tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17682710427246699682024-02-07T11:57:51.168-08:00Blah Blah blog!Random thoughts about the journey of life.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-75019282609259545922012-07-23T13:08:00.001-07:002012-07-23T13:08:22.464-07:00Alrite - my new siteI now have a new official writing site. Please visit me at <a href="http://www.alrite.me/">www.alrite.me</a><br />
I do not think I will not be writing this blog again - all my new writing will be on the "Alrite" site.<br />
Thanks for all the support over the time that this blog was active!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3oMYFCSwBOgHt5jTmPnGg9dnK80jC2cXdUN5fYNJbV4yJAkOYRRZ808IvCdsmMIgRwUuB6sZIaX7eQQgzmSuCGrDvkAn4amjckupihV0U4cKpwNwirBHgUz0lFiifHLjldFIkHaIi5SkN/s1600/Caprese+Salad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3oMYFCSwBOgHt5jTmPnGg9dnK80jC2cXdUN5fYNJbV4yJAkOYRRZ808IvCdsmMIgRwUuB6sZIaX7eQQgzmSuCGrDvkAn4amjckupihV0U4cKpwNwirBHgUz0lFiifHLjldFIkHaIi5SkN/s320/Caprese+Salad.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I have just been given
a bag of freshly picked organic sweet basil. It smells like summer.
The first basil culinary delight we indulged in was a Caprese salad.
Tomatoes and basil, the perfect combination to grow together, and to
eat together. <br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I do not have a herb
garden at the moment, probably for the first time in years. We move
so much, but my terra-cotta pots make the journey with us, and are
normally planted out with lavender, rosemary. thyme, mint and basil
(come summer).
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Not so this time.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My pots stand empty and
strung with cobwebs on the back stairs.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Still, I can take
pleasure in others' gardens, and always have anyway.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLp65ad1inhDlqXOw_q8EpoOgh5c-uFp0CQun-I9nHNqtrn5gT7T0viHZH1mJYzhrL_VWFug9jeD-ChDQcz7eoNB3zxP6UZPJXfHYSrjz9JIR-Y3eub7UUwBuNrhwkfIz0btARlJKQgGf/s1600/pakistani+woman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLp65ad1inhDlqXOw_q8EpoOgh5c-uFp0CQun-I9nHNqtrn5gT7T0viHZH1mJYzhrL_VWFug9jeD-ChDQcz7eoNB3zxP6UZPJXfHYSrjz9JIR-Y3eub7UUwBuNrhwkfIz0btARlJKQgGf/s200/pakistani+woman.jpg" width="163" /></a>I remember my
Pakistani neighbours, in shalwar kameez beneath warm black winter
coats, standing out at the beginning of a chilly English summer,
tilling their small rectangular patch in front of their terraced
house. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Coriander seed, that's
what they planted, just beneath the sand, waiting for just a little
sun, to burst up and out in leafy, fragrant greenness. They picked
the fresh leaves, and I would sample it later, in delicious platters
of aromatic curry, generously brought to my door. The seeds they
gathered, to be planted out the next year, and some they dried, to
see them through the winter months.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Herbs have been
important to me for as long as I can really remember. In the South
Africa of my youth herbal knowledge, for the most part, extended to
parsley in the kitchen, and lavender in the garden. My mother grew
lavender, and I used it to make 'Lavender Water”, in my
Grandmothers cast off '4711' bottles, which I adored. </div>
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<br /></div>
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There were always all
the indigenous herbs though, their secret magic and mystery shared by
less and less, and relegated, for the most part, to rows of Lennons
Boereraad on the dingy shelves of a country store, serving only
those who could afford no other medical attention.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
All that is changing,
more and more.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Here in Knysna, I take
my various woes to a Herbal Practitioner, who, in high heeled wedges,
and with a flick of sun bleached hair, mixes up my potions in the
exclusive part of town. They all taste vile, as, to my mind, real
medicine should.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My organic basil comes
from the vegetable gardens with a view up at the Epilepsy Centre.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I recall, in its heady
fragrance, my best and most extensive herb garden, grown, years ago,
just outside PE at a similar centre.</div>
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I had sixty two herbs
there, some small seedlings having been transported in back seed
trays, on my lap, on a midnight flight from Cape Town to PE.
</div>
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I was keen, and young.
My enthusiasm drove my team of two large men, given to me by Ebba
Booth, a somewhat awesome German lady, who ruled Lake Farm at that
time, with a cigarette in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My two helpers were in
my charge, and I worked them hard, myself armed only with the
obligatory cigarettes and coffee. I overdid it on numerous occasions,
and one of them would chase me menacingly with a raised spade or
pitchfork, whilst the other huffed and grunted threateningly, to put
me in my place.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I left Lake Farm just
as the garden really bloomed, and it was a comfort, at the time, to
know it continued growing without me. I don't think it remains today,
there has been building, and no one ever loved it well, like I did.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Still, other herb
gardens have been grown and left since then.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I've always known they
have the capacity to heal and cure, and just never really took enough
time to study them fully.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
Now, with my present
age upon me, I am looking to them and their secret ways again.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
And those pots are
calling me.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com1Knysna, South Africa-34.0333333 23.0666667-34.0859688 22.9877027 -33.9806978 23.145630699999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-50625943630520778662011-11-18T00:41:00.001-08:002011-11-19T00:09:15.979-08:00Bus Ride<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPP6Y_ZKun5dQql9qvX9CSFEAQDqAfXFNtmFndJJDKX-D95KmQZkprUg0eQYAbvRZYe_3WQWVk3YRjmgnFPjxrcDqDTUt0mlt5ByEWpqXpXTwgJgx5jGLN76VSWHGHaRnWEsf4H7gcvUQv/s1600/intercape-coach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPP6Y_ZKun5dQql9qvX9CSFEAQDqAfXFNtmFndJJDKX-D95KmQZkprUg0eQYAbvRZYe_3WQWVk3YRjmgnFPjxrcDqDTUt0mlt5ByEWpqXpXTwgJgx5jGLN76VSWHGHaRnWEsf4H7gcvUQv/s1600/intercape-coach.jpg" /></a></div>
I have just been on a long bus ride.<br />
I rode one way by day and one way by night.<br />
Part of me had been looking forward to it, the reward being friends waiting on the other side. The other part of me is travel weary, and even one travel bag is too much for me. I am earth bound these days, and my footsteps are heavy.<br />
<br />
I had a couple of good thick books for company , and a bottle of water. As it turned out I had a television as well, relentlessly turning out Morality Plays, like in the Middle Ages. I tried to zone out and read, or look out the window, but television is intrusive by nature and penetrated my consciousness. And so I watched segments from my seat.<br />
I was tempted to tell the girl in front of me that I am not, because she might not have been aware of the fact, a double amputee. I still have both my legs and they are extra long ones. I sighed instead and groaned, I think, but she still lay back in her seat, as far as she could, leaving me in a perfect position to see the mousy brown roots of her auburn hair. I could have rested my book on her middle parting, and, in fact, it was difficult not to.<br />
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I was the only person reading on the entire bus. Books have definitely gone out of fashion. Cell phones are in, and with a little or a big screen, they provided enthralling reading and general entertainment for everyone around me, for the six hour duration of my trip.<br />
I felt completely put out.<br />
My reading material didn't help I suppose.<br />
It dealt with Womans' Troubles, and I did try to get excited about the virtues of 'the Dark Goddess', the reclaiming of the 'Crone' and the 'Wild Woman Within', but it was hard. The moral tone of the films being shown, just added further to my feelings of conflict.<br />
The story on the screen of Jesus, as a waiter in some diner on an American back road, in the middle of a hurricane, didn't help in any way either. There He was, Jesus, doling out toasted sandwiches and advice on how to avoid Hell, all with a beautific smile, and an apron.<br />
No,it didn't help, not in any way at all.<br />
<br />
I was traveling my own highway towards my 49th birthday, due to be celebrated in two days time, and the countryside (I have traveled that road too many times) somehow held no interest for me. Change was blowing through me, and I was restless, trapped between a reclining seat and a television set.<br />
<br />
A young boy got on and sat next to me in Swellendam. He was unkempt, but I am a chatty passenger, which is probably, to some, the most dreaded kind. Anyway I ascertained by and by that he was at a 'special' school and was having a birthday the same day as me. He had been quick to tell me about his ADHD problems and how he was two grades behind where he should be.<br />
I think I went on a bit too much about the awful school system and how I feel about education and learning and incorrect judgments being made on children. I wanted to tell him, basically, that he was wonderfully good enough, no matter what, but I got lost in the telling of it, I think.<br />
I hope I redeemed myself by eventually saying something like, 'we all get where we need to go in the end anyway'...or something like that.<br />
I hope so, and I got to my destination eventually too, and to the embrace of my friends.<br />
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The return trip was by night and I took the very front seat with a wide spread of window. I tried to fill both seats with my books and bag and water bottle, but I had to eventually give the seat next to me up. A rather large lad took it in the end and I spoke to him as well, even though I didn't really want to. I realized that I am a bit of a compulsive talker.<br />
<br />
He got out at every stop to smoke with loads of others. I looked down at them all,standing in a loose ring, stamping their feet in the cold and conspiratorially sharing cigarettes. I would have liked to join them, that happy band of disparate people, united in their comradely addiction, hugging themselves and flicking ash around.<br />
<br />
I don't get out the bus if I can help it.<br />
I like the neon glow of petrol stations at night, with their gleaming metal motor vehicles, pausing for thought during a long journey. I like the idea of junk food on a journey too, but, like smoking, I don't do it anymore, and could hardly endure the returned lad and his brown paper bag of chips and a burger.<br />
<br />
My little birthday boy was not on the return bus, although we had parted with the cheerful assumption that we would see each other on our return.<br />
I was sorry.<br />
I had joked and told him that we would both be a year older when we saw each other again.<br />
I was sorry I had missed him, but more than glad to get home.<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-26730103267519070292011-10-27T22:32:00.000-07:002011-10-27T22:32:20.244-07:00Call back the past<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have always loved history.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSppmv4I8G7tR0BePd0PRw7M57UHj_j1fQZ5WP_NpcbCPea9l1S0bsqyNQRWjdYPTfNxJDl1Kfuzx1boLCUEKy-0lv_56KWiBx631Jfqv5DMPUiL7QF0b0UCyU1ylG0GlMQgdCO7061Qy7/s1600/women-in-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSppmv4I8G7tR0BePd0PRw7M57UHj_j1fQZ5WP_NpcbCPea9l1S0bsqyNQRWjdYPTfNxJDl1Kfuzx1boLCUEKy-0lv_56KWiBx631Jfqv5DMPUiL7QF0b0UCyU1ylG0GlMQgdCO7061Qy7/s320/women-in-love.jpg" width="246" /></a>In fact, I loved it so much that I chose it as a third 'learning' subject for matric – and the truth was, of cause, far from the history books of South Africa in those days. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I know that there remains a gap between what is truth and what isn't, when it comes to History. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Nevertheless, the past still holds, for me, an allure, which the present, simply does not.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have always been intensely enamoured with the Victorians, the Edwardians, the Georgians, and their Poetry and Literature. I have a penchant for those in this group of people who lived, or at least desired to live, outside the frontiers of the conventions of the day. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I day dreamed my way into some of their bohemian lives. As a young woman, I sometimes wore coloured stockings, and eventually a bob, and Victorian shawls and brooches, like some D H Lawrence heroine. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have always allowed all sorts of characters from the past , to crowd out my reality, at will.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The truth is, I suppose, that I don't much like 2011. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Its too lonely for one thing, with the technology of the day masquerading as closeness, but in fact bringing distance of global proportions. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I long for long letters, and languid days of company and conversation. I long for the time before telephones and emails, and definitely for the time before the dreaded cellphone, which has become the intrusive soundtrack of humanity, with its beeps and buzzes and bizarre tunes. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Still, with no time machine at hand I must, it is the only way, seek solace in film and books and old maps and photographs.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Here in Knysna I've been reading books about the old life. From my wide white wooden verandah I look out at the lagoon and try and imagine it all. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The mysterious George Rex, in his day, with his misty imagined past (who really knows the truth), had this whole beautiful stretch of blue and green world as his idyllic playground. There was no other European here for a while, until the ships came sailing , braving the devastating sand bar, to tie themselves to an island, that would later be claimed by a family of blonde, Nordic Thesens. </div>
