Christmas Turkey.

In between running around, changing the CTICC into an airport in Vienna, turning a farm building into an orphanage somewhere in deepest darkest Africa, miles of curtains and furniture and wind pumps and graveyards and and and... the lists continue into eternity and I dream of them at night. In between all of that, I dashed to the travel agent during lunch today and bought a ticket to Istanbul. Just like that!

There is a Turkish photographer/film director whom I admire greatly. It's not so common to find photos of Istanbul in Winter, but Nuri Bilge Ceylan has taken some beauties.

He won the award for best director in the 2008 Cannes Festival for his film Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys). At the end of his acceptance speech, he said: "I dedicate this award to my beautiful and lonely country, which I love passionately."

Simmering excitement.

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.

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.

On moving up. And on.

My grandmother's house had an attic. During the holidays we'd all sleep there - two rows of siblings and cousins. Those were some of the happiest times of my life. Maybe it's that association that has made me want my own loft room, for as long as I can remember. They say be careful what you wish for. They say manifest it. Well, it's taken me a while.

A star popped out! As I lay on the floor, drinking a beer, thighs and calves aching from running up and down the stairs, I watched the sky darken and a star popped out. I felt like the king of the world.

It's a good feeling moving because I want to, not because I have to. My first night here and I slept like a little baby. Watching the light change as the day moves on.

Love/Insanity

As I drove to Milnerton yesterday morning, I wondered how it could be that this careful-person-I was about to spend almost a month's rent on a coffee machine. Reviews had been read, comparisons made of steam jets and copper water tanks. There were transcontinental Skype discussions and calls to the Italian importers in Johannesburg. Still...

Then I met Mr JP Gelonese. I was all for paying him and rushing back home to play. But he said: No No. We'll plug it in and make some coffee together. This from a man with a raging tooth-ache and a constantly ringing phone. It turned into an hour-long lesson full of tips and wisdom. Cup after cup of beautiful coffee. Espresso, latte, cappuccino, flat white. Crema.

So happy and giddy with coffee love was I that I clean forgot to eat. Stopped at the supermarket to make a few more unprecedented purchases: hot-smoked salmon, Mozzarella di Buffala, sweet potato sourdough rye, candied kumquats.

This Winter is slow. Project after project is canceled before it starts. But this is what I realized with a smile as I made my first cup of coffee: in this world of uncertainty and no guarantees, it's about starting every day doing at least one thing pure and calm and right.

My Isomac Maverick is from Caffetalia. Real people who love coffee.
(As I left, Mr Gelonese gave me a gentle caution - he's recently had to cut down to a scant 24 espressos a day due to a spot of insomnia.)

Animal coffee and other urban adventures.

A dreamy day, this.

It started with a lily unfolding with an audible pop as I watched, dazed in skull'n'bone pajamas.

Then the beauty and the horror that was Black Swan.

Then new places with Shonah - she of the raw food delights.

In my lucky packet today: ginger-almond-spice stars. I ate three in a quick row. Well, "ate" is putting it politely. Not to mention the raw chocolate with roasted cocoa nibs and hazelnuts. Good gracious. This woman has talent. We had a really good coffee at Haas in Rose Street, though not the eighty buck cup of Kopi Luwak...

 We spoke about the travel bug. I was told in the nicest way possible to get on with it.

This great procrastinator still hasn't renewed her passport.

I highly recommend a visit to Haas. It's an interesting, friendly place with a gallery full of quirky and lovely things.

We regrouped this evening at enmasse for a Thai massage. It was like stepping into some serene kind of underwater laboratory. And thank the Lord - no crap spa soundtrack of wailing sea creatures or ethereal choirs. Nouvelle Vague, Mirwais, John Martyn, even some dub. In white Thai pants and tunic, you're massaged on a comfortable white mattress on the floor. There are pillows and fluffy white blankets. The scent of aniseed. Deep rocking and rolling of pressure points. Stretching and kneading. At times you float like a skydiver. At times it feels as if a big and gentle jungle cat is walking all over you. At times it hurts, but in a really good way. Afterward, amazingly I could still walk and talk - in a fashion. Sipped Turkish apple tea from a beautiful glass.

Back next week, same time.

A devotee.

Mummenschanz.

You know those shimmering hot days when you drive around to a hundred places, knowing full well that Cape Town in March 2011 is not the place to find authentic 5th century dressing for a commercial featuring King Arthur? And on top of it all, you feel fat?

So you can either go home and drink wine or you can go to the theatre with your dear friend. I did both.

No photo does Mummenschanz justice.

The show is a constant enthrallment. Just as you think: THIS, this is the best part, they do something better, funnier, more touching. I loved it when the big yellow slinky man batted a giant red balloon into the audience and we batted it back. The illuminated ribbons of light swishing through the air. The man who cried toilet paper tears. The inflated organ as big as a car. It changed from liver to heart to grinning head, to ominous thing engulfing part of the front row, to a small puddle of fabric. Mummenschanz wobbled and floated and soared across the stage. Deceptively simple and fiendishly clever are these elegant illusionists. Then, to final bravos, they whip off their camouflage and you see the people underneath. Grey hair, beautiful smiles. They've been doing this masquerade since 1972.

