Aquarium soundtracks

Today Cleo, L.'s parents (visiting us in South Africa for 12 days) and I went to see the Two Oceans aquarium, which has become one of my favorite child-friendly spots in Kaapstad. Or, rather, three of us went to see the aquarium - for Cleo fell asleep minutes before we entered, and snoozed in her stroller for more than an hour as her grandparents looked about and I sat vigil, near the excellent two-story glass wall that fronts the predators exhibit.

That quiet hour was deeply pleasant, as it gave me a chance to look closely at several animals whose forms I'd previously noted in passing, but had never studied with any real patience. The whispering wings of the rays; the graceful arc of underbelliers of mid-sized fish; the dull, remote eyes of the ragged-toothed sharks. At the same time, I also had a chance to observe the ebb and flow of the museum space itself: the lull between groups and the delighted shrieks - joy in terror viewed from safety - of children gaining their first glimpse of the sharks.

And underneath that varied hubbub, a further soundtrack: a slow, ethereal, regal, and spectral composition played over the speakers, as an accompaniment to the organic circles described by the fish as they swam. That rang a bell, for the Baltimore aquarium also plays such music - New Age music, at root - in their largest display space. And you can see why, rather easily: it fits the bouyant, stately rises and falls of the school about you. Moreover, it seems to suit toddlers as they sleep: Cleo snored on, the music around her.

Just before she awoke, though, we happened to see something completely unexpected. One of the sharks - who are fed once a week, and are allegedly sated for the other six days - suddenly turned abruptly on axis and crashed its jaws about a 30-inch Cape Yellowtail. In less than a second, the back third of the fish was simply gone, and the Yellowtail began to sink, even as it tried - still momentarily alive - to swim, to the bottom of the tank. In vain: soon the shark had reappeared, and it took the rest of the fish in its mouth, slowly swallowing it while still circling the tank, to the delight of a gaggle of preteen boys.

What soundtrack could accommodate both the peace that preceded, and the violence that had occurred? Whatever it would be, I can't recommend it - if only because I sense that it certainly would have woken up the one spectator in the room who slept through the whole affair.

Personal preferences

When is it proper, or possible, to speak of the emergence of a child's aesthetic sense? Do young children perceive beauty, in a meaningful way? Do they really prefer this to that, on a level that differs from mere whim, or instinct, or random choice?

Cleo, well into her third year, sometimes spends discernible effort in arranging items in rather neat ways. A spoon will be placed virtually parallel to a yogurt container; her monkey George nudged and jostled until he sits upright. But only sometimes: it's easy to find examples, as well, in which she seems clearly content with chaos, with disorder, with canted angles.

Do her choices in clothing reveal much? Again, not really. We often hold up a couple of possible outfits, allowing her a degree of input. And she seems, at first blush, to be decisive: Cleo wear flower pajamas, or wear red heart shirt. But more often than not such courses of action seem driven more by rote routine rather than taste; today's outfit is chosen because she wore it two days ago, and so on.

This morning, though, a hint of something more personal, more meaningful. In the car, before heading to campus, Cleo asked me to turn on the radio, for some music. I did, and we heard a d.j. on the classical station giving the news, in a restrained voice. Cleo let a few moments pass, and then said Better music. Um, okay, and I showed her how to operate the tuning buttons. We soon hit upon a bouncy, lively pop song. She listened, and then, again, lowered the boom: too loud. Want quiet music. And so again up the range of frequencies, until we found the classical station once more, now playing a meditative piano piece. Is this okay, Cleo? Yes, she assented. And we rode to school, accompanied by music that was both quiet and better.

Speech patterns

Feeling momentarily cultured, I dropped a few lines of opera in a recent post, forgetting that 18th-century Italian isn't necessarily a lingua franca. One reader, bless her heart, asked for a translation, and I was happy to oblige - and will try to be more democratic in the future. While we're on the subject of difficulties in understanding sung Italian, though, let's push at least one step further. It's worth noting that one of the complexities in comprehending spoken Italian is the relatively common use of contractions - that is, of dropped letters. Because Italian words often begin and end in vowels, one's often faced with consecutive vowels, and since Italian, like many languages, tends to simplify or collapse adjacent combinations of vowels, one ends up with a number of spots in which one vowel is simply omitted, for reasons of fluidity and ease.

