"...just walkin'"
All my loyal and my much-loved companions | They approve of me and share my code | I practice a faith that's been long abandoned | Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road
I been listenin' to old Bob. Got dem ol' blogger's blues #46. Why not? Everythin's bust, battered, broken. 'Cepting myself, of course... We was walkin' on the mountain with old Zonker and the Dutch Boy round full moon. I was determined to get a coupla good shots. But you get a coupla good ol' boys from the 70s, a late-nite mountain an' a coupla spliffs and you got yourself some improvisation. So the above's my shot of the moment...just walkin'.
I'm gonna keep on doing that — walkin', despite everything that came down on us afterwards. We spent a few hours up on that cold old wintry mountain, till the wind's bite felt warm and invigorating. There was a giant ring around the moon but, although I pointed the camera its way countless times, I wasn't interested in shooting it. You can't in the city. When you look at the pictures, the lack of clarity reminds you of your whereabouts and your desire to get out of town.
Lion's Head's part of Table Mountain, but I wanted a shot of the table itself by the light of the moon. I got it. Couldn't see a damned thing through that viewfinder, but I guess the camera knew where to look.
The picture above reminds me of the old Zen poser, "What do you do when you've climbed to the top of the mountain?"
A lot of people head up the mountain at night and, we guessed, that's why we saw the blue lights of cop cars driving along Table Mountain Road. You get a lot of muggers up there. But all the cars sort of sidled down as the evening progressed and, around half-past ten, the cops left and the only light to be seen was that of the Cable station.
So the other's an old view — there are fuck all people up there, so I like it, and that's why it's here. That ol' lump of stone has lasted longer than anything around it, about half-a-billion years. Sitting 'neath its shadow, you feel the mysterious power of all that time. It hangs over you, brooding, like a shroud or a weight of some ancient wisdom.
It doesn't do so in any negative way. As the New Agers assert, it energizes you and enables you to cope with the crap going on down below.
Zonker and the Dutch Boy were meeting Joe at a club in Long Street, so they had to head off. I'd heard Zonker having a chat to Joe's landline a few minutes before. "Howzit, Joe. I don't have your number so can't give you a call. So I just wanted to tell you not to call me." He looked at us. "You reckon that was lucid?" he asked. "Perfectly," we assured him. We idled down. Wendy and I wanted to head over to Signal Hill to get a shot of the mountain with Devil's Peak off to the side.
"...at the world's end."
The sufferin' is unending | Every nook and cranny has its tears | I'm not playing, I'm not pretending | I'm not nursin' any superfluous fears
In the dark of the trees shading the road from which our path wound to heaven, a security guard manned a barricade.
"We want to go and take some pictures from Signal Hill," I told him. "That okay."
Apparently not. The road was closed.
"What do you mean, 'It's closed'?" I asked with some dread. I recalled trying to drive up to Rhodes Memorial at night last year, only to be turned away by a chained gate and an official notice that it was closed to the public "after hours."
Too many muggings, murders, rapes and what not.
"We're Capetonians. It's our mountain. We wanna get a shot of Devil's Peak. It's a full moon."
He looked at us as though we were dumb. Zonker had picked up an orange road cone and, using it as a bullhorn, was ordering imaginary cars from the hill. The Dutch Boy wandered up in all his politeness. He reminds me of Frank, although Frank looks more mischievous. There's solidity (in principle and presence) about the Dutch Boy. With his silvering hair and spectacles, he epitomises the well-off, middle-class pillar of suburbia.
"Good evening," he smiled. "Are we allowed through?"
"Jesus," I thought. "I've just asked him that. He won't let us through."
As indeed he didn't. The city's capitulated. It's given in to gangsters and criminals and refuses to allow law-abiding citizens walk its open spaces after 10:00 pm. So much for the fucking police. While we'd been enjoying a clear, starlit sky and a celestial display of icicles circling the moon, they'd been throwing people off Table Mountain.
I wanted to see the moon go down the next morning so Wendy and I headed home while Zonker and the Dutch Boy headed off to catch some jazz in town. I was seething. "Fucking cunts!" I swore. "It's those Goddamn Yanks. We've all fallen victim to fear. We've given in to thuggery."
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm anti-American or anything; in fact some of my best friends...
Last year, I got some shots of the FPSO Dalia while she was in port. I had to go to extraordinary lengths to get those pictures. The harbour I wandered as a kid and adolescent had been taken from us. "By whom?" I asked the guy who organised me a permit. "The Americans," he answered. "They don't want 'terrorists' coming in."
I kid you not. And this is backed by an impeccable source who tells me the U.S. is putting pressure on Cape Town to move the Royal Cape Yacht Club from its corner of the harbour. "Their supply ships come and go," he told me. "And they don't declare a damned thing. It's military and their manifests are blank. And we let them get away with it."
Back down in the suburbs, the cops were all over the place. First, we avoided a road block leading out of town — some habits die hard, and the next thing we knew we were witnessing the usual Friday night carnage. Blue lights and ADT vans all over the place. Houses behind high walls, razor wire, and electric fences.
So that's how I got the blogger's blues. We're a city of fear. And we're doing nothing to help ourselves. For myself, I don't want any part of it. I'll speak to whoever I want, even if he's carrying a gun.
Which leads me to my most depressing news. I'll leak it out over the next long while. The Americans, as I feared and as Thomas P.M. Barnett now gloats, have landed. That's not worst of it either. My contention is that Cape Town is already host to what will become the nerve centre controlling the Pentagon's latest beast to slouch towards Bethlehem, Africa Command (AFRICOM).
But more about that later. It's all too depressing to think about. I need a walk.
Ain't talkin', just walkin' | Up the road, around the bend. | Heart burnin', still yearnin' | In the last outback at the world's end.
Bob Dylan | Ain't Talkin'
