The following is by Myer Taub, who is contributing a column monthly.

HOMO IS WHERE THE HEART IS…. I am on the express train to Pretoria. The express train is a wonderful thing. It just means having to get to Joburg (Park) Station at seven in the morning; sometimes without a car that becomes difficult. I have caught a taxi to Noord Street, Joburg Central close to Park Station at six in the winter morning, when the moon was still on the horizon. There is beauty about the expectation of danger in a dangerous places especially when the danger doesn’t happen, the danger that is… Jo’burg is dangerous but the expectation somehow nullifies the danger- or does it… I mean the worst thing that happened this month was being attacked by killer spiders in the Bag Factory House. When I say poisonous, I mean toxic but I cannot track the origin of this toxicology. I am not sure whether the spider could have been a Black Widow, Violin or Sac Spider? The first bite, I did not even notice. It occurred under my arm and I thought it was stress. Then four days later there was a severe bite on my leg. Later a red line of poison running under my skin. Bravely, I tried to ignore these bites as one does a mosquito bite but this resilience did not last. The pain, the anxieties and an unusual throbbing that deadened the infected skin sent me to Millpark Hospital, where I was no stranger too, as a few days before my spider bites I had witnessed a man dying on the street, close by the hospital, unsure of what to do I went to the hospital to ask them and they informed me to call an ambulance (as if I should know the procedure). Therefore, I called an ambulance, and went back to watch the man die and wait, as I had been instructed to so by ambulance call operator. Nevertheless, I digress, I was back at the hospital waiting amongst queues of kids, mouths covered with masks suggesting swine flu. The scenario began to play out like an apocalyptic tragedy so I left and arrived back the next morning when things were quieter and less dangerous. I had been bitten. The doctor confirmed the bites and then gave me AZT for poisonous spider bites. These medicines were very large anti-biotics, which I had to swallow for days. So I could not even drink on my weekend away in Alexandra Township, which was a fantastic opportunity to drink. Township life over those three days was abundant in generosity, food and drink. In Alex, there was a celebration in the everyday. Something I can only describe as if joy for life had been rendered in an optimistic hybrid hew after Goya and Brueghal and Daumeir. I went to one of the best nightclubs I have experienced aptly called Bafana and danced relatively sober until dawn. The nightclub heaved and throbbed with the well dressed, the gorgeous, the macho and the lesbian and gay folk. It was here that suddenly I realised that Jo’burg is not a homo city and that every thing queer has migrated to the townships or to Pretoria. But - This is not the reason I have been catching express trains to Pretoria. Amongst my crazy/busy schedule in Gauteng, I am creating a performance piece with several drama students from the University of Pretoria. Thus far it has been daunting yet strangely liberating as the work feels like it must just occur as it is and does; regardless of the constraints of distance and time. Time presently is an engagement with serious creativity; projects, exhibitions, meeting, papers, people and plays-is this full throttle of creativity surging from the metallic rock that the high-veldt is built on? Its also now officially Spring, and on the first weekend of spring, the last weekend of August I am back in Alexandra. It is Sunday morning and it is very hot. Laurent Bonvin (fellow Swiss Resident Artist) and I are collaborating on a performance/photographic project. We are dressed in Hazmat Bright Yellow suits and we are playfully immersed in the junked up Juskei stream / river that runs through Alexandra. We are posing as if we are cleaning, but we ARE cleaning the river. There is an ambiguity to this work as if we are helpless to the pollution that surrounds us. Of course, I am being contrived right now, as parallel to this spring-cleaning I am aware that the spider poison is still running through my veins close to my heart.