I love my boy, D’Artagnan

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love my boy, D’Artagnan. He was of course named after the Musketeer by the same name and anyone who knows him will tell you, he did a stellar job. Make no mistake, he can be a grumpy little git but next to eating and chasing birds, his favourite thing to do is loving his mommy.

This morning he was very clingy, more than usual and insisted on my attention. I thought he was just losing his mind. Everyone in this house does that from time to time. But when he didn’t want breakfast and he started crying and walking funny, I knew… this wasn’t an ordinary hurt. I knew he hadn’t eaten something obscure or was constipated or any of the ordinary things. I also know he’s ten… He’s “listening” to me less and less and even when it’s time for cookies.  And with the puppy in the house, I can tell he’s an old boy now.

So I spent the morning crying. Crying to the car, crying to the Vet. Crying at the Vet. Crying on the way home. I didn’t even say anything on Facebook till this afternoon, because every time I think about it, I cry all over again.

Yesterday I cried for altogether different reasons, so this is day 2 of crying. Cue: migraine. Cue: bizarre side effects. To highlight a priceless moment – I get to the ATM, can’t remember my cell number. Luckily I came prepared, I wrote it down before leaving the house… but only halfway through. I morphed into Dory in one fell swoop. So I go across the road to the pharmacy where they know me – this is why I live in a village in the city – and I ask the lady for help, my hands shaking, twitching, making sentences like I learnt to speak yesterday.

It was a hard day. After my nap I was better. I bought myself a little thyme plant in Woolworths to reward myself. I can look back and be grateful for the friendly vet, she said D’Artagnan is in great condition and though spaniels have an average of 12 years… she’s seen spaniels in D’Art’s condition make twenty. He’ll have to, because I would die without him. I’m super-grateful for the every angel that crossed my path today…. By pure chance. Of course I don’t believe in co-incidence, it was all Divinely inspired.

Looking back on days like today you realise – these are the moments it sucks to be single. These are the moments where you wished you had a partner to at least call and cry to or who’d say, don’t worry I’ll cook every other night and carry D’Art when you can’t. I also know that I may feel alone, but I am not. I have a network of friends who call and help and just “are there” at the beep of a cellphone. I am truly blessed.  And even on rainy days, I have a team of divine angels looking after me.

There. That’s all I have to say about that. Except maybe keep my boy, D’Artagnan,  in your prayers.

(Photos by Adele Horn and Elsa Bleda)

Love – Logistics – Logistics of Love – Love and Logistics?

Nothing feels quite as good as when your Heart loves in full force. It’s a very physical sensation, like a drug induced high. It shares many other traits with a drug induced high: Like you always want to go back for more, the comedown, the let-down, the euphoria. The sick-to-your-stomach-feeling… sometimes good and sometimes bad. But there’s also the moments of quiet. When in the presence of your beloved your Heart just feels like it expands beyond the laws of physics. Those moments when it feels so open you think you can fit everything in there. Your senses are heightened, things smell better, they taste better, colours are brighter and textures make you excited. You absorb space. Because you can. Because love fuels you and Eros himself blew life into your body.

In all this invincibility, you can get quite lost. Love ultimately has logistics too. It has behaviours. It acts out… and it acts out of love. The Bible has some great observations on what love does. And how it behaves and the particular part I refer to is rather esoteric and holistic in what it preaches, it was always my favourite.

This is probably why they say love with all your Heart but take your Brain with you. Something needs to weigh, measure and make findings. I have an especially way-ward Heart – despite claims of walls – Tsk! Mine just goes where it wants to go. It sees something it likes – normally a loving soul and it attaches itself. Like a clownfish to an anemone – weaving and bobbing and weaving and bobbing, but never wandering off too far. It’s very important that my Brain keep an eye.

Also years of neglect has taught me to be happy…. Or at least content with extremely little. You know, it occurred to me of late, I have never ever been a priority to someone. Love aside for a moment, because Brain noticed this, packed up Heart and it’s crazy ways and assessed the situation.