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I do try and imagine it all – the winding road to George, through dense forests bursting with elephants, in which lived communities of forest dwellers, that hardly ever saw the sun. </div>
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Such a different world!</div>
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The approach of summer makes me long for old Africa anyway. </div>
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I dream of tents and living simply, with a river running passed our camp, and the heat crackling with cricket sounds, just beyond the tree line. </div>
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I remember the smell of canvas in the coolness of the night, and the starry sky appearing again, as if it hadn't been there all the time, in the city.</div>
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I'm reading a book about Denys Finch Hatton – the real person, not Robert Redford. </div>
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What a world there was then, for adventurous types. Sure, he came from a privileged class, but there was a window of wonder at that time, and he and his friends, just caught the end of an Africa, which was vanishing at the hands of the Colonialists. </div>
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Denys, they say, had a great love for Africa, and planes, and bohemian women. He, said Beryl Markham, invented charm and so, luckily, could indulge all three, although with loves like that, one was surely going to kill him.</div>
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It's just that the world seemed to be so much more interesting then. Maybe because so much was as yet undiscovered, in a technological sense, and the very naivety of those past heroes pushed them on.</div>
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I probably just need to go camping again. </div>
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I remember us loading our old Cruiser, with tents and boxes, and taking to the road less travelled. We used to open the windows and let the dust blow in and over us. </div>
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We left behind houses, and our normal restricted life, which by necessity held us in. </div>
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In the past, there definitely were fewer boundaries, and border posts, keeping people out, keeping people in.</div>
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The world, it seems to me, used to be a more tolerant place, for a restless spirit like mine, although the price of loneliness, intrinsic to rootlessness, no doubt still had to be paid.</div>
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For now, I'll pace the verandah. </div>
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</div>Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0Knysna, South Africa-34.0333333 23.0666667-34.0859688 22.9877027 -33.9806978 23.145630699999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-60983047311952857372011-10-21T02:30:00.000-07:002011-10-21T04:17:50.783-07:00Karate Kid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My daughter is going on a camp this weekend. L and I don't think it sounds like a lot of fun - more like an army boot camp. She's looking forward to it, it's her first Karate Camp or Gasshuku, to be correct.<br />
I must say that's one of the things I like most about the Martial Arts - the words. To me they are good ' beat them up and spit them out' words.<br />
Which is quite fitting, really.<br />
.<br />
The location holds promise, being on the site of the Sedgefield lagoon, and there is the possibility of her achieving her first grading on the white sands of the beach in the back ground.<br />
But its going to be hard work.<br />
As it is her classes are two and a half hours long, twice a week. I hope she enjoys it and comes home with a spanking new yellow belt.<br />
<br />
I have dabbled in the Mystic Eastern Martial Arts myself a little, at odd times in my life. I remember trying out some Yoga positions in the Family Room of my childhood home. I got a book out from the library. I was always interested in just about anything, and made little personal studies of all sorts of things. The contortions and extraordinary achievements of those elastic Yogi men are something astonishing to behold, and to read about.<br />
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Well, you need a little guidance when it comes to Yoga.<br />
I tried to stand on my head during the course of my first lonely lesson, and dislodged some delicate fluid balance in my ears. I was deaf and dizzy for a while after that.<br />
Balance, I now know, is a fragile but deeply essential thing.<br />
<br />
People who do Yoga age incredibly well, in my experience. They have supple and lithe bodies right into their eighties. At a rather stiff nearly fifty, it seems to be a worthwhile goal to aspire to.<br />
And yet, as with many other things in my life - I just don't get down to it.<br />
<br />
In Cape Town years ago I did Tai Chi for a while. It was marvellous. I went with a friend.<br />
A Great Master visited our very junior class once, and I tried to make sense of his, no doubt, very wise words. Probably a whole lot was lost in translation, but my thoughts did wander off a little, and I'm sure I missed the important bits.<br />
Nevertheless I didn't let that put me off, and I did persever for a while longer. I was also very inspired by those wonderful images of Eastern people in business suits, on their way to work, doing Tai Chi in a park somewhere, with their brief cases placed patiently beside them.<br />
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Now that, it seems to me, is balance.<br />
If you have to wear a suit, and catch a commuter train, and live in crowded Tokyo, in a high rise apartment, to pause under a tree to do some slow mo moves, must make it all somewhat more bearable.<br />
<br />
My daughter hated me when I practiced 'The Form' at home. She was very little and she cried.<br />
I think it was the detached and far away look in my eyes. I was outside, next to a bush in our Plumstead garden.<br />
Images of hippies in 'Hair' were being played out in my head.<br />
The theme tune was 'The Age of Aquarius' - there was a flower in my hair...<br />
My daughter has always hated that 'hippie' thing.<br />
She would do 'Tai Chi' quite happily in a business suit..<br />
<br />
Maybe I should try Tai Chi again.<br />
It strikes me as being a nice slow place to start.<br />
At least my daughter should be more supportive now.<br />
We call her our Lethal Weapon.<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-50236471143620338272011-10-13T22:23:00.000-07:002011-10-13T22:23:24.447-07:00FerrarisWe heard a helicopter first and L and I ventured out onto our wide white verandah. The helicopter whirled close, with a cameraman leaning out and forward. We know him as a friend and thought he was maybe waving, but probably not. Those moments are not for multi tasking, but only for focus.<br />
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Still, that drew us out further. L remembered reading something about Ferraris gathering, and travelling, from place to place. It was all very hush hush, as befits such a show of immense wealth in this land of ours. But hush hush, Ferraris are not, and wandering down the Knysna hill we live in, the roar of their engines rose up to greet us.<br />
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Despite myself, the growl of an engine does get to me. Not quite like L, granted, as a watcher of Grand Priz with a memory for every combination of XZ L or G behind a cars name, he is in a different class.<br />
Like Ferraris.<br />
They aren't really cars anymore.<br />
Sure, they have four wheels and ride on roads, but there the similarity ends.<br />
Icons, works of art, a showpiece of immense wealth, a toy....all 45 of them stood,edgy but still, like wild stallions.<br />
Over R100 000 000,00 worth of them.<br />
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We wandered amongst them, low and gleaming, parked at the Shell Garage, and L was engrossed, cell phone held high.<br />
Their redness reminded me of shiny, glossy, lipsticked mouths.<br />
Sensual, sexy, slinky, are just some of their characteristics. Their low roar and sheer animal-like energy takes your breath away.<br />
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Who owns these things?<br />
Well, there they were, mingling with each other, besporting red Ferrari peaks.<br />
Shame, L had one once from the factory in Italy. Even that he has lost lately.<br />
To be honest, they do seem untouchable, these riders of red steeds, and I am not someone who stands in awe readily.<br />
What was there to say anyway?<br />
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That was a few days ago.<br />
Yesterday was very different.<br />
I visited the Epilepsy Centre and met some other folks there.<br />
They came right into my space at a moments notice. Blue was their colour mostly. Overall colours.<br />
So today I have been thinking about balance and how all man is created equal.<br />
Not a new thought.<br />
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It just struck me how a thin black layer of kevlar , aluminium and steel provides such a impenetrable shield.<br />
No need for hand holding there.<br />
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I felt the hands from yesterday though for hours after.<br />
The addictive thing about being with vulnerable people, is the knowledge of how me, standing next to them, just balances some kind of scale.<br />
And I am not even a powerful person.<br />
The frailty of a person who could be thrown down and taken to the land of fits and tremors is not for the faint hearted.<br />
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I just know the manner in which I would rather be whisked off, from 0 to 100km/h in 4 seconds, in a zig zag of red like a lightening flash.<br />
If I could have choice, that is .<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0Knysna, South Africa-34.0333333 23.0666667-34.0859688 22.9877027 -33.9806978 23.145630699999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-83618392292014905742011-10-06T23:07:00.000-07:002011-10-06T23:24:17.180-07:00What's in a nameSometimes weeks of my life run to a theme, some thought that dominates, some idea that pops up again and again. I don't choose it particularly. It chooses me.<br />
Lately its been Names.<br />
Not that names have not featured in my life before now, naturally.<br />
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For example, I have a little dog called Teaspoon.<br />
Her name played a big part in us acquiring her. She was featured in an advert stuck on the door of the Superette in Kommetjie. Her owner made other claims about her, apart from her name. She was meant to be a bomb disposal expert, for instance. And some other things besides. When we met her, scuttling into the yard under the wooden fence, well, she wasn't even cute.<br />
Her name was everything.<br />
We kept her.<br />
Over the years she has grown into it, the extraordinaryness of her name. That, and her oversized ears, and her bad manners where little children are concerned, or older men, or anyone who comes near my husband. Shes grown into having a penchant for a mohair blanket (or any blanket for that matter), and never grown out of a deep hatred for the car.<br />
I might even make the claim that her name saved her, absolutely.<br />
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I've been reading two books about a child with the unusual name of Turtle. She held on and would not let go, like a certain kind of Turtle, who only releases its grip when the thunder claps. The idea is that if you hold on tight enough, you will be safe against most things.<br />
Her name saved her too, in a sense.<br />
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Personally I have never felt the need to change my own name. I might have been forgiven for wanting too. There were always far too many of us. I was never, by way of example, the only one in my class. Not ever, right up to matric.<br />
This phenomenon continued into University, and then, strangely, stopped. I think after that they all changed their names.<br />
True, I have been given other names, in friendship, in intimacy, by lovers, haters, teasers, children, parents and those who feel fondness for me, generally.<br />
Somewhere within the bigger picture of things, my name must be saving me too, one day at a time, because this name is mine, somehow unique, even within a large cloud of others.<br />
Like a snowdrop.<br />
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Lately, over the last few weeks, I have met quite a few folk with rare and unusual names. Names that have made me smile. Names that have made me wonder.<br />
These names, filed in a list at the soup kitchen I help out at, have attached themselves to waifs and strays, either by choice, or accident, or maybe, by another.<br />
At first glance they appear to be a group of men in serious need of saving. But then, apart from a tatty set of random garments, their name, is just about the only thing they have.<br />
The job of saving then, is probably done.<br />
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So, as I learn their names slowly, week by week, I greet each one with the weight a name deserves. They look at me clear eyed and me at them, and as all do not have English as a mother tongue, I wonder if they even understood, when first they heard their own name, the deeper meaning.<br />
Well, it doesn't matter anymore, that much is surely true.<br />
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The day at the soup kitchen begins and, with a tub of samp and stew in hand, I await Johnny and his glorious surname, Be Good, with his snazzy red shoes, to give me his lopsided smile.<br />
There is one man whose name I hesitate to call out, when his meal is ready- Banana - echoing around the church yard.<br />
General's name is perfectly apt as he is large and black, but also unemployed and hungry.<br />
There is sweet Breakfast who comes round often, although we serve him closer to Lunch...<br />
And there are some others, with rare and beautiful names, who I am only getting to know.<br />
But my favourite of all, has to be that of a man, with a bowed and humble head, who seriously told me that he has but one name only, and that is Splash, and there it was, written down.<br />
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I have always liked to give names to things, or even change them. I changed my husbands name when we first got close, to a veriation of his name no one else used. Now I use only a letter, L, in referrence to him. As he got bigger to me, his name got smaller.<br />
