but they all denied any involvement or culpability. “It apparently didn’t get picked up by ‘Spell Check,’” I was informed. “Oh, what a lame excuse,” I snorted. “Do you know that she’s here right now, right here, in the gift shop sweeping her credit card through the air like a saber? She’s not going to be happy.” [View Full Entry]

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AFTER ONE MONTH, SOME THOUGHTS WINE AND GUILT. At my initial wine tasting experience here in South Africa, or for that matter anywhere, I was reminded of those moments in Amsterdam years ago when I stood outside of a “Coffee Shop” for the first time. Despite the fact that I knew it was perfectly legal to walk in there and order up a gram of Afghani hashish or some marijuana that was called “Jimmy Hendrix,” I stood out in the street paralyzed. It actually took me a few days before I had the courage to sit down at the lovely bar, [View Full Entry]

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CAPE OF GOOD HOPE HARD OUT OF THE SOU’WEST “Recorded history credits the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope to Bartholomew Diaz and his crew in 1488. However, artifacts from middens found in the area show that the region was known to and utilized by man intermittently since the Early Stone Age period some 600, 000 years ago.” Pocket Guide To The Cape of Good Hope, South African National Parks. Thankfully the wind is blowing onshore. Could I guess its velocity? OK. Maybe steady at 40 knots, with gusts to 60? But what’s in a number. What [View Full Entry]

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