Love apple.

I've been meaning to write a story. It's about two lovers who fall under a spell. At night, she goes to bed alone. Then, in the morning, she wakes to find him there - fast asleep in a shaft of sunlight. He looks so beautiful, she wishes she could wake him. She kisses his shoulder, he smiles a small smile, but doesn't open his eyes.

Later, he wakes alone, the bed still warm beside him, a hollow in the pillow. He can smell her skin, but she's gone. He arrives home late at night and there she is - fast asleep - her arms flung above her head...

Our lives are very much like that right now. We are both caught up in the world of commercials. It's soul destroying work. There are no layers of beauty, not much respect, but damn... the money's good.

In the garden, life burgeons. It swells, it explodes.
All it wants is water.

A hole, in the shape of you.

How do you comfort someone who has lost half of their sky? The love of their life was there one day and gone the next. There was no warning, no ache or pain.

Vincent van Gogh, 1882

Life goes on, people say. But when you are grieving, it's the world that goes on. Your own life grinds to a painful halt. Long after people have stopped offering help or comfort, you are still retreating behind a door to weep.

How can you tell them that even though time makes things easier, you will still be reminded of someone every day, that sometimes, even after years, the missing is just as bad.

You can remind them to eat. You can say: keep your body strong. Yes, eat root vegetables - they will keep you anchored.

You can say: crying is good for you.

You can say: take it a day at a time, or an hour even.

But you can read all of that on any old website.

Rest in Peace R.H.

Love is written about.

I woke up with this dream lingering in my head:

I was giving a big golden labrador a bath. We knew each other well, this dog and I. His eyes closed, a slight smile on his face, he leaned back into my hand as I brushed his furry head with soap and a soft scrubbing brush.

If it is true that you are all the people, or the animals, in your dreams… then I would like to think that I am allowing myself to slip into contentment. Believing that I am loved.

We spent the last blustery day of the summer break pottering in the garden. Digging, planting, drinking fresh mint tea. Laundry snapping on the line.

Back to work we go. The tender new plants will be watched in our absence, by the others.

Twice shy.

My family is scattered, and it has been so for many years - since the death of my father - who was the glue that held us together. So I find myself celebrating Christmas on my own,

or with families who are not my own.

Someone once told me that the world is divided into two types of people. He said to me you have the pigs and you have the wolves. So it was that this Christmas, I found myself in the company of a clan of wolves. Tall, lean, long of limb, straight of nose.

Beautiful creatures.

A little boy popped up in the fig tree next door. He whistled and he growled. One socially challenged, medium sized pig longed for a time when things could be that simple.

Merry Christmas, belated.

And happy birthday to my Ouma Eva.

You are missed!

Nightshade.

Last night I lay awake listening to the curtains breathing in and out, in and out. Amplified, magnified: a flower unfurling. Or a woman's skirt from a long time ago.

When I was little, I'd hear the beating of my blood when I pushed my ear against the pillow. Even though my father explained to me about the workings of the heart, all I heard was footsteps.

Fight shy.

It's been a week of fighting. Fighting the elements, fighting for enough money to do the job well, fighting with myself - searching really hard for the good things about this job that I do.

We danced an awkward ballet, trying to save sets in raging winds, napkins swept up into the gale and forever lost in the Maiden's Cove sea. Glasses and plates swept off tables and bursting upon impact with the lawn. Until the tables themselves went flying. Chairs shunted themselves from one side of a balcony to the other, palms were ripped from their pots.

Someone I hadn't seen in a long time, upon my question "how are you?", replied: "Calm as a land mine." The perfect analogy.

People regularly make remarks about my calmness, my "serenity", the fact that I don't sweat, my air of "mystery". 

But here's the truth, unfiltered: it's just a shell I've built. And sometimes it feels so transparently thin.

I sleep fitfully, if at all. Some mornings I get up and there's a stone where my heart should be.

In any spare moment of time I have, I read and I read. Better than any drug for escape from the world, I devour words. Right now, Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch". It's thick, densely written, and I don't want it to end. For her to write this way about loss… surely she has experienced things in her life that have torn her heart in two. 

I yearn for my own lost parent - to hear him say: "Everything will be alright my darling". I yearn for calm, uninterrupted sleep.

Then wake me gently, like on the north sea ferry.

Something this way comes.

Ten days in the desert felt like a month. Away from ringing telephones and television, newspapers and traffic, time passed in a different way. The days were long, and very, very hot. 45 Degrees Celsius is 113 degrees Fahrenheit. If this were the temperature outside, you could expect to be sweating profusely and almost baking. Indeed.