We seem to make the things we love as diminutive as we can.<br />
<br />
Or maybe we reduce the names of those things, that to us, are big and beautiful and terribly important, to hardly any sound at all, maybe just a breath, a sigh - like the Ancient Hebrews, who didn't mention the name of G-- at all.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com310 Hill St W, Knysna 6571, South Africa-34.03295 23.04531-34.034595 23.0428425 -34.031304999999996 23.047777500000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-81893459724500531972011-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:002011-10-01T00:10:04.104-07:00Diets and Barbie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I grew up with a mother who was constantly on one sort of diet or another. The Grapefruit Diet, the Drinking Mans Diet, The Egg Diet, Weight Watchers and Weigh Less...<br />
She did them all.<br />
<br />
Now in her seventies, she is finally perfectly slender, and will be for ever more. One diabetes scare did that.<br />
Scare tactics, it seems, work.<br />
I remember my mother having two wardrobes. A fat wardrobe, and a thin one. She yo-yoed between the two. Or she did, until Prudence. Prudence was our maid when I was in my teens. My mother managed, rather miraculously, to remain in a thin phase during her tenure with us.<br />
Prudence was not, you might say, thin.<br />
She was also, to put it mildly, a superlative cook.<br />
Food in our house underwent a transformation under Prudence's reign. We had eaten vaguely grey cuisine before her. The live- in lady who raised me cooked for us during that time. Her name was Sarah and she came from a different culture, one devoid of spice, colour or flavour.<br />
We knew no better. What she cooked, we ate.<br />
Prudence changed all that .<br />
<br />
She also changed my mother's wardrobe, by removing the fat range of clothing all together. We found the evidence in the postbox. There was a wad of photographs of Prudence waiting with the mail one day. Pictures of Prudence modeling my mothers fat summer selection, albeit with the ensembles looking somewhat tighter all round. It seems the maid next door had second thoughts about sharing the spoils of my mothers dieting, and she gave the game away<br />
<br />
Prudence was duly fired. I regretted the change that brought to our menu. More than that, I regretted, bitterly, the discovery that Prudence had also liberated all my collection of Barbies from the suitcases they were stored in, recently relocated, to the top of my cupboard.<br />
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I adored Barbie. For years and years Barbie and her collection of friends and outfits were the only desire of my heart. They were all I ever wanted for birthday presents, Christmas presents, and any other monies gathered in between.<br />
Long before 'Friends' was ever a hit TV show, Barbie and her buddies lived out their perfect world in their special suitcase , carefully packed and stored, as a child, beneath my bed.<br />
<br />
My sister was my favourite Barbie playmate. Only she had the same ideas for the complicated sagas, romances, tragedys, soap operas and thrillers we wrote for them.<br />
These adventures would drag out, day after day for the entire six week Summer Holiday. They were played out in Roller Skate Sports Cars, and Biscuit Tin Boats, all around and in the swimming pool in the yard.<br />
I think I played my last game when I was thirteen, although I would not admit that for years.<br />
<br />
So Fat Brown Prudence stole Skinny Blonde Barbie, and Perfect White Woman Barbie ended up in some Port Elizabeth township, in the Seventies<br />
<br />
I'm not sure what that says really, but I myself have disproved many of the anti - Barbie theories.<br />
I have never aspired to be a kind of Barbie, with a body shape that some say is not humanly possible. I grew into a very tall, long limbed, long haired, bespeckled adolescent, whose favourite attire was straight jeans, veldskoens and cheese cloth tops. I have never owned a pair of stilettos in my life, or worn anything even close to the colour Barbie Pink.<br />
So much for that then.<br />
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And then I hit the forties.<br />
Suddenly the kilograms that I had previously effortlessly shed, stubbornly refused to shift.<br />
I find myself having to diet.<br />
There has been no health scare yet, for me, but there might be<br />
.<br />
So, with Spring in the air, I phoned my mother for a few dieting tips. She was happily eager to give them to me. I think, in a way, she had been waiting for the moment.<br />
Nature over nurture every time.<br />
<br />
I need to set a goal for myself.<br />
An After model, to go with the present Before one.<br />
Somewhere between Prudence and Barbie - like a real South African.<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com010 Hill St W, Knysna 6571, South Africa-34.03295 23.04531-34.034595 23.0428425 -34.031304999999996 23.047777500000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-65620633963250253222011-09-24T09:30:00.000-07:002011-09-24T09:30:28.258-07:00Sort of Spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In some ways this is the worst time of year.<br />
Waiting for Summer.<br />
<br />
I took my daughter shopping on Saturday. I had noticed that she was looking particularly bedraggled. It was probably not really her, as such. Everything looks that way to me at this time of year.<br />
The soggy sad shivering end of a season that simply will not die.<br />
<br />
But died is what most of her jeans have done, with splits in the knees and her skinny's suffering from winter weight gain. And then there are those tired winter woolies that keep on having to be pulled out from the back of the cupboard because, oh dear, its chilly again.<br />
<br />
I conned myself into Spring. For a day. For a shopping spree. The shops, in case you haven't noticed, are bursting with Springiness. They made me feel the same. For a short time.<br />
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I am a very bad shopper. My daughter, is worse. She was grumpy by the time she had sloped off to the changing rooms for the first time only, heavily laden. I was grumpy by the time she came out. I got grumpier as I was forced to stand in the narrow changing room passageway, as she tossed clothes at me from inside the cubicle. I was denied entry. Her body, which was created in my womb, has now become a High Priority Secret.<br />
<br />
This is strange to me. I have always been quite free and easy about bodies, perfect or not, with their wobbly bits holding not that much fascination, one way or the other. Bodies are bodies. Maybe its the nurse in me, or maybe the artist, or maybe I have just forgotten what its like to be thirteen.<br />
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More than likely. I have forgotten a lot. Like what it feels like, to try on one garment after another in a tiny space, with a mirror that reduces ones bodily proportions to those of a vertically challenged circus person that people might pay to see..<br />
<br />
For many years now I have used the same trolley for my clothes as I do for my mince and veg.<br />
Mostly my wardrobe is made up of the type of garments that have labels in Small Medium or Large, or Extra Large, for that matter. Trying on is really not necessary. The rest of my collection has simply 'happened' via jumble sales and other people's delightful cast offs.<br />
<br />
So, you understand, my daughter really hasn't had a shopping role model.<br />
In other words, its really not her fault.<br />
She hated it, but we emerged with a couple of items. I think the most joy both of us had was finding some really 'cool' stuff for her brother who, at 17, has less interest in shopping than he does in shower gel, and that is saying something.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4QFAzY6Hg2RuD6mIpiUslHBqHfQNuFQqNW4CGSXki5gjNWoEWmJsl2trXGJ9_nkJeM2oJuo3utqI5_OJzsHlHw_-a1LvLJ86GtzwX2azJxpABdiDC0D3LhRbJhFYTOBgWOxnOMCAKBD9h/s1600/uggs-ultra-short-sheepskin-boots-5225-chestnut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4QFAzY6Hg2RuD6mIpiUslHBqHfQNuFQqNW4CGSXki5gjNWoEWmJsl2trXGJ9_nkJeM2oJuo3utqI5_OJzsHlHw_-a1LvLJ86GtzwX2azJxpABdiDC0D3LhRbJhFYTOBgWOxnOMCAKBD9h/s200/uggs-ultra-short-sheepskin-boots-5225-chestnut.jpg" width="200" /></a>I blame the time of 'Sort of Spring' that we are in.<br />
I eye my sheepskin boots with something akin to nausea most mornings, sliding them on with a 'not again' sort of sigh. I cannot believe that at the end of last Autumn I felt excited about boots.<br />
<br />
How I long for slip slops, sun hats and loose cotton tops.<br />
Of cause my daughter cannot yet wear the clothes she begrudgingly bought. We are having a cold spell again, and those purple 'chubbies' are back out in full force.<br />
Who can blame her?<br />
<br />
Pass the blanket.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com2Knysna, South Africa-34.0333333 23.0666667-34.0859688 22.9877027 -33.9806978 23.145630699999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-15122775236685254842011-09-08T08:21:00.000-07:002011-09-08T08:21:47.647-07:00Soup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">One day this week I helped out in a soup kitchen. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">The kind folk here at the Methodist Church in Knysna dispense
containers of soup to over a hundred hungry people, every Tuesday and Thursday.
And there are a few other soup kitchens too, in other parts of town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I was quite sick that day, and as a result experienced it all
through a feverish haze.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Still, I have dispensed soup before, and when L picked me up, and
took me home, to fall headlong into my sick bed, the memories tumbled around my
head before I slept.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Times spent in such different realities to my own linger on in my
mind, anyway, like some dream or hallucination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Memories of spaces and shadows falling into grotesque shapes,
under bridges, under foggy, dim, street lights, late at night, came back to me
in my delirius sleep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I remembered other times spent with people who live on the street,
who gather in dark corners, mostly out of sight, with some security only lent
by a concrete wall or a reinforced pillar, holding up a highway, way up above.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Those in need of soup, to be sipped, slowly, into a body not much
used to food, can be found in these sorts of places. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">We joined them, a twenty something me and a couple of others,
under the P E freeways, a long time ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Port Elizabeth had a docklands like no other South African
city. It was bounded by a row of strip joints and sleazy nightclubs in old
warehouses, which let out into the underbelly of the freeway network. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">It was a labyrinth of concrete pylons, holding up highways going
no where - a world of cold cement and tar-kept back from the sea, by chicken
wire fences, and a row of faceless buildings,with the waves so near you
could smell them crashing in the cold air curling round.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I remember fire lit faces with toothless smiles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">The people gathered under the bridges, warming themselves around
those fires, mostly smelt incredibly bad. I, then not much accustomed to them,
recoiled a little. But, I had a friend who brought her small, three year old
daughter with her, and she let those dimly lit women dandle her, which they
loved to do, and stroke her little smooth head, and she was not a bit
afraid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">And so, I let my hand be held, by one lady, who, still somewhat
drunk, wanted to sing me a song, in exchange for my offered, polystyrene cup of
soup. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Everything changed for me after that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Similar hands took soup from me again on Tuesday. Hands with long
nails, ingrained with grime. Thin wrists emerging from stiff cuffs, ringed
round with dirt. Grey hair tangled into dreadlocks, hanging down alongside
thin, crusty and lined faces. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">They sat on the wall in the sun, and waited for their number or
their name to be called, graciously accepting soup and samp, from my hand to
theirs. I had had no part in the expense or preparation of the soup, and
wondered at myself, in between helping to wash containers, dry up,
dispense, receive, smile, chat briefly, lapsing into my words used for those
unknown to me, 'love', 'sweetheart', ' my dear'...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">That turn of phrase, resident now in my speech, found its way
there during my time in England. It has settled into my vocabulary,
comfortably, cheek by jowl with 'skat', 'liefie' and other all encompassing
terms that cover a wide variety of folk, and roll, effortlessly off my tongue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I used those comfort words first, when working with the Homeless
in Guildford, Surrey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">There, in that lap of luxurious Southern England, I spent some
time, distributing soup and sandwiches. The Homeless there, when unable to make
use of the various shelters, also gather in similar dark corners. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">We found them, in the icy winter, by breaking through the
barracades of back, boarded up windows in a multitude of 'squats' - a dark
warren of connected terraced houses, abandoned and derelict.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Finding our way in, in the freezing dark, was the stuff of clothes,
jeans and arms, being hooked on nails and shattered pieces of wood. It was
clambering up, over, through, crumbling, tumbling, falling down stairs stuff,
and missing a pothole and losing your foothold in the ripped up floorboards,
and following a thin beam from a headtorch lamplight stuff - at least
that is how I remember it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">The people we found were wrapped round in a blanket and still and
stiff with cold and alcohol and drugs. I am not sure how welcome our sudden,
