We're on vacation.

I've been having a severe case of internet existentialism. A friend said to me on Sunday night that he just doesn't have the energy for something like a blog. I said to him that I can't not. That it's something I cannot suppress and I love it.

Then I sat down yesterday and I looked at the mountains. And I realized that it hasn't been all that much fun lately. (And I wondered what becomes of a thing like this if you just leave without turning off the lights. Does it become a cavernous place full of cobwebs, unanswered questions, doors that lead nowhere?)

Forgive me if this appears self-indulgent or ungrateful - there have been so many incredible rewards.

I'm hoping it's just a case of the blahs.

So I'm booking myself off for a while.

X

The truth.

Last night saw the opening of Honest Chocolate's first shop. 66 Wale Street, a little ways down from the Plastic Sandwich.

For this, I blew off my Book Club. The proprietors are a good advertisement for their product - they are tall, dark and skinny. The building is beautiful. The packaging is stylish.

Raw cocoa. Anti-oxidants. Traditional methods. ETCETERA.

What does this chocoholic care about all of these trifles?

Not a fig.

All I want is satisfaction.

This chocolate is good, people.

Buy it. Eat it.

Happiness.

I was very relieved to learn from Oprah that the first step to happiness is the place where you live. I've been feeling a little over-zealous about my new home. Toning down when I speak of it and so on, so as not to appear maniacal.

But the truth is that it has been life changing. I smile every time I walk through the door. Every time I go up the stairs to the loft. Every time I hear a cock crow on the farm.

Every time I look out of a window, I see the horizon. I spend many happy hours cloud-watching.

Last night I heard a girl in an apartment across the street singing along to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. At the top of her lungs. "Home". The reflections of clouds had me enraptured.

The end of hibernation has come. Hello World.

heartstrings

Wandering around Kalk Bay this morning, I stopped for a chat at the Railway House and heard the entrancing thrumming of fingers on a drum. I walked around the corner and fell in love.

Mwalasha and Mateo. Their music did something to my heart. I'm listening to their cd right now. So happy and slow and beautiful. There's a number for bookings: 079 577 2737.

C'mon friends - lets pool together and have a party!

Sugar in my bowl.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook this morning: how many of you are on Twitter and why?

Twitter is a mystery to me. I'm only there because the man with the generous heart said I should be (he also said you should start a blog / you should start a tumblr, etc. so I listen)

Sometimes I find interesting links there, sometimes it feels like a real-life soap opera. I never won anything before in my life, but on Twitter I won a meal for two at a posh wine farm and a few months later, a case of Pinot Noir. Who follows who is also an utter mystery to me. Dita von Teeze follows Die Antwoord! I once retweeted a writer from LA. It was something about hairy dudes in a car and it reminded me of film recces I've been on. He said thanks and we had a little chat. Next morning I woke up and Erica Jong was following me. Yes! Famous Feminist Writer! She of the zipless fuck!

(I do admit to checking every now and then to see if she's still there.)

16 August 1977.

Cotton Candy Land

Doves and Battle Ships.

Peace and War.

Two years ago, I worked on a film about a submarine. We were immersed in the forties and it was then that I decided I'd like a grey room one day. (The wishes are coming true, one by one.)
 

 The colour of a freshly painted battle ship, darker than the doves that peep through the sky lights into my bedroom. Mixed by a man from Khayelitsha called Wonder. Drop by drop. Wonder Grey.

Where the heart is.

A jam-packed week.

Things found during the move: photos of me as a baby with my mother, on the beach. An earring presumed lost in Mozambique. An old letter that starts: I am writing to you because we cannot speak. A small heart scratched into the handle of my screwdriver, visible only if you turn it just so, in slanted light.

My mother came to see. She brought roses, unfinished tapestries, cups like her grandmother used to have. She said: You're happy my darling - I can see it in your eyes. I always know by looking at your eyes. She's right. I've only been here a week, but since that first day, I walk in the door and it feels like I've finally come home.

Saw Guy Tillim's new exhibition of photographs taken in French Polynesia. They are the stuff of cold shivers. So full of life and detail and soft colour... they reminded me of looking through my View Master as a child. Magical, moving, painterly, utterly beautiful. Alas, they are the price of small cars. Second Nature is on at Michael Stevenson until 3 September. The best boyfriend helped me to hang things, gave advice, tidied all the wires. He also took me to see Steve Newman and Tony Cox play their guitars at the Olympia Bakery. They are omnipotent. Do go. They're playing every weekend this month.

It's Spring. I see snow on the blue mountains through my lounge windows. It snowed on Table Mountain. The internet turned forty. In a mad dash to Stellenbosch yesterday in my friend's lovely old Merc, we saw these words painted on a wall facing the N2: with you I am well pleased.

The way we live.

My friends I & J have grown themselves a remarkable and happy home, full of colours and layers of interesting things. Over the years I have: eaten many a scrumptious meal with them - indoors and out (there is a pond with a frog, a pool filled with salty water, a sunny stoep with sculptures), played ping pong in the basement, deejayed at parties in the lounge, had lessons in eyeshadow and lashes, splashed in the attic bath, slept over in the spare room a-dreaming of Italy...
these friends of mine are a constant in an
inconsistent world.

I could have spent a day and a night taking pictures, but my camera ran out of juice.

Watch Daddy Make Sushi Day.

I should have taken a picture of the empty plates, but I was too full to move...

Thank you Willow!

❤