Your first experience of love in this world is from your primary caregivers – my mother will tell you straight she barely liked me, I was an unwanted burden dragged through her existence. The cause for many, many extra bills. In her defence, my mother did spend money on me – not piles, we were poor, but what she had. Of course love, affection, and making me a priority… that did not happen. Whenever anything more interesting came up she was out the door. To this day I don’t like watching AbFab. It’s like a nasty childhood flashback. And that experience had it’s repeat performances: I was estranged from my father, what relationship I would’ve had I’ll never know.  After my grandmother died, I remember staying over at my grandfather’s house. When he left for milk at 12 and wasn’t back by night fall, I got concerned. Those were the days before cellphones and my mother races 100kms to the town where he lived and he returned ridiculously late. But what sticks with me to this day is that my mother shouted at him: “You can’t just leave her on her own, she’s just a child!” to which he shouted back, “Why not? You do it.” And it was true, I was often left. Forgotten. My family members all picked up on how easy it is to forget about Natasje, to leave her behind… go out and she’ll be there. Don’t worry if there’s food or that a waterpipe might burst – which happened and that was also somehow my fault. That one is like a cockroach; she can survive a nuclear fallout. Bizarrely, I think I probably could.

With that behind you, you become content with very little. So when someone shows concern, I mistake it for love. My own family made me carry crates of water bottles while I was  having arthritic elbows. To be truthful, when I was flaring and nearly dying – even my beloved cousin who is the most caring of the pack of wild animals I sprouted from avoided me like I had the plague. No one gave a thought to the fact that I can’t open the milk or pick up a cup, or walk down the stairs when saints that they are, they bring me bread. My garage doors are a testimony to how much my family cares for my welfare. My estranged father is a bit better. When they broke into my house he phoned friends in my city to make sure I’m safe.

So Brain looks at this, and Brain looks at how very little I’ve been content with in the past … and all I can do is shake my head.

My wayward Heart holds on to a story my granddad told of how he saw my grandmother from the back of a bakkie – he was drunk with friends – and from his drunk stupor he knew he would love her forever and marry her. I added the “love her forever” because he did. I think my grandmother fell out of love when she realised she married below herself into a pack of wild animals, but she tried. Poor woman. My grandfather loved her through his mad days after her death and probably to his dying day. My Heart thinks I will love that way or that someone would love me that way.

But my Brain is really concerned about how very, very little Heart will settle for.

To begin with, there’s a thing called WANT. It drives people. My crazy unlikely hero grandfather’s Heart wanted my grandmother’s Heart. They didn’t even live in the same dusty Free State town. But he found a way and won her Heart. A certain amount of effort, should be shown by gentleman callers. I’m not about to turn my little Heart into the Hex from Hexriver but… show some spine, ingenuity and chutzpah. No effort, means move along swiftly.

Priority, now once you’re used to so very little… climbing that ladder is hard. Dear Natasje’s Heart, you need to be on the TOP THREE of his priorities, below that is a bit of an insult… I know you’ve always been happy with the scraps that fall from the table, but it’s a little pathetic now. Stop it. See how abusive I am to myself? I don’t appreciate my own sarcasm. Priority is important, that is the point.

When looking over the logistics of love, I think it’s safe to say I have two tasks to work on. Two challenges. Two fresh habits to create. Don’t sell out.

Shaping things

They say if you want to live a happier life, you should stop comparing your life with other people’s lives. Which is true, mostly because you can’t see beyond the smiles and photos of Facebook profiles… generally you can’t see more than what they want you to see anyway.

A short while ago I had a very candid conversation  with my cousin, I said I wish I had been adopted and not part of this mess of a family I was born into. Me and him, we kind of turned out okay, but my stepsister recently graduated and I look at her, and I can’t help but wonder… She grew up in such a wholesome family. My father and her mother love her unconditionally – as they do all their children, they have two more. They, my sisters, are supported in their dreams and endeavours, they are encouraged to do their best, but not chastised if they fail. They are not judged and they are certainly not ever told how they’ll amount to nothing. I saw my sister’s graduation and I saw how proud my father was, my stepmother was beaming, her sisters were beaming. I was beaming… just because of all the beaming that was going around. At my own graduation I was so proud of myself, my photo still hangs over my desk. I was mostly proud because I proved my mother wrong – I can get a degree. My uncle congratulated me with a: “So you have a degree in English, what on earth will you do with that?” That was a blow. But I got up and went on to have a very successful career within four years of getting my “useless degree” in my vocation and I made more money than he did and I felt a little better because I proved him wrong. I proved them all wrong: I did amount to something. My name went up on the credits of at least three TV shows any day of the week. I must be somebody, the TV says so. It’s a small and shallow victory and it’s all I have to show for my graduation.