Take, for instance, a portion of Cherubino's aria in Act 1, Scene 6 of Le Nozze di Figaro. He sings of love, and wants to say that he speaks of it when he is awake, and asleep. Parlo, he intends to claim, di amore vegliando. But that i-a combination in the middle is a touch awkward, and so it's simplified, or contracted, and becomes d'amore; at the same time, the final -e of amore is also undesirable, in the rhythmic structure of the song, and so it's merely dropped. And the rest of the sentence features further examples of the same idea:

Parlo d'amor vegliando,
parlo d'amor sogliando,
all'acque, all'ombre, ai monti...

But don't blame the Italians. After all, we do it, too. Note the similar contraction, in the English translation:

I speak of love when I'm awake,
I speak of it in my dreams,
to the stream, the shadows, the mountains.

I am becomes I'm.

Cleo's learning to contract, too, in a halting, lurching fashion; she'll sometimes announce that "That's Cleo's." But she also contracts in less conventional ways, as well, for apparent reasons of ease. For instance, it's not too difficult to voice words that begin with s and a vowel, and Cleo often speaks easily of our sofa, or crying babies who appear to be sad. But an opening s that is followed by a consonant is trickier, and Cleo often deals with that combination by simply dropping the s-. So stool is tool, and sometimes she asks to tand on that tool. Point to her belly, and she'll identify her tomach.

Such a tendency can make Cleo-speak a little opaque to the outsider's ear. But, viewed in the right context, it has an impeccable logic of its own. After all, it's the same logic that's governed singers playing the role of Cherubino, for centuries.

Mille e tre

Generally, the past couple of weeks have been a relatively smooth sea, as far as parenting is concerned (and a downright miracle, as far as a certain baseball team is concerned). Cleo now approaches school with something like neutral acceptance, she's willing to try out new foods (most recently, cashews and figs), and she goes to bed quite punctually, between 7:15 and 7:30. She's pleasant most of the time, she actually says please on her own relatively often, and her recent abiding interest in Tibor Gergely's Busy Day, Busy People approaches the attitude of a Talmudic scholar. Really, the only major hiccup involves the start of the day, because lately she's taken to rising between 5 and 5:30, and happily announcing that she's ready to watch the latest installment of Ruby and Max, her cartoon peers.

So, feeling exhausted, we had to draw a line. Yesterday I explained to her, several times, that there would be no morning screening today. And when, sure enough, she rose and began padding about the house at 5:03 a.m., I quietly reviewed the plan with her, and told her I was going back to bed. Given her affection for Ruby, I'd say that she handled that news well, and she actually played quietly by herself for 30 minutes. But by 5:40, she wanted her oatmeal, and I was up, again, with the girl and a few fishermen, to our south.

I'm a morning person by nature, and I know that the pre-dawn black has its beauty. But, still, the idea of blowing balloons and studying Gergely's interpretation of a restaurant before six in the morning can strike even an early riser as ridiculous. And, today, for whatever reason, that sentiment took the form of some of the few lines of opera that I know. "Notte e giorno faticar," I mumbled to myself as I made my coffee. "E non voglio piu servir."

But they also serve, as Milton taught us, who stand and wait, and there I was, waiting on Cleo's warming milk, and then working her into the day's first new diaper. Happily, though, Mozart came through again. There's a point, early in Don Giovanni, where the titular Lothario's servant is commenting on his master's sexual prowess by enumerating his conquests. "In Italia," sings Leporello, "seicento e quaranta; 'n Alemagna duecento e trentuna; cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna; ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre."

