an excerpt from my 750 words - february 26

in march, i'm going to devote at least some of this daily writing to the novel, even if it's just a paragraph or two, it would be good to get some solid writing in on that. i think that writing whatever is in my head here over the past month or so has cleared the way for me to really start writing something of substance. i had a lot of writing blockage to clear out. i really feel my time in lego in 2014 set up a road block to my daily writing, since there were so many secrets and i am such an immediate, here and now sort of writer. when i couldn't write about what i was doing and experiencing, i stopped writing and found it hard to get back to it. this past month has helped me over that.

yesterday, i read coleridge's rime of the ancient mariner, which is a lovely and mystical poem. i don't remember if i read it in high school or not. if i did, it didn't leave an impression. i knew a line from it, without knowing that it was from it - "water, water every where and not a drop to drink." i went looking for interpretations of the poem online and found i could have bought a few high school level papers on various websites. i did not. and it made me realize that whatever interpretation i come up with myself of the poem is as good as any. i dug in a little bit to the notion of the mariner as a wandering jew - or the biblical cain, doomed to keep wandering and telling his story to all he meets. i think it could definitely be woven into our story. i originally became interested because of the interpretation of it as related to the flying dutchman legend of a ghost ship. i quite love the supernatural in the poem, in the battle over his soul. i could definitely see some moments of the supernatural in our story, so i will work on bringing that out. surely the voyage to cape town can contain some moments of the supernatural. perhaps i have to introduce a mariner-type character among the crew, or perhaps the captain can be that kind of figure. and he could have experience with women who sail as men and he knowingly accepts lumke's disguise.

see, the ideas are already flowing. i need to do a bit of research into the actual name of the captain of lumke's ship, surely those extensive records the VOC kept have that information. i'm happy to make up a name, but since we have so many other historical, factual details, it would be good to have his real name. i just hope it's a good one. he could always have a nickname if it's not.

i do think that reading things which inspire is a key to writing. hemingway suggested that in his moveable type, and i can tell that reading the rime of the ancient mariner has sparked new ideas and moved me closer to seeing how things can come together in my own writing. everything that goes in, must come out, processed somehow and transformed into something that's my own. our own. i think that i feel a strong belief in the project all of a sudden as i write this. and that's a very awesome feeling. it wasn't that i didn't believe before, but i have felt like i couldn't really see how to get to the writing. now, i think i can.

Capturing the relentlessness of the rain

Days and days of relentless, unending rain. It seemed like there was no way it could go on, and yet it did. Grey skies, mud, puddles and even small lakes where before there had just been fields. The earth could scarcely absorb another drop, and yet the rain continued. On and on, day after day, with scarcely a moment of relief. Maybe the odd moment or two of sunshine, but always another dark bank of clouds on the horizon, promising that the sunshine would be short-lived. Temperatures hovered around 5-6°C, adding to the general sense of cold and damp. Nothing dried in these conditions. Laundry remained damp and began to smell musty. The ground water seeped up through the brick floor of the pantry. The hens, even when the door was opened so they could go out and scratch about, huddled inside, murmuring their complaints, loathe to get soaked. Even the snowdrops, normally the most hardy of souls, were tattered and drooping, their frilly white heads bowed heavily with raindrops. It didn't even really matter that the light was returning to these northern climes, as the greyness of the skies and the eternal rain, made everything colorless and cast a dusk-like pallor over the whole day. We didn't know how much more we could take.

Lynne's ponderings about Abraham

So today I am thinking about so many things. How is it that I always have so much work to do and so little time to just be? I thought that this year would be slower, that I would have time for the 'indulgences' category on my grindstone app, but it hasn't worked out that way.
I'm writing this with indulgences on, but today I have bounced between Dairy, Deloitte, Wisa and Cancer, as well as checking emails and doing general research. I have designed a meme, I have managed Facebook pages, I have tried to be trendy for Qatar Lifestyle.  It is a lot - and that's not counting the time spent thinking about Abraham.
I'm aware that I have left him in limbo... he is washing his hands prior to the execution more times than Lady Macbeth! I need to get him walking down the road, past his pottery, towards the grand parade where the gallows stands, forbidding, looming and unavoidable.
I wonder if he would walk. Would he have ridden to perform the good death? Gone in a black-shrouded carriage?
Would he have looked solemn or sad?
What would Maria have said to him when he got back? Would he have explained how he felt,or just said nothing?
His Jewishness is a secret from her,and from everyone. It brings him comfort in the task he has to perform, but he can't express it in public. I assume. Maybe he came to the colony as a member of a dynasty of executioners and everyone knew that was who he was? But the children would have been Christian, so I am sure I am correct that the Jewishness would have been hidden, kept under wraps.
The talk last night by Willem Steenkamp was interesting. How old he is getting. Those long legs so fragile now, but that looming presence and certainty of manner exactly the same as when i worked with him 40 years ago.
40 years! The time just flies by, and I wonder how much I have left.
I was interested in the length of the journey to the Cape. He was talking of a century or more after our Lumke and Abraham arrived here, but I suppose the ships hadn't changed much in that time. Leaky, creaking, manned by scurvied, smelly sailors... it must have been such a relief to set foot ashore.
And that feeling of standing on solid earth after three months on a moving deck, must have been a bit like the jarring sensation of jumping off a trampoline onto the ground.
And the scents of the land... I remember my oupa describing what it was like to come to Zanzibar across the sea and to smell the scent of cloves on the wind, long before the island was in view. I wonder if the distinctive smell of fynbos was discernable?
And I imagine the sea smells would have been much stronger? No big trucks and workers removing rotting kelp in those years!
I suppose the mountain must have seemed further away than it does now, because there would have been no roads leading up to it. No concrete. No tall buildings
When did the gun get moved to signal hill? And when was the noonday gun first fired?
I wonder if executions were performed at a particular time of day? Early in the morning to spare the prisoner a day of anguish? Late in the day to allow the crowds to come?
And what about burials? Would Angela van Bengale have been able to take her son's body for burial in the un-consecrated ground at Prestwich St? Would she have buried him elsewhere? I need to go to the Prestwich Memorial because it "commemorates the unmarked graves of slaves and executed ones of the 1600’s and 1700’s. Once executed by Dutch settlers, these ones were not deemed worthy of a proper burial, hence their being buried and forgotten," according to the website. This area was known as District One, which is also interesting. I wonder what the area where Abraham's pottery was, was called.
Would the executioner have also had to arrange the burial? Did they put people in mass graves, or one by one? I wonder what the death rate was at the time? And were all slaves buried there? They seemed to be so liberal in terms of slaves being allowed to buy their freedom, that it makes me wonder who would have had those unmarked graves. Maybe Angela went there , secretly, to mourn her son, and had a conversation there with Abraham, saying some sort of kaddish for the man he had killed? Would he have done that, to appease his conscience? Or his God?