A long stretch of road, nearly empty, takes me up another wide hill. Cars with bigger engines set cruise control at 140 and whip past me. I am in their way and we all have nowhere to go. Brenda Fassie plays on my stereo. I’m reframing my relationship with travel, with my perspective on place. […]
Category: blog
The Slow Boat
In Scribbling the Cat, Alexandra Fuller wrote: It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani River to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The Pepani in Zambia, where her parents live and where Fuller met the man who would be the focus […]
What the Cat Saw
The choice was between a white kitten and an orange kitten. I was going through a Garfield phase so the agreement was that I got to pick the orange kitten and my sister could pick her name. It was the late summer of 1996. I was starting a new high school, which led me down […]
Jumelage
Last year when I was packing up my apartment in Johannesburg, I watched a few too many episodes of the reality show Hoarders, where people with obvious, serious problems are hectored into shape over an episode’s arc of denial, shame, anger, acceptance and redemption. Around this narrative I watched half-full bottles of condiments and bubble […]
One Fell Swoop
There’s a chirpy pop song that came out a while back, where the singer exhorts us to be brave, with uplifting lyrics that seem targeted at anxious kids. They’ve been prattling around in my head lately. Bravery is a great concept for a song. In real life, it’s a way of life, a dedication to […]