You’re up all night — with pussy galore

OH well, there you are minding your own business …
You’re walking to Madame’s sea rock, with Vento, your hunting dog.
You’re examing the cloudless sky while Vento has her nose to the ground.
You’re looking for clues about life in the blue yonder and Vento is off the leash, the one that extends.
It’s helped her learn to return to you and yesterday you also played your first game: throw and fetch.
She’s very clever is Vento, and it took only about three or four trial runs before she came back to you, with your Pooh Bear toy in her gentle mouth.
Yes, your Pooh. Such a cute one too, Pooh Bear dressed up like a bumble bee in a red and pink T-shirt with horizontal stripes. It wraps his torso.
He’s got little red wings on his back, and on his head, two red hearts on antennas.
Vento tossdes her head and throws Pooh into the air. She wags her tail.
We like this game and you wonder why you haven’t played it before.
Hello. It’s because today’s the day, duh, for it to be so.
You’re bonding nicely then …
What?
Pitiful little kitten cries.
Mew, mew, mew, in stereo.
Then you see them.
Tiny kittens, so small their ears are just about flat on their miniscule heads.
Their eyes are still closed.
Vento and you find them at the same time … one, two, three.
Oh, drat. One is dead.
Splat. It’s four paws are spread out on the gravel, and the ants and other crawlies are feasting on it.
Poor thing. How lifeless. Inert. History.
Your heart is racing. Vento looks at you.
One’s ginger, one’s black.
They’re still breathing, and crying.
For a moment, you hesitate.
Leave them be, you think. It’s the way around here. Leave them.
But you can’t.
There’s something about ebbing life that makes you panic; that makes you want to save them.
Life. So vital.
Breath. A heartbeat. A reed-thin voice.
Mew, mew. Help me?
They hang on to your lefthand fingers, these little things, it doesn’t hurt.
Their claws, spread in a kind of terror you think, they are transparent, opaque, so soft you don’t feel them.
You hold them close.
Vento’s back on the leash in your right hand.
You hurry, for the black one is struggling.
There isn’t any milk at home, so what.
You put some sugar in warm water.
Then you grab the NoyNoy, a kind of milk we put in our tea and coffee here.
You remember the syringes. They’re in a kitchen drawer ready to be filled with the scorpion bite prophylactic.
You tear open the packet and dislodge the needle.
Their little mouths are difficult to see. Your glasses have misted up and the openings to their tummies are tiny, tiny.
You squirt the mixture down their throats, one at a time.
You put them in a box, one of the boxes you’ve used to sort out your writing.
They crawl around on the kikoi.
And go quiet.
Miss G, of Gaga Animal Care, she tells you to mimic a cat mom.
You must rub their tummies after you’ve fed them.
Then massage their faeces and urine exit points.
Miss G tells you that if you don’t do that, if you can’t get them to eliminate, their bodies will succumb to toxins. They’ll rot from the inside.
The touch treatment works.
This morning they’re still alive. They spread out their pale pink paws with their see-through nails, and squeak.
When they open their mouths, you squirt in some of the mixture in the syringe.
They don’t seem to like it, the way they shake their heads.
You’re going to see if you can get a type of a teat or something. You don’t want to hurt their soft toothless jaws with the hard end of the plastic syringe. You pick them up again, for another feed.
Blighters. They’ve got fleas!
(ends)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreams are made of this – and so are nightmares

THE velvet blue sky leans into the hot earth.

It moves to kiss sunset’s orange pink skirts, and why not?

They’re billowing in carefree ribbons along the stark contours of the darkening and jagged mountains.

Night deepens its adamant ardour.

It clutches the elegant remnants of day, and throws them to the stars.

The full moon smiles and the plants’ fragrance — oregano you think it is, and/or that many faced plate sized thing that smells like honey — its sultry scent clings to your clamouring skin.

Ah, Madame X, where … where are you?

It’s been a long day; up at 7am to walk Vento (and yourself), then you drive a hired car 95km from Eressos to Mytiline, 100 or so from Skala.

No, no, no, you’re not looking for the most swankily dressed woman in Eressos. no.

You’re going to a meeting, to seek your fortune.

What’s that triangle of blood on the top of your nose?

You rub it off with some wet toilet paper, at Iliotropio, your favourite place on the shores of the Kalloni Gulf — thanks to a generous serving of indulgent sentimentality and very good food.

It’s the first place Madame X took you to. It’s the place where a melody all adagio played, on the Day of the Dancing Cloud.

But you don’t let this slothful this tedious emotional dross, you don’t let it stop you.

And one bloodletting slap in the face from the branches of a tree in a parking lot, it won’t get in your way.

You get into the car, brave courageous you; intrepid woman, beautiful woman.

You bang your left arm against the door trying to change gears.

Yes, the gear shift is to your right.

That’s what happens to me in South Africa, Mr V says later.

Your silver pinkie ring slams into the door again, and again.

Every time it shouts louder and louder auslander foreigner you’re in a new place.

Thanks gott you’re wearing your big girl panties.

You make way for shepherds and their sheep. You wave and smile.

Smile? More like a grimace you’re so alone.

The pine forests gather closely on the sides of the road. They conspire, so quietly, to tell you you’re close to the capital.

You park in the first available spot.

Where am I, you ask a man in a bookshop.

In the cetnre of Mytliline, he says.

Bonus!

You’ve stopped close to the harbour, this harbour that wears a fringe of significant shops and restaurants around its horseshow face; this harbour where fancy yachts berth; yachts from places such as Turkey (not far away, across the Mytiline Straight), the US and Italy among others today.

