holiday mayhem

Fair to say it's been a proper vacation when I've been doing instead of writing about it- we are lovely in the harbor, nestled in a corner along with other bigger boats of various descriptions- ratty rusty near-ocean fishboats, a two hundred foot chinease fishboat

, or at the moment, a norwegian research vessel. at the opposite side are the tugboats responsable for guiding the heavily loaded cargo ships that moor offshore. The tugs are the musclemen- below is a vid of one temporarily

stern to the dock as someone hops off or is collecting something from the office- we joke that even such a mass of machine can't move that concrete dock- they move with equal facility forwards backwards and any which way- they spin on a dime- Pop says its because they have their propellers in tube-shaped cages down below their center-point that can be pivoted in any direction, much like my wrist-joint, as i imagine. These ones are about ninety feet and we're guessing pack a few thousand horse-power. hot.

on the other side of the pier is a very large boat with an oddly-shaped bow and stern, designed for laying ocean cable.

We rest against a floating dock with a constantly creaking ramp. the dock itself was a favorite of the harbor seals until we bipeds invaded the territory. A standoff was described to us as we arrived: the big male (bob) and his harem were pushed to one end of it and a temporary barricade was constructed: turf. Bob was displeased with the arrangement and moved his coterie after a while, now smaller males compete for the right to lay in the shade and be pestered by chinese sailors shouting HELLO!HELLO!HELLO! at them. I sometimes wake to their honking and snorting. Then there are the various beeps and blasts of ships coming in, going out, going in reverse, the pirate ship tour that looks like it would be more stable upsidedown, the harbor tour boats who point us out, the deep bass of tugs, the distant wail of singing from the marine festival (I think I've heard sweet home alabama seventeen times now), planes, helicopters, police cars... it's never quiet and like living in a city, it all blends in after time. The harbor, though polluted, is far from empty of marine life. Of course there are the hordes of screeching seagulls that sound like something from Hitchcock. Flocks of hook-beaked cormorants swoop down in search of the occasional school of little fish that get trapped in here. Other schools may be chased by dolphins ripping under the surface, and corralled at the other side by the seals that swim in such playful spirals. We've even seen a sunfish on multiple occasions, one of those strange beasts that looks like a boney disk with a dorsal and lower fin- like a fish that got it's rear half bitten off. When the wind picks up, the waves move from gently tapping at the steel drum of the stern to actively smacking it, the rigging begins to rythmically bang against the resonating tube of the masts, whisting around the shrouds and lifting the sunshade tarps into sails until we roll them up again.

New Year's Eve was a night such as this, tending to the tension on the dock lines, delaying the enjoyment of the champagne, anticipating fireworks under the blue moon, which turned into ducking flares set off upwind by some passing jokers. Pop and I are here for the month as the captain and crew take their vacation time on various schedules. Fortunately, we are joined the entire time by the second mate, Sam, and when they were all satisfied that they'd secured the boat to a safe level, he and I ran off in search of parties. It's an unexpected treat to have an occasional partying companion, but after that night and last night, I am beginning to think that perhaps I need a guide for the urban safari as well as the wilderness one. Pop and I muse on the veneer of civility that covers the modern human animal. Partying sometimes brings this into stark relief- we ended up at someone's house in a rich neighborhood, strewn with liquor bottles and fashionable people. His comment was that it reminded him of high school and we left as soon as his question had been answered.

But they celebrate new year's twice around here! the second of the year is the day when historically, the slaves had their one day off. They took to walking through the streets in a procession of minstrels, banners, song and dance. Today it is organized into brass bands, a raucous surging energy that taps the African love of rythmn and dance. Each group is in their own polyester suits, from the older men to the little kids, and the colors are out of control- Often the little kids came along first, perhaps with a full feathered hat and baton, and dancing, always dancing- faces and bald heads painted in swirls and ribbons, then the full band, always playing something with great surging rhythm, and then a huge group behind them of people waving parasols. Invariably there were the stragglers- still dancing, blowing whistles, waving arms- frequently I got goose-bumps as their song blew into it's full volume and everyone erupted into movement. Especially in amongst the others were a few young people who were specially designated at dancers- those who roused the crowd with running flips, wild gestures, flapping tongues and wide eyes, a fay strip-tease style dancer, boys naturally moving as they would have centuries ago, now with rainbow mohawk wigs... and there were the ancestor-demons with rubber halloween masks and wooden axes that jumped up on the wire railings that kept the crowd on the sidewalk, frightening the kids as they pretended to steal their souls- the funniest moment occurred when a little boy ran away from one of these, into the arms of his mother who promptly, playfully, flicked off the demon. the little boy mimicked his mother and everyone burst out laughing...

Travel is always a mixed bag- it is bittersweet to me whose desires run deep- I wanted to follow the parade to where I knew they were going, move with them- these beats are the same as my canned electronica, but the energy was internal and palpable and not maintained by annoying laser noises and squealing women: the beats are the same as the plains indian sun dance, soaked in the spirit released by trance and ritual wounding. Something in me stirs when I am confronted by energy in this form, and I made a plan to rejoin the people that evening at the stadium when I learned they would be dancing all night. But I am in a foreign land and confirmation is not confirmation, and the veneer of civility is particularly thin in some places: I was a woman alone last night, wandering through places where white people are stabbed then robbed, and when I got the the party, it had moved- I was heartbroken. here I am in the center of the river, and even then I somehow get stuck on some rock- how? invariably i blame myself- what intuition is off? why does fate move in these ways? Pop quotes Einstein: "is the universe belevolent or malevolent?" if you accept the question to begin with, one can only accept what is as right and necessary. I lost the thread, so my imagination extends forward into evening- staid grandmothers shuffling with the littlest kids, portly fathers and their exhausted wives, girlfriends hanging on each other preening for the circles of boys in a metaphorical cockfight, their shiney band suits, elaborate metallic face paintings and clown wigs in various states of disarray, everyone and me dancing in the exuberance of the unvarnished spirit.

Kirstenbosch gardens-