The late afternoons brought psychedelic sunsets - a few drops of rain evaporated before they hit the earth. At night, Venus shone like a burning torch and the Southern Cross was unmistakably bright. It was good to get away from the circus. Sometimes the Props Master and I would make a light supper and drink a cold beer. We'd sit on the deck listening to moths beating their wings against the cotton lamp shade.

At the end of every day, I'd be covered in a layer of dust so thick, that the first few moments in the shower brought the smell of rain hitting a dry red road.

This is leopard country. We found tracks on the sandy little path we walked every morning and night. Thinking about this one morning as I walked to breakfast, I heard the sound of scissors cutting fine sandpaper. Ahead of me on the path: an adult Black Spitting Cobra, hood spread, every little scale gleaming dully.

"Preys on puff adders, spits neuro-toxic venom up to 1,5m

with amazing accuracy."

I froze, but he didn't even look my way. Off he sailed through the sun-warmed rocks.

We drove vast distances on bad dirt roads. So rutted they make your teeth rattle and your fat jiggle. I had to stop one day to answer nature's call. As I hunkered down in the shade of the pick-up, I heard a rustle and looked up. A giraffe towered over me, looking at me curiously. He turned his head and called some friends over. Soon there were three.

I smiled, and then I laughed.

Desert bound.

I left a brooding Cape Town on Wednesday - dark clouds draped over the mountains.

On the way to the airport, the shuttle passed oak trees of an impossible green - their bright new leaves not yet turned leathery.

The familiar feelings of travel: trepidation, wonder about the unknown, flutters of excitement.

The tall man I have to leave behind. He sends me modern day love letters that need no words.

In the tiny embryo jet, surrounded by Namibians, I listened to their harsh German sliding easily into smooth Afrikaans. The large man next to me folded himself up like a buddha, resting his head against the seat in front of him for the entire bumpy flight.

From the air the earth looked scorched - shades of red and black and brown. Striations like long legged spiders and dried seaweed or the whorls inside ears.

At Upington International Airport, a sleepy little place, the plane drops you at the door. At 11 in the morning it's already 36C, a few ragged clouds far up in the sky.

Our schedule has been relentless - the Cape Town days passed in a whirl of ballrooms and war offices and apartments and hotel rooms - we dressed Berlin and Cairo and Mombasa.

Here in the desert we build African villages and tented camps. I have only one 8 ton truck to dip into and we packed it to the brim. In the nights preceding I had dreams of making forgotten things with cardboard and scissors.

The distances are relentless, cellphone reception is scanty. Water and ice are paramount. Often I am alone when things need to be done. At dawn one morning, I taught myself how to operate the tail lift of the truck. The farmer's son said to me later: My mother always says, "if you can read, you can go to the moon."

Chronicles of a Thief.

Monday, 14 October

Mr Owl loves Lindt chocolate. Specifically: Red Lindor balls. So Mr Owl buys himself the bumper pack (750g). He gives one to the Sourcerer, proving he is not a true chocoholic, as we don't share, and eats one himself. He leaves on a recce to the desert.

Wednesday, 16 October

Mr Owl returns from the desert. He reaches into his drawer to find.... a large, empty box. He accuses his wife of being a prankster. He asks the Sourcerer if she took them. Even though she didn't, she feels guilty and gazes at the floor. He suspects other co-workers. Mr Owl and the Sourcerer talk about locks for the office doors. The Props Master gives Mr Owl some chocolate and immediately regrets it - she fears she is now suspect number 1.

Thursday, 17 October

Suspicion. Insults. A lot of swearing. The Sourcerer eats a slab of organic white chocolate with vanilla seeds on her lonesome.

Friday, 18 October

Mr Owl finds a small scrap of red foil in the lower drawer of his desk. He follows a trail to the garden shed. The following i-Message exchange takes place.

Mr Owl:

High Class Mouse Nest

The Sourcerer:

Stupendous!

Mr Owl:

I have started washing them off and eating them!

The Sourcerer:

Eek! Bleach!

Mr Owl:

Actually they are fine. This guy was just hoarding them. The ones he bit into I have thrown away, but I just can't bring myself to throw away the ones that have hardly been touched, just dragged off one by one into his lair!

The Sourcerer:

I understand.

Mr Owl:

Don't lie, you are disgusted

The Sourcerer:

No. My name is Lily and I am a chocoholic.

Saturday, 19 October

Mr Owl:

The Lindor thief is dead.

The Sourcerer:

Long live the thief...

This little dog.

Stitch caught my eye this morning at the market.

So much world weariness for one small dog.

Behind him lies Twilight, who couldn't be bothered.