It’s also the harbour where the boat people from Africa land.

They stand in queues, docile. That’s where they begin the bureaucratic process to facilitates their entry in to Europe.

Delicious irony, fleeing African rule dot dot dot to seek refuge in the lands of the erstwhile colonisers!

They’ve paid three thousand dollars each to get here, says Mr V. They’re from Morocco, Libya, you name it.

They come with the GPS coordinates for the holding camps installed on their phones, he says.

You see them walking there, he says, looking at their smartphones.

The harbour sweats in the heat of it all.

Uhoh, your old Blackberry konks out in the phone shop where you’re buying air time.

You can’t believe it. You have to get a new phone, there and then.

Crumbs, the expense!

You meet who you’re meeting at a pizza restaurant. It’s across the road from a big grey frigate tethered to the quay.

You find, yes, there’s a possibility that a business could blossom but heaven forbid, the red tape, the research, the planning!

The taxes!

Mr V comes back and walks with you to a bookshop.

Yay! Your Greek books: English-Greek dialogues and a Learner’s Pocket Dictionary, with real Greek writing in them too!

The evening chorus of swirling swifts and swallows, it reminds you it’s time to leave.

You drive out and head for Plomari, the ouzo capital of Lesvos.

Mr V says his cousin, at Lesvos Estates, is selling a lot of property there, to Norwegians.

But you don’t get there.

You take the wrong turn-off and land up alongside the Gulf of Gera, one of the two gulfs of Lesvos.

You think about the refugees at the harbour, the way they’re clutching their prayer mats and buckets of hopes.

At Papados, there’s a load of wide-eyed Africans grabbing at the steel bench in the back of a police van.

You can see the whites of their eyes so wide open are they.

They look this way and that. They’re trapped.

You turn around and head back through groves of thickly set olive trees; olive trees so old their stems are entwined, they tear torridly into themselves.

They look like lovers in an oblivious ecstasy, panting for release.

Oh dear, you get close to Eressos, and veer off the road to fill up with petrol.

Later your realise: you’ve driven out the way you came in — back to Kalloni!

Tears blind you.

It’s late now, and the car’s headlights are brighter than the moon.

You drive, and drive. Exhausted. You’re afraid of how the road gives way to nothing.

You’re finished.

You can’t get home too soon, back to your cocoon.

(ends)

Life’s a beach
FRIDAY and you’re in your office, Kafene, the wifi-spot and restaurant where you work in Eressos, The Village, say the locals.

It’s private there, and you can find quiet corners where there is no glare on your computer screen.

The whole week you’ve watched as the mother and sons walk in with packets of fresh produce: fish, vegetables, meat — any type of ingredient from around here.

Mama, Yannis calls, as Despoina swirls something around in a bubbling pan.

He’s getting the house speciality for a regular, spaghetti and shrimps.

He shows the serving to you, and widens his eyes.

Yum!

But you order the courgettes filled with mince meat and a short-grained rice.

They’re plump, these courgettes — about the diameter of the inside of a toilet roll.

They’re anchored in a pale yellow sea of lemon, egg and flour, a kind of lemon curd, only runnier, and much tastier.

You’d like some of that green stuff too that you saw Despoina eating, and it’s not spinach.

It grows on the farms around here, says Yannis, casting his eyes about.

He’s laying out a large paper cloth so he can bring the food to your table.

You tell him you don’t mind eating without it, and he shakes his head.

Greek rules, he says, and fastens it to the table top with a stretchy piece of rope-like elastic.

The wilted greens, bottle green they’re so nutritious, are served with a generous wedge of lemon.

Yannis advises you to squeeze a lot of the juice on them.

Delicious!

The next morning, Saturday, you toil in your new garden at the house you’re renting from July 20.

You plant spinach, and some lettuces, and plenty of dill for all the fish you’ll cook and eat in the height of summer. You sweep the yard and start to stack and sort the stuff that’s lying around.

Miss T emerges from her morning coffee and rollup reverie, the one she enjoys at the round table outside her front door.

A spurt of energy propels her to pull out some peppery-smelling tree-type things.

She even sweeps up garden debris, into a dustpan, and lobs it over the stone wall, into a plot with a ruin on it.

You follow her example, and away go all the garden offcuts.

The exercise exhausts her. You’re caught in the momentum of the work.

Let’s have a nice rest, she says, and you sit and enjoy some more of the coffee she’s made.

At lunch time you pack your bags for a weekend in Skala.

You call Babis, one of the taxi drivers — you named him Babsi in an earlier blog … wrong! — you phone so he can take you to the beach.

Babis is also a fisherman; with a little boat, he says.

You’re going to go out with him on it, in a week or two. You’re going to chug out from the harbour at Skala, where antiquity’s mole is still visible. You’re going to go fishing in the Aegean.

We stop to fetch another woman, Stella.

Some visitors in a hire car back off down the narrow alley. Babis waves his hand out the window, to encourage them to squeeze in against the old walls, but they hurry away in reverse, out of sight.

Stella is also a fisherman, says Babis, as she clambers into the back seat.

But you can’t go with her.

Her boat is too big; it’s a commercial fishing boat, he says.

You pay him E5 for the fare and say the amount in Greek. You show off some of the other words you’ve learnt, just listening, just letting your ears let the sound in.

He smiles a big smile. You’re quick with Greek, he says, and his whole face settles into his cheeks.

