Saturday with soul

 

Bright and early on Saturday morning, hoping to get over the mountain to an AA meeting followed by a walk on the beach with solidly sober friends. Woke up this morning to another newspaper report on attempts to stop local wine farmers paying their workers in alcohol. Here in the valley we have pregnant women receiving six or more litres of wine on Friday afternoons in lieu of salary. The Western Cape has the highest Foetal Alcohol Syndrome  rates in the world. And alcoholism is a very political issue here.

 

I am thrilled by the prospect of getting to a meeting and look forward to hearing the shares. It is not a speaker meeting, those are rare outside of the cities. And there is no saying of the Lord’s prayer because this is a multifaith country and the animists would object along with the atheists! There is a very strong emphasis on human rights which makes sense only if you recall that South Africa endured 300 years without human rights, and that is a kind of oppression unimaginable in the West where one can be contemptuous of democracy because it has always been there, like bread and clean water and adequate shelter.

Yoghurt and organic honey and fresh figs from the garden! The pups have dug up a little lemon-scented pelargonium. They are great diggers and shredders and I wonder how the garden will look in three months time. There may well be a tunnel all the way to the Antipodes. Just writing that gives me a pang for my beloved big red dog who died of cancer last year and who buried his bones all over the garden. Each time a worn fossil of bone is unearthed I get tears in my eyes. And sometimes I think I still feel his companioning presence with me as I garden. The tiny puppies do not have his gentleness and sagacity as yet, his ability to detect sadness and respond with nudges and his great head against my lap.

My seafaring wild woman is coming home later from the cruise billed as a ‘Mystery Cruise to Nowhere’ and I am longing to hear her tales of derring-do. For a homecoming supper I am thinking of doing my North African lamb shanks very slowly in a tagine, the lamb spiced with tamarind and cinnamon. With fluffy mounds of couscous.

 

Gratitude wide and deep as the ocean — and Stravinsky’s Firebird playing  (the 1919 concert suite with some fabulous percussion in the Infernal Dance) as I write and cook and repair the ravaged garden.

Hottie-totties

 

I had a friend over for my famous mushroom risotto and went out to buy ruby grapefruit juice. This is my answer to those who want chadonnay. It is a surprising drink with a fruity start and a sharp aftertaste.

 

When I came back my sweet golden puppies had shredded my new and unread copy of the London Review of Books, a subscription gift for Christmas. I was quite upset.

 

‘Bad dogs!’ I said firmly as they sat adoringly in frnt of me with shreds of literary criticism dangling from their sharp little teeth. Saying ‘Bad dogs!’ in a firm voice is about as firm as I get in puppy training. I explained to them that I am culturally isolated and have to write sophisticated articles for people who have the Palladio exhibition  and talks by Ian McEwan on their doorstep, while I live in a philistine wilderness and long for crumbs of cultural savvy.

‘Yip! Yip! Crumbs, yum-yum! Love, eat, sleep, prey on mice! Gobble up mommy with love! Beg for biscuits! Eat, sleep, run wild! Talk puppy babble, mommy!’

‘Huggie-wuggies for itsybitsy hottie-totties!’ I said happily, gathering the bad beasts into my arms.

 

A little sentimental sugar and spice works for me.

 

The friend came round and raved about the mushroom risotto — arborio rice, wild mushrooms sauteed lightly in butter, homemade chicken stock, grated flakes of Parmesan cheese, uninterrupted attention while ladling stock into the risotto and stirring evenly – and said she will bring her own wine in future, does not share my informed palette when it comes to ruby grapefruit juice.

 

Call#12 from my seafaring housemate, marooned off the West Coast. She has been looking at fish factories near Saldanha Bay all morning and now the ship is turning around and sailing back to Cape Town. Her favourite sailor is nicknamed ‘Smurf’ and he has a boyfriend with a multicoloured moustache, one side grey and the other blond with a little ginger frosting. The women go mad for him.

 

‘You should see them slowdance together,’ said Una. ‘Erection paradise.’

 

This is a quick glimpse down the whirling kaleidoscope, currently showing the wonderful, absurd and entertaining life sobriety has given me one day at a time.

What we can’t say about love

My housemate has presumably sailed off into international waters surrounded by disinterested sailors and the blue Atlantic – although I miss her the peace and quiet is a relief.

 

A friend of mine, to be called Barbara, has been suffering with ovarian cancer and came home from hospice to die in her own bed. Her daughter was very distressed and could not face the vigil but I sat with Barbara last night  as she died peacefully, no fear or agitation. I lit a rose-scented candle and threw open the sash window and we stayed together until she had gone. A privilege to accompany a friend on that last journey. She had an old black-and-white photograph of Norma Shearer that had belonged to her own mother, and it hung in an oval tortoiseshell frame, such a wistful 20s look. Resembling the younger Barbara herself to go by family photographs. A gentle caring woman.

