To those of you who still receive my – extremely sparse these days – ‘Good Company’ blog, I have girded my metaphorical loins and re-started (returned to) my ‘Canada Diaries’ blog (here, at http://glenchristopher2.wordpress.com). The idea is to consolidate the blogging into the one place so, if you are interested, please visit me there, and sign up for a subscription, if you haven’t done so already.

For your convenience, however, if not necessarily your pleasure (your call, not mine) here is a copy of my newest ‘Canada Diaries’ post:

So what do you think a South African, living abroad in Canada, working in downtown Toronto, dreams of when he is not actually working? He dreams of Sossusvlei in Namibia, of course. I know – go figure. But consider the photo: is not the man, that tiny figure atop the dune, peering or trudging, the very image of our existence? Okay, okay, enough of the pretension – but do take a look at the picture.

Rob chose it, out of all our Namibia photos (the first trip we ever did together, three weeks in the Landy) for a print that I made as a gift, yesterday afternoon, for Paul, a colleague at HESA where I work (when I am not working in or on South Africa) who is getting married next Saturday. Rob made the card, an exquisite piece of her unique artistry, and I wrote the words: something about having a long life together and visiting many wonderful places. And what place – existentially speaking – speaks more of the journey than the shifting red dunes in the desert at Sossusvlei?

So the picture has a meaning, at least to Rob and me, not least as we plan our upcoming trip to South Africa in December, and dip into our memories, those that are written into the soul, for distant voices and images. Sossusvlei, in this sense, stands in for more than itself.

And it’s a pretty good picture. Don’t you think?

The ‘S’ in Sossusvlei