You drop off the chicken and veg for the Sunday braai/barbecue at the Kaftan One’s place.

She lends you her little bicycle, and you feel quite happy riding around Skala on it, until you nearly pole-axe the Queen Bee, who’s a Busy Bee today, with papers in her hands.

I mean, you’re so intent on saying Yasou — and keeping the tiny-wheeled bike going in a straight line — that you forget you’ve got a loaded rucksack on your back, and it just about topples you as you swerve to miss her.

At the beach you swim for hours, far out into the sea; a nice slow swim, sure and strong.

You love it. Floating too. Just floating, in silence, with your ears under the water.

A womb with a view, of a blue blue sky.

You get out to find two topless American women sitting near you. They’re talking quite loudly about swimming: crawl, backstroke and the merits of each technique.

You pipe up: Errrr … I like breastroke, you say.

And laugh heartily. They look at you askance and you lie back on your kikoi.

You can hear the sheep bleating and the cocks crowing, even though Da Luz beach is packed with all sorts of people.

The younger Hellenes, in posses of male and female, they lean on their elbows and flirt with each other.

They adjust their beach wear and talk a lot. Ela this, and ela that.

That night you go to a party at Flamingo.

You’re just about to blub coz there’s too much dub, then Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Bum crack you up.

They’re nimble on their feet, as large as they are. They copy each others’ steps on the dance floor.

Cute. Tweedle Dee’s got some rythym, but Tweedle Bum?

Her wedgie seems to be cramping her style but she’s having a good time.

She doesn’t notice her slacks are caught in the pathway of her derriere.

You laugh with delight. You’re feeling daft tonight.

At Parasol, after midnight, you can’t keep still. Everbody else is sitting around, as if there is no music playing.

But you, you work up a sweat. Are you dancing to forget?

Where are you from, asks a young woman, when you sit down.

Afriki, you say.

We’re from Venezuela, she says, in halting English.

There are four of them, and they came from Mytiline for the party, Parasol’s 18th birthday.

The place is packed but you don’t know anybody there.

The moon turns into a burnt orange with a third of it sliced off. It’s sinking into the sea.

It lights a bright ocean path to tomorrow.

There are no answers tonight, no matter how thoughtful you are, sitting on a bench almost at the water’s edge.

You down your water from a plastic bottle and walk slowly to your friend’s flat.

You can’t sleep.

Nor can Skala. It’s noisy. At 5am there is still no rest on the short main street.

By 7, when you wake up (yes, two hours’ intermittent sleep), the LAPD is already open, and the waiter is carrying Greek coffee on a tray to the first of the rotund men to arrive.

Your friend makes breakfast, then you amble your lazy way to the beach again.

But you’re anxious to get home and the sun’s raking your back.

Mercilessly.

There’s no Sunday barbecue for you.

You have a big week ahead, and some outstanding business to attend to, (some of it is quite close to your heart).

Gregoris drives you to your hill house in The Village.

Peace and Quiet and Vento, they walk down the stairs to greet you, just as you open the big street door.

They wag their tails and whisper, they whisper at once the story you long to hear.

(ends)

 

 

 

 

What a difference a day makes

AH, there she is.

At Last, with two short-legged dogs on leashes pulling her arms out in front of her along the boardwalk at Skala Eressos.

You’re looking good, she says, and stops and smiles at you.

Her face has brightened too, that’s for sure.

The antibiotics have kicked in and her flu has fled.

You stand together and chat.

The dogs leashes entwine and their tongues hang out as they romp and pant.

Nip. Yap. Nip. Nip.

You’re in Skala to do some shopping, buy air time, and draw money from the ATM.

Money? You can’t call rands money, not anymore.

You might as well have drachmas in your account for all the South African currency’s worth.

Better get out, fast, before Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters kick in.

They’re on the ascendancy, the men with their red berets and gung-ho attitudes.

Their policies mirror Zimbabwe’s — they’re all about Zanu-PF (101): land grabs, nationalisation, everything for all.

The tyrant and spectacular homophobe Robert Mugabe is their hero and mentor.

And, shock horror, they call the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille, they call her South Africa’s biggest racist, that’s how far out of touch they are; that’s the sort of lie they spin.

Enough of that, you think, as you count your euros. Ouch!

At the veggie shop, the one on the corner opposite Manos, you buy fresh fresh things straight from the young woman’s garden.

Mine, she says proudly, pointing at her chest.

She looks at her boxes full of produce jumping in juice and organic jolliness.

Crunch. They’re delicious.

It’s like entering another realm, being in Skala.

It’s a metropolis after the permeable quiet of your mountain village.

The place is popping, and the season’s not even in full swing.

Talk about a body buffet!

The shops are resplendent too, in their new coats of paint, and some are decorated on the outside with all types of art work in beautiful bright colours.

The beach caravans strain in their starting blocks and soon they’ll let rip too; they’ll open to sell their food and drinks.

My word, there’s even a blond-haired surfer type jogging along the shore.

His hair bounces in the wind.

Your Kouitou Hotel loves are sitting on the steps of their friend Sylvia’s Leather Shop in Skala’s cobbled main drag.

They’re a kind of beacon for you, Vasi and Alex, constants in the unpredictable sea of a burgeoning summer.

You ask the taxi driver to stop so you can run over to give them two kisses each; one on each cheek.
In Eressos, you start to prepare your stifado, beef stew Greek-style.

The phone rings.

It’s Miss T.

She’s sitting at Portakali sipping raki and ignoring a plate of Alexandra (the Great’s) mezedes.

