Today was another relaxing day in C^2. It's funny what nicknames people give to cities. NYC's the big apple of course. But I'm not sure what to call Cape Town. C-Town? C-squared? I think the locals just call it "The Cape." Unclear.
I've settled into a nice routine here in South Africa. Since Didi and Neeti came, I've been getting up early and doing 15 min of P-90-X inspired yoga to get the day started. Then today I settled down with a cup of red bush tea while people watching from our excellently large bay windows.
Yesterday was a late night (the jazz at Asoka was awesome! they started with a Miles Davis piece but then quickly moved on to either really loose interpretations, or just their own stuff that I haven't heard before. There was a trumpet, bass guitar, keyboard, and drums.). But when we got home I saw Neeti's copy of "One Day" by David Nicholls sitting on the coffee table, so I decided to read it. So I slept at around 6am, and then was up doing yoga by 8am. I feel surprisingly refreshed, but am waiting for the crash to come soon...
I walked to a very cool bookshop (The Book Lodge; think Brookline Booksmith) and spent a few hours perusing the upstairs fiction section before discovering there was a whole cafe/lounge and nonfiction section downstairs! So then I settled down with some Goethe and Neruda; it was cool because both collected works had the spanish/german on one side and the english translation on the other. I always like to see/hear what the original sounds like; it's just so much richer. Especially now that I understand some spanish, I really like at least hearing Neruda's words before inevitably reading the english interpretations for deeper meaning. Is it funny/ironic/surprising that my largest purchase in cape town so far is books? I almost went nuts and bought six books this morning; I did tone it down in the end and only came home with 3. Two are just for pleasure reading in the gardens and plane (the last of the dragon tattoo series; and Le Carr's famous tinker/tailor/soldier/spy). But one of the books was a special purchase.
As I was walking to the bookshop I took the scenic route around the Parliament. I saw squeezed in between two governmental buildings a cornershop with lines of books by the windows and a handpainted ?cardboard sign that said "Bookery." I was intrigued, so I went in. Apparently, it was the head office for an organization called Equal Education, whose mission includes a "One School, One Library campaign" because a lot of South African public schools don't have their own library. Jyoti and I were just talking the other day about how much we loved our elementary school libraries (of course we spent more time there than any other school room...) -- the smell of the old books, the thrill of discovering an author then reading the whole shelf (Arthur Clarke, Babysitter's club, whatever), etc. I met the guy who's running the campaign here, and his mission is to get books donated and build real libraries for all these kids. I told him I'd be back with old novels when I had a chance. But then at the bookshop I found a cute nonsense cartoony kids book called "A Wanderer in Og" whose sales proceeds went directly to EEs Bookery. So I bought a copy (for Jyo, really, not for me...).
So now I'm at DLL (the usual hangout, for free internet/cool music/interesting people). I had only a small snack earlier, so I think I'll find something to eat, then read a little in Company's Gardens before meeting up with Didi and Neeti for Table Mountain and the sunset on Mission Hill later tonight.
Cheers,
P
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