Mille e tre. And, still dazed from the early wake-up call, I imagined a father's version of the same boast - involving changed diapers, rather than loved beauties. Can you sing with me? In North Carolina at least twenty-five; in New York a handful or two; a hundred in Cape Town, in West Virginia several score; but in Baltimore, already a thousand and three.

A thousand and three. And soon to become 1,004.

Love and parked cars

Friday morning in Cape Town and the sun's shining brightly, and so it's easy to feel ambitious - and I feel like trying, a bit improbably, a bit of concurrent socioeconomic and literary analysis. Sounds daunting, I know, but I promise it won't be very high-falutin' at all. Or, if it does veer too much towards the serious, you can simply return your eyes to the less abstract photo of Cleo at the Worcester train station, above.

One of the more interesting, and revealing, aspects of Cape Town's geography is the virtually ubiquitous presence of parking lot attendants. Yes, a few parking spaces downtown are governed by posted rates, but the vast majority of lots and busy streetside spots in the city are manned, for much of the day, by men who purport to keep an eye on your car, in the hopes that you'll pay them a few coins when you leave the spot. Sometimes they wear orange vests, and sometimes not; sometimes they seem actively vigilant, and sometimes they loll under a tree until a driver returns to his car. They're rarely hired, as I understand it, by the local businesses, but they are generally tolerated - partly because, as everyone knows, they're among the millions of poor and unemployed who are still, arguably, a result of decades of apartheid. And so, over several years, an informal wage scale has evolved: as an employee of the Tokay library told me, when I asked about the man in their lot, a tip of 2-5 rand (30-75 cents) is common.

But not inevitable. Since Cleo and I spend a good deal of time at popular parks, we've seen our share of parking lot attendants. And since Cleo still likes, occasionally, to stand in the front seat and to pretend to drive, I've had a chance to study, informally, Capetonians' responses. I'd say that about half of all drivers give something, but generally only when approached: few actually offer money, unsolicited, to the men. Many refuse altogether, in a sternly passive manner: eyes straight ahead, and windows rolled up, they simply ignore the claims of the attendants. And a rare few even chide, or chastise, the attendants: in Worcester, I watched a man yell heatedly at the attendant, who slowly retreated, with the patience of one who's seen it before.

Occasionally, the scene can be rather heart-wrenching: a few days ago, near Rockland Park, I watched one of the attendants, clearly famished, miss a departing driver as he poked through trash of an adjacent pizzeria. Coins or food? How to choose? But even had he approached that driver, he might well have gotten nothing: four consecutive drivers, in fact, pulled away without responding to his gestures and pleas.

That's their choice, of course, as things stand. But the choice is given a certain sharpness, due to the fact that most of those drivers had just spent, in the adjacent cafe, at least 20 rand on coffee and snacks. Indeed, Cleo and I had just downed, after playing, an 18-rand fig smoothie. How can one be so generous, one moment, to one's healthy child, and so coldly frugal, the next moment, to a stranger clearly in need?

Perhaps the most concrete answer I know to such a query is the sociobiological one - the sort forwarded by Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene. When we're altruistic, we tend to give to kin, or to those genetically similar to ourselves. By sharing smoothies with our kids, we extend our own genes' life; when we give to strangers, we do a good deed in the abstract, but do nothing to further our own immortality.

Or do we? Coincidentally, in the next 24 hours I came across two very different discussions of love, and both suggested, in their own way, that Dawkins' view is hardly the only one. So meet Creina Alcock, a white woman who moved with her husband to rural, black Msinga in the 1970s, and gave the remainder of her life to the local community, and land - only to lose her husband to cancer, to watch their cooperative gradually erode, against a backdrop of local warfare, and to fall victim to a number of personal robberies - some by an orphan she had informally adopted. "If you're really going to live in Africa," she told Rian Malan in the 1980s, " you have to be able to look at it and say, This is the way of love, down this road: Look at it hard. This is where it is going to lead you. I think you will know," she concluded, "what I mean if I tell you love is worth nothing until it has been tested by its own defeat." Smoothies, in short, are easy stuff; giving until one can give no more, in the knowledge that the problem will always overwhelm one's own resources: well, that's something else entirely.

