• Eating: Greek yogurt with chocolate chips. Mmm.

• Listening to: Camera Obscura.

• Wearing: My coat inside. It was an even-colder-than-usual day in Joburg today.

Tonight, I think I’ll go back to the South. It was warmer there, & the air smelled more of sea salt than pollution or petrol, like it tends to here. So I’m closing my eyes, squeezing real tight, & trading this cold, dry air for a day back by the shore—if only in my mind.

There’s a place, tucked about halfway between Cape Town & George, where a lighthouse stands proud between the city & sea, its red stripes a bold contrast to the green hills below & blue sky above. There, a woman stares longingly toward the shore. Her landlocked legs are beginning to grow weary, her beauty fading & chipping away in the wind. The waves were her home. Here, she doesn’t belong.

If you follow her gaze there’s a path, narrow & winding & dotted with stones. At its end is the boardwalk. At its end, the sea. From the frothy water’s edge, you see this is no beach for swimming. Stones sprinkle the shore & jut out from the swell, rising ragged from the blue. It’s the kind of beauty that’s bigger than words, that can’t be captured in a shutter or a lens.

A sign lets you know you’re at a crossroads: left Atlantic, Indian right.

Here, two oceans meet. There isn’t a struggle, there’s no boarder patrol, no barbed-wire fences. There isn’t even a line. Hard as you look, both sides are the same.

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PS – The real reason behind our trip down: Bragging rights.