Recently my puppy ate my degree, I was going to re-frame it but he got to it first. I was upset for less than a second, because on the second second – I really wanted to say that – I realised what it stood for. It stood for “I got a degree in something I WANT TO DO”, in round one I was manipulated into studying Architecture – I know, anyone who knows me always does a double take. But it also stood for I was playing a game of … I don’t even know if it has a name, I just know there’s a game of “they” set standards and you either rebel or obey, and the degree was a symbol of I rebelled and won. I have recently just stopped playing. Disengaging is the only way to end it and get out. I’ll get the degree re-printed, but the new one will be a symbol of nothing but three years of literary theory.

Back to my conversation with my cousin, I said: Can you imagine how we could’ve fulfilled our potential by now. I mean we are pretty awesome as miracles of Nature – or miracles of Despite-Nurture – but still, would’ve been nice to have been loved and supported. My cousin, eight years my junior but with a spirit of pure joy said, Nah. It sounds boring. What would we have to rebel against? We are two pretty unique beings the pair of us. I smiled to myself, and that started me thinking.

I watch people a lot. Which is why I have to pay heed to the don’t compare- rule often. I watch people and I see so many people walk paths paved by expectation of what they should be – a good Muslim, a good father, a good husband, a good girl, a bad girl, the list goes on – and I always wanted a piece of that cake. Because from where I am standing that cake always represented belonging to a family, a group, a community, a religion, a culture and I always feel like this lone wolf roaming the woods of the world looking for my pack. I have a knowing in my heart that I belong somewhere though where exactly that is, I don’t know. I see other people with their designated packs, some are happy, some less so. Some are not necessarily unhappy, they are just so unauthentic, like they have been cast in a part they don’t mind playing. But it’s not who they are. After all, being a good Muslim, a good father, a good husband, a good girl, or even a bad girl can be pleasurable. It’s just that it’s not necessarily what they were born to be.

One blessing about having no place in this world is that I am afforded a rare and precious luxury, which I am thankful for having taken up on its full promise, I get to shape myself and cast myself in whichever part I choose. It’s like having been born with the ultimate freedom: You get to be who-ever you want to be. You will have no place to belong that shapes or moulds you… you will be clay until you decide what your little blob decides to be. It came at a great price, but I am grateful for it as I shape who I am every day.

I think about that, I think about my sister’s happy graduation andthen something precious happens. Most things that come with my predisposition I don’t even notice, though my behavioural patterns are part of me as much as my skin is. Like the way I am either over-sensitive or oblivious of the way people talk to me, listen to me and the like. A friend once chucked her ex-husband out mid-dinner because he said something deeply offensive to me. I didn’t notice. It went straight over my head, I usually just think they must not mean it like that. And once a drunk ass said Natasje is like Satan spelled backwards and I was hurt for days. Honestly! Who pays attention to a drunk (junkie) anyhow.  Today I was talking to a man dear to me and he cut me off mid-story, because he had to do something. I didn’t even think it was odd. I simply thought, okay whatever. Then he said, you can tell me later, because I really want to hear what you are saying. I nearly burst out in tears, because I’ve never been validated before. And I realised that it hurt not being validated. My mother (and her brother) are complete narcissists when it comes to talking and listening. My cousin and I always say, if you want to end a conversation with them tell them about yourself. You don’t even have to have a story, you can just say, You won’t believe what happened to me today… moments later, seconds really, they have to go feed their dogs or there’s a delivery at the door or God himself is on the other line. Just talk about yourself. Having someone validate my feelings – feelings I don’t even know I have… that is big for me.

Long ago in a faraway me, this would scare me and make me run because I’d believe that people from the other side know how to be nice to each other and validate people’s emotions and be supportive and I don’t belong there. This new me, the one who is grateful for chipping away at a new shape of a person, this one who doesn’t compare, this one thinks well I have a liberated mind unspoilt by expectation and ideas of what we should be… I will share this, while you share your love and support. I don’t feel like I am coming to a table empty. The Cranberries are no longer singing in my head.

There’s been a breach

The moon is full and word is there is an eclipse. I read up about all these things when I feel… “Affected”. When my stomach is in knots and my mind can’t keep still and my heart feels like I might have an attack any minute. It must be in the stars. The planets must have aligned just so, as to disrupt my ordinary ebb and flow. The stars must be to blame. But the first thing you should always remember when you follow the stars and if you have a particular attraction to how and why they move, is that mainly they provide a sense of stability: The moon teaches that whatever begins will end, there’s a cycle to all things. They teach to look within… they are stars and stars but reflect the light YOU shine on them.

