monday stuff

The weekend brought many things, including rain.

I'm staring out at the gray day, thinking of everything. 

My time here is drawing to a close, so short, it seems. 

I have just seven weeks and one day left before I leave. 

Wow. 

Nearly halfway there. 

And I feel like I just got here yesterday. 

If time could suspend itself, just for a little bit, I'd be eternally grateful. I wish to float right here and right now for quite some time, watching and being and living. 

Priscilla asked me if I had any regrets about coming here. I laughed. None whatsoever. 

I wish I could explain it. It's not different and yet it's nowhere I've ever been before. 

On Friday, as I was headed home on the train by myself around 6pm, I stood up to stand by the door for my stop. A man came up to me and said, "You stay in Muizenberg?" 

"No," I said.

"You used to stay in Muizenberg?"

"No," I said.  "I stay here."

"You know this is a black area, right?"

"Yes," I said. "I live here."

I find it interesting. I've been hanging out with a set of white kids from Cape Town and I've been listening to the things they have to say and seeing the places that they live and go, and I've been cataloguing it all next to my perceptions of the coloured experience and the black experience. It's drastically different.

We were out Friday night, late, and we were going to get a ride to meet up with my friends. The kids driving us were colored, friends of a girl I stay near. One man, a white bartender, told us we were making a huge mistake. I told him she'd gone with him before and that it shouldn't be an issue, and that at any rate, I wasn't about to let her go alone. 

Again, we arrived quite safely in a nice car, and my friend's friends saw me. They immediately wanted to know who the "thugs" I was with were. I told them they were friends of a friend and they got apprehensive. 

It's this ingrained tension and unease that's holding everyone back here, I think. 

But alas, I'm happy here. I'm doing sociological research and I've come up with some lovely story ideas. Tomorrow I should be finishing up the building story since I'm going to do the interview for it and then on Wednesday I might be filming again. 

Laundry, though, looms ahead of me, as always. 

I'm getting a roommate on Friday, so I must do some legitimate cleaning (ah, the bane of my existence) before she arrives. I really don't want to have to share my room. Really.