 

Came home and sat out in the garden under a sliver of bone-white moon, listening to turtle doves and thinking about love and loss and all the mysterious  intuitions of our lives

 

Some lines from the poet Jack Gilbert:

‘Fading out and coming again after a while. Getting lost

and the waiting for it to come again. Waiting meaning

without things. Meaning love sometimes dying out,

sometimes being taken away. Meaning that often he lives

silent in the middle of the world’s music. Waiting

for the best to come again. Beginning to hear the silence

as he waits. Beginning to like the silence maybe too much.’

Crest of the wave

 

Early this morning my beloved house mate left on her cruise.

 

At 11am came Call # 1

‘It’s me! I’m on board ship! The cabins are very small! We sail at noon!’

 

At 12.30am came Call #2:

‘It’s me. The ship is overcrowded but there are shops everywhere. It is just like a floating shopping mall! You would hate it! I might buy some dog shampoo while I’m waiting to set sail!’

At 2pm came Call#3:

‘It’s me again, we are still in port! This harbour has the filthiest water you have ever seen! We are sailing at 3pm.’

At 3pm came Call # 4:

‘Hannelie and I aren’t speaking to one another and she wants to go home. We have nthing in common! Lunch was very El Cheapo. All the sailors are gay and nobody is going to dance with me! We are only sailing at 6pm because they have to get fresh water into the drinking tanks. I changed my money into American dollars and I can’t afford more than a small glass of Coca Cola!’

 

I just hope that damn ship leaves port before the Unsinkable Molly Brown combusts.

Ash like a feather

 

This morning my housemate, her leg still bandaged, left  for the short sea cruise with a friend who has a severely degenerative illness and would not dare travel without Una. The latter is in great spirits and has a jaunty new cap in nautical stripes. I am vaguely woried about tsunamis, pirates and shipwrecks. She is hoping the captain has a glad eye for a fine woman.

 

There are veld fires burning all across the mountains in the heat and when we went out yesterday, the air was hazy with smoke and fragments of ash everywhere. The food at the restaurant was delicious but all I really wanted was a large jug of water with ice cubes and slices of lemon. Thirst is just thirst these days.

 

Outside in the garden the purple figs are clustered thickly on the tree and I go out to pick them each evening. Lilac spires of plectranthus are coming up like pale candles under the trees and the New Moon in Pisces is just a curved fingernail in the skies.

 

There is so much to be grateful for I don’t know where to start.

 

The poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) : “‘Tis a fast to dole thy sheaf of wheat and meat unto the hungry soul. It is to fast from strife and old debate, and hate; to circumcise thy life. To show a heart grief-rent; to starve thy sin, not bin; and that’s to keep thy Lent”.

A phoenix from ashes

 

Well, before I say anything else, let me just say very quickly that my post on the Catholic church was intended to be funny and affectionate and not critical in any anti-Catholic way. I am a former convert to Roman Catholicism and it is very much part of what has shaped me. The Catholics I have known are wise, mystical, zealous, endearing and infuriating, and all of them God-smitten – I wouldn’t change them for the world. English Catholics tend to be very irreverent and this can be misleading for anyone not brought up on Evelyn Waugh or Ronld Knox.

Una is officially booked off work and supposed to be in bed resting a very swollen leg. She is not resting of course: she sneaked out of the house and has gone to change patients’ dressings and eat doughnuts while playing poker with a 92-year-old woman on the other side of the mountains.

 

My farmer’s wife Bokkie arrived for her French lesson with her arm in a sling and we practised singing La Marseillaise and La Maison ou J’ai Grandi as performed by Francoise Hardy in 1967. We climbed up onto the kitchen table and danced a little with ’60s bebop arm swinging. Bokkie’s arm came out of its sling and had to be bound up again. The puppies barked the house down, mechants chiens that they are. Then we did some verbs and practised ordering le bifteck (steak) from le garcon. She was laughing so hard when she left, her arm came out of its sling again.

 

Then I revised my not-altogether-successful piece of speculative fiction and sent the Tim’rous Beastie off to my new writers’ group for comment. Scary stuff. I am going out to lunch at a country restaurant called Dassiesfontein (Fountain of the Rock Rabbit, not a soigne kind of name is it?) where I hope to eat fresh grilled perlemoen (abalone) and a large green salad.