And, second, in Njabulo Ndebele's 2003 novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela, a female Sowetan, abandoned by her politicized husband, quotes, rather bitterly, this maxim: "Selflessness is the essential condition of love." She mocks the idea, gently, noting that it could work as a lyric in a pop song, but she's also attracted to it. What else can she do, in the long absence of her untrue husband? Her notion of self has dissolved - and yet she still loves.

All right, then. I'm not sure how to add all of this up, but it might go something like this: when we buy snacks for our children, after an hour on the playground, we do so lovingly, but not entirely unselfishly. When we give to parking lot attendants whom we may never see again, however, we move into some other realm of generosity - and one that may qualify, too, as love. So, then: sociobiology and pop song - two models of kindness that can be enacted on a single city block.

Coming of age

After nearly 40 days here, I feel like we've experienced a number of the more stereotypical aspects of Capetonian life. We've watched the surfers at Muizenberg, sampled wines at Klein Constantia and Steenberg, nursed cappuccini on Lower Main in Obs, eaten a vivid curry, and visited the penguins at Boulders Beach. And Ouma's buttermilk rusks, you ask? We're well into our second box.

That said, we had somehow not encountered the drone of the vuvuzela, the horn so familiar from last summer's World Cup - until this past weekend, which we spent in Worcester, a provincial city about 90 minutes east of Cape Town. We went there with L.'s students, who stayed in the homes of several residents of the black township; on Friday, the whole group took a large walk through the township, and on Saturday L. and her students went to a discussion of HIV/AIDS in the township, and then visited a sangoma, or traditional healer. We thus got a hint of a largely overlooked part of Worcester (one local history's entry on rugby in Worcester was five times as long as its entry on Zwelathemba, with its several thousand residents). But that hint was never clearer, perhaps, than in a raucous parade of young men that we saw on a sidewalk as we left the township on Friday evening. Vuvuzelas blared, the men seemed to sing or to shout, and L. immediately identified the group as part of a critical Xhosa rite: the rite of circumcision, that is, that represents young males' entry into manhood. It's a controversial topic, apparently, in public health, largely because it involves conditions that are far from sanitary - all candidates are sometimes cut using one blade - and because its history has led many Xhosa to see circumcision at birth as an assault on their traditional culture. Regardless, though, the combination of horns and tightly knit men was quite potent; it evoked images such as this for me, and thus spoke of sanctity, and powers that lie beyond our ken. We were mere outsiders, of course. But isn't that part of the point of a ritual? Those who are on the inside know, and those who are not, know only that they do not.


In thinking about the image of the men afterwards, I realized that Cleo has experienced very few formal rituals. Sure, that's partly because she's only two, and it's also due to the fact that she is being raised in a largely secular environment. And perhaps you could argue, too, that in fact a great deal of her life is comprised of modest rituals: walks to Whole Foods, when she was still so small, to get her daily muffin; Sunday trips to the farmers market; birthday cakes frosted to look like animals. Certainly, though, none of these were loaded with the sheer import or significance of a circumcision ceremony.

And yet, despite the lack of dramatic rites of passage, Cleo learns, and grows, and changes. Safe and quiet in her car seat, she saw the parade, too - just as she, as well, has seen penguins, eaten rusks, and wandered the vineyards. And is no doubt changed, irreversibly, by all of it.

Ask not for whom the vuvuzela blares. It blares for the bleeding young men, it blares for Cleo - and it blares for you.

Freedom to be

In 1932, a number of musicians, composers, and critics gathered in Cairo for an International Conference on Arab Music. You can probably imagine the general scene - cups of tea; men in ties - but it may surprise you to learn that one of the major themes of the conference involved the proper relationship between Arab and Western musical traditions. Some attendees listened to a formal discussion of the complexities inherent in Arab ensembles adopting the violincello and string bass. “Can the maqamat be harmonized?” asked a separate session. And another: "Should Arab music abolish quartertones?"