Mummenschanz is on at the Baxter till 19 March.

Yes, I still feel fat. It's just one of those days. But my heart is light as spun sugar.

Hello World!

Our New Year's Eve dinner. Spartan but delicious. It included dancing on a rooftop. 

01/01/11. Dawn.
This day is marked by thunder and soft rain.
 

And pushing the boundaries of shyness.
The meeting of cyber-friends. Marie and I have been linking and commenting since June last year. Through her blog I came across Voer and they came across me. There's been talk for some time about the connection of dots and lunch under a tree in Constantia when everyone's in town. There were blizzards and there was snow, but finally they all arrived from New York, Southampton and Arcadia.
Marie neglected to say that this tree is the biggest plane tree in the world, with leaves the size of dinner plates. It was a long and lazy lunch. We ate like kings. Read the menu here.

If someone had said to me last New Year's day: 'A year from today you will have lunch with ten fantastic strangers as a result of your blog.', I would have laughed and asked: what is a blog exactly?

What a wonderful world we live in.

About changes, big and small.

 

I saw this some weeks ago. It entered my dreams. I thought of it whilst driving. Eating. Brushing my teeth. I think this change needs to be big, bigger than a new hairstyle. The obvious thing to me is travel. That means next year. A New Year's Resolution. But as my dear friend pointed out from far-off Tennessee - why not get a headstart and make it December 1? Small changes are good too and they always lead me somewhere interesting.

My first day off in many. All my friends are working. The grass at the bottom of the garden needs cutting, but after watering, the bamboo copse is filled with chattering Cape White-eyes, so it doesn't get done.

 

Through neglect, the mustard greens are going to seed. The flowers add zing to my lunchtime sandwich. It would have been so easy to stay in my pajamas and not go out today. But my Calvinist upbringing dictates otherwise and I go to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens for a few hours.

A fragment of poetry by Ian McCullum, part of the Untamed Exhibition. Your animal heart. I like the sound of that. Sculpture and maquettes by Dylan Lewis.

And then - what I actually came to see: The Living Wall. It's a cage-like metal structure, filled with plants in plastic bottles. The colours change as you walk the curve. I love it.

Walking with bare arms in this garden is sheer bliss. The bushes buzz and whirr with bees and ladybugs. Frogs croak in the ponds. Guinea fowl and Egyptian geese compete. 

 

Home again, my fingers still smell like peppermint geranium. A glass of white wine, feet in the water. Back to work tomorrow.

Reunions, Discoveries and Differences

 The boyfriend of my sixteen-year-old self said to me at the reunion on Friday night: "I'm surprised to see you here - not really your style, is it?" I'm a reserved kind of person and I mostly keep to myself. Now I offer this suggestion: go out and play. I'm discovering that I'm not that shy anymore and it was FUN.
 

 Kewpie is ready for her starring role in the next production by Nursery Rhymes for Adults Inc.

As I was sewing the last stitch, I remembered an incident from last Friday night at the Albert. The Tall Drink of Water and I were standing chatting at the bar when a very annoying man came up to us and held his finger to his lips. The band hadn't started yet and we were quite some distance from the stage. The Tall One said: You can't be serious! Annoying One continued with his charades. He was dressed like a Buddhist monk, with robes and shaven head. Just the Clark Kent spectacles detracted.

It so happened that I ended up standing behind him in the crowd and was just thinking how nice it would be to draw something rude on his shiny head with a fat khoki pen, when the Tall One piped up: "Ek wil sommer 'n mes dwarsdeur hom steek!" ( something to the effect of wanting to stick a knife right through him, like a skewer... ) I like these differences between men and women.

Stuff I learnt about cars and glue.

The big car wouldn't start. So I took the little car to the shop and bought some jumper leads (they call them booster cables on the packet. R70 at Hammer&Tongs). I studied a tutorial on wiki-How. Once I had the cars in a favourable position - that is, 'working' up against 'disabled', I found I needed to phone a friend. Lacking the proper terminology, the conversation was peppered with 'red thing, black thing'. What had me in a mild state of panic was something I'd read earlier: As a last resort, you may connect the other black (-) clamp to the negative (-) post of the dead battery, but this risks igniting hydrogen gas coming off the battery. They suggested connecting it to the engine block. (where is that?). Also, they urged the donning of safety goggles and gloves. I don't have any. In the end I risked the gas explosion and five minutes later the big car was growling. Girls, I gotta tell you - your hands will get dirty, but the feeling of satisfaction is sublime. 

 

wiki-How also helped me with that other can of worms - how to apply false eye lashes without getting glue in all the wrong places. Result: a night on the town with demi-whisps that stayed stuck and a big car that goes.    =)