The prowler scowler Mellie rushes at you. She’s talking talking, the little old thing.

Miss T is very protective and tells you to say hello, be nice.

You’re a stranger, after all.

So you tickle the dog and you are friends. Clearly it’s forever the way she’s wagging her tail.

Alexandra (the Great) fetches a key attached to a Vento pizzeria (and more) keyring.

She dangles it in front of Miss T, who takes it and hands it to you.

I suppose this means I trust you, says Miss T, for it is the key to her house, the one you will hire from July 20; the one you will share for two months with a Turkish sanyasa, Devi, you think it is.

It’s goddess, says the Kaftan One, at dinner.

She knows all sorts of things, the Kaftan One.

She loves your food, and your blog, and you can talk about books, which is what a librarian is about isn’t it, books?

The house is empty without Vento, who went to be spayed by the visiting vets.

The Pied Piper Miss G phones while you’re savouring the stew.

She has astonishing news.

The vets searched and searched but they couldn’t find anything in Vento — she’s already been snipped.

Mr T from Mytiline calls too.

There is not one Greek learner book in the four bookshops there. They have to order it from Athens, he says.

It will take a day or two, and that’s OK. You will see him on Tuesday, in the island’s capital.

After your meal, you take your friends on a walk, to show them the ruin you would like to buy and fix for the future.

Trust you to fall in love with a wreck.
(ends)

 

It’s Greek, to me!
THERE you are, sitting quietly at Portakali, on Saturday morning.

You’re reading Athens Views.

Miss T is at the table too, with you under the big tree outside.

She’s wearing her sage face under her curly salt and pepper crop.

She’s focused on a book, and her short-legged old dog is patrolling, scowling, growling.
Mellie the Marauder you want to call her, the way she acts before she gets to know you.

What’s with these Greek women and their anti-social, suspicious dogs?

They think nothing of making a run for your ankles, whether you are a local or not (the dogs, not the women!).

Gott!

Anyway, you’re just about to dip into A glimpse of life in the early iron age, a story about Exploring the unique settlement of Zagora on the island of Andros, according to the headlines, when Stuart walks up to you.

Stuart? You’ve never met him but remember, this is a tiny village you’re living in.

He’s interested in Vento, because he rescues dogs too.

He tells you a long story about how he and his wife — they are both regulars around here and let their house during the summer months — he tells you how they found two puppies dumped on the side of the road near Sigri, a village about 12km from Eressos; how some English fat cats paid thousands of pounds to get them transported to Heathrow Airport, two braks from Greece.

He waves his arms to demonstrate the size of the country property the dogs are running around on now.

Stuart wants to know about Vento.

You tell him that her name means wind in Greek. You’re holding a newspaper, so you must be intelligent?

He looks puzzled. No, it’s Spanish, he says, with indisputable authority .

Uhoh. You’ve trumpeted your ignorance in your blog. Drat!

There you were making assumptions again: a restaurant called Vento, run by two Greek women, who tell you the word means wind … it must be a Greek word, right?

Wrong!

Assumptions and expectations are not to be trusted. That much is clear.

Miss T raises her eyebrows and says ne? when you (humbly) say you should’ve checked your facts.

The next day, Sunday, you take Vento for her morning walk, and pop in at her place just steps from the gravel road.

You discuss accommodation, since you will be hiring her house for as long as you are in Eressos.

Out of this mansion of a place, with all its mod-cons and a CD collection you really like, into a typical village house: stone, wood, upstairs and downstairs; little wood-burning stove in the tiny sitting room.

You choose the bedroom above it, so you can absorb the warmth from the flue that runs up the wall to the chimaminee.

You’re thinking of when when the cold comes.

You’re very happy the house does not have petroleum heating — petroleum stinks.

And it’s super expensive to use, during winter.

It starts raining. You, Miss T and the dogs go inside.

She fans her face with a piece of paper, and crinkles her nose.

You’re also hit by the smell, since you’re on the sofa next to her.

Hmmm. Vento is living up to her name. Wind.

Thunder whips your ears, it’s so low.

By the afternoon, the sun is out and the Kaftan One is sitting (no, not on your face ha ha), she’s sitting with you on your larney verandah with the plants in pretty pots.

She’s enjoying the late Sunday lunch that you’ve cooked.

She tells you that in Norway they get rebates to dump petroleum heating systems.

They’re encouraged to change to eco-friendly ones.

You tell her about the house: a spacious yard with a big 10-seater table in it; plenty of place to plant vegetables and herbs.

It’s also got a terrace, a stoep at the top of the curling outdoor stairs. They take you, one step at a time, to a first class view of Skala, and the never-ending sea.

You’re going to be sharing this old old place for the first two months, from July 20.

A Turkish woman you have never met will move in, on July 16.

She’s a sanyasa, and will spend a lot of time, you suppose, at the Osho centre that’s plonked in some bushes a short distance from the village.

It must be karma, says Madame X, for she is also a devotee of this fringe cult, and sees karma and past lives in everything.

You were meant to stay with her. Is it karma that you are not?

Which reminds you.

You went to the centre too, once.

You watched Madame sway her head from side to side.

Her shiny auburn-burgundy-red hair (you loaded your suitcase with tons of henna from Fordsburg, Joburg, enough for a lifetime, she said) her hair, it was tied in a knot, a tennis ball size of colour in a colourless room. Six love?!

You saw them all jump up and say Wa, or something like that.