bursting upon them presence was, really. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">But stumble over them we did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">And they mostly sat up and took the Sainsbury sandwiches
from us - yesterdays fare- but quite exotic with tasty
chicken tikka, or prawn cocktail fillings, inbetween two soya seed, sourdough
or rye layers of slightly curling bread.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">They, the forced to rise for us, recipients of our worthy gifts,
were grateful for the most part. Mad for the rest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">One man, I remember, jumped at us, and swiped at us with a plank
of skirting board, like a raging demon in the dark. We beat a hasty retreat and
I panicked that I would not find my way out, but I did, and tumbled out, back
into the dark, tangle weed garden. Quite safe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigY2OczcLyiHSW2j3KG8uJj5CSHpxBYH4reFCGIpvHLHhFsfpdIfZNJ9bE4VHVL3BhVIE2ezcAQ2987SxVTLLPzCOiGNtjwpoNYNtuq612pTfYEfC1Lh3quS-Z3mvuo-8XKsPhyphenhyphenXUpSfkP/s1600/Mfuleni+soup+kitchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigY2OczcLyiHSW2j3KG8uJj5CSHpxBYH4reFCGIpvHLHhFsfpdIfZNJ9bE4VHVL3BhVIE2ezcAQ2987SxVTLLPzCOiGNtjwpoNYNtuq612pTfYEfC1Lh3quS-Z3mvuo-8XKsPhyphenhyphenXUpSfkP/s320/Mfuleni+soup+kitchen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I will, I think, be back at the soup kitchen, this Tuesday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Being older, and more cynical about myself, I do wander why I do
it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Without thinking too long and deep, my more philosophical
side might present an argument about balance or justice or just doing good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">But probably its just because I like it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Just because I like to do it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Feed people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">And I like them, those of the stripped away gaze, and
the open eyes, of the stale sweat smell, and the stench of alcohol and dirt. I
like the held out hand, the bad toothed smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Maybe it is a kind of love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">I surely hope so. Then it is something more than like, and sense
or understanding is not necessary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">No answer. No solution to be found.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Just a cup, from hand to hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0Knysna, South Africa-34.0333333 23.0666667-34.0859688 22.9877027 -33.9806978 23.145630699999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-25032332034071166272011-09-01T07:01:00.000-07:002011-09-01T23:40:26.147-07:00Ballet<br />
<b>The Ballet came to Knysna</b>.<br />
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An old friend bought me and my daughter each a ticket. Turned out she bought a load of tickets and on the day we all followed her, splendid as she is with grey plait and jaunty hat, to take our front row seats, amongst the other ballet dames, with grey coiffed hair and legs crossed neatly at the ankles, in the Knysna NG Kerk Hall.<br />
<br />
Ballet is not new to me, although seeing it so close up is not something my daughter takes for granted.<br />
My sister did ballet for years. We started out together as little girls, me dropping out early and moving sideways to the more heavy handed (or footed) tap. Even the satisfying clickity clacks bored me pretty quickly and I moved out yet again. I found my niche in drama as siblings tend to unconsciously give space to each other , leaving my sister to the delights, and there are many, of ballet.<br />
<br />
The most impressive things about ballet, to me as a child, were the concerts. Concerts and costumes. I remember my mother hunting down seamstresses and fumbling, panic stricken, with paper templates and dress patterns. A sewer and a maker of anything creative my mother was not. She was a secretary and an earthbound gardener. She still is.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXTgdd9WF40Y-Pr5h6mcuLvOp47ys6fGSXrsxisi0_bwFhn_aaLVPiiXjQSwED1Ge55uHz7MoAuNInAS0v2DiBSSNbqEWRF87JTnibrU_08qPt-l-OOty8BPYQbwidWQpm_McP3dQF8z1/s1600/ballet-children.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="214" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5647388633081644098" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXTgdd9WF40Y-Pr5h6mcuLvOp47ys6fGSXrsxisi0_bwFhn_aaLVPiiXjQSwED1Ge55uHz7MoAuNInAS0v2DiBSSNbqEWRF87JTnibrU_08qPt-l-OOty8BPYQbwidWQpm_McP3dQF8z1/s320/ballet-children.jpg" style="float: right; height: 214px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 320px;" width="320" /></a>Ballet teachers are a different breed. My memories of them are of tiny flexible feet, fluttery fingers, and feathery beehive hairdos. They are eternally cast, for me, against a backdrop of church halls and rows of little girls with buns, clattering around and thumping jumping, spinning and falling.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"> The soundtrack is one of piano playing, by a retired ballet dancer, looking up and over all from behind her spectacles, while the teacher loudly shouts out single words - in French - </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"><em style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">plié</span></em></span><span class="Apple-style-span">, pirouette - and first position, second position, third...</span><br />
It was all fascinating for a very young me, sitting on the church chairs at the back with my mother and other mothers, fretful over the next concert and the whispered expense of it all, the bother...<br />
But it always came together in the end. Temple Bell costumes, Thailand style, scratchy I thought, and stiff, with a large headdress which my sister wore without a murmur of complaint. She only vomited a lot, as I recall. Excitement did that to her, always. And so, she glided out from the wings, in tutus, Polish Mazerka peasant dresses or as a Temple Bell pretty pale beneath all that make up on a totally empty stomach, with my mother praying silently that she would not faint.<br />
<br />
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As it turns out Ballerinas and empty stomachs seem to go together.<br />
You have to be light.<br />
There's a lot of leaping and jumping and catching that goes on. I saw that close up in Knysna the other day. The dancers were right on top of us all. I loved being so close up. Its so much nicer than looking down or up to a performance on a stage. I did that often in the P E Opera House, growing up, where we regularly went to see Capab Productions and Phyllis Spira. Once two men stood up in long black coats and threw single stemmed roses at her feet. I was awestruck by that, feeling, for a moment quite transported to London or Paris, forgetting the limited charms of the Opera House, with its tiny stage and musty dimly lit foyer.<br />
<br />
My sister danced on that Opera House stage later, many times, when she got older. I did moon over the star dressing room, the tutus all squashed together on a rail, the strange turned out feet and the delicate but hollow thunk thunk ballerinas make rushing about in points.<br />
I tried to be very small backstage, so as to be smiled upon by a totally transformed face, now sporting eyelashes as long as a birds feather.<br />
<br />
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Oh, the magic of it all!<br />
The magic of the dance does linger. I dreamt of the Knysna visitors that night.<br />
I remembered<br />
the hooks and eyes holding the extraordinary tutus of lace feathers sequins satins brocade and gossamer floating tightly together<br />
the delightful lycra bottoms of the men<br />
quivering fingers and gently perspiring foreheads<br />
glossy lipstick smiles exactly tilted necks arms elbows knees ankles toes<br />
lifts and legs and tight holds releases spins stops..<br />
<br />
There is always an element of imperfection to any live performance, a crackle on the soundtrack, a piece of loose cellotape, a slipped strap, a feather fluttering down, a wiff of cigarette smoke from a fleeting flying figure...<br />
the illusion slips<br />
I enjoy the little girls, who run onto the sheets of floor covering laid down specially for the dancers, once they have skipped finally behind the velvet curtain. At their age no imperfections can be seen.<br />
<br />
And me, I was transported.<br />
Probably by their awesome commitment almost more than anything else. Their work. Their striving and attaining perfection in their craft. Their ability to transport me, in lifts and tilts, and to be so balanced...<br />
<br />
I remembered other church halls.<br />
Thanks Fi.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-42610081804595670162011-08-25T12:29:00.000-07:002011-08-25T12:30:02.184-07:00PizzaLast night we ordered takeaway pizza.<br />
We wanted to treat our children, and so, while they tucked in I watched them, and realized that pizza has always been part of their lives, something they know.<br />
<br />
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Not so for me.<br />
Archie comics arrived at my childhood house in mysterious ways. I don't remember ever buying any. Comics were frowned upon in my house, where good literature was always highly praised and encouraged. But it was in the pages detailing the antics of Veronica, Betty and Jughead that I first encountered these strange, platelike, floppy, edible things called pizza, which I pronounced piz - za, without the obligatory, inserted T.<br />
They were a mystery in the then South Africa, alongside 'Sea Monkeys' and that empowering ingredient that transformed the guy on the back page advert, who never had sand kicked in his face again.<br />
If you know what I mean, then you know.<br />
<br />
That was then.<br />
And me, growing up in a suburban house, set like an island in a sea of mown grass in P E, glimpsed the bigger world as best I could.<br />
<br />
There was one big exception to the comic rule in our house.<br />
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Every Friday the British mail arrived, and we would stop, on our way home from school to fetch our magazines from CNA ( as long as there had not been a workers strike in Britain). We bought chocolates too, and home at last, shed our uniforms for an afternoon, bare legs hanging over the side of the sofa, of reading.<br />
Chocolate melting on my tongue on a carefree afternoon still fills me with guilt free pleasure. No homework, no sport, just the antics of 'Patty's World' in 'Pink' magazine, and posters of David Bowie and David Cassidy and the Bay City Rollers to drool over in 'Jackie' with my sister.<br />
My mother paged backwards and forward through her 'Womens Weekly', which educated me all about the Royal Family, and 'Mills and Boon' romance. We always had 'Look and Learn' thrown in for good measure, no doubt to assuage my mothers guilt of all the frivolity<br />
.<br />
Everything was always depicting the wrong season, winter in summer, summer in winter, and the special enclosed gifts never arrived. I don't think I ever heard a song or saw a moving image of any of the pop stars on the posters, which my sister and I stuck up on our bedroom walls.<br />
<br />
When I first arrived in London later, fully grown , and surfaced from the tube somewhere near Trafalgar Square it was all so familiar. The train out from London through the suburbs, clattering between the backyards of the terraced houses was as known and loved as chocolate on my tongue.<br />
It took years before the reality of its strangeness overtook me, my deep Africanness surfacing and totally swamping every other thing.<br />
<br />
Then, memories of lying ill as a child and listening, against my mothers wishes, but she was at work, and it was just me and my nanny Sarah then, at home, to Springbok radio all morning, would come back to me.<br />
I balanced the leather encased transistor radio on my stomach and it was so close to my face that I was reflected as in a mirror in the silver metal lines across the speaker. I stared into my own eyes staring back at me and listened to 'Under the Jacaranda Tree' and other stories so gripping to me then, that I would often have to fake an extra day of illness so as not to miss the next installment.<br />
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I fell under the spell of serials in England much later, when the dreary dark afternoons kept me housebound with my baby and I had only the telly for company. The Australian soaps in the afternoon filled the screen with sun and sea and funny accents.<br />
But my downfall really, were the British series, when, on my little snowflaky screen I followed the antics of all the 'East Enders', and, with chocolate in hand, and baby sleeping, it was the British mail all over again.<br />
<br />
My love of magazines was born then I suppose.<br />
The black and white 'penny horribles' Sarah read in her room, and the Afrikaans radio dramas in the afternoon she listened to whilst ironing, were out of bounds for me. Mom came home then, and I picked up my real book, probably a classic, maybe Wuthering Heights - again.<br />
I loved them passionately too, its true.<br />
<br />
But, what sweet memories.<br />
Archie comics, being read with my damp swimming pool hair dripping and making the print run, whilst lying on a towel in the sun.<br />
Those British mags being poured over too, by other far away girls, who were, I thought, like me, but were really oh so different. They had 'fellas' and 'discos' and called their sisters 'our Kate' and wore their hair loose to school, and their ties pulled down.<br />
And food like pizza was being eaten, and people all went to the 'pub' .<br />
<br />
None were like me, lying in a sick bed, with no TV yet , but only a transistor radio for company, and a nanny called Sarah, who came in from hanging out the washing, to pull my bed straight, and plait my hair back very, very tightly.<br />
<br />
And if I was very good, she would make me french toast with Worcester Sauce, and bring it to me , on a tray.<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com110 Hill St W, Knysna 6571, South Africa-34.03295 23.04531-34.034595 23.0428425 -34.031304999999996 23.047777500000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-22004161798981963532011-08-18T11:30:00.000-07:002011-08-18T11:31:27.594-07:00FeversIts been the time of fevers in our house for the last couple of weeks. No doubt its linked to the time of year, a new school, new viruses.<br />