 

Lent is like all liturgical seasons, to do with metanoia and transformation and letting ourselves be changed in ways we are unable or unwilling to change ourselves, mostly by the purifying power of unsentimental agape love. I am looking at this time leading up to Easter as a kind of 4th Step retreat and fearless, thorough inventory. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — and hopefully  the phoenix of a greater, deeper, more authentic faith rising from the ashes

Post-script

Una called me from the waiting room after seeing her new doctor. She is having blood tests done and has to take antibiotics and lie in bed for two days with her leg up.

“She is a brilliant doctor,’ said Una happily. ‘She has two dogs of her own and is trilingual. And she is just like you, a recovering alcoholic. Isn’t that nice?’

 

Mary, gingerly: ‘Um, er, how do you know? Not the dogs, the recovering bit.’

Una: ‘She told me she gave up drinking wine and eating chocs  over Christmas and actually lost weight! Lovely little chubby figure.’

Mary: ‘Um, that might not be alcoholism, you know.’

Una: ‘Oh that’s too bad! She didn’t look like an alcoholic, I must say. No bashed nose or that funny stagger and she didn’t reek of cheap hooch.’

Mary’[thinks]: WTF?’

Una: ‘Of course I didn’t tell her about you because I know all about anonymity and that you never tell anyone you’re an alcoholic, especially doctors. Just other alkies in your meetings, but nobody in the real world.’

Mary: ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong.’

 

And Una even reads the BB when her John Grishams are not to be found in the local library. Do the recovering alcoholic and the normal drinker ever understand the remotest thing about one another?

Shrove Tuesday sans pancakes

It is Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and I cannot make pancakes. I end up with scrambled dough or burned pans. And my housemate is not going to be flipping cinnamon and honey  pancakes because Una has a burst cyst in her lower leg and has gone off to the doctor while I sit here chewing my nails and worrying. She is supposed to go off on her sea cruise on Thursday and can scarcely walk. Damn, damn, damn.

A friend has alerted me to the AA historical library of Mitchell K and I sat up last night reading about Dr Bob’s last drink. He was over-confident in his fledgling sobriety and decided to go to a medical conference in Atlantic City. He boarded the train from Ohio and went on a spectacular five-day bender, not ever getting to the conference, and ending with a black-out that lasted more than 24 hours. (I once passed out on a Monday afternoon and came to my senses again on Wednesday morning and if you have never experienced that kind of chronological whoopsy, it is quite a disconcerting feeling.) Anyhow, Dr Bob was kept at home and tapered off alcohol and detoxed with a mix of sauerkraut, tomato juice and Karo syrup. Three days later he  had to carry out a medical operation and his hands were still shaking, so BillW gave him a beer before he went into the op. That was his last drink ever. No comfy rehabs or smart drugs and I bet the taste of sauerkraut and syrup stayed with him for many years!

 

I am wondering if I should go to the small Anglican church tomorrow for the Ash Wednesday service. My mind and temperament are inclined to agnosticism in the Christian sense but my Unconscious is liturgical. I would rather go to the Catholic church up on the hill but they are desperate for new faces for bingo and will fall on me as if I was the prodigal child and begin saying novenas for me and I shall be visited by the terrible army of the Catholic Women’s League with their holy cards and clicking rosaries and sharp-eyed curiosity. A little overwhelming. Una adores the Catholic church and tried to convert until the priest gently told her she doesnt believe anything the church teaches. Una is pro-choice for women, hands out contraceptives all over the place, has no time for popes, supports the ordination of women and thinks the bread and wine stays bread and wine. But she was very upset that she could not go along to Mass and sing Panis angelicus and Ubi Caritas and line up for comunion with everyone else. Very funny.

 

Let me go and wash dishes and say some prayers for Una’s health.

The life you save may be your own

 

Just back from the airport where we dropped off my drunken friend en route to the funeral of a young niece killed in a head-on collision. A strong and changeable wind blowing and planes taxiing out onto the runway with a loud  roaring of engines. She had a head-splitting hangover and could barely light a cigarette, deathly pale and jaundiced, wearing a jaunty red plaid jacket that made matters worse. I gave her some orange juice, some organic cloudy apple juice and some cheese crackers to take along. She lookd at them with grim distaste but when the plane hits the turbulence over those towering Cape mountain ranges she will need something in her stomach to make the retching bearable. The sunlight hard as knives and she looked grey and pasty, a condition I remember oh so well. As she hugged me goodbye very gingerly, holding her dark glasses in place, she said in a wistful voice: ‘I hope my sister remembers to serve wine with lunch.’ I burst out laughing. Our dogged determination to perpetuate the suffering. I used to feel grateful for blinding hangovers because they took my mind off the prospect of plane crashes and I did not mind the thought of imminent death so much.