At the heart of such questions, of course, was an even larger issue: the relationship between two cultures. At a time when Egypt was controlled by the British, the embrace of Western musical tradition was more than a mere aesthetic choice; it was a political gesture. But not necessarily in the way you might think - for many Egyptians, in fact, saw their right to draw on a wide variety of traditions as a basically desireable freedom, while some British wanted Egypt to remain true to what they saw as a timeless authenticity. Thus, as Virginia Danielson has observed, “the willingness of some Egyptian delegates to adopt European musical practices alarmed a number of Europeans who advocated ‘preservation’ of the indigenous heritage, which attitude, in turn, outraged those Egyptians who saw Westernization as the path to cultural accomplishment….” In short, Egyptians sought the right to be members of the global community, while some British wanted Egyptians to - well, to remain Egyptian, as they thought of the word.

At the risk of stretching an analogy (a risk I've taken many times before on this blog!), might I suggest that a similar tension underlies much of parenting? One of our goals, as parents, is to socialize our children: to teach them basic manners and graces; to show them how to share; to let them know that, no, they can't wear pajamas wherever they'd like. In that sense, we are like a modernizing colonialist force: we impose a certain sort of civilization upon our wards. But at the same time, don't we wish, too, on some level, that they'll always remain the same? That Cleo will always respond, with shrieking giggles, to tickling, and that she will always announce, with a cool authority, that her monkey has 'no poopies' this morning? And when we do, we're the British, wishing romantically that the Egyptians will continue to play their familiar, timeless melodies. But it's a losing battle: Umm Kulthum and her songwriters will learn from Western precedents, and Cleo keeps listening to us, and keeps speaking in more and more adult patterns. She wants the right - as most do, I suppose - to be herself and to emulate others. She wants, like Egyptians in 1932, to be free.

So we try to enjoy Cleo in the present. The British were forced out of Egypt in 1952. Similarly, in 20 years Cleo will probably greet any attempt at tickling with a crisp "like, quit it, Dad," and an immediate complaint on whatever the 2031 equivalent of Twitter is. She'll still be Cleo, and she'll still be my girl, but she'll have learned from many, many others, as well.

Getting the right word

This morning – a bright, clean, cool morning in Cape Town – offered a chance, after dropping Cleo off at daycare, to sit down with a book I’d been anticipating with some pleasure: Virginia Danielson’s ethno-musicological study of Umm Kulthum, the famous mid-century Egyptian singer. It didn’t disappoint, offering a useful series of comments on the remarkably diverse oeuvre of Kulthum, who sang popular songs, courtly poems set to music and, especially in the turbulent 1950s, a tapestry of nationalistic anthems. Kulthum was widely celebrated, too, as an icon of Egyptian authenticity – she hailed from a small village in the Delta – and she inevitably packed the house for concerts that often began at around 10 in the evening and lasted until 3 or even 4 in the morning.

Particularly interesting, though, were Danielson’s comments on the aspects of Kulthum’s voice that were most often praised. Specifically, her voice was said to feature a laudable ghunna: a sweet nasality, that is, which is distinguished by Arab experts from khunna, a nasal intonation that is by contrast unpleasant and musically uncultivated. Too, Kulthum was also said to sing with bahha – with a reedy hoarseness, that is, is said to be a natural color in a strong, healthy voice. Sure, she was known for her phrasing, too, and for what Danielson calls her stern artistry, but precise terms such as ghunna and khunna point to a deep interest in the exact contours of Kulthum’s majestic voice. Connoisseurs brought an efficient vocabulary, in short, to their attempts to explain exactly what brought so many Egyptians to a halt when they heard her sing.

