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!

❤

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.

The way we live.

Another man's treasure.

The Victorian Doctor of Madness, aka GQ

 I haven't seen my friend Guy in many years. According to the World Distance Calculator, we live 7817.03 miles apart. But every year around Halloween, I look forward to seeing what him and his wife are getting up to. I haven't met Sabrina yet, but I know that she is a make-up artist extraordinaire. The other day Guy posted an album of photos of these dressmaker's forms or Judies. I pored over them with delight.

Originally from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and destined for the trash, thankfully they have been saved. Most of them are dated, so Guy has kept two for his office, with the date of his arrival in New York. The rest are looking for new homes. Objects worn by the ages and hundreds of hands, by pins and by scissors.

This morning I saw these photos of an abandoned movie theatre in Brooklyn.

Love old-time grandeur.

Postcard love.

Two in the last week! The mere idea: that someone had a thought, chose a card, sat down and wrote it, went to the post office and stamped it, dropped it in the postbox... it warms the heart and makes me believe in the goodness of the world again.

❤