Having read all this, I feel a small sense of relief. I go to bed knowing that all’s well. Just wait out the planetary activity. And don’t make ANY decisions. Not “yes”, not “no” … just wait. But of course I get up, and my stomach is full of butterflies, and my head is spinning. My first thought: You know what, it’s the RA. Just sleep it off. I lie in. I get a good ten hours which always sorts me out.

Only it doesn’t and I race to my PC to see who said what and what went down in the hours I was unconscious. There’s a message in my inbox and I know who it’s from. I don’t have to check, I can tell by the little red “1”. Suddenly the butterflies go wild, and the nausea gets worse and I’m pissed off for no rational reason. It becomes evident that it’s not the stars or the RA. There’s been a breach!

I write about and think about love often. Fact is, my heart is so big that a life without it would be the same as having a great John Deere standing on a town square, never seeing the green of a field. I write about, dream about and think about what it would look like and feel like and how I want it… In fact in jest I always say, “My ideal man, would be me but male.” The Universe has a sense of humour by the way – it can be very literal. Yes, I muse on it often. I also worry about it a lot. I get out. I meet people. I don’t like anyone in “that way”, ever. I can’t tell you how many dates I’ve been on and left thinking, “Would it be rude to set him up with Anne or Jane or Sandy?” (I don’t know any Anne’s, Jane’s or Sandy’s interestingly enough.) I meet some really stand up guys. I’ve been on dates and left thinking, I wish I liked him. He’s so nice. But my heart does not flutter… and there is most certainly no fire in my loins. I really wanted to use the word “loins” – it makes me giggle.

I worry also because people keep telling me I have “walls”. My first thought is always, “It’s not a wall – I’m just not that into you.”  Men are rather arrogant in the way they think women go weak at the knees for them. Honestly, I didn’t bat my eyes it’s Joburg there’s pollution and there really was something in my eye. I’m not playing hard to get, you bore me to pieces and I can’t be bothered to think of a smart retort to your unfunny attempt at banter. When I’d rather watch TV than get a free meal at a nice restaurant – that would be a clue. Someone should write a book for men. Poor saddo’s. Oh and I dated a friend of a friend once who made me pay for my own food – dude, that would be the friend card and that’s why no-second-non-date was your destiny. It’s not a date if I paid for my food, that’s me going to dinner with a friend or in this case, a stranger.. I might title this book, “Men, why women think you’re idiots” but I digress.

These “walls”. Well, it didn’t bother me as I extensively explained, until one person said to me, “blah blah blah WALLS blah blah blah” and I thought, “What?” This should’ve been a clue to me that there was someone at the wall hoping to breach… Note. To. Self. This should also have been a clue that soon I will be “affected”.  I am suddenly reminded that over Valentine’s I asked the Universe to fall hard and deeply, and I would like to take that back now.

This is what I worry about most, the retreat… that place where I look around and search for an exit. The place where my mind lists the reasons why I don’t do relationships like other people. Where I tell myself I am a butterfly and butterflies flit, they are not caught, tied down and certainly not bottled. That would be the death of me. At this point – the joys of being 35 and able to spot those patterns, and even predict where they are going – I have an overwhelming urge to go out and get drunk and snog ten boys for notches on my belt. I snogged a boy in London who worked in Scotland Yard, that notch is the same as having snogged Sherlock Holmes. I win! I’m not sure of the prize, but I turn into a man dying to sow my wild oats. I don’t even have oats, let alone wild ones! From here on out the irrational things I do, makes my usual farce-on-feet existence seem like I’m not even trying.

It’s exhausting. And none of it makes the butterflies go away. Fuckit.

There’s been a breach. I met a man who makes my insides unstable and I don’t know what to do with it. I met a man who speaks in Afrikaans (my mother tongue) so purely, sometimes I just stare at words and think WTF, who says that? But I love it and I find it enchanting. (I am using the word enchanting in sentences, honestly!) He makes me question what I think and how I am. He is the complete opposite of me, but so much the same that I wonder…

The thing about stars is, they’re just rocks that reflect light, right…? I probably am remembering what I want stars to be, I digress again, the thing is… what I always thought the thing should be, is that people come into your life in their different shapes and caricatures and they are supposed to teach you something about yourself, illuminate something, help you grow.