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I took my thirteen year old daughter into my bed the other night, like my mother did before me. L had to sleep on the sofa, or her bed. He opted for the sofa, her bed being one large knot of blankets and sheets. We extricated her from the tangle like from the tendrils of some tropical plant. Her fever was so high she was hot to the touch. I watched over her all night, whilst she tossed and turned and muttered strange delirious strings of poetic words.<br />
<br />
I was a very feverish child myself. I think I ran a fever with every virus I had. I also had illnesses like tick bite fever, hepatitis and my sister the deadly encephalitis. My mother tended us both faithfully, folding cloths soaked in vinegar and laying them across our brows.<br />
<br />
Some illnesses I came home for, having left some lover who proved unable to tend to me. My mother changed my soaked sheets and pajamas as faithfully as if I was still a young child.<br />
I sailed the seas of my fevers like a drunken sailor, muttering muddled thoughts through parched and thirsty lips. Indeed, the days after a fever feel like those of a man who still has his sea legs on dry land, with a rolling gait and a far away horizon in his sights.<br />
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Rudolph Steiner has a thing or two to say about fevers I believe.<br />
I spent some time at a Waldorf School, my son in the Nursery and me in an office. The fantasy world of washed through purple and lilacs and pinks coloured both our worlds willingly. No nightmares there I found, only a dreaminess, and a welcome escape from the harsh reality of the divorce we were enduring at the time.<br />
<br />
I think my son had some fevers then, And I, comforted by some dear women, almost 'brides of Steiner' I fondly remember, rode those fevers with him. The Waldorf world has no fear of fevers. They are seen as necessary times of travel, of journeys almost, to the other side. Times when 'we can truly be ourselves.'<br />
And, when they, the fevers pass, we awake afresh to a new, bright day, alive with possibilities.<br />
I do remember that feeling.<br />
<br />
In those Waldorf days I was wracked with pain mostly, emotional, spiritual and physical. My body was bent double often then, with the passing of agonizing gall stones, so 'galled' was I with an individual, I suppose. Our bodies do, it seems patently clear, mirror our minds and our emotions.<br />
<br />
So, very healthy now, my thoughts have turned to illness.<br />
I watch my husbands eyes grow bleary and red rimmed, watery, his pupils like two swimming fish in bowls, when he is sick and tired. Those fish flash their tails at me, like warning flags of approaching illness. Stress does it too.<br />
He hardly remembers having a fever - only I do, nursing him once through the high temperatures of pneumonia, when he made the transition from bachelorhood to me and mine. That was a long bridge to cross.<br />
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No doubt my daughter has made it over some high suspended crossing with this latest illness of hers. It is a time of change for her in body, mind, place and face. I remember her as a baby, emerging from fevers to reach another milestone. She took a sudden step, uttered a clear loud word, slept through or tossed a bottle aside for a sippy cup.<br />
And never looked back.<br />
<br />
In my nursing days I held many a hand whilst feverish eyes flickered and bodies shook and sweated and fought that within which needed to be dealt with. I felt I might have steadied them as they made some crossing.<br />
.<br />
I left some folk after a fever. Some left me before.<br />
All I know is something changes with a fever.<br />
Something new begins.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-1495233018030675892011-07-28T07:18:00.000-07:002011-07-28T12:32:59.067-07:00BrokenI read an explanation of the word SHALOM once. It was, 'nothing broken, nothing missing.'<br />
I always remember that, when interpreting it the more common way, Peace.<br />
<br />
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I watched 'Eat, Pray , Love,' again the other day. There is a scene with the Elizabeth character, in Italy. She is with her somewhat frightening, brusque and honest new Italian landlady. The lady is outspoken, and decidedly disapproving of Elizabeth when she says softly that , No, she has no husband, that she is, in fact, divorced. After a few more broken English questions to her about her divorce, Elizabeth quietly admits, 'We broke it..'<br />
<br />
We broke it.<br />
Any divorced person knows that there are few things in life as broken as a divorce. Shattered, messy, scattered,destroyed..done.<br />
<br />
I love it when scenes in films get played backwards. When, for example, a child dives back up, from the deep water, up, up, through the air, back up to the diving board.<br />
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Or, when the many shattered shards of a piece of precious porcelain gather themselves together from their watery puddle on the floor, and gather that puddle back into their belly, and then, reformed now, as a pretty painted jug, they travel upward through the air, to be clenched again (obviously not well enough, not tightly enough) into some delicate ladies hand.<br />
<br />
I wish some things had never been broken.<br />
At nearly fifty I wonder if it could have been possible to keep more things whole, in one piece.<br />
I watched something on YOU tube that explained (quantum physics, I believe) that there is a theory that everything started out the size of one (maybe green) pea.<br />
<br />
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There was a Princess once who knew the power of one tiny pea.<br />
<br />
I rather like the thought of a play backwards of the moment of creation, of all of us and the cities and the seas and the planets all zooming inward and squeezing down to fit in, cosily all inside each other....<br />
<br />
To me God IS the Big Bang.<br />
Or maybe He is the Pea.<br />
<br />
He is a lot of other things too.<br />
<br />
But the most comforting thing to me right now, as I survey, from a great height, another broken scattering on the floor of my life is...<br />
That He is surely SHALOM, or one small pea, containing all the pieces.<br />
Healed and whole.<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-57744484479407400102011-07-21T06:06:00.000-07:002011-07-21T08:18:22.448-07:00Commitment I have been away from home for a long time. Five weeks. To me, that is a long time. Long enough that when I opened the door of my home and walked inside, and sniffed the air, it smelled different, not like me/us any more.<br />
<br />
The cups and plates and cushions and other things were in different places and spaces and it felt like someone elses' house. It took me a while to settle back in.<br />
<br />
Still, I was happy to be home. Very happy. My dogs were happy, one thinner, one fatter. They were both strangely subdued. And so was I.<br />
It took me a few days to make one decision. And this was it.<br />
Time to commit.<br />
<br />
Commitment and I have a long history.<br />
The thing is - I seem to do it. But actually I don't.<br />
<br />
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One of the first things we did when back in the Garden Route was to take a young nineteen year old Dutch boy bungy jumping.<br />
He wanted to do it. He booked a jump as early in the morning as he could. He hesitated only because he did not understand the instructions to jump. They were in Afrikaans. And there was music playing. Loudly. Even we could hear it, from the viewing station across the gorge. He was on the curve of the arch beneath the bridge. The highest bungy jump in the world.<br />
I suppose they play the music to help the jumper. Similar music is played in clubs in Amsterdam. Here it beat out along the fynbos covered ravine running beneath the bridge and out towards the river sky sea.<br />
<br />
When he jumped I screamed. He, was silent. He said he was aware of the air rushing passed his ears. Silent.<br />
That's commitment.<br />
You make a decision and you do it.<br />
No turning back.<br />
<br />
I have moved over fifty two times since I was eighteen. I think that might be a world record.<br />
My children have moved about fifteen times. They are grumpy about it - but I am not very sympathetic, really. I tend to hold the view that not moving and staying in one place is only the accepted thing because most Western people do it.<br />
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So I tell my children that they could have been the children of:<br />
- the touareg (my daughter retorts that at least the tent would have stayed the same - and all your friends travel with you.. and the desert is the same just about, wherever you go...)<br />
- yachties (same argument more or less, the same boat, the same sea...)<br />
- the maasai, who have no respect for borders, but only for lions, and own nothing but a stick and some pretty impressive beadwork ( the retort to this, from my son, is that the masai have sold their souls for wristwatches and photograph money and would probably live in a house in a security complex these days, if they could..)<br />
- circus people (a friend pointed out that maybe, to them, we ARE circus people..now theres a thought - the juggling, tightrope walking, performing dogs, clowning....hhmmm)<br />
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But even circus people settle down eventually. Retire- to some caravan in a field where they let the grass grow up around its wheels. And yachties possibly throw the anchor one last time, or move into an upside down boat that they make into a home, maybe, complete with chimney. I'm not sure about the tuoareg, or the maasai, but their lifestyles are endangered and the lure of the west is getting to them too.<br />
Which leaves us.<br />
<br />
Moving is tiring, and the temptation to follow our noses over the next hill or beyond the next bend in the road is loosing its appeal.<br />
<br />
Bungy jumping is expensive, but worth it I am told.<br />
So here goes.<br />
Lets stay!<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com3Sedgefield, South Africa-34.0213889 22.8033333-34.0213889 22.8033333 -34.0213889 22.8033333tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-6172938791028916922011-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:002011-07-01T10:40:39.270-07:00New Books and HorsesI wrote a book a while ago. I haven't done anything with it since I wrote it. I wasn't sure why until I met with a writer/editor friend the other day.<br />
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<br />
I met her in a cosy restaurant on the edge of the horsey set. I like it because people(women mostly) trudge through with manure and mud still on their boots. They have riding hat hair, and horse neck grime under their finger nails, from holding the reins against sweaty damp horse necks.<br />
<br />
I have always been a great horse lover. My parents let me learn to ride a horse, but not a bike. Our road was too busy, they said. I nearly broke my neck on a horse a couple of times.<br />
Its a while since I rode a horse. I lived in Greyton for a time and rode with a group of women, all, like me then, in their early forties. They all fell off, one by one, until it was only me left. They broke arms, collarbones, and fractured a skull. I decided, if I was next, I might kill myself. I stopped. But I regret it. At the time I thought I still had children to raise. Indeed I did, but life is risky nevertheless, and so you may as well ride, ride - the world is wide.<br />
<br />
I was always a bit of a daredevil on horseback. There is a famous story in my family of me taking off with the Xhosa groom over the Katberg mountains on one of our family holidays. I do remember him daring me to race - he was on a naughty pony, and me on a horse sick to death of carrying tourists, no doubt. I think I lost control. I remember dodging overhead branches, but clinging on while the groom beat me, anyway.<br />
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<br />
I can still feel the elation of galloping, standing up in the saddle, leaning forward, hearing the wind in the horses nostrils. Great. I would like to feel that again - but I think I have become a real scaredy cat, the thing I have always despised above all else.<br />
<br />
So, I like driving the roads of the mink and manure set. I love pausing for riders and their large rumped, sashaying tailed mounts, trotting on the side of the road. I love the the tap tapping crop and clicking tongue riders, with matching blonde swaying ponytails and straight up down backs.<br />
It's a treat to meet at the horsey deli, then, to discuss the publishing , or not, of my first book.<br />
<br />
Officially, actually, its not my first. I wrote another one years ago, locked into a centrally heated flat in the dark of northern England one dismal bleak winter. But thats another story.<br />
This second first one was a sort of rewrite of that other one, a sort of gathering together of pages of scribblings from piles of moleskins, printouts, tapestry,tie dyed,pretty printed covered books that I have lugged around with me, for years.<br />
It feels like that, like a shedding of skins and skins. like a lizard<br />
<br />
My friend was marvelously helpful, basically giving me permission to leave the manuscript in a drawer and move on, for now, to my second book, which is, well, champing at the bit, to be written.<br />
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<br />
Its like a wild horse, a new book.<br />
Like a herd of wild horses.<br />
Like a herd of wild horses all tossing their manes and neighing and stamping and pawing the air to be let free.<br />
<br />
Its terrifying though.<br />
They feel impossible to ride.<br />
So, I suppose I'll just let them go and watch for a while.<br />
New books and horses are like that. To me anyway.<br />
Never totally under control.<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-38416920641546608892011-06-23T08:20:00.000-07:002011-06-24T01:36:53.414-07:00WaitingIt seemed like I waited forever. That's the thing about waiting. It feels like that. Like forever.<br />
I learnt a thing or two while I was doing it though:<br />
1. Waiting is stressful<br />
2. Waiting is boring<br />
3. Waiting teaches patience<br />
4. Waiting is best done indoors:<br />
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in a waiting room<br />
womb<br />
tomb<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
This waiting was done in three places.<br />
<br />
I have the best friend in the world - who let me wait part of the time in a large flat in her garden. I was alone most of the time. I made new friends:<br />