Okaaaaay …

You watched a bearded and bulbous-eyed Mr Osho sitting there, holding forth in a DVD.

He raised a right hand (verily, you bet) and he said I say unto you … well!

That made you do like a donald and duck.

You’re spiritual but you don’t need someone to tell you so, especially a copycat!.

Nor do you want to live by what anybody says, by dogma and cant.

There are certain universal fundamentals and, as far as you are concerned, they do not require the rigidity or control of a so-called teacher, saint or guru to manifest themselves in you.

No!

Life is your teacher. 

Not some Jesus, Buddha, Osho or whatever or whomever is cast in the mould of saviour and light.

You don’t hold it against people, though, the fact that they worship people who name themselves gods.

Since then, like yesterday, you’ve made up your mind about several things.

The Kaftan One, she encourages you, on all sorts of levels.

You get out your notebook and write down things.

What’s more, she and you know what it means to be out, as lesbians for one, since 19 voetsek.

You know what it means to try and be authentic. Real.

You’ve lived open lives. She is a one-breasted cancer survivor, for instance.

She doesn’t do falsies, like Angelina Jolie does. Not even naked on the beach.

No, you don’t do things like that, not if you’ve been in the women’s movement, since the 1970s!

And in bed for eight years with yuppie flu.

Today, her days start at 2pm.

It’s no secret, no shame.

You, on the other hand, have suffered severe and debilitating depression; you have burnt out and cracked up several times.

Each time you have come back lighter, with a newer more beautifully translucent skin.

Each time — and with therapy of course, loads of it — you’ve become honed to better handle this exquisite paradox, this thing we call life.

Living is not easy, no matter what the song says, not even if it is summer time.

The Black Dog bites. Hard. Anywhere, anytime.

Do not underestimate the power of this vicious and indiscriminate beast.

Manage it; keep it at bay. Admit, and submit.

It’s essential to do this, for if you do not confront his mental illness it will, as sure as the dawn breaks and the sun sets, it will manage you; it will bully you.

Jesus many not want Kurt Cobain for a Sunbeam, but the Black Dog sure as hell wants you for a rag doll. It wants you in its jaws, this monster, so it can shake you, break you, bring you down.

It makes breakfast of the brittle and eats the anxious for lunch.

For supper, it takes your soul.

Beware of the Black Dog. It wants to finish you off.

It mauls you even as you whimper, cower under your pillow.

It feeds on the fact that you’re fraught and afraid, terrified in your psychological torment.

You shrink from the beauty of life. You see horror, hostility. It’s everywhere.

You retreat into a cave. Nobody can reach you.

You hide behind booze, drugs, maybe even religion, whatever.

Busy-ness. Anything.

You do everything to not have to admit it. You are sick.

Depression destroys a person. It’s destructive too for those around them.

Your family, and friends, your ex-lovers, shame, they suffered too, for you could not feel love, no, not at all.

You were always blaming someone else! Ruining lovely things.

But that’s depression, it’s not you.

You take a pill because the illness is a critical matter: it is a matter of life and death.

Admitting you were not coping, and getting a diagnosis, and treatment, they were the first steps on your road to wellness; to an emotional equanimity, to a peace within.

It’s hard work getting better. But you have no regrets.

You know that Denial is not only a river in Africa.
You know that sometimes it takes years to climb out from Denial’s murky waters; to free yourself from its dangerous, damning depths.
If you stay there, you drown. As sure as nuts.
(ends)

Bye-bye, Miss Muscles

DARK, low clouds hiss and spit. There’s a gale-force wind and some random drops of rain.

It’s as if the sky is metres from your head, so low are the swollen, sullen heavens.

They match your unruly feelings, these moody mad blues so crazy they make you cry.

Definitely not weather for a barbecue, a method of open-air cooking that South Africans call a braai.

This chicken you’ve marinated for hours, this bird, it must go in the oven, Kaftan One’s little oven, at Skala.

It fits in, just. It’s lying on its back, open-legged, in red wine and olive oil.

Chunks of a whole fresh pear wallow in honey. Fresh thyme and oregano nestle in the fruit; they stick to it, they’re glued to a delectable dressing on a sheet of meat.

Pepper. Some garlic. A bit of this, and that.

The Kaftan One, from Norway, is keen to learn how to build a fire.

She wants to know how to grill and bake food on smouldering, shimmering coals.

But not tonight, Josephine.

Next week, you will give a lesson at Villa Sappho, the Kaftan One’s colourful cottage, down the road from the Kouitou Hotel, a unique establishment indeed.

You will demonstrate your prowess with flame and food.

On this occasion, tonight, Miss Muscles and Krolle, her dog, are the stars of the show.

They shimmer in the glimmer of goodbye.

You, the Kaftan One, Madame and Miss Muscles are just about to start dinner — your knives and forks are poised in mid-air — when there’s a knock at the door.

In walks The Grunter.

She sniffs and snorts as if she’s got no tissues to blow her nose.

WTF? What’s with this woman who’s taking over Miss Muscles’ flat?

She’s sitting next to you but you dare not look at her.

Maybe this is a Nordic cultural practice? Who knows?

Later you notice the snuff box on the table, between you.

Ah. So that’s what all the nose pnuematics is about.

It’s not a late night.

Miss Muscles, Krolle and the Kaftan One are driving to Mytline the next day.

The departing ones will stay at the Sappho Hotel in the island’s capital, and leave from the airport at the crack of dawn on Saturday.

You don’t go with them, as you say you will.

You stay at home, to gather yourself about you.