In a somewhat similar vein, I challenged L. a few days ago to come up with some words that describe, in exact terms, Cleo. There’s not doubt that she’s her own person now – but in what ways, exactly? And what sets her apart from the average two-year-old? In other words, I wanted something more individual than stubborn, or pint-sized. After a few days of staccato thought, we came up with several candidates. Deliberate, suggested L., and that’s right: Cleo tends to approach tasks – such as diapering, and re-diapering, her dear stuffed monkey George – with a patient focus and a willingness to repeat. And repeat, and repeat. Along the same lines, I’ll throw in fastidious: for a toddler, she’s remarkably neat. We often set her up with a bowl of yogurt and a spoon, and don’t even bother with a bib: at the most, she may drop a blotch or two, but most of the yogurt ends up right where it’s supposed to. And, finally, I might add something like intimate, for Cleo thrives in small groups, but seems to freeze up when in a party of more than five, or six. In fact, a Cleo connoisseur might turn to the Dutch term gezeelig here: as Marieke de Mooij notes, the word suggests “sharing your feelings… in a very personal and intimate way while being together in a small group.” Ask Cleo to say hi to L’s students, and she’ll bury her face in your shoulder; sit down alone with her, and ask her what she wants for dinner, and she’ll soon ask for a spoonful of peanut butter – which she’ll then eat deliberately.

Bahha, gezeelig: neither term, I’ll freely admit, is very common blog material. But if you’re committed to your subject, you have to be willing to reach for the right word from time to time.

Unforeseen lists

Among the many various things that you acquire, incidentally, as a new parent - car seats; changing stations; advice on how to wear a Baby Bjorn; experience in washing poop from rugs - is a set of familiar anthems. It almost happens without your realizing it: for a few months, you take your baby to reading groups, and then you buy a few DVDs for your toddler, and all of a sudden you've heard The Grand Old Duke of York fifty times, and the theme song to Max and Ruby at least twice that often. In the process, some of those tunes can acquire a sort of warm associative glow. Sure, they can get a little repetitive, but along the way you come to associate - rather like your child, I assume - them with regularity, with comfort, and with reliability. Good old Max and Ruby, you say to yourself when you hear the melody, and you smile at Max's blithe good luck and at Ruby's gentle exasperation with her little brother.

One of the tunes that's acquired, in my mind, such a patina over the past two years is a real chestnut: it's Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World, which is the final track on an album of jazz standards that two close friends gave us about a year ago. Cleo was a big fan of that C.D. during her Old MacDonald phase, but I always looked forward, instead, to Armstrong's soulful, sincere, and somehow melancholy invocation of the beauties of the world. It's a lovely song, and it had the added power, I convinced myself, of putting Cleo to sleep: more than once, she nodded off in the backseat as I sang silently along with the tune.

If you look at it closely, though, it's also a rather odd song - odd, that is, in its collection of images. Sure, the rhyme scheme dictates some of the choices, and so did the decision to emphasize color; as a result, we get - no real surprise here - green trees, red roses, and blue skies. But keep going: "I see skies of blue / clouds of white / Bright blessed days / dark sacred nights." It's a somewhat sudden leap into seriousness, isn't it? And then we move on to a rainbow, to faces, and finally to the cries of babies... The song is clearly meant to evoke what you might call the pageant of life, and to create an affirmative tone, but its means of achieving that tone feels almost random. The wonderful world is a collection of colors and people and trees and bright blessed days. And even larger car seats, as your baby grows up.

That's not to say, though, that the list of seemingly disparate elements necessarily weakens the song. In fact, I feel like arguing the opposite, after a brief conversation Cleo and I had yesterday. In the soft winter sun, on a park bench, I felt especially warmly towards my daughter, and told her that I loved her. And then, perhaps a little self-servingly, I asked her whom she loved. Might she name me?

Amy, she replied, with no hesitation - referring to a good friend of ours who was, interestingly, our first friend to see little Cleo in the hospital recovery room, and who more recently taught Cleo to blow soap bubbles through a washcloth. Good stuff, sure, but Amy hadn't spent, as I had, the vast majority of the past month with Cleo. So I pressed my luck. What else do you love? I asked. And she responded, in turn: school. School? I thought. But you resist it every single day of the week. You offer sudden alternatives - a walk; a puzzle - to driving to school. You cry when we leave you at school. But, well, okay. And what else do you love? And here she thought for a while, and then issued a third love: cheese.