The thing about love affairs and lovers is also, that they feed, nurture and grow something… Which is great for writers, right? But ironically, being a writer I add one and one and I follow the trajectory that these characters will likely follow and I go, “This will end badly.” I map them like Vogler wants us to, and then I get off a little on the drama and the arc, but walk that path I will most certainly not. I analyse, I don’t dream. But when I do… it’s great. Dream that is.

Now I’m just starting to waffle and I am at risk of getting lost in the abyss I am consciously trying to escape by writing. There’s been a breach, but I think that I’ll make sure that it’s not a visitor before I call the Police. There’s been a breach and it’s not necessarily bad. I won’t make any decisions before the moons and eclipses pass, but I will acknowledge that the butterflies are most certainly due to the breach. At least I know I can like someone in “that way”… what I will do about it, remains to be seen. But that is a start.

Things I learnt from gardening

I’ve always wanted to write one of those “5 things I learnt from scratching my butt in private”-type articles. Mind you I think I wrote one blog called five things to be grateful for, but that wasn’t entirely to format so it doesn’t count. Of course I hate those articles with a special passion, because of the number mainly. Like “7 things highly effective people” or “12 Keys to success” etc. My biggest gripe is this, why 7? Or 12? Or 5? And does that mean there are ONLY 7 habits or keys or principles? And that just opens the door to other questions in my crazy brain, like who are these people? And do I actually consider them to be successful… What measure did we use to decide whether they are successful? What is your definition of success to begin with? And then I do what everyone else in cattle-class does, I read it. Obsessively. And make every word I read law.

Now my big hoo-ha about that, might have almost made me break format, but it’s okay because it’s my blog. I can do what I want.

Just before Easter, which was going to be DESTINATION: HOLIDAY, and I literally mean 18:00 on the evening before Good Friday, I learnt that my holiday is kind of cancelled. Not only will I be working I will be working on two extra episodes. Which is awesome, because I realised two days before production break that I will be skipping a week’s pay. This way I don’t skip and I get a bit extra. So I am very blessed and very happy – and that’s what Easter is kind of about, if you get down to it. Long story short – I clearly have no clue what that expression means – I spent the weekend gardening and spring cleaning! And joyfully spending time with my pups and resting and watching DVD’s… but mostly, gardening. Next to writing, my true-true love. (And also next to my pets.)

Seven things I learnt from gardening

(SEVEN because it’s my lucky number… so you can read in peace and not wonder. In case you are OCD – like someone we both know. And There are more than seven, this seven is just at the top of my head.)

1.     There is a season for everything

My grandmother left a mark in her Bible by the passage on there being a time and season for everything. (There is a song by the Byrds about it too).  In the time before her passing, I’m sure one gets a sense of when your time is almost up, it must’ve rang true to her. I get that sense, time and again when I garden. And with every realisation it sticks a little better. A little deeper. And I get it a bit more… “it” being, it’s going to be okay.

When my mind or life or my heart is a muddle, you can always see it in “my world”. My house, my garden, my skin… Early in November, or late November… I can’t quite put my finger on the time, my garden was just starting to look lovely. My grass was like a thick green carpet. My plants burst their seams … it was lush and full of promise. And then in the blink of an eye the lawn was a swamp, the dahlia’s had white mould… that which wasn’t drowned was scorched. I was so distraught I ended up spending little time in the garden because I just didn’t even want to look at it. If you look at my life, you will see a reflection of this… less metaphor and more real, but there it is: Life.

But thank goodness, there is a season for everything: A time for decay, a time to grow, a time to bloom, a time to lie dormant under the soil… and wait for the perfect time.

2.     Seasons aren’t always what you expect them to be

Traditionally people jump into the garden in Spring and that is considered a season of growth – after all, Summer-in-full-flower is evidence of that, right? Right. Winter is when things, die down… hibernate and all other sleepy things. Indeed it is, and it isn’t. If you want a garden in Spring, you better get cracking in Winter – or before. Planting that Spring feast for the eye can be quite a bit of labour in Winter. My favourite description of Winter is that of a time when seeds lay in the belly of the earth… In my mind’s eye I see the snow-covered earth and the ground almost frozen with tiny seeds inside waiting… waiting… waiting… In actual fact the waiting is a very laborious task. Nothing sleepy about it. Summer too, conjures an image of fun-in-the-sun and growth and abundance. The expectation is there that things will grow and bear fruit. But Summer can be a scorcher – where things burn to death. When the sun dries up all signs of life… it is exactly what you’d expect, but not what you expected at all.