Two Albanian sisters are here. They’re cleaning windows, washing the floors.

They slosh water everywhere.They shake their heads when you proffer cloth upon cloth.

E5 an hour, each.

Madame pops in to make sure they’re doing their job, then she too waves and leaves.

She’s on her way to unblock her chakras, to paint them free in a village nearby.

You? You waddle around in words. And let them swamp you.

You must be careful not to drown.

(ends)

ps: I am finding that writing a blog every day is utterly exhausting, intellectually and emotionally.

I need time to assimilate and to integrate, to chill, and to not be preoccupied by its contents 24/7.

This is why I will publish Afrodykie’s blog only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting from today.

I have a lot of typing to do too, ie inputting reams of poems, pre-computer writing and so on.

After that, I intend to collate my life’s work, and to stack it in a coherent order: poems, journalism, interviews, short stories, film scripts, etc. It is published and unpublished work.

I also intend (please sweet Jesus, and all the gods and goddesses) to complete what I believe to be compelling stories, the ones I have started over many many years.

Retrospect and experience will make them rich, in texture and tone.

Please!

I will also need to do some journalism (maybe a feature a month?) for possible publication.

Hello. I take commissions. Hello. Can anyone hear me? Yooohooo!

So! This work is going to involve a lot of sitting around, and hours and hours of sweat in my office.

You know what they say, one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration…

I imagine I am going to need longer than six months to do this, and to complete it.

It may take the rest of my life. This lifetime! Whatever. It must be done!
(ends)

Summertime, almost

YOU wake to find your heart floating next to you, light and free.

You walk with Vento, who heads to the long grass at the start of the path on the way to the sheep shed.

She stalls, and sniffs the air.

Then you see the sheep, drinking at the water trough.

She’s very sensitive, is your Vento, attuned to your every move. And everything.

Intuitive.

She reminds you of your Rosie-girl, your beautiful cross-breed of indeterminate heritage.

Much like Vento, who is a hunting dog, says Madame X. And purses her lips.

You can’t argue with that!

Rosie-girl died when you were looking after your dad, on his death bed.

So you never had a chance to say goodbye, to hold her when her beloved head sagged to one side, still forever.

Shame. Poor Miss H, in Joburg, South Africa, she had to call the vet, and drag her lifeless body from the house.

It was a portent. You were absent from your father’s death bed, and his funeral.

Sometimes the soul shrinks. And there is nothing you can do.

Sometimes you curl in on yourself, to shield yourself from scarring, from being torn to shreds.

Feelings can claw the life from you.

You have to do this, from time to time, for living’s sake. For love. Of yourself.

There is no merit in turning yourself into a dart board; the target of things that stab.

Never mind. That’s the past. Goodbye pain, hello Eressos, Lesbos, Greece.

You walk into the veld here this week, past Madame’s sea rock, into the side of mountain on the other end of the back of the village.

Fennel, oregano, other herbs and plants you can use for tea and cooking, it all grows profusely along the side of the road.

The day before, you and Madame X go on a road trip.

It is the best day. A long day, together.

There is no blog about it because The Day of the Dancing Cloud has become a template for a story.

Madame, in the way she does, prompts ideas and this one, the route she takes, and the things she tells you, and shows you, they trigger a recognition that it’s time to write about something other than the characters of Eressos.

But never fear, dear reader, there are characters in this story too!

It will take some work, of course, to get this right: facts and poetic writing, but you’ll give it a go.

You look forward to it, for you are on a big learning curve, in more ways than one.

It will be good to get down to basics, to specifics. Seriaaaas mixed with levity.

In the meantime, she arranges to get a housekeeper for you. Pronto.

Gott! It looks like a bomb’s hit this place, she says.

Madame warns that you have to tidy up before the housekeeper arrives, tomorrow, Friday.

You don’t want people talking, she says.

Last night you intend to see what’s going on at the Tourism Board’s function: Painting the Turtle Bridge.

But you don’t get there, even though the Queen Bee organised it; Miss QB who’s lived here all her life.

She knows everything there is to know about everything, and everybody.

Miss QB and her Sappho Travel (Sappho everything, actually) the yearly September celebration of all things Sapphic, the Sappho Women International Eressos Women’s Festival. She rules the roost, she and her business partner, Miss Crew Cut.

Anyway, you land up at Vento again, Vicky and Lena’s place, where you found your dog or rather, the dog found you.

Yummy. Salad and ah, moussaka.

It’s mama’s moussaka you say, kissing your fingers in a bunch on your lips.

Yes, I’m your mama, says Vicky, who cooked it.

She’s smiling from behind the counter. You notice her soft eyes, for the first time.

The till jingles. The tourists are coming.

Today, you’re at Portakali, in Eressos, again. You’re here just about every day.

Arti, your Arti  … from the Kouitou Hotel.

She walks in and tells you about the South Africans who have been staying there.

There’s this link, she says, Greece and South Africa.

Yes.

The English women you met on the beach the other day walk in to Portakali, for old time’s sake.

Let’s call them Belle and Elle, for their names do chime.

They hold your dog while you write. You introduce them to Alexandra (the Great). They laugh.

We used to live here too, the say, and take over Vento’s lead.

Now they are talking to Miss T, the Miss T who tells you, while you’re sitting outside her house drinking coffee and smoking roll-ups yesterday, what you can do with the herbs you’ve picked from the side of the road.

You buy a chicken across the way from Portakali.

You make hand signs so the butcher. You want a flattie, as we call them in South Africa.

