I’m somewhat sad that it feels like it’s impossible to get properly lost anymore.
I know this seems like a really stupid thing to get sad about, and I don’t mean the kind of lost where night is coming, you ate your last Snapstik hours ago and you’re clinging to the low, thorny branch of an acacia listening to the manic yipping of hyenas getting closer by the second.
I mean the rarity of not really knowing where you are and having to sort of muddle your way back to familiarity by actually paying attention to your surroundings. Cellphones and smartwatches have made this sort of thing mostly impossible, and so, with the increasing rarity of being deliberately aimless, I feel like we’re losing one of the best ways of making new discoveries.
Cities are the perfect place for this kind of thing. It’s pointless to do this in the Karoo or … I dunno, Bathurst. Where everything looks like the same barren patch of stony desert with angry goats and/or giant fiberglass pineapples on it. In many ways, that’s kind of what cities are for. We put up with the constant noise and being shouted at in traffic by white men driving Porsche Cayennes, and cocktail bars that insist on putting exotic toast in your drink because, on a whim, you can also find somewhere that will sell you kitchen tweezers or a garden gnome that looks like Riaan Cruywagen.
I woke up the other morning with a totally odd need: I wanted to look up a quote from one of my favourite books.
I’m not sure this happens to everyone? And to be fair, I’m not usually a “look up a quote” guy, but I was trying to remember something about wine from Hermann Hesse’s peerless examination of middle-class isolation, Steppenwolf (I am very interested in both wine and middle-class isolation). So I shambled to my bookshelf to hunt it down. Except my copy was missing.
This is not unusual for me.
When I really love a book, I excitedly give away whatever copy I have at the time to anyone I meet who hasn’t read it yet. In my head, this is endearing. The truth is, it’s like trying to force your hobbies on people who aren’t that interested. Just because you want to create an Instagram account for Martini the Cat, doesn’t mean everyone else has to.
Anyway, my book was gone, and I still didn’t have the quote.
I was on the verge of Googling it when I stopped myself and decided it would be far more fun to see if I could find a replacement copy somewhere.
The fact that this felt thrillingly like a treasure hunt really speaks volumes about how a) I am a raging dork; and b) how foreign the idea of actually leaving one’s house to find a thing has become, as opposed to just clicking out another contribution towards the Jeff Bezos “I’m Scared of Death and Poor People Space Programme”. I even resisted Exclusive Books, thinking instead that this was an opportunity to go trawling through Joburg’s second-hand bookshops. We so often stick to our well-grooved desire-lines, and this felt like a chance to step out of that.
The first stop was a bookshop I’ve been going to since I was 14 years old and which has not changed one bit in that time. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a good thing. It has that kind of unyielding permanency we usually reserve for mighty trees, great oceans or roadblocks on the Malibongwe off-ramp. No matter what happens in the world, you can rely on these things to still be there – steadfast, unchanged, and still selling copies of The Da Vinci Code.
The man behind the counter was genuinely perplexed that he didn’t have a copy.
“We have it all the time, just not today.”
Secretly, I was pleased. It meant this was now a proper quest, and also there was a bakery across the road that sells truly outstanding croissants, and I hadn’t had breakfast yet.
The boerie roll next door
The thing you notice when you’re driving through suburbs and paying attention is that you can’t unsee the property signs that compete for space on the sidewalks like muggers after closing time, only more desperate. There hasn’t exactly been a glowing sense of optimism about Joburg lately, but for the first time in a while, the SOLDs seemed to be making a comeback among the ever-present FOR SALEs. A different sign on a deeply suburban wall was optimistically offering Scuba-diving lessons. Which felt like a metaphor for something.
The second bookshop on my list didn’t exist anymore, having been bulldozed to make way for a Checkers, which literally seems to be every third new shop at the moment. I went in and tried my best to find the exact spot where the bookshop used to be. As far as I could tell, it was now the aisle where they sold loo paper and pedal-bin liners.
The third place on my list didn’t have Steppenwolf either, but they cheerfully assured me that they get it all the time, like it was cramps or something.
I was beginning to wonder if this whole thing was stupid and was about to give up, but the butchery next door was doing a roaring trade in sidewalk wors rolls, and there was no way I was ignoring that. A Saturday morning sidewalk boerie roll is possibly one of life’s most visceral and earthy pleasures – sizzling fat and cheap yellow mustard the colour of a high-visibility jacket, all on a basic white roll, eaten from the hand while listening to young Afrikaans guys in shorts that are way too short talk about how their law professor “is ’n yster”.
Perfection.
The fourth, fifth and sixth stops were also fruitless, but next door to the last stop was a bottle store that specialises in wine that I’d been meaning to visit for ages, and it immediately proved itself to be an Aladdin’s Cave of unfamiliar labels.
Because this whole day had been triggered by something about wine, it felt only symmetrical and proper to leave with a couple of bottles clinking happily in my tote.
Then inevitably came the clichéd last pocket you dig your hands into. A place I’d driven past a bunch of times and hadn’t actually even noticed was there. But because my search felt profoundly unfinished, it caught my eye this time around. And of course – there it was. A slightly tattered, but still sturdy copy of the book I was looking for, sold to me by a cheerful lady for next to nothing.
This is what cities are for.
I had my book. I had my quote. (It wasn’t really that good, but that’s not really the point.)
I had a bag of croissants, a boerie roll, and two great bottles of wine. Which, if you ask me, is a pretty good way to get lost.
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