Fourteen years

Today is the day I feel naked, unzipped, unhinged. Silly really, but there you have it. Fourteen years ago, today, The Tragedy happened. Around about exactly now actually. I commented to G this morning that in all those fourteen years, each 1st of December has dawned as bright and blue and sunny as that one in 1996. I normally take the day off and do something beautiful. This time, I’m at Real Work. Feeling naked, unzipped, unhinged. The clouds are coming over. Weird. Maybe it’s because I came to work. I will do something beautiful over the weekend.

Everything just seems so close to the surface when I think about it. It’s watery and bare and it stings a little and it feels like yesterday that I lay on my dig’s carpet in the room I had packed up into a couple of boxes and a suitcase – four years of learning, living, loving, completely carefree (except, of course, for some good doses of teenage angst) into so little material stuff and so much wonderful ‘internal’ stuff. I listended to Eddie Vedder sing Off He Goes loudloudloud on my Walkman and cried fat tears for leaving that life behind. It feels like yesterday, but it was yesterday fourteen years ago.

Little did I know how big and fat those tears were. Maybe I did know. Maybe that’s why they were bigger, fatter, hotter. Or maybe they’ve just turned into that in the time that has passed since.

I am still here.



Off He Goes, Pearl Jam

Know a man
His face seemed pulled and tense
Like he's ridin' on a motorbike
In the strongest winds
So I approach with tact
Suggest that he should relax
But he's movin' much too fast

Said he'll see me on the flip side
On this trip he's taken for a ride
He's been takin' too much on
There he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

He's yet to come back
But I seen his picture
It doesn't look the same up on the rack
We go way back
I wonder 'bout his insides
It's like his thoughts are too big for his size

He's been taken...where, I don't know
Off he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

And now I rub my eyes, for he has returned
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned
For he still smiles... And he's still strong
Nothing changed but the surroundin' bullshit
That has grown

And now he's home and we're laughin'
Like we did, my same old, same old friend
Until a quarter to ten
I saw the strain creep in
He seems distracted and I know just what is going to happen next

Before his first step, he's off again

My morning

Sometimes the beauty of the world literally makes me unable to breathe. It's as if the beauty has long fingers that burrow into me and squeeze my heart so tightly, stopping my blood flow, crushing my lungs, simultaneously filling them with air and rushing it out, leaving me gasping.

I had to be at Real Work very early this morning. It was pitch dark, I was completely alone (except for the hundreds of spirit creatures who I'm sure wander the halls of this rambling old building that used to be a hospital), here in my Ivory Tower with it's huge window that looks across the flat, city-filled plain, to the mountains way over there, that lead to the rest of Africa. I wrapped myself in it. The aloneness.

Then I put on music, loudly, and watched the beauty unfold, through my huge window. As the whispy cloud-filled sky lightened from black, to navy, to blue and then spectacular pink, as if somebody had woken up and thrown an enormous bucket of pink into the sky. It made me think of the Washerwoman in The Faraway Tree. It may have been her who threw her bucket of water... it was pink so she must've been washing her new red knickers or something. I hope she remembered to separate her whites out.

Then I realised I was not alone in my awe. Just next to me, on the ledge outside, a pigeon friend was staring across at the sunrise too, her pretty grey feathers lighting up, her little pink eyes blinking at the upcoming sun.

And I wondered if her little pigeon heart was squeezing at the beauty too?

Beautiful day

It is the most beautiful day here today. One of those days where working should be illegal. Like Summer has snuck in through the kitchen door while Winter was thrashing about having a tantrum in it's bedroom last week, gently closing it's bedroom door and taking over the house. It's glorious, and it is impossible not to grin because of it. Like The Cheshire Cat.

I am going to see the sea after Real Work, to bask in the sunshine and watch the sun set. This makes me grin even more. And then to one of my favourite restaurants for dinner. Things are good. Oh, and did I tell you - my sister is having twins? Yeeha.

Is it obvious I had a great night's sleep last night?

Waffles, sunshine and Nini

Good grief, that might've been a bit heavy for a Friday morning. I have been revived by The BFF bringing a King Cone to shmush up on a waffle. Let me tell you a little secret: this is one of my best ideas. I think possibly ever. The combination of hot waffle with squashed ice cream/sugar cone/chocolate sauce and nuts is beyond description. Yum. Now that's what breakfast is about.

And now I sit, listening to ocean sounds (no, The Fridge has not come down yet), knowing I have work to do but not feeling like doing it, looking longingly at the patch of sunshine on the stoep, thinking it'd be nice to just, well, sit in it for a bit. Just a little while you know. Not too long. It's just that this morning was the first morning with that impending winter chill-feeling and I feel like I shouldn't waste the last bits of summer sunshine. And there's always tomorrow to work. And if not, there's Sunday.

So, yes, with heaviness aside and sunshine outside and, oh look, The Fridgeman inside... He's back to hold The Fridge's hand while gently (hopefully) bringing it down. Let me away to work sit in the sun. Ah, and one of my favourite songs on the radio - I miss my friend Nini, who escaped to London for a bit. Come home now. It's time we went Spring Day delivering, singing songs at the top of our (most melodious) voices with the car radio on full blast.

"Don't waste your time on me, you're already a voice inside my head"
Blink 182, I Miss You

Sunshine? Work? Sunshine? Work?

Sunshine

I closed my eyes and turned my face toward the rising winter sun and allowed it to fill my head with gold. I felt the gold change slowly to a brighter, whiter light and knew I had been oh-so-very-lucky to have done it at that moment before the deep gold changed to it’s brighter, daylight hue.