the bed<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqXDwSsuYwxZXrb8qEFXQ3o3PLhZanQFS1hH8PAHootwcph6g54gts9-rWEPM0jPX6l8XKeGwH2EmT49laei1oqVo8GZLf37ljUKEnmrlTohQSfHKt6GQFNaGjPvPokrvfDzs4W60fwJX-/s1600/noordhoek_common.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqXDwSsuYwxZXrb8qEFXQ3o3PLhZanQFS1hH8PAHootwcph6g54gts9-rWEPM0jPX6l8XKeGwH2EmT49laei1oqVo8GZLf37ljUKEnmrlTohQSfHKt6GQFNaGjPvPokrvfDzs4W60fwJX-/s200/noordhoek_common.jpg" width="200" /></a> the fluffy red blanket<br />
some books<br />
a couple of grey squirrels<br />
decaff - cappuccinos<br />
a cosy trendy deli<br />
some horses wearing blankets in a green field<br />
some leafless oaks<br />
a new meditating me<br />
my interior room <br />
<br />Later I moved on - not alone anymore, to a cottage in a grassy field in the country outside Greyton. I had my family with me by now, but new friends were waiting, nevertheless:<br />
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a light lit swing bridge at the bottom of a green<br />
slope.<br />
a large lazy river under it.<br />
a wood fire<br />
other beds<br />
a sunny stoep<br />
<br />
There were naturally more cappuccinos and lots of mist. There was a misty road out of which overall clad men emerged on bicycles, their startled eyes glowing in our headlights.<br />
<br />
When you are waiting you consciously pass time. You think a lot. You worry. You make Plan A Plan B Plan C...then you stop. And wait.<br />
<br />
Our third stop was a suburb house in the city. We carried in bags, wetsuits, books, computers,surfboards and too many suitcases. We planned to stay a while. We unpacked. We were still waiting but we settled in. We stocked the fridge. We introduced our little dog. We made new friends:<br />
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Two sweet black dogs<br />
some books<br />
seriously sharp knives<br />
non-stick pans<br />
television<br />
the best bed<br />
<br />
<br />
And then the waiting stopped. Just like that.<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-22227875817292409912011-05-27T06:06:00.000-07:002011-05-27T10:13:50.921-07:00Winter Castles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I can't make up my mind whether I like Winter, or not.<br />
I think it depends on the duration. And the depth of cold.<br />
England was too much of both. So was the Langkloof - and with no central heating!<br />
Still, there is much to enjoy in a month or two of mild chill.<br />
Stripy socks. Hats. Fires. Mohair blankets. Bredies and Pies and Soups. Boots. Books in bed.<br />
<br />
And a winter beach.<br />
Last weekend I bullied my two children into leaving the comfort of their books and face book and all screens in general to venture out with me and L into the icy outdoors.<br />
The drive out was a miserable one, but I remained unfazed by our two gloomy backseat passengers.<br />
The final idea had been L's, when he said something like -if we were tourists what would we do?.<br />
And so we headed off to Noetzie.<br />
<br />
We had both been there years and years before.<br />
I did not remember the turn off being through an informal settlement. No doubt it had not been. These places almost suddenly appear. The road sides were lined by structures that had truly embraced the term 'lean to'. Lean too far and they would topple their bright turquoise, purple, red selves right into our path. They cheerfully teetered into the banks of nasturtium leaves, whilst the children outside their toppling houses waved. We waved back and proceeded on.<br />
<br />
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Down the gravel road we drove, leaving all behind us until it was all trees only on either side. And then we entered the Pezula Estate zone, of mansions perched in fynbos behind electric fencing, with soulless sheets of glass eyes staring with a lonely gaze down towards the sea.<br />
We passed on, and our passengers cheered up, and we remembered other trips down gravel roads, dragging tents and gear to isolated spaces, and it felt a little like that again.<br />
<br />
The parking lot was not quite deserted. L and I both know crime stories that have happened at Noetzie, but we both said nothing. Deserted places in South Africa always cause us to hitch our senses up a notch, pull out our antennae, as it were, and become a lert, in the African sense.<br />
We met two fishermen on the steep path down. They were tired and armed with long rods and knapsacks. We greeted them, and they us.<br />
I relaxed a little on the descent of bricked path. That had not been there before, and was built no doubt, by Pezula who have privatized a section.<br />
A castle.<br />
<br />
By way of explanation we told our two children (bright eyes now, with the assault of sea air and pungent fynbos, and the shiver of steep cliff to our left) that the castles built at Noetzie beach were a kind of folly. I forget the story, or history of it all, but the fact is - someone one or some people built six stone castles down there on the sand sometime last century - simply, I suppose, because they could.<br />
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By the time we made the final descent of 132 steps to the sand the children were ahead of us, and we were warm. L and I followed the bend of river around the corner and peered up at the castles and peered down to the sea, and ended up perched on an abandoned lifesavers chair - to keep watch. The children, meanwhile, with sticks in hand, followed steep tantalizing pathways up between stone walls and hanging vines, to wave to us, after a while, from blind, glassless windows in the very top, decaying castle.<br />
<br />
They came back eventually, to say that apart from some graffiti about heroin the castle was absolutely clean and tidy, as far as abandoned buildings go. Only a rich kid shooting up then, took shelter once, it would appear. No shack dweller, wandering down the dirt track, past the shut away Pezula houses, came upon, and decided, on a cold day, to set up home in a castle by the sea. No dirty rascal making a bid for being King of the Castle.<br />
It would be too lonely down there. There is a desolate lack of company - only a colony of seagulls gathered together on the icy sand, and two back birds with spread and drying wings on the foamy waters edge. No Ubuntu. No community in Castle land.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFVa_IYkI7oKDSGqrUbribycGKHEYPCrMJjq1udZ7CNTWb4k838rraCTz80rQua4gAvDj4XiGWWoamjn9MsuZ9YA5XTmrP42sE3MRSyVweEkZ3jApSKc4si3HxBUlz5sR5En2PzdnJOvu0/s1600/pezulacastlenoetzie1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFVa_IYkI7oKDSGqrUbribycGKHEYPCrMJjq1udZ7CNTWb4k838rraCTz80rQua4gAvDj4XiGWWoamjn9MsuZ9YA5XTmrP42sE3MRSyVweEkZ3jApSKc4si3HxBUlz5sR5En2PzdnJOvu0/s320/pezulacastlenoetzie1.jpg" width="320" /></a>Even I was glad of two smart figures with large cameras glimpsed behind the buttresses of Pezulas private luxury castle. And there were one or two other tourist strays coming down with clicking cameras.<br />
The ascent was harder work and my heart beat alarmingly. No fear now though, the spirit of adventure had caught up with us by then<br />
<br />
We were a cheery lot on our return, and threw all final caution to the wind at the Knysna Heads, where we drank wine and ate pizza on the way home.<br />
<br />
Tourists we remained, until the end.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-23389328265938022522011-05-19T07:07:00.000-07:002011-05-19T07:07:00.806-07:00Crime and PunishmentSome people tell naughty children that the police will come and get them, if they are not good. No one ever told me that. But I heard it. I still do.<br />
<br />
Good cop, bad cop has become an accepted turn of phrase.<br />
It is a reality of life anyway, on which it just, well, depends, I suppose.<br />
<br />
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The police have been there, in my life, always. In fact, they are one of my earliest memories. I remember waking in the middle of the night to the sound of them hammering on the door of the servants quarters in the yard. The door of the woman who worked for my parents. Real fear gripped me as I heard their loud voices demanding that she open the door.<br />
I loved her. I was little, and she was like a mother to me.<br />
I heard my father open the bathroom window and talk to them, and then shut the window and tell my mother softly that they were checking passes. My mothers ghostly form drifted into the room I shared with my sister, and touched us both and whispered to us to go back to sleep.<br />
<br />
I remember the police vans of the time, with the brown fingers of the men in the back wound around and gripping the wire mesh. I was not sure that I could trust them for myself, but I was told I could.<br />
<br />
At university and in the communal houses of my early adulthood I knew the sound of the security police kicking open a door and bursting in. In their uniform of tight jeans, running shoes, leather jackets and moustaches, in the Eastern Cape, I knew some of them by name. Their faces had shouted into mine a couple of times.<br />
I would be lying to say I was not afraid , but being young then, and white, I had felt invincible.<br />
<br />
Not so, anymore.<br />
L has been hijacked too many times. Once with a gun to his head, and the trigger pulled, but the stolen, mismatched bullets stuck in the chamber. That drove him to a solitary life on the Crocodile river, with an old land rover and a long drive back to Jozi.<br />
Another was with AK47's in a barrackaded schoolyard .<br />
There was another one, but the details get confused after a while. That drove him back to the Fairest Cape.<br />
The point is, we have not, not been touched by crime<br />
<br />
So, last week I did not march into the police station because we do not understand the issues around crime. I served on the Community Police Forum in the Langkloof precisely because I try - to understand the issues, that is.<br />
I marched into the police station because, a short while earlier my son - my seventeen year old, tall and lanky son, with a new cell phone, a bank card, a snazzy purple asthma pump and no doubt a wad of crumpled tissues(rhinitus) , in his pocket - had come riding home on his very good bicycle, with his beanie on his head - visibly shaken.<br />
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The two policemen who stopped him now know the exact contents of his pockets - because they made him empty them. They know how good his bike is because they checked it over. They know the colour, curl, length and height of his hair because they pulled his beanie off and checked it out as well...<br />
<br />
I have been told that they - asked where he had been, whether he had been using, what he was doing there (on the streets of Sedgefield), whose bank card he had ,how his asthma pump worked (he had to demonstrate),whose bike it was - because they can and will stop, search, and make a young man spread his arms on the bonnet of their vehicle and pat him down, wherever and whenever they like.<br />
<br />
I took the complaint as far as my son would let me, which wasn't very far.<br />
He is not very happy.<br />
To him the police are far from being friends.<br />
I understand the feeling.<br />
I thought those days were over.<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com1Sedgefield, South Africa-34.0213889 22.803333299999963-34.0421069 22.769537799999963 -34.000670899999996 22.837128799999963tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-41764126315188956072011-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:002011-05-14T00:17:34.780-07:00Every Mother has her Day<br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This morning I woke up thinking I had
heard my Mothers voice.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I experienced a moment of confusion,
like when a dream crosses over into reality and voices escape from
inside to outside, for a moment.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
She is not here, where I am, but is
alive, and living in a city far away.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This morning her voice brought me
intense comfort. Like when I was a little girl, and I would awake to
her, and reach out my arms , with eyes still shut.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Every week I phone her, and even
though our roles are beginning to reverse, the roles of carer and
being cared for, she can still be, for me, a warm voice of comfort.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A lot of our lives have been lived over
the phone. That way our voices could be any age, and I forget that my
face is becoming more and more her face and I am aging. And I forget
that she is getting old.
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEier0gIKcgHQYa8WOycnbGKKjoUXsnCcmQvqhZYwruGHOqn4IvyVrfsS0U6Ov3BI464cZF7jfqlE7Rin_9dEffgyHdKH2gBykHRe3OcQRCgvtObnwDyoBc2kol3S_jxAqsY2H0gQZLFxS76/s1600/mothers-day2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEier0gIKcgHQYa8WOycnbGKKjoUXsnCcmQvqhZYwruGHOqn4IvyVrfsS0U6Ov3BI464cZF7jfqlE7Rin_9dEffgyHdKH2gBykHRe3OcQRCgvtObnwDyoBc2kol3S_jxAqsY2H0gQZLFxS76/s200/mothers-day2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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There were many years when we lived on
separate continents. Years when most of what we said was conveyed in
letters ( mine since returned to me, a big bundle tied with string –
I can't recall where they are even now.)</div>
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Phone calls were for Christmas and
birthdays. There were a few years of New Years Eve calls, when I was
still young and it was a tipsy delight to phone all and sundry at two
in the morning for a slurred 'Auld Land Syne'.</div>
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</div>
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Our lives intersected at times back
here at home and we connected, mostly in quaint towns but also busy
cities. I was always a faithful visitor – dutiful, perhaps making
up for the grey hairs she claims I gave her, which I have now.</div>
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I gave her plenty of scares I guess, by
disappearing on yachts for weeks on end and doing other dares that
she probably guessed at, but didn't know.
</div>
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So, when Mothers Day comes round, like
it did a while ago, I phone, of cause, and I do miss her.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTVx_rT3UYp6h6ei7IRtXuXPXRgh_OzQrPqAhuAkJpwCOwCkmQ98mfiVRWt3rJk-ln582Rbj59au886ZrRuL4ZCA3JYzRdiF1rgUdv11vRog3YlJX6w3IaN6XQfs9d3rzW_Sa_vMimge1r/s1600/mothers-day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTVx_rT3UYp6h6ei7IRtXuXPXRgh_OzQrPqAhuAkJpwCOwCkmQ98mfiVRWt3rJk-ln582Rbj59au886ZrRuL4ZCA3JYzRdiF1rgUdv11vRog3YlJX6w3IaN6XQfs9d3rzW_Sa_vMimge1r/s200/mothers-day.jpg" width="200" /></a>She and I have had our lonely spells,
hers by staying, and me by going, but we are grateful for the phone.