But what I learnt in the garden, is that never think that because Summer squeezed the life out of you, Winter will be the same. The “squeeze the life out of you”-phase may just have been a prep-period for great growth that will come in Winter. It may not be what you expected, but still it’s as it should be.

This year I planted a flowering fruit tree that flowers in WINTER!! I am looking forward to it.

PS. I specifically capitalized the seasons, hoping to start a trend. I feel it’s unfair that they may only be capitalized when personified.

3.     If the grass won’t grow plant flowers instead

Okay, I will broach the subject that has been referred to “The topic that should not be spoken of” all Summer. The grass. Here’s what happened – my theory of course – to my once-lush grass: Well first, we got more rain than expected… and then a happy swarm of butterflies laid their eggs there. And so… swamp! There were days when you actually sinked into the mud-grass. I say mud-grass, because it was mud with grass. Now it’s only mud. It was painful. But Can-do girl that I am… I tried to save it. I dug holes for aeration, I added lawn-things that everyone and his uncle prescribed… and four months later, still swamp! A couple of weeks ago I looked at the devastation that was my garden and thought… You know what, I’m tired of all the squares anyway. I feel like ore circles. And where’s the colour I once had? (Short of the blue and magenta walls) Where’s the magic? Where’s the whimsy? So, I hopped to it and created a new lay-out. And as for the swampland, clearly it WANTS to be swampland. Now I’m planting a pond with some plants that like the boggy conditions… and a path to go around it.

If you keep working against it, it will frustrate and infuriate you… accept the things you can’t change, plant flowers instead.

4.     9 out of 10 times spiders are just gross

I am a bit (read BIT or A LOT or HUGE) of an arachnophobe. I hate them. It’s not right to have that many legs and eyes… Spiders give me the heebie-jeebies but on top of that, they instil a fear that makes me cold. It makes logic elude me. I can’t even vomit because my soul leaves my body and there’s no one to operate the machine.

But the thing is, the healthier your garden, the more all God’s creatures will be living there (I’m no fan of other creepy-crawlies either, by the way) and this includes spiders. As fate would have it, I think people who study arachnids can come to MY garden and study the five zillion species creeping and crawling around to scare the bejeezus out of me at intervals… Even as I write this my mouth goes dry, so you know.

But here’s what I’ve learnt from gardening, 9 out of 10 times spiders are just gross. *shudder* There is nothing to be afraid of. *shudder* And the logic part of my brain knows this. *shudder cubed* Life will give you your share of “spiders” – most of mine have names – but most often they are just gross. They do the big “Ooh I have eight legs”-thing… but they won’t hurt you. They do the whole “Oooooooh I have venom”-thing… but in all likeliness they won’t come close enough. They can do even do the “Ooooooooh I can kill you with one bite”-thing, but then you could just step on them with your garden boot. Problem solved… more like eliminated to be accurate. Most spiders are just gross, and that 1 out of 10… will give you a cool story at the next bar.

5.     Working in the rain won’t kill you

I really do like metaphors. As I write this I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about them. Last week amid hectic deadlines etc. I attempted to… started to… yeah, that will do. I started to dig a hole for a small kiddy splashpool for my darling godchild. Then it started raining. It was the only day I had a helper, so I decided to push through. What a muddy mess. It was unpleasant. To top off the experience, the gardener and myself did not see eye to eye and suffice to say I was kind enough to let him leave early. But I am a Virgo, which is my euphemism for I am OCD, so I couldn’t just leave it. There in the pouring rain I dug, I scraped, I pulled, I tried to not destroy more than I create… It was unpleasant. But the rain also washes mud and unpleasant away. I stood in the rain for a while just allowing it to beat down on my skin. I have a friend with MS, she has no feeling on the skin of one of her arms – so I stood there dripping wet, feeling grateful that I do. And then I just stood there.

Number 5 could actually be “… in the rain won’t kill you”. Fill in verb of choice. Storms pass. Rain too will pass. But before it does, take time to feel it on your skin.

Of course then the famous Joburg lightning started dancing in the skies above and I thought it best to get my butt inside.

6.     You can’t have too many flowers

In your garden, you can’t have too many flowers. In your life, you can’t have too much joy.  You can’t have too much colour. You can’t have too many breath-taking smells. You can’t have too many laughs at the cat chasing the lavender or at the dogs chasing the puppy or at the puppy chasing the cat… You can’t. Too much of a good thing really is spectacular. You’ll have a really hard time convincing me otherwise.

