Black into blue.

I left home at 4h30 am. Flashing blue lights at the bottom of Sir Lowry's Pass meant that the mountain was in flames. Meant a 90 minute detour along the coast. As I drove I thought of the last time I'd been on that road. It was almost a year ago and I was immersed in abject misery, my heart a pulpy mess. I wrote a story back then called She smells like cotton candy, which I still can't read past the first paragraph without my stomach twisting into a knot.
*
A pale dawn broke somewhere between Pringle Bay and Kleinmond. Slim Gaillard laughing in rhythm. I thought about the nature of heartbreak and how it's true what they say about time.
A friend sent this to me late one night:
You let time pass.
That's the cure.
You survive the days.
You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks.
You cry and you wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months.
And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you're okay.

I savour that feeling, for long minutes at a time.
*
I followed the markers down Appletiser Road into the Elgin Valley. Apple country. I passed orchards of trees bent double with loads of blushing fruit.
At base camp we packed our furs and our swords and sailed to set on three barges.

The calm ticking of clocks. By some fantastic stroke of synchronicity, I have found myself a place on a team without drama. So we worked together and we ate together, we laughed a lot and at night all of us slept over in little wooden houses overlooking the lake. A working kind of holiday.

I drove back to the city through the smog hanging over Athlone. Sat for a while in the morning rush hour, listening to Public Image Ltd, loud. Campfire smoke in my hair. Content.