Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there.

I fall asleep with images swirling in my head.

Blustery days, unexpected meetings on the street, abandoned gloves on the sidewalk,
the photographer in black.

Sean Penn in This Must Be The Place.

The view from the 26th floor of a building on the foreshore - windows with latches, now screwed shut.

The long legged man under a pomegranate tree.

Fragments of old porcelain from a park in the Bokaap.

My neighbor is such a bad piano player. Discordance wakes me, interrupting my dreams of animal metamorphosis. That white horse again - eating red apples in my kitchen, the floor a mess of juice and pulp. I lie there wincing, waiting for the next false note.

I think of Salieri, shouting at Mozart.

And I wonder...

what does one read after Murakami's 1Q84?

1318 pages, so few notes,

such beautiful simplicity.

Girls with pink boots and some horses I know.

Years and years ago, before I had a car, I used to catch buses and walk much more than I do today. So it had been many years since I found myself on foot, walking past the big bus terminus near the Grand Parade. The same queues of bored-looking people, a large woman sitting with her legs spread wide open, shouting at the passers-by. The hustle and the bustle. We passed a shallow doorway and two thin and tattooed men were crouched there, the one meticulously shaving the other one's head with a naked razor blade. We strode across to the Castle of Good Hope, to see a photography exhibition.

To the girl with the pink Doctor Martens boots:

you stole the show.

Happy Birthday!

A few nights ago, I had a dream about a grey horse. Since then I have been feeling a little sad. But there are other horses out there. Bigger ones.

Does your heart beat true to me dear...

Post cards, letters, inscriptions in books... by people I will never know. Recently I bought a second hand copy of Don't Try This At Home, subtitled Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Cooks and Chefs.

On the flyleaf it has this inscription:

Dear Lawrence

Happy Christmas

xxx Love Me xxx

(with many hand-drawn hearts)

Surely, if Lawrence felt the same way about Me, he'd have treasured the book - it's a beautiful hardcover, with thick cellophane over the paper cover. The book is so pristine in fact, I fear I am the only reader.

That Lawrence.

I found two old postcards today at the boot sale. They are mysterious and touching. Written 98 years ago by C, to an undisclosed sweetheart. The copperplate fades and darkens, as the nib gets dipped into the ink.

The first, dated 14/9/14:

Does your heart beat true to me dear

You have not answered yet

But by a smile on your face dear

My answer I shall get,

C x

The second, almost a month later, simply reads:

Lots of Love dear

to you

C. x

Ode to Vicky Leandros.

 In South Africa, ownership is a really big deal. People want to own their houses and their land. You grow up thinking that it's really important, and you feel a lack when you don't.

But what do you do when you just can't afford to buy a house or an apartment in the place where you want to be? You rent from friends with trust funds, you find something in the paper. You live in a place you could never afford to buy, not in a million years.

I'm the kind of person who likes a bit of space around me, especially over my head. Low ceilings are the Devil's work. I rent a place in the city that would cost close to R 2 000 000 to buy. It has skylights that leak when it rains and I can hear the neighbors sneeze. But it's up in the clouds and surrounded by giant trees and when I walk in the door, I sigh with happiness.

I have friends who rent a house on a curve in the road, overlooking the bay of Fish Hoek. When I walked into their house the other day, everything seemed to fall into place and make sense. This is why we do it. It's a dream, but we're living it.
The garden slopes up the mountain, seemingly forever. Covered in fynbos, with birds darting in and out. There's a serenity there that I would find very hard to leave in the mornings.

And for dessert, there was pumpkin pie.

Eating in tongues.

Birthdays are big in my book.

Yotam Ottolenghi's new book has my gentile heart a-flutter. I cooked the hummus with tender lamb. Bought Za'atar for the first time, and whole pimento berries.

What satisfaction to bash them in my mortar.

Roasted sweet potato and fig salad.

A red hot chili balsamic reduction.

Yes.

Bless the friends who gave me a celeriac bulb wrapped in a golden ribbon. Shaved into fragrant wisps, into the salad it went.

And then lunch at Babel, on that most beautiful farm Babylonstoren, outside Franschoek. After an icy flute of Christine-Marie, there wasn't much talk, there were hmmms and plenty of sighing.

The fruit and vegetables come straight from the garden. The bread has a pear for a heart, drizzled with herbs in oil. In each dish a small pool of delicate sauce.
The plates silently proclaim toro, toro ...

Fleecy clouds.

An arbor of guava trees.

A chamomile lawn with the invitation to walk barefoot.

Clivias, bees, chickens, ducks, lotus ponds, a prickly pear maze!

Serenissima.

The Big Unwind.

The relief is soporific.

Naps are required.

And all of the other good stuff.

Where no cars go.

Today, in a week, my life be my own again.

The nasties will have flown off back to where they belong... most of them anyway. There will be time for friends and cooking and sleeping well...

The long legged man will walk through my door once more, returned from his long travels. He sends me pictures from a country where most people don't own cars. Can you imagine that?

Cape Town is beautiful today, washed clean after the rains, with a thick lashing of Spring in the air.

A Friday treat: lunch from Jason Bakery. A Buffalo and Thyme sausage roll, piping hot from the oven. And a brownie for dessert. Not just any old brownie.

I sigh to think that Jason never asked me out when we were neighbors. I would have fallen in love with his tattoos and his cooking and become very fat. And if we had married, my name would now be Lily Lilley.

The Pyramid Scheme.

As I write this, I think of what someone said to me today: there is no "I" in team. Well... I disagree. But it's because of the nature of this particular film we're working on. There is so little respect, there are giant egos at work and with that, the abuse of power.

And then I think of what my honey said to me over the phone: "die kak kom van bo af", meaning the shit comes from the top.

Absolutely.

The director is giving the designer a shovel-full of it, so he snaps at me. I want to yelp with the injustice of it all, so I end up snapping at the swing gang. The difference perhaps being that I love those guys. So I apologize. The driver says to me: It's okay Lil, I understand. You know when I get home and my little daughter is noisy, I row with her and I tell her to sit still for just one moment!

That's when it all came crashing down on top of me.

The consequences of everything we do. And say.

I don't want to be a part of this pyramid of shit.

 I had a sweet respite last Saturday, when I went to do a booking with our friend the collector. There were no other customers and it was just like the old days: we sat down with a small, strong cup of coffee and had a bit of a gossip. The weather blew and crashed outside. He told me about his take on fame - that he understands why stars are so difficult.
"If you don't distance yourself and make a stand, people will walk right over you"

I guess. It must be hard to stay nice when you're in a position of power. But what if you weren't even nice to start with?
 

Worry and sleepless nights... white noise helps sometimes - I put on a loop of waves crashing on a beach somewhere and it lulls me for a while.
 

Alas, I will never be this guy, sleeping on the job, on a noisy city street:

Everywhere, the little cars.
They make me smile.
  

How I miss that long-legged man.
He has been away for so long.

This place we call home.

While we go to work and make plots and plans and spend a gazillion dollars, across the road the community of pavement dwellers carry on with their daily life. Since I wrote about them the first time, I've become friendly with them - we greet and talk a little. I'm still not comfortable enough to whip out my camera and photograph them - I just don't have the time to do it properly.

Fridays are bad. There's a lot of drinking and staggering around, badly aimed punches, cursing and the wailing of womenfolk.

Early on Saturday morning, all is peaceful again. He's sitting on his bedroll reading a comic, heating water on a tiny brazier. The woman in the purple sequined dress is fast asleep next to him, her head on his shoulder.