Came back to see that a biography of the great Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor has been published, the first since O’Connor’s death 44 years ago. She was perhaps the most brilliant, acerbic and mystical writer of the 20th century, certainly the most disconcerting to read. She did her own take on the Gothic of the Deep South and  the stories are timeless. I hope the biographer Brad Gooch can cope with Aquinas and Duns Scotus and has empathy for the eccentric.

 

Such a busy day, conference papers to edit, a short story to revise, bushels of celery to blanch and freeze, soup needed for the soup kitchen which means dragging 10-litre pots around and chopping large quantities of onions amidst tears and sneezes. My new barely sober friend from the distant village talked and talked yesterday with heartbreaking lack of insight and pathetic longing to have it all come right as if by magic. We made a beginning and she ate a month’s supply of shortbread and then a tub of chocolate ice cream. She is terrified of dogs, so I put my puppies outside in the back garden where they dug up a pretty little cherry-red salvia. My new friend is also frightened of  owls, trees struck by lightning, women in felt hats, Ford trucks, low-slung bridges, films about birds, satanic cell phone music, sheep seen in fields at night, drowned clumps of reeds in farm dams, cirrhus cloud formations at sunset and the noises her fridge makes at night. She would make a good writer of Southern Gothic fiction if she was a writer rather than suffering the free-floating phobis and paranoia of severe alcoholism. I recall how I would shudder inwardly to see the flowing water far below as I crossed bridges, how I feared a certain hour of the afternoon. The world seemed malevolent and dangerous, filled with threatening symbols and hauntings.

 

When I sobered up the fears went away and I hope that will be true for her as well. I shall call my new friend Hulga after the innocent farm girl in one of Flannery O’Connor’s stories in which disabled Hulga is seduced by a Bible salesman who then steals her wooden leg. The title of these stories and novels are pure poetry: Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

Scribbling on Sunday

My small puppy Chloe was stung by a bee she tried thoughtlessly to consume and came running into the living room to scrunch up next to me on the sofa, her little jaw red and swollen, her eyes squeezed shut, sneezing from the rush of histamines. I cuddled her and curbed my imagination-of-disaster while Una called the local horse vet because her Afrikaans is better than mine.

 

The vet was aghast. ‘Chloe? What kind of name for a dog is that?’

Dogs on local farms are called Impi or Zulu or Simba (lion) or Sheba or Spot. Or Jack if the dog is a Jack Russell. This means that you can call any stray dog by one of these names and the dog is likely to bound towards you in glad recognition and eat you alive.

‘Very weird name, Chloe,’ said Una to the vet. ‘And you should see the spelling. But Mary reads poetry all the time, so she comes up with all sorts of names.’

 

“Poetry is useless in the real world. Poor bloody dog living with a poet! Take some nice pills to keep you happy,’ advised the horse vet. ‘If the dog is still sick tomorrow, call me in the morning.’

 

That is his favourite joke unless horses are involved. Horses around here are named after heroes and battles in the Anglo-Boer War (after Afrikaner heroes not English cowards), names like De La Rey, or Spionkop, or Swart Jan, or Boet Viljoen.

 

Anyway, little Chloe-otherwise-known-as-Spot  slept for a few hours and then lapped up some water and went out to try and catch another bee. This morning she is fine, and I have been lying in the bath reading the poet Georges Szirtes and trying to decide on a seasoning for roast lamb because Una has invited four neighbours for lunch. One of the neighbours, who is a brillant confectioner, announced she is bringing a dessert based on plums in port with whole vanilla pods.

 

I called her up instantly and whined  about alcohol being death to me and begged her to make her non-alcoholic millefeuille with fresh apricots and whipped cream and laced with a cardamom custard and grated orange peel, ambrosia for the sober. She seemed a trifle put-out because that millefeuille is hell to prepare, but agreed on condition I make my snappy green beans with toasted sesame seeds. Oh, us gourmets and our greed! I am all for not minding others having wine or unsober desserts, but this woman is a genius with pastry and I will not miss out on any of her culinary triumphs through my little problem wth alcoholism.

 

And this afternoon I shall be having tea with a woman from a distant hamlet who wants to get sober but cannot seem to stop starting again. I wish I could tell her to go to AA, but the nearest city is seven hours drive away and she does not have a car. So we will talk and I will tell her how I stay sober each day and lend her my BB and some Joe & Charlie CDs from Steve, along with a CD player, and because she does not have a telephone we will meet again in three weeks time and I shall write snailmail letters to encourage her. Because if you really don’t want to drink, there is a Higher Power that will help you stay sober.