Yes, a spatchcock chicken.

Next door you get some charcoal.

You’re cooking tonight. A good old braai. For Miss Muscles’ farewell.

The meat must marinate, and you’ve got washing to hang up. No dirty linen, so far!

(ends)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wheelspin
THE style around here is haphazard and nonchalant — including everyone’s transport.
You’ve never seen anything like it, not even in Africa, and that’s saying something.
In Johannesburg, about 25 people can squeeze into a 15-seater minibus taxi, when the necessity arises, but four human beings on a tiny scooter?
You gotta believe it!
Yesterday you’re walking from Eressos to Skala, a distance of about 6km when you include the stretch to the Kafatan One’s nest at the Women’s Beach in front of Da Luz.
You realise you’re taking your life in your hands stepping out into this maelstrom.
The pace may be sedate in these villages but hang, on the road between Eressos and Skala Eressos, they certainly make up for it!
Not everyone though is hell-bent on getting from A to B as quickly as possible, with no regard for life or limb. Not everyone’s bike engine revs like crazy mosquitos.
One bloke comes chugging along with a hand on one handle bar. The other one clutches a fruit that’s heading for his mouth. Chew, chomp, chomp. Chug, chug.
Three chattering teenagers race by, on one scooter. Two of them, their feet hang loose, precariously close to the ground.
Off they go. Laughing. All the way to the beach. Their towels fly behind them
Then the family of four.
Daddy in front with his elbows out like wings, a mother hen protecting her chicks.
He’s leaning forward a little, as if to give the trip some momentum.
Two little ones in the middle, looking this way and that, and mama at the back.
Solid and sure.
These aren’t motorbikes or anything, just ordinary scooters, from tiny to only a bit bigger.
They come in various stages of dishevelment and sometimes you wonder how anyone could sit on a tattered old seat like that.
Just about every one of these two-wheelers is customised.
Plastic crates or baskets or any old something to carry things in are attached to them in various positions: front, back, on the part where they put your feet.
They never know when they might need to come to a sudden and unpredictable halt, and pick some oregano or wild spinach. Fennel, perhaps? Maybe they’ll stop. Simply to stare.
They don’t know when they’ll have to take their dog or dogs somewhere.
Yes, they have to be prepared.
The pooches sit wide-eyed, in their crates. Their ears almost blow back when the bikers race around. But the dogs don’t budge. They dare not!
The cars are another story.
Dusty, whether they are new or not, and dented — if they’re older than one week!
Or so it seems.
Madame X parks her cute car outside your house, where the car park is, for our area of the village.
You wash it, and suddenly it gleams. Pretty thing.
Then it’s time to find the sun visor, for the big front window.
Uhoh…. it’s a long search in that Pandora’s Box of a boot!
Perhaps it’s a Greek thing, or at least an Eressos thing (you don’t know), this carrying your life around in the back of your car.
Everyone seems to do it, even the ex-pats carry a hotch-potch of Gott knows What.
Sometimes this paraphernalia overflows onto the back seat: anything and everything clogs the cars. Ok, not all of them, but it’s not strange to see things, anything lying there, innate.
You see a man on a quad bike. He needs four wheels — the size of him.
He has a very formal and smart carrier tied to the back, the local yokel crate is pinned to the front.
It’s got the residue of some vegetable stuff in it.
You watch him take his right leg in hand to get off his quad. It rises about 10cm as he unseats himself.
Yes, they’re good at constructing mobile contraptions, the people in this area.
There’s even a giant-sized tuk-tuk — dishevelled and rudimentary — that parks in Eressos Square.
It reminds you of Snowy Struthers’ buggered up old Beetle that we used to ride around in at Mazeppa Bay, in the Transkei, South Africa, when we were kids.
One day, us rural types, Snowy and me, we took two Joburg girls for a spin.
We laughed like hell when we rode over a cow pat (on purpose, mind you).
It splashed and splattered onto their legs through the rusted floor of the VW.
Boy, did they shriek, those city girls from the fancy suburbs.
That ruined any chance of success in our amarous overtures.
So, we smoked cigarettes instead, and vomited behind the beach shack at Mazeppa.
You’re remembering this on the way to the beach yesterday.
Your feet in walking boots without socks squish mulberries.
The juice is blood, South African blood. Marikana — the big post-liberation massacre of striking platinum miners. A rape every four minutes too, in your blighted homeland. The murder of lesbians.
Poor thing. South Africa. It’s stuck in an apartheid paradigm — racial tyranny, brutal sexism, and a president who spends R225-million on his private home.
The liberators (sies!) are the opressors now, and the much-vaunted constitution pays lip service to human rights. You could cry, and sometimes you do, it disgusts you so. It hurts, yes it does.
Thankfully, there’s no lurking malevolance or the evil of sinister and indiscriminate violence here.
You breathe a sigh of relief.
The agrarian ambience soothes you; the smell of the earth, sheep shit; the swifts and the swallows go seriously tweet tweet. They’re swooping and soaring, singing with glee.
You love the way there’s always somebody busy on a piece of land, growing something, tilling the soil. The plants are health, so green.
There’s lots of cultivation going on. You see people dropping off fresh stuff at the restaurants, the vegetable shops, the mini-markets.
They park their scooters and walk in with the stuff, fresh and fullsome.
It’s sort of a culture here, this selling from a vehicle.
This doesn’t happen in Athens, says Madame X.
There are any number of trucks, some with loudspeakers, others without.
They carry anything from clothes, to pots and pans, fresh fish in a fridge.
Yesterday there was a van in the sqaure loaded with garlic, long strands of it.
It was a kind of makeshift campervan; garlic at the bottom and then a level above it, for sleeping.
You’re on your way to the butcher, after the beach, to buy a steak for the candlelight dinner you’re imagining for yourself.
It’s the butcher opposite Portakali, where you bought a whole chicken last week, for chicken soup.
You swear it’s free range, even without it carrying a contrived city label telling you so.
He slices a piece of meat for you, and you say Bones for Dogs, please.
Woof woof.
You imagine he will give you the gristle he has chopped off.
No! He goes to his freezer and comes back smiling.
Wow! A whole packet full of meaty bones, for mahalla.
Vento licks her lips. It’s her first bone, and she loves it.
Madame X’s little ones will get theirs soon.
Note to self: maybe it will stop the Yorkie going for the villagers’ legs.
(ends)
ps: You’re happy you’re not brushing your teeth every three hours anymore, in anticipation of Madame X planting a smacker on your loving lips.
You know it. She is never going to kiss you. Period.
pps: Yes, Afrodykie is clever but not clever enough to have come up with the name Afrodykie. That brainwave belongs to Gabrielle Bekes, who sat next to you at the Sunday Times in Johannesburg.
Thank you, Gabrielle, for this wonderful gift. A brand, at last! xxx
(ends)