Its not that we have always been the best of friends, but her imprint
is so strong on me that , wiping away the mist on the mirror, I
cannot avoid her.</div>
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I can only hope that my voice will be a
soothing balm (it must be the right time of day, you understand...not
too late, when the weariness of the day has taken its toll.), for my
daughter in her life. It does not stand to reason of any sort,
because, there has been hurt, and fear, and doubt, along the way.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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A voice can be like a refrain, or a
familiar song, that takes you back in time, to moments well lived,
and loved.</div>
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I live in Sedgefield, and my mother in
Cape Town – and I miss taking her out to a special lunch on a
special day. I would like to think that these days it is more me
giving and her receiving. But, no, it is probably not yet quite that.</div>
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Some say that you only truly grow up
when your parents are no more.</div>
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I am still a very needy me , sometimes,
and I do not yet feel fully grown.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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All this, settles down on me right now,
as we plan my daughters first trip to England.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisN4DHRdKE2uSSOA0FfUJc2YUv4tSwm4nkmBsFIiiysQC0LV1sHzqoCoyPqIhpdXMr8yNeYE28Taice5zCuKIzPgktA8qWWiSTAOtA2rouWHdnb23_73SNJpC5e-BuerMKTxLzTYR-s-kx/s1600/mothers-day-cards1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisN4DHRdKE2uSSOA0FfUJc2YUv4tSwm4nkmBsFIiiysQC0LV1sHzqoCoyPqIhpdXMr8yNeYE28Taice5zCuKIzPgktA8qWWiSTAOtA2rouWHdnb23_73SNJpC5e-BuerMKTxLzTYR-s-kx/s200/mothers-day-cards1.jpg" width="198" /></a> She goes without me. Already we have
our skype conversations planned. She is the wrong age to confess to
much anxiety or to express that she will miss me too very very much,
as I would want her to.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
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I realize that I am the one staying,
for the first time now, while she will go.
</div>
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Many a call was made home by me, from
chilly England, to my mother, sitting sunny by the pool, with a
smokey braai in the background, that I could almost taste with the
memory of it.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
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With skype I'll get to see my daughter,
and hear her, and that will be for better or for worse.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm not ready for any role swopping –
but it seems it happens, ready or not. </div>Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-32225828906057318062011-05-06T04:08:00.000-07:002011-05-06T04:08:00.793-07:00A right Royal affair<br />
Of cause I watched the wedding.<br />
<br />
There were many complaints from those who claim to be anti- Royal, and some whinging on about money being wasted and how inappropriate it all is in this day and age...<br />
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I remember similar comments about the World Cup and the money being spent by our poor nation to host such an event. I explained in an e-mail to a friend in Britain that a party is important sometimes. A moment in time in which to forget the tough times, the violence, the disillusionment, the discord - and join together and at least believe, for a month or more that we all love each other and are united as South Africans.<br />
It was a great moment.<br />
It seems the same may be true of Britain, and I for one sat in my African living room and thoroughly enjoyed it all.<br />
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Life is too serious at the best of times, and lately I really believe in the Power of the Party.<br />
And I try to still believe in weddings. I've had two, and the only Royal thing about both was probably the jelly and the icing.<br />
<br />
The first one was the most in contrast to the Royal one witnessed in London the other day - and with all its political correctness and lack of spending it still didn't last.<br />
So, theres no guarantee..<br />
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I bought the dress for that cross racial/ cultural wedding in a pre-democracy South Africa in a Surf shop the day before the wedding. It was plain white viscose and I wore purple shoes. My parents bought me flowers and the groom was jazzy in dreads and an Indian waistcoat!<br />
The black community I worked in was bused in and my dress was later stained by the blue dye in the icing of the slab cakes we cut into hundreds of squares for the children whom I carried around the reception. Only immediate family from my side were present, due to my choice of groom, and all in all it was rather a gloomy affair.<br />
There was no dancing, just eat and drink, and our Azapo and other friends, who thought they were 'communists' would not enter the church, but languished outside until it was all over. I do remember a young 'comrade' wrote us rather a nice poem which he recited mid floor whilst the cake and cokes were consumed.<br />
We were idealists, thats for sure, and probably more than a little self-righteous.<br />
<br />
That marriage, like many similar ones of the time in South Africa, ended in tears and confusion and disillusionment. So, I don't hold 'doing what appears to be the right thing' in such high regard any more. Its alright, you understand, but me and my second husband swung round more to the 'Carpe Diem ' maxim, I suppose.<br />
<br />
That second marriage was just about 100% a gift from friends. We fell into it after two years of living together, probably more so that my children could legitimately say Daddy, and some misled idea of religion. It was a day of fun in the sun played to a Van Morrison soundtrack with friends outside under the Oaks. We ate Nandos from a trailer and tent and there were no speeches, no table settings, and was similar to the first in that I carried around children again (this time my own) and very little money was spent.<br />
Still, the dream of marriage is one that brings a tear to even a jaundiced eye.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtA_MX3yMaPmLCQ01T8r0UBUNbP66DTof6WBUecN8nY24yDvBCD7zDJwpMtFLr-CO18m04FDgbLBB1-7iu1cxTpGMiIGGw2tKLlftz2nM4ZmFH2zHU89PbS5gCpAZK1HE5Ic3G1DAB3WFw/s1600/ROYAL-WEDDING_2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtA_MX3yMaPmLCQ01T8r0UBUNbP66DTof6WBUecN8nY24yDvBCD7zDJwpMtFLr-CO18m04FDgbLBB1-7iu1cxTpGMiIGGw2tKLlftz2nM4ZmFH2zHU89PbS5gCpAZK1HE5Ic3G1DAB3WFw/s320/ROYAL-WEDDING_2011.jpg" width="320" /></a>Maybe Wills and Kate want to have kids, and being Royal they need to be on the right side of the blanket. Or maybe it was more. Married they certainly, in a sense, already were.<br />
<br />
It was also a gift I suppose, to them, by tax payers money, and then in turn another gift to all of us, the satellite viewers. Deep in our psyche is the desire of the mystical union, expressed in different ways, in different cultures.<br />
<br />
In the end money has nothing to do with it.<br />
Its all a dream. A hope. A fantasy.<br />
Long may it last.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0Sedgefield, South Africa-34.0226468 22.807571999999936-34.0433648 22.773776499999936 -34.001928799999995 22.841367499999937tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-28648456459856152662011-04-29T11:43:00.000-07:002011-04-29T11:43:48.199-07:00The Luck of the Draw<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Mh4bkyPqRhOEpKyD8S35oW31yON4MCfMLrSBiHJaolH3iKOHE0BKTYJTaJh-48Wpy-Mt0fE51W5sAjsbg6cp1tcflLznucVCRemtVTyb1_gzv_SZBFSnc04K8cV5TXSTexCPFa_nmh8e/s1600/dot+to+dot.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0Mh4bkyPqRhOEpKyD8S35oW31yON4MCfMLrSBiHJaolH3iKOHE0BKTYJTaJh-48Wpy-Mt0fE51W5sAjsbg6cp1tcflLznucVCRemtVTyb1_gzv_SZBFSnc04K8cV5TXSTexCPFa_nmh8e/s200/dot+to+dot.png" width="200" /></a></div>
Its a long time since I have done a dot to dot puzzle. I was always rather fond of them and used them to teach my children how to count. They are such a good marriage of right and left brain, aren't they? A combination of numbers and art as the picture magically appears.<br />
<br />
Art and Maths are the opposite ends of the scale and passion of my sons schooling - one being hated and one being loved. It was in the pursuit of the one that I took him and a fellow art student to visit a local artist the other day.<br />
Here in the Garden Route are many dabblers in Art and a few famous names also, hidden as they mostly are amongst the mountains and dunes.<br />
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Beatrix Bosch lives on the ridge of the dunes of Wilderness and has had an open house for the month of April - an exhibition contained within her house - and so we popped in. We were on our way to George for Art classes and she was alone when we visited, and we spent longer than we intended and were late (although, of cause we did not miss anything really). We stayed longer because we were invited upstairs to her workroom - which we could not resist and lingered longer there, fingering her piles of skins and admiring her newest work in process.<br />
<br />
I glimpsed her bedroom to one side and heard the radio for a moment before she clicked it off. I had willingly toured all the huge art works downstairs, and talked about them, felt them, smelt them - praised them.<br />
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But, I have to confess my eyes kept wandering to the huge panoramic views of the crashing sea and beach stretching the entire length of the house, visible through the wall of windows. I noted that her bed was placed so that she could see it - the crashing sea.<br />
I enjoyed the twinkle in her aging eye. The sadness too, was there, because of longing and missing and getting old and things ending, I think. I imagined the legendary parties (she said with up to two hundred guests) that used to fill the place in the seventies...<br />
I saw one photo of her in the sixties, so pretty and vital. I remember her comment of how her and her late beloved husband used to run down the wooden walkway to the beach, with bicycles, and haul up amazing and twisted lumps of drift wood, which he made up into sculptures..<br />
<br />
It was she who interested me , almost more than her creations of leather (purple, red, orange, turquoise, black) and wool, hanging heavy on every wall. I thought of her strength in bone and muscle and mind as she created, letting the leather speak to her, against that backdrop of sea and sand.<br />
<br />
So I left late, but still sad not to stay longer. She seemed lonely, and would not deny it, because she is quite recently widowed and alone. After all, there is surely no way to separate the Creator from her Creation. The Artist from her Art.<br />
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In preparation for teaching Art I am lately swept away into the world of Artists. Enthralled by the stories of Gauguin, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Rousseau, Picasso and the rest. I think of Paris and poverty, of mistresses and madness, paint and passion, light and laughter.<br />
The Creator and Creation, all jumbled up and impossible to separate.<br />
Dots and numbers, dots and numbers..<br />
<br />
I spend a lot of time these days thinking about the act of creation and how it starts with one dot.<br />
One number, or a lot of dots and how they are joined and become the numbers, the sequence, the picture...<br />
And I think about Beatrix - on her duney hilltop, within her walls of bright and brilliant leather - looking out at the sea with her artists eye.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-66340744703246381242011-04-21T03:39:00.000-07:002011-04-21T03:39:13.046-07:00You are sixteen, going on seventeen...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My son just turned seventeen.<br />
As always, for me, a birthday brings with it a bittersweetness, especially when it is one of your children, getting older, moving on.<br />
And now, its strangely winter, a sad and sudden end to summer, and I close my eyes and think of England...<br />
<br />
My bonny bairn was born in the borders between England and Scotland. The Scottish nurses hailed him as the future President of South Africa, seeing as he was born on the cusp of our new democracy. They tucked him into the car, sheilding him from the icy North Sea wind. A lazy wind they called it, "Why go round ya, when it can go right through ya.."<br />
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That was all after the panicked removal of me and my belly on a dark night, in an ambulance, through the border hills to a 'proper' hospital where he would be born by emergency c-section. We were accompanied by our Scottish nurse in the back of the swaying ambulance who got herself high on the 'gas and air' which she repeatedly offered to me and then enjoyed herself.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6lZ0K5vyj_C2mgGf5BmAzdWUdYhw1wMlgA2BQ5VL8iY3zH7u4LVnFG5Fd21pWUxvaN-e-jzSymjSPDVEnubETXfmy8v8jvMtZzL6OGw7SZVKCbJlXjlnq1WVkCPsEdAhM7pbnQUidwKqM/s1600/DarkAmbulance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6lZ0K5vyj_C2mgGf5BmAzdWUdYhw1wMlgA2BQ5VL8iY3zH7u4LVnFG5Fd21pWUxvaN-e-jzSymjSPDVEnubETXfmy8v8jvMtZzL6OGw7SZVKCbJlXjlnq1WVkCPsEdAhM7pbnQUidwKqM/s200/DarkAmbulance.jpg" width="200" /></a> For most of the journey her face was covered by the large black rubber mask - I was attended by her halo of golden curls and her beautific (read stoned) smiling presence. She later visited me in the maternity ward and presented me with a knitted pink jumper for the babe - an honour she foisted on all the babies she accompanied in the ambulance.</div>
<br />
With hindsight I think that what I was going through was pretty much like what was happening in the run up to the vote. A mad rush to rescue a life on the brink of tragedy, with a crazy angelic being in control, with a home knitted jumper as a reward at the end for the creature that had been born - a being that she was a little confused about - what was it?<br />
<br />
