Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sunday 160 - so what is the norm?

I spent the whole day yesterday thinking it was Sunday; the first one that MM had not posted his 160.
And then the penny dropped.
So today was a complete bonus!
A dash of insomnia afforded me the chance to catch a Season 3 re-run of an episode from Gray's Anatomy. I just love those before during and after monologues that relate to the essence of each show, so my Sunday offering is 160 characters plucked from the original 411 (per kind favour of Meredith Gray)

~~~*~~~






We cling to our expectations because the expected is what keeps us steady; standing.

The expected is just the beginning.

The unexpected is what changes our lives.





Monkey Man . hosts the 160 Character Challenge


Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sunday 160 - counting threads


A Sunday morning lie-in is a reminder.

Let people lie in the bed they made;

not out of spite or retribution

It’s how the grown-up world works.

It's time for coffee.



Monkey Man hosts the 160 Character Challenge

 

 

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Be careful what you wish for....

I read somewhere that one can compare ones past to lifeless forms hanging on hooks in a closet. The  closet goes with you wherever you go – or in my case, the shipping container with the packing cases finally arrives!
It makes sense that these bits and pieces are part of us – they have made up our experiences – but that we are no longer part of them. Ergo they are our past….lifeless. Of course you can open the closet door and look through them. But, if you take them out and try to carry them around, they are a heavy and unnecessary burden.
I've experienced that heaviness first-hand of late; pretty much each and every time I opened a box marked “personal” or “precious” or possum’s “stuff”. …Stuff that I had packed with such hope and happiness in my heart.
Of course not all of my “stuff” was emotionally heavy to unpack into its new closet; some things…many in fact…were like old friends …a joy to see again after such a long absence.
One such joy was a book sent to me by a precious friend. Her mail to me heralding its arrival went exactly like this:
“I've just finished reading a short poignant book of anecdotes on South Africa by the Muslim writer, Rayda Jacobs. It's called Postcards from South Africa. Have you read it? Just reply yes or no. If it's no, I shall send it to you as a belated birthday present. What is your postal address?”

6 months later I had to stand up in a Church and find the words for her obituary.

She was a friend like no other; abundant with her love and honesty…an abundance which commanded the same in return. But it was more than that…she “got” me…even when I was tired of and confused with me. When I left Cape Town - the first time – and went to live in Plettenberg Bay she relished the fact that her annual pilgrimage to her family’s holiday home passed through my new town so she could plan a sleepover and catch-up both coming and going. In fact when she bought her new KA car she called me immediately and asked if she could come to us for the weekend she wanted to give it a long-distance test drive. I treasured her for this.

She also absolutely understood how hard and lonely my new life in Texas was and endeavored to write me as long and as newsy emails as she could, even when she had no news. I treasure those emails as through them I can still hear her voice. She just knew that sending me that book would put a little bit of home back into my life. I like to think that it also made her feel a little closer to me.
I’ll never forget calling her to tell her that we were going to live in Texas. And by Texas I mean Muleshoe, Texas.

(I’ll wait while you see if you can find that on a map.)

“Right!!”…she said…”this is obviously going to be good so let me get my wine and my cigarettes and don’t dare leave a thing out!