7.     You have to get your hands dirty and be gentle – at the same time.

Gentle folk – and I’m not being derogatory – work well with gardens. Just like anything else in this world flowers and plants like you to be gentle on their journey to abundance. You can’t step on them, you can’t pull and tug and jerk and shove and back-hand them. I know it sounds obvious, but it’s not obvious to everyone.  At the same time, while being gentle… you can’t be “gentle” – now I’m not being derogatory either I’m talking about wussies. You have to get your hands in the soil, you may even have to take your awesome pink garden gloves off sometimes and get soil under your nails. It has to be done.

In my heart-world that is because sometimes to get the bulbs, seedlings and tiny plants their best shot, you have to put some lovin’ in there. In the real world it’s just… because it has to be done. It’s the only way. No short cuts. No cheats. But like what lies under the skin of the metaphor, it’s also the most rewarding way.

There needs to be balance though… you can’t just get in there and “sort that shit” – now read it again with a drill sergeant voice:  “SORT THAT SHIT!”. You can’t play good cop, bad cop in the garden. Or in life. Whenever weeding etc. needs doing, my cousin always says, “just give me a garden fork I’ll sort this whole thing out before you know it!” Of course I reel and protest and object and and and… AND get back to gently and slowly and with great care picking at weeds careful not to upset anything in the beds. They like it like that. Things grow better when you are gentle. People grow or develop better when you are gentle. Maybe I am inclined to be gentle, because I was always pushed, shoved and jerked through life – famously dragged by the arm… Just because you are in get-your-hands-dirty-mode doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be gentle anymore. You have to be both. At the same time.

And now that I am at the end of number 7 I can think of more… You really do learn a lot about life while gardening.

Getting The House In Order

It’s not spring in South Africa, it’s Autumn… Usually in this time of year I feel ready to let the dust settle. But this year, I feel the need to get the house in order.

On every level.

I bought myself a bright pink cleaning set to inspire me, because the good Lord knows I despise cleaning. Mostly the part that comes before it. The part where you psyche yourself up to clean… As a child my mother “spring cleaned” once a year in December. She used to ammonia the floors. One year I got so sick from the ammonia fumes, I got flu. My mother said I was just being too lazy to help… but when I had a fever and a rash, my mother took me to the doctor – I can’t fake that. Personally I think it was severe protest by my cells. Which is really what an allergic reaction is. But nevertheless. My mother used to clean rather obsessively. Even my grandmother maintained levels of hygiene and cleanliness that were borderline unnatural. Either way, I blame the matriarchs for my abhorrence of the act of cleaning, but then without their OCD, where would I get my stories from.

Me, well… my inner-Virgo likes things just so. She likes my T-shirts all folded with the same size cardboard so the piles are equal in size and she likes cleaning between the grooves of things. Just last week in fact I cleaned the pipes of the Hoover – or vacuum cleaner. It’s actually an AEG, but that’s beside the point. It occurred to me that when you vacuum all that gunk goes up the pipes in the bag, but you never clean the pipes out… so that must get germ-infested. So I cleaned it. My inner-Virgo can be rather particular about how she likes things. And if she really did rule, my grandmother and mother’s standards of hygiene would be maintained.

However my Moon-in-Cancer-side likes leaving things where she last used them. She likes kicking off her shoes where her feet hurt and leaving then there. She likes making a merry old mess. She likes hoarding cups around my desk to the point where it sometimes look like four people use this office. And the four-leggeds love it that way. In fact with the new puppy, keeping the house tidy has been very much like a friend put it, “Like brushing your teeth while eating an Oreo” … The end result of this is that parts of my house will always be magazine-pretty and parts will look a little post-apocalyptic.

For a few days now – maybe because I was supposed to be on Production Break (“supposed to be” is a story in itself) – the cells in my body have been preparing themselves for this task: Getting The House In Order. I started in my bedroom, cleaning out closets and organising garments, throwing out the old… mending the torn. Cleaning.

While you’re scrubbing and wiping and polishing and spraying orange-ey freshness, your mind finds a bit of peace. In the mundane. In cleaning and fixing the things you can clean and fix, my brain finds quiet. In the repetition, the banal acts that can be done without too much thought. No creativity or extreme problem-solving skill is required and when you’re done… it shines, not quite like in the ads, but the smell totally makes up for the missing star popping off surfaces. You can completely fathom where the whole “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”-thing comes from. You can fathom, understand and embrace it as a religion.

