The night falls and falls and falls around me filling me up with a kind of sweetness and reticence. Thoughts which I had last night and had not unfortunately scribbled down escape me now. To me they are fragments lost forever. I start writing early in the morning. At around eight o’ clock. There’s a fresh start to the day, Bukowski’s bluebird in my heart and I feel absolutely terrified that I am not going to get the perfect sentence right. The light is a harsh line in the sky breaking over the horizon. It hurts my eyes. It fills this room. I have little more than a spare bedroom. I wonder how long I will still live in this house, sleep in this room. At night I don’t sleep. I sit on my bed with my head in my hands. I think of Albert Camus and his Francine. How wonderfully handsome he was. I think of Joyce Carol Oates and the breadth of her work. How she buried a husband. I think of Joan Didion, her glamour and beauty and the tragedy that played out in her life. You’re wrong about me, I want to tell the man. I do love you and will for the eternity that is upon us. See, here I have written about you. You’ve inspired stories that have been published. But he can’t see me. He’s turned his head away from me and has now forgotten all about me while I swim in the sea that is Achebe, the ocean that is Soyinka, while I climb Fanon’s mountain and the majestic intellect of Onyeka Nwelue that is arching over this continent.
The box of green tea has the word “Chinese” written on it. It’s loadshedding so the lights are out but I make a cup of tea for one, always one but when you come to the house, I would sometimes make two. You don’t come anymore. The love affair or whatever that was is over. It’s come to an end. You came, said you did in a message via social media and said that you “were sent away” by my mother. She had done something like this before. Twenty years ago. When someone very important in my life at the time had telephoned the house and she had written his number down. I found it months later but never said anything. I only brought it up when I fought with her. I fought with my mother constantly. There were days when I blamed my parents for the way my own life had turned out. Days when something calm and hard settled within me and there was some sense of achievement and contentment from my side. I haven’t thought of the man who taught me everything that I know from the working relationship and dynamic between a man and a woman. I hadn’t thought about R.M. in years. I think of his tall and slender body, his beautiful hair, skin, nails and I am transported back to that time. The time when I was twenty years old and had my first nervous breakdown in an office space. I could not cope. He is married now, and I think he has another child. He was on my mind all the time in hospital while I was recovering. I would sit on the bed all day and read the same magazine. Turning the pages as if somehow, they were fragile too, as if they could break.
I do not have the key to unlock the door to the celebratory event. It’s the holiday season. I am in Grinch mode. I have had another ebook published, “The Waking”. My mother waters the garden and the day itself feels peaceful, restful. My brother teaches English in the study. He is happy. He smokes too much but remains for the large part unaffected by it. For now, that is. The holidays get better. The year is winding down fast. Fast.
I take a book inside the bathroom with me. Hot water runs into the bath. The tiles are orange and steam up. I tell my mother and brother that men think with their libido. My brother doesn’t come back with a quick retort. I am surprised at this. Camus said that writers write in solitude. I would say that writers think in solitude. Solitary figures with the sea inside their heads. I am that figure. The sea is not manic today. The sea inside my head. I turn the pages of the Anita Brookner novel I am reading, and they make a kind of gentle crinkly sound. The day is turning out to be cold. There’s a chill in the air. I close the curtains. I shut out the world, the tumult, the light. Just everything. I just have this energy within me today. It is still early morning and the dogs bark. I am preparing my reading list for January’s imminent arrival. Jordan Peterson, Mel Robbins, ex-President Barack Obama, the poetry of Mxolisi Nyezwa and Alan Finlay and my copies of New Coin. If I were a bird, I’d be an eagle but an intellectual kind of eagle.
