IN ACTION

This is the picture I wanted to add in the last post, flying around a dance floor avoiding stilettos. The person behind me is Theo, just in case he complains he wasn't mentioned, one of the salsa dancers; everyone changes dance partners all through the night, that's the way it's done. I think this was taken in Fiesta tapas bar where people dance on Fridays, but not hundred percent sure; anyway, as you can see from the TV screen in the background, it's sports vs. salsa, you get two types of men here, the 's' for salsa men and the 's' for sports men.

Of mermaids and mountains...

[copyright Jade Gibson 2007]

Well, I saw my first mountains again, in the real sense. When they stand stark and solemn against a night sky, with a three quarter moon rising above a swelling sea coated with a sheen of moonlight. A friend drove me down the coast towards Kalk Bay (harbour), Fishhoek (beach) and Boulders beach (where the penguins are) in the evening, after I declared I hadn't seen Cape Town properly yet. The dark streets with firmly shuttered and burglar-barred shops turned into an open stretch of sky with bright stars circling the moon.

'I can breathe again,' I said. After a year in London, I could see far again, across a sea that suggested new horizons, a vast sky unmasked by buildings, neon signs and massive crowds.

I remembered once, seeing over Kalk Bay harbour wall on a dark night, a luminescent seal shooting through the waves. 'Red tide', explained my friend, 'when the algae come in they float in the water, and when they are disturbed they give off fluorescence. The squid come in too, and people fish for squid.' I remembered the seal; a flash of bright phosphorus green, spectral in the water, as it chased food, the squid also luminescent, darting in bright sparks under the waves. The seal swirled in the dark, appearing translucent as it awoke a haze of spinning green light around its body, seeming almost human in its silhouette. I understood then how sailors could easily believe in mermaids, strange spectres that ghostily haunted the waves with fish-like tails.

Earlier, I danced, my own spectral mermaid, amongst a sea of floating colours. Up to now, I have been looking at Cape Town from the outside inside; as a visitor, a spectator. There comes a time when you move from living in a place from the outside, to a time when the place takes over and encloses you, becomes shell-like, protective, and the two of you are in unison. I am not sure if I am there yet, a little torn between two places, but, slowly, I feel I am growing wings here, and soon, like the seal, will be sailing in my own light.

BACK TO A LIFE OF CRIME...

We went dancing last Saturday, and my friend L came to pick me up. She spent an hour first having drinks with the friend M I'm staying with for two days. A thunderstorm raged (once again) outside. Well, this weather is good for something, she said, it's the Great Policeman of the Sky...

What do you mean? we asked.

The crime rate drops when it rains, she says. Didn't you know that?

Only in the Monsoon in India, says M. (Not that he's ever been there).

That's because everything is flooded, I say. Anyhow, how do you know something like that?

M shrugs. I just do, he says.

I'm telling you, the crime rate drops everywhere, says L.

After drinks, we went outside to her car to drive to the salsa venue. Oh, f*** f*** f*** f***! she screamed, they've done it again, they've got into my car and the stereo is gone. Even the speakers!

It seemed the thunderstorm had kindly masked the car alarm going off. First night going out in Cape Town, my friend's car stereo is stolen in one hour of being parked outside the house. It's the norm here. You can buy the removable fronts, so people still steal the inner sections.

I'll report it tomorrow, she says. Let's get to salsa. So we did. Nothing's changed here, even the Great Policeman in the Sky is corrupt. But the dance goes on...

LONDON SHRINKS, INTO CAPE TOWN DARKNESS

[image from Wikipaedia, London page]

Leaving London; the plane rose, the houses shrank, red buses moved like beetles along the streets, slowly shrinking too, the streets became smaller and smaller. What was I doing there? I thought. As if the jaws of a steel cage had suddenly released. It was a beautiful day as the coast receded and became blue sea. I arrived 6am in Cape Town, dark and in a thunderstorm. But, out in the dark, there was mountains and space. And, at the airport, was my sister, wondering why the plane was two hours late.

I explained that as we were about to take off from Frankfurt, and approached the main runway, the pilot explained there had been an urgent telex from airport control and he was waiting for it. After a while he explained they had found landing parts of an airbus of the type we were in on the runway, and needed to send an engineer to check it was not our plane. After another very long wait, we were told our plane was safe, the parts had not fallen from it. As we turned into the main runway, and gathered speed, one of the passengers shouted out, 'We are now in God's hands...'

Well, whoever's hands it was, we got to Cape Town, although the luggage of my co-passenger, a young Scottish woman headed to work on a game park, didn't. So she headed off without any kit to her next destination as I entered Cape Town. I had over-optimistically expected to see the mountains as we came in, but all was dark as the sun was out and the wind and rain were howling (haven't you heard rain howl before?). They had been working on the airport car park so we entered a building site as we came out of the airport.

Despite expecting major cultural shock, as I had always had coming back to London, I didn't have any going back to Cape Town. Nothing much has changed, only salsa venues, and the weather maybe, which is apparently more wet than normal. No jokes about bringing the British weather with me, please. On the salsa floor, people were much the same, in fact, most of them looked better than before. It may have been my jet lag affecting me though, as I was a bit tired after packing and working non-stop before leaving the UK.

So, I'm off to explore culture and look at the theory of how creativity and practice crosses nations; hence my own translocation as my own guinea pig. And, as they say on the dance floor, one step at a time, before the spinning begins....