In those moments you can understand the obsessive need for women in times gone by to obsessively clean and catch the dust before it hits the floor. In the midst of life’s little storms, the dust is sometimes the only thing you can catch before it hits the floor.

That said, now that it’s started… cleaning the house isn’t the worst thing a person could be doing. And as I have time to clear the fog in my brain, I can see the loose ends in my life that also needs… getting in order.

Slowly moving toward balance. New insights. I will keep you posted.

After the storm

I’m getting into a new habit to not write while I’m in a storm. I should stop. That’s exactly when I should write. So that explains the hiatus.

In the middle of a storm, you can stop to pick a flower. Or just smell it… What I’m really trying to say is that, there are flowers to be found in storms. You can see them, or can choose not to. Sometimes I think it’s a gift to be able to see them, many people just don’t.

In the middle of this last storm, I found a flower.

Mumford and Sons. A song called After the storm.

And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

There’s always something that keeps you up. Keeps you running. Even when it rains. Sometimes it’s inside and sometimes it’s outside, but something keeps you running when it rains. When I was 23, long ago and far away, when the world spread itself before my feet like jelly. Offering colour and joy but little else, it was a boy. When your heart is young you need little else to live on than love, it didn’t matter that the world shook and crumbled and gave way under you. It was the colour and the joy you were after. That fed you. A pair of blue eyes, a daisy chain and a promise can keep you running through your own personal famine.

I remember standing in the pouring rain in Shakespeare’s Globe theater, in the pit. While Vanessa Redgrave gave an inaudible performance of Prospero (method actors… Tsk!), and the Tempest was not just raging on the stage. I remember everyone else in the pit – some fellow thespians at the time – running for cover, but I stood in the rain and soaked up every golden word that fell from the stage. I ruined my leather jacket, but I wear it to this day and I remember standing in the rain. That time it was another love that kept me up in the rain. Literally.

It gets scary when whatever kept you up… kept you running fades and leaves.

Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won’t rot, I won’t rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won’t rot.

There’s been many a storm, tossing me this way and that. Leaving me in degrees of shattered; And I fix it by becoming mosaics with varying levels of detail… depending on the size of the shards I have to work with. If you take a walk around my house and garden you’ll see many mosaics and each one has a story, a history. Each one is an incarnation of the previously broken me – all fixed and beautiful. That’s also why I don’t really make them for people… or at all. Unless I have a deep love for that person.

Actually, this is all a ‘used-to-be’-state. Something’s changed. There used to be a sense of relief when I made a mosaic. A sense that once I’ve put the pieces back together and created something beautiful, all is well.

And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

There’s a part of me resistant to fixing things. Like if I can’t create it from scratch, you can keep it… throw it out, let it go. I don’t want to fix one more thing. If the shoe doesn’t fit, it’s obviously not my shoe… I’m not fixing anything. If it breaks… Maybe it’s supposed to be broken. Maybe the cracks is where the light gets in, because this incarnation of me is quite fond of the light show on display at present. I see myself acting this out: I tossed out a broken old heater and all other broken things light enough to carry to the kerb. I have no further interest in fixing that patch of lawn that just won’t grow, it’s now a flowerbed. Flowerbeds are prettier anyway. And my dogs don’t run on the lawn with the hallway having a much greater appeal.

And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
But oh no more.
That’s why I hold,
That’s why I hold with all I have.
That’s why I hold.

There’s great freedom in this new sense. Letting go. Mostly of the need to control, down to trying to control what is broken… like an obsessive-compulsive gluing bits together that don’t want to be anywhere near each other. I let go… the relationship with my mother I can never fix, because a frog and a scorpion cannot be friends. The guild I helped build, because good intentions only speak as loud as actions… I can go on. But the good thing about letting go is, it’s gone. It’s no longer part of you. It’s no longer near you and it no longer hurts you. You never have to think about it again. And when the sting subsides, you have space… For what you know with your heart. And your head has space too.

I will die alone and be left there.
Well I guess I’ll just go home,
Oh God knows where.
Because death is just so full and mine so small.
Well I’m scared of what’s behind and what’s before.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

Storms will always be there. They can be hard, and they can be beautiful. In the middle of a storm you can even find a flower, you can pick it or just smell it. I guess the gift is, being able to see that there is a flower… and if the flower can live through it and still be pretty, so can you. So can I.

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

(Beautiful lyrics in italics from After the Storm – Mumford and Sons)