This morning I woke up in my new home. A small cottage on someone’s property, but it is too perfect for my current needs. I am needing some time to live a more simple life. I want, no, I need things to be smaller. Less. Less complicated, less difficult, and less drama. Oh, how I need less drama. Life in the city was becoming far too unbearable. For two years I was living in an apartment that was making me sick. So cramped that there was no room for the sun to wiggle in. So dark that the damp seeped into everything, my picture frames, my books, my bones. Black mould grew on my soul, who knew mould become rootbound?
Outside the city was no longer what it was a few years ago. Now, muggings happen so regularly that you no longer blink. You shrug your shoulders and mumble an uninterested “meh” as you continue on with your day. Everybody trying to make their way through the narrow streets with dark clouds above their heads, like a morbid Sims game. Everyone in bad moods, grumpy at the struggle to do something as simple as fetch milk. I felt trapped. Too afraid to leave the house because I wouldn’t stand a chance against a knife or gun. Or even a hand. The mountain, I will miss the mountain. I will miss the people I met there.
But this morning I woke up in Songbird Cottage, the sun flooded the room like a tidal wave of Vitamins D, washing over my bed, my body and my heart. I felt something I haven’t felt in so long.
Promise.
And boy did she deliver. The power was out again thanks to politics which I am not interested in speaking about just at the moment, but it was the reason that I left my house so early, still in my pyjamas, some Ugg boots and my hair in a wild bush. I plugged my completely flat phone into the car charger and decided I will drive around while exploring the neighbourhood. I ended up on the road to Jonkershoek. I drove past the enormous estates with their dams and fields with horse grazing, and into the tunnel of trees, old, wise trees bending over to form a tunnel, tiny flecks of sun peeking through the leaves and casting dancing shadows on the road. It was so beautiful, I felt so at peace and at home. As I came around a bend I was greeted by a troupe of baboons sitting in the road. There must’ve been about 8 adults and 4 or 5 babies of varying ages running around, playing with each other. I stopped the car and opened the window, not something I would advise anyone to do, but these baboons are so accustomed to humans, they honestly couldn’t have been bothered by me. Perhaps it was the hair or the morning breath. I wasn’t remotely appealing to them.
I watched as the babies ran up and down, climbing over their mothers, looking at me with curiosity, but they clung to their mothers and never strayed from their guardians’ reach. I watched them for quite some time and felt my heart pump blood through my body with so much enthusiasm. Cyclists raced by in their droves, shouting at the baboons to get out of the way. I thought to myself that it was a good thing I had turned the engine off because I may have been tempted to block the cyclists’ path myself. Honestly, here was this beautiful sight, something so special, and these hooligans on their bikes raced by like this wasn’t a gift. What a moment. This was more than I could’ve hoped for when I decided to pack up my life, downscale everything while shunning materialism and the pursuit of “stuff” that merely drags one down, and move out to the country to a tiny, rustic cottage where I can spend some time focusing on things that feed my soul rather than drain it.
It wasn’t an overnight decision I suppose, it has been slowly creeping up on me. I suppose it was when the pandemic arrived and the world started shutting down, locking us indoors with all our stuff. And what comfort did that offer us? Relationships ended, people were suddenly spending far too much time with their partners, or themselves, and started noticing just how unhappy they were. I didn’t escape that. I spent weeks on end trapped inside a tiny little apartment with nothing but a pot plant and bottle of Japanese whiskey for company. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like myself. I like myself now, a whole lot more, but that is because I have been working on myself. Trying to get to know myself. What I learned was that I don’t want to be in the rat race anymore. There is more in this life to be enjoyed than the latest cellphone, a right swipe or a big fancy car. Strip yourself down to the core and see if you still like what is there.
So far, aside from the recent realisation that large 8-legged neighbours may actually come inside my little cottage and that that would probably put me in hospital, I am actually very happy, and also considering a cat. Songbird Cottage is small, very small. The kitchen cupboards are old and tatty, the tiles in the bathroom are possibly still from the sixties and closet space is scarce, but I am surrounded by nature, I am woken by the dawn chorus of hundreds if not thousands of birds and nobody has pulled a weapon on me, so far.
So for tonight, despite my skin crawling with imaginary creepy crawlies, I am happy that I did this.
