After a hectic move from dreaded Harlem to our old beloved Brooklyn ‘hood, from the depths of the most stressful professional year of my life, and out of Africa, shall soon spring a few blooming pictures and if luck holds, a story or more.

Three days from now, I will accomplish the ritual passage from here to there, from rush to lush, north to south, ugly to pristine, equal pollution to unfair beauty. I will be Cape Town-bound, not to say spell-, joining Marie in our yearly retreat.

Cape Town in spring – Photo Marie Viljoen

It will be lightning-fast, since North American culture – or the lack thereof – rewards a society driver with a mere two weeks off for each rotation of our planet around the sun. What, did you not know I was a society driver? Well welcome to reality. You are probably one too. Me, I’m not the hands-on-the-wheel type. Rather the Windows/Mac kind. You know, that insignificant bit of code that helps the big machine work well.

But truth be told, if one can ever regain lost sanity, the ability to be amazed and that balance that makes us mortals at times be great, South Africa will do it for me – privileged as my experience might be.

A few years ago, I was writing the following after coming back from the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho:

In the coming weeks, look for tales of dirt roads and torrential rains, of camping kleptomaniacs and good-hearted traffic cops, of wine bottles hidden by a riverside, of game grazing freely on rolling hills and on wonderfully lush lands, of stars and satellites drawing perfect skies, of solitude and silence and peace, of unsettling poverty and proud herders, of hairy mountain passes and differential lock, and of all the small traveling links that glue all these together.

Well, this trip will not be as lyrical, but I intend to let the shutter go wild and, if at all possible, the tongue loosen. Stay tuned. What else do you have to do that is so important?