"You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted, I got an attitude of need..."

There's a man that stands in the middle of the road, at the robots at the corner of Jan Smuts avenue and St. Andrews in Johannesburg.
While waiting for the red to merge into green, you notice the way he's just there, an island unto himself.
He doesn't look up, so there's none of that awkward avoiding of eye-contact that usually goes on with the guy who hands out flyers or the woman with her blind companion and enamel cup.
He's so still.
And in a sort of delicate and ironic caricature, he stands there with his pockets turned out, fingers gripping the inner seams, holding the white cloth out like banners, while his eyes drill through the tarmac
Such a clever bugger.
See how he's reversed the roles!
He's ignoring you, but look how at you're seeking him out, wondering about him.
Don't you want to ask him things? Like where his favourite place is and if he eats the same thing every night.
When Adam Duritz bled his words on stage Friday night at the Dome, I wanted to ask him these questions too.
Duritz and the turned-out pocket man, grand canyons apart but their rocks grind down to the same dust for me.
Pocket-man is as much celebrity to me as Duritz is.
While I sing along to the Counting Crows slipping out of my radio, I scan the street for Pocket-man. I want to know about him, things I can't get on rss feed or google.
Like Duritz; who's lit up with more poetry than a cemetery at sunset, I'm sure Pocket-man has words in him too.

---
Click here for a bootleg version of one of my favourite Counting Crows songs.

Bunny suits and rocket rides!!!

Duritz and the boys will be hitting our atmosphere on June 06 in Jozi!!!
Yayness!!!
I heart the Counting Crows!!!
I'm so there!!!

I'm over-doing the exclamation marks.
Anyhoo, they're an awesome band and you should go see them if you can.

capsule roadtrip (mafikeng)

There’s something about a 300km stretch of tar.

Something about the road that pulls at you to start pulling together.

And that’s what happens on the N14 from Krugersdorp, all the way through to Ventersdorp and the R503 pass Coligny and Lichtenburg on the route to Mafikeng.

You pull together.

Just me, Duritz and De La Rocha (who screams in an oracle of irony, “Fuck the police,” just as I drive pass a hoot of speed cops on the roadside.)

Just me and a long way ahead

The Aveo chews kilometres at a rate she never dreamt when her rubber smacked the streets of the city. But out here, her voice breaks, and she croons like a lounge singer to her audience of enquiring sunflowers who could not tear their faces away.

And while Aveo is seduced by the way she’s been allowed to stretch out on this country route, the mind of a lone driver charts its own course, looking forward, back and where I’m at.

And on that road to Mafikeng, one realises that there’s lots to pull together.

So between the RATM and Counting Crows, old risks are weighed up against each other, their consequences lined up like dominoes arranged to form the face of Elvis.
A finger nudge, tik tik tik tik….
I count the number of times on one hand. I will nudge again.

The edges of some parts of the road looked like they’d been masticated by a tar-monster on a bulimic binge. It was only suddenly, when static washed out Duritz telling me that Richard Manuel is dead, and the rooibos-bred voice on the traffic station floods out my speakers, that I wonder if I entered an alternate dimension when I passed that roadside stall selling “Tamaties!!!*”
I drive on with my fingers melted securely to the steering wheel, generating reservations about the innocence of the seed bars I ate earlier. The traffic voice stops its loop about the backup on the N1 and the trouble with the traffic lights near Booysens. Duritz displaces the weird energy left behind by the strange intrusion, “And what brings me down now is love, Cause I can never get enough.” Sing on man. I pull together.

Priced to go...

I park at a garage rest stop where the signs proclaim the toilets to be clean. I order a cup of coffee at the take-away. “Percolated?” they ask which confirm my suspicions that I’d entered into the bizzarro space-time continuum at the padstaal* with the histrionic tomatoes.
“Yah, that’s fine,” I say, hearing the crackly jingle, “Ricoffy, fresh percolated taste” ricochet in my head disturbingly. I wonder when they’ll start calling it filter coffee in these parts.
What I receive tastes like ditchwater that’s been strained through two layers of dirty dishcloths and nuked for good measure.
So much for percolated I think as I empty the blasphemous abomination out onto the lawn. It’s so vile, I forget about any ants encountering the liquid and mutating.

And I’m on the road again, carding my thoughts, making neat piles of things as I pass a small dam, its water reflecting scatters of the sun, so pretty and sparkly.

The drive is longer still and I start thinking about the people in my life especially the one whose eyes crinkle up at the corners when they smile and the thought of whom leaves me with a warmth and tenderness I can not title.

I pull together until the sign ahead reads Mafikeng.
The woman at the guest house offers to take me to the halaal steers. Those questionable seed bars ingested earlier were about as substantial as eating clouds.
She can see I’m hungry enough to devour anything in an unladylike manner.

Every sentence out of her fastens to a close with a ribbon of “mm” or “aah”. The next day I find this to be a general idiosyncrasy of town’s inhabitants. It’s such a distinctive “mm” conveying agreement and consideration in just that one sound, Mmabatho*.

In the afternoon I pensivate my route back to the city.

There’s just something about a 300km stretch of tar.
It pulls at you to pull together.

---

*tomatoes
*roadside stall
*an area part of Mafikeng.

on the drive - opening rituals

Car door locked (knee-jerk Jozi), window rolled down an inch give or take (precautionary habit even with anti-smash & grab tint), ignition keyed, radio face popped into the console, sound turned up, clutch, first gear, accelerate, the first song of the day, every day, play...

If I Ever Feel Better - Phoenix

They say an end can be a start
Feels like I've been buried yet I'm still alive
It's like a bad day that never ends

I feel the chaos around me
A thing I don't try to deny
I'd better learn to accept that
There are things in my life that I can't control

They say love ain't nothing but a sore
I don't even know what love is
Too many tears have had to fall
Don't you know I'm so tired of it all

I have known terror dizzy spells
Finding out the secrets words won't tell
Whatever it is it can't be named
There's a part of my world that' s fading away

You know I don't want to be clever
To be brilliant or superior
True like ice, true like fire
Now I know that a breeze can blow me away

Now I know there's much more dignity
In defeat than in the brightest victory
I'm losing my balance on the tight rope

chorus:
Tell me please, tell me please, tell me please...If I ever feel better
Remind me to spend some good time with you
You can give me your number
When it's all over I'll let you know

Hang on to the good days
I can lean on my friends
They help me going through hard times

But I'm feeding the enemy
I'm in league with the foe
Blame me for what's happening
I can't try, I can't try, I can't try...

No one knows the hard times I went through
If happiness came I miss the call
The stormy days ain't over
I've tried and lost know I think that I pay the cost

Now I've watched all my castles fall
They were made of dust, after all
Someday all this mess will make me laugh
I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait...

chorus

It's like somebody took my place
I ain't even playing my own game
The rules have changed well I didn't know
There are things in my life I can't control

I feel the chaos around me
A thing I don't try to deny
I'd better learn to accept that
There's a part of my life that will go away

Dark is the night, cold is the ground
In the circular solitude of my heart
As one who strives a hill to climb
I am sure I'll come through I don't know how

They say an end can be a start
Feels like I've been buried yet I'm still alive
I'm losing my balance on the tight rope
Tell me please, tell me please, tell me please...

chorus x2