Amy, school, and cheese. Skies, and days, and trees. The lists are not quite what I might have predicted. But for that they have a beauty all their own.

Homefield disadvantage

A weird combination of events and anecdotes came together yesterday to remind us that in South Africa home doesn't always signify love, or safety, or even quiet privacy. The Cape Town Stormers hosted a New Zealand squad in the three-nation Super Rugby semifinals - but much of the talk in the week leading up to the game focused on the fact that the visitors actually enjoyed considerable support in the Cape Town stands, because of lingering resentment regarding the Stormers' slowness in integrating. Red Crusader uniforms were common in the Stormer stands. Meanwhile, one of L.'s colleagues went out for an hour, only to find that while she was gone a burglar had somehow removed the protective iron bars from one of her windows, shattered the glass, and made his way into her home. And just as L. was receiving that news, I happened to be reading about an infamous series of murders committed in eastern South Africa, in 1983-4, by the Hammer Man, who broke into a number of white homes and... well, I think I'll spare you the details. But I have to add this: an hour later, I got a call, as well, and learned that my credit card had been used fraudulently in a number of attempted transactions. Home field, home, wallet: all easily infiltrated.

So if the private isn't really very private, what do you do? Many South Africans respond -like many Los Angelenos, after the Rodney King riots - by heightening their walls, by redoubling their hired security, by ordering a new layer of razor wire. That's one approach. But we prefer, in our naivete, a simpler one. If home isn't any safer, in the end, than the world at large, than why not simply embrace that larger world? On a day that began with a dense fog that entirely hid the mountain and that then gave way to brief showers, spates of sun, and several rainbows, L. and I played a sort of city parents' tag-team. She took Cleo to an old biscuit mill, now a lively, yuppified morning market, and I then took Cleo to lovely Kirstenbosch, where we played in the small piles of dirt at the base of an imported oak. And then it was time to head south; as L. joined her students for a day tour of the Cape Peninsula, Cleo and I drove through several fishing towns and then peered at the nesting penguins at Boulders Beach. At about 3:30 we met up with L's group at Kalky's, a locally famous fish-and-chips joint where the owner took our order and threw in an apple juice for the thirsty toddler.

I can't say that we weren't a little nervous, later in the day, when we were locking our doors and putting out our lights. But the night passed uneventfully, and the sun rose clear and strong, and now we're making plans for another day in the world.

The world as playground

Sometimes you think you have a general sense of your surroundings - average city block, say, or beachside boardwalk - and then, in a moment, you find them momentarily transformed. Today, for instance, I was walking on Bloem Street, downtown, on my way to get a sandwich. I passed a curbside deli, a warehouse, a few taxis, and then suddenly saw a small plaque that noted that I was standing in front of what used to be a recording studio. But not just any recording studio - rather, it was the studio in which Dollar Brand, the legendary Capetonian jazz artist who later changed his named to Abdullah Ibrahim, and whose early albums I've been trying to find - had recorded Mannenberg, a widely known 1974 work that became an anti-apartheid anthem. And then, underneath the plaque, I saw six hollow steel pipes, of slightly different lengths. Strike them with a stick, a small label read, and you'll hear the melody of Mannenberg. And suddenly, just like that, an ordinary city block was a playground, and I was using a coin to bang out a raw version of a locally famous jazz melody.

But of course transformations like that are somewhat common when you're in the presence of a child. On Sunday, as you can see in the picture above, a tiny patch of sand became a temporary sandbox, and then, as we built up two small walls of sand, a pretend crib. Or take the time, a few weeks ago, when I gave Cleo a small bucket and shovel, and we spent several happy minutes in a pebbled parking lot, which was suddenly an ample quarry. Similarly, a steel railing at Heathrow, on our way here, was magically transformed into a prop for a gymnastics routine, and a taut wire fence on the Cape Town harbor recently found itself converted into a pullup bar.

The world is the world. And then, too, it is overlaid with past worlds, and all that we can imagine.