 

 

Walking into the s-u-u-u-u-u-n

MONDAY May 26.

It would’ve been six weeks to go if you hadn’t behaved like a silly teenager and packed your bags the minute Madame X hugged a slim leggy leg leg. Heavens, it was cunningly encased in a black stocking.

She tilted her head, on Skype, and said you must be ready by now?

Ready? Jesu Maria! Has she heard of a spontaneous orgasm?

Your heart raced and beat faster than a humming bird bats its wings.

WTF, Afrodykie?

You’re not sorry though, that you made the decision to cast all caution to the wind.

Reckless? Daring?

Who cares?

It’s been a wonderful experience, seeing Eressos and Skala Eressos blossom.

They’ve transformed from colourful spring shyness, to the verge of the full-blown glory of summer.

If only love were as predictable as the seasons!

It certainly is as splendid, in its intensity. It spurs you.

Two weeks into a six-month visit to Eressos, and there is a lot more than Madame X to life on a Greek island.

Thanks gott, as she would say. For her, and me!

She proffers a slender neck. It’s laced with Dolce and Gabbana, and a flowering of mixed messages.

Of course, like a twit, you brush your lips along the vertical vein from shoulder to ear, and retreat lest you startle her.

You’re surprised. She actually keeps still long enough for you to complete the manoeuvre!

Enough of that. Let’s move on, please. To things that are not of the heart, nor of an unfathomable connection.

Her word, not mine. You like to call it luuuuuuurv. Ha ha.

So, you open your eyes and see the beach bars at Skala coming to life.

Tourists are wandering around, and here in Eressos, cyclists with pink legs say Kalimera every two minutes.

They nod their heads in their helmets. And smile. Their teeth are very white against their red faces.

You can see they are visitors also because nobody upon nobody around here wears a helmet; not on a bicycle, motorbike or quad bikes. 

As for you, you feel as if you’re in the driver’s seat again, on your bus to better days, around the bed to love, perhaps.

The Kaftan One and you are planning this, that and the next thing. 

Vento, too, is coming along for the ride.

We were fast out the starting blocks this morning, at about seven.

The Landlord’s music got us into a dancing mood:  Kandy Clasic the CD is called, and boy, did we get moving.

Yes, we actually ran, a bit.

Your right ankle is puffed up, like Miss Muscles’ party balloons, but that doesn’t matter.

You’re happy Vento’s your girl. Gentle, intuitive. Loving.

She goes with you just about everywhere.

And curls up at your side. She nudges you to let you know when she needs the ablution block.

Kewl bananas. There’s a relationship here.

She’s a hunting dog, says Madame X. 

You venture Vento may be a cross between a Beagle and a Doberman but no, she’s a hunting dog.

Finish en klaar.

You and Madame X (aka The Filly) are walking the dogs from the village into the Kampos.

I don’t think I’ve been here before, she says, looking around in her dramatic dark glasses.

You feel the tranquility there. Trees, pools of cool water, concealed by the foliage.

Look at those rocks, she says. They’re like sea rocks. The sea must’ve been here, she says.

You step out of the shade to walk further, but she’s had enough.

You notice baby fruit on a tree. 

Almonds, you ask.

She steps closer, and peers at the little blobs of green.

No, it’s a pear tree, she says. Pears

You wonder if she appreciates the pun.

You don’t say anything. Again, for you can sometimes see things where there is nothing.

It’s nice walking around with Madame X and the dogs. Her little ones love it, but one of them is anti-social.

She (not Madame X! though you wouldn’t be surprised) charges out to bite a villager who’s telling us about the old factory.

Yes, everyone speaks Greek to you here. Somehow, you can get the gist of what they are saying, for the language is not only about words and impossible tenses.

It is also about gestures, and facial expressions.

Intonation too. It’s important, and denotes meaning.

You’re keen to start learning Greek, and your vocabulary has improved. 

It consists of about 10 words now, and you can count to five.

From zero to not quite hero.

Miss T laughs.

You know what they say about learning Greek?

The first 100 years are difficult, and then it gets easy!

Like love, you suppose.

(ends)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ed her chin on h