Ten days later we travelled to Glasgow to vote for our exciting new country. I was nursing a baby and a hacked and black laced up wound and the air was icy and grey. The voting hall had an air of a party where hardly any guests had turned up, but those who had made it were determined to have fun nevertheless. A couple of women yululated and some elderly folk punched the air with their fists and muttered 'Amandla' I think.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2r19n-pTwTyBbXiBpDGtR8FolxuCp6-LyW8eyS-Sa0p-R3ekzYY2Jqt3qRWMw3esSgenjXN9CspA1pRUIRQGwxwQyH_FyJ8Lk1OIjZe01VqaJ4Kpw9H6xibeWXGHw1GAH6kaN3dh9orOU/s1600/South-Africa-election-day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" i8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2r19n-pTwTyBbXiBpDGtR8FolxuCp6-LyW8eyS-Sa0p-R3ekzYY2Jqt3qRWMw3esSgenjXN9CspA1pRUIRQGwxwQyH_FyJ8Lk1OIjZe01VqaJ4Kpw9H6xibeWXGHw1GAH6kaN3dh9orOU/s1600/South-Africa-election-day.jpg" /></a></div>
Our Manchurian friend kept us laughing by peering hopefully out the doors in expectation of more exuberant voters, but to no avail - only a trail of bleak grey Glaswegians huddled or tottered by, ablivious. We were left to sit upstairs in our apartment , coaxing life into our sooty coal fire and had to be content to watch the scenes of sun beating down on those long snaking columns of queues in our home country<br />
.<br />
I nursed my baby and sipped soup and sobbed with the missing of it. The loneliness of it - us mothers know the new baby tears and fears. And I had it for both those new babies then, mine and the other mine (that longed for country of jubilation and joy) .<br />
I have never stopped regretting not being here, and being there...<br />
<br />
Still its now seventeen years of democracy and boyhood. Seventeen seems to be nearly manhood, but the British have the best word - a lad.<br />
Lads can be loutish, funny, irresponsible, adorable, sexy, hunky, sweet, violent ,maddening, charismatic,scary unforgettable,loud, thoughtful and relentlessly cheerful.<br />
A lot like our democracy.<br />
<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com3Sedgefield, South Africa-34.020654915730709 22.807571999999936-34.033717915730712 22.782364999999935 -34.007591915730707 22.832778999999938tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-39879584203061181462011-04-13T22:08:00.000-07:002011-04-13T22:08:34.779-07:00Timing is everything<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Timing is everything.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I sms'ed that to a
friend the other day, and I've been thinking about it ever since.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XFcghSdi7dJwjQaATZbP0qVRJlmv5pidRfsv2FgNtQEQE1sySYQFZjYqlrJjgs_iQJL5iUuR5ggYsbUsOnvKyxNWILx0uyv2FxtVNA9vhRqMGgoLbKpx2bxMST_QP49F3_nMZA6TtlFr/s1600/sliding_doors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XFcghSdi7dJwjQaATZbP0qVRJlmv5pidRfsv2FgNtQEQE1sySYQFZjYqlrJjgs_iQJL5iUuR5ggYsbUsOnvKyxNWILx0uyv2FxtVNA9vhRqMGgoLbKpx2bxMST_QP49F3_nMZA6TtlFr/s320/sliding_doors.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I remember a film I saw
once, with Gwyneth Paltrow, called Sliding Doors. Basically, as I
recall, it was about the difference a second or two can make. You get
into a lift, or you don't because the doors slide shut. You meet the
man of your dreams in that lift – or you miss him....and life is
different evermore.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The other morning I
wandered down to the Lagoon, like I often do. I had something on my
mind, and needed to think it through. So I sat on a bench covered in
mosaic (a Sedgefield thing) to do just that – a sort of
think/pray/meditate thing.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What I heard was a
distinct voice telling me to Pay Attention.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Check the details.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stay in the moment.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So, I noticed people
out on the muddy flats, pumping for prawns, and others joining them,
and others leaving.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Two women, with
rugsacks and prawn pumps were passing behind me. I turned to them and
asked them what they were doing. They told me, stopping their long
gumbooted strides, to smile, to unpack their rugsacks to show me
their handlines, to explain how they pumped for bait, then moved over
the lagoon to a fishing spot where, they assured me they would, some
time that day, catch a fish.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For the pot, for
supper, for the family, or the neighbour.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
They greeted me and
moved on, and I watched them till they entered the lagoon and waded
out, maybe feeling my eyes on them.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The timing of fish and
hook and bait.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Timing of seasons and
currents and desultary conversation.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sliding doors.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Chance encounters.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I went home grateful
of meeting them, and their generosity for allowing me to glimpse for
a second the pace of a lifestyle, probably generations old, and that
it is still continuing.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There was nothing
special about them or me that day – but the timing was never the
less perfect. I think of them often at that time of the morning, and
it is a comfort to know that they continue, most days, with their
rhythm of life and me with mine.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5p3rbrwvHLOoYFNG1TAMJJFOEsaashVRuoh-G7Wq0mPHwKY_p5z74Bg0ALG7Ou1t25iJOHPmY_RfIhPsEyKRvUwNva4isByDDjAjp-ILaWsWlrzmcsTDzrCRzkwNOlrgfFjQsm6GM-sFu/s1600/timing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5p3rbrwvHLOoYFNG1TAMJJFOEsaashVRuoh-G7Wq0mPHwKY_p5z74Bg0ALG7Ou1t25iJOHPmY_RfIhPsEyKRvUwNva4isByDDjAjp-ILaWsWlrzmcsTDzrCRzkwNOlrgfFjQsm6GM-sFu/s320/timing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And I remember, more
and more these days, to pay attention.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Check the details.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stay in the moment.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Timing is everything</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Once outside Prince
Albert, on the pass, we came upon a man, stumbling towards us, his
face a mask of blood. We stopped. He staggered. Before us on the pass
road was a car. There were three bodies. One flung against the cliff,
where a smear of red paint showed me the car had ripped through. One
was in the road. One was near the edge, where the road gave way to a
deep and unforgiving ravine. The car was twisted and still.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I got out. L tried his
cellphone. The children peered anxiously at me from the back window.
I moved from one body to the next. Some were still, some moaning.
Another three people were still in the car. The wandering, blood
smeared man approached me again. He reeked of alcohol. The man on the
cliff side also did – his trousers were down, and I noticed his
Daffy Duck boxers. Another car stopped, another one drove on,
shouting that there was no signal there, in that sweeping corner of
huge mountain, grey road and green ravine. He would drive on to make
the distress call.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I got back in, and we
drove on.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There was a man with
latex gloves, and a medical kit – and another now stopped, who were
moving amongst the injured, tending, touching – in a way that I
could not.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sliding Doors.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A moment before we
would have been facing that red out of control metal
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
coming careering
towards us, from side to side, ripping along the cliffside and
across, to be propelled back off barriers and rocks, to eventually be
still.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How many avoided
accidents have there been?
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Timing is everything.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Be in the moment.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Pay attention.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So we are faithfully
moving forward on this journey, trusting that no opportunities are
being missed.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That danger, has been
avoided.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That secret other life
that could have been, but isn't. </div>Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1768271042724669968.post-61493273887468028562011-04-07T22:46:00.000-07:002011-04-07T23:07:15.553-07:00Re:treat<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_oWHJaKC5QjCgx_Kj2tA52ZiTP0t8yo8egi6BiTTqyM1twlRfvE9ZHAF1GVnxUR94c74v-jpKpbBSO7cZYtX_h2w2BBiv19mCiq4bYzQHVchGTW28pyIYMOTnlFk3cuhBkpRgQWJ5rhI/s1600/volmoed.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="235" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593080547565926754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_oWHJaKC5QjCgx_Kj2tA52ZiTP0t8yo8egi6BiTTqyM1twlRfvE9ZHAF1GVnxUR94c74v-jpKpbBSO7cZYtX_h2w2BBiv19mCiq4bYzQHVchGTW28pyIYMOTnlFk3cuhBkpRgQWJ5rhI/s320/volmoed.jpg" style="float: right; height: 184px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 250px;" width="320" /></a>I have just returned from being on retreat.<br />
<div>
The retreat was held in a secluded place in the country. A silent, hidden place amidst mountains, with a stream, trees and an overgrown pathway to a beautiful waterfall. </div>
<div>
To me all that was, neither here nor there.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Most, being city folk, hotfoot it out, retreating willingly and longingly from the madding crowd, towards the silence and serenity.</div>
<br />
<div>
I, coming from the Garden Route, and very recently before that, coming from an even more hidden place, ran, full tilt, towards the city and my friends, tolerating the location, outside the city walls, for the greater good.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Four of us shared a room. Four maturing ladies, finding ourselves on single beds (me on the bottom bunk!), reverted very quickly to girlhood.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdX0eHsMj2yVDPreZ6RGuxLZ4zulawmYT3_CgGYQ9j8FVSDHRsk4_1jPtsWhr2npUIJClLRB4ZGRVC99n3J15jwCaJB2N4H5mbDjKOGTgG-t8IA3yJoKCQbHwgvvMrlG64i39M9X6EgqP/s1600/Out_of_Africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXdX0eHsMj2yVDPreZ6RGuxLZ4zulawmYT3_CgGYQ9j8FVSDHRsk4_1jPtsWhr2npUIJClLRB4ZGRVC99n3J15jwCaJB2N4H5mbDjKOGTgG-t8IA3yJoKCQbHwgvvMrlG64i39M9X6EgqP/s1600/Out_of_Africa.jpg" /></a></div>
I have a favourite film - Out of Africa - and apart from the allure of Denys Finch-Hutton, it is Karen Blixon on her farm in Aafrika that delights me. Her story telling, whilst seated around a lace and crystal dressed table, on tapestry chairs, being waited upon by men wearing white gloves....is the stuff of dreams.</div>
<div>
She was a great weaver of tales, as Isak Dinesen or Karen, and to me, the greatest of all is the tale of Babette, and her feast.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It turned out that , this retreat, held on a kind of African Farm, contained within it many types of Babettes, for me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are some friends who live within a fearless abundance, that has nothing to do with money. During this weekend I was at the receiving end of some of that.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
And , as weekends like this are meant to be a drawing closer to God by drawing away from worldly things, and drawing towards the spiritual, I found, like Babette,that the opposite proved to be true.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwc20v6fp3SwlIuRn1myA-xZm33ZcF-BF2bB5bSgPJk0KmOeDsOoqYfVd_Z_TGfVP4N-nXovK9ukecDqT4bpGX-IrK0WhYl_FbROZz4yvaSPJabRxT6psbVYfzIsBDisfnj0XhcMTpxZji/s1600/narnia_turkish-delight-temptation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="240" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593080541392852082" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwc20v6fp3SwlIuRn1myA-xZm33ZcF-BF2bB5bSgPJk0KmOeDsOoqYfVd_Z_TGfVP4N-nXovK9ukecDqT4bpGX-IrK0WhYl_FbROZz4yvaSPJabRxT6psbVYfzIsBDisfnj0XhcMTpxZji/s320/narnia_turkish-delight-temptation.jpg" style="height: 216px; margin-top: 0px; width: 288px;" width="320" /></a></div>
There was a Narnia moment when I was tempted, like Edmund, by the indulgence of Turkish Delight, and I , like him, could not resist!</div>
<br />
<div>
An abundance of them had been tossed to me, where I lay on my bunk bed, while we chatted and laughed, pretty hysterically , before we slept.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My last waking memories are of a friend spraying me with Issy perfume, so that my crumpled down sleeping bag released that heady fragrance at every restless turn, throughout the long night!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There was an exploration of deep matters of a spiritual nature which I participated in, in a manner of speaking.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the greater thing was just Being.</div>
<div>
Just being with all of those Babettes who shared with me their passion for shoes - sixty three pairs! (What have I being doing with my life? Obviously not shopping nearly enough!) and their passion for books and their husbands and dancing and wine and food and music and smoking cigars and Italy and laughing (rude and crude) and our children and each other and thinking ....and God.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, even though Edmund was tempted and indulged, it all turned out alright in the end. All safe and happy because Aslan dealt a final blow!</div>
<img alt="" border="0" height="237" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593080537544490722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5Zl42XdM8UaPz4cqRVkaAXvz0rVgIsH_-PdPg80y9YsxIw44R_1XUBTfj9wZr_V1vOSc0o_YD-AQZIP9dIH6JBQhKdz7y38xxKiSsp0wN6IBYEQvHIzm1US_aZLUIBCkUivosu2Rr9U2/s320/babett1.jpg" style="float: right; height: 213px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 287px;" width="320" /><br />
<div>
And Babette blew every last penny of her winnings on the greatest indulgent feast for all her friends, and they ate food they never even knew existed and despite a resolve not to, they enjoyed themselves and laughed and drank and ate and found that by doing all that they could, finally, love each other.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was so sorry to leave them all.</div>
<div>
To say goodbye. </div>
<div>
What fun it was!</div>
<div>
What a treat!</div>
<div>
Thank you </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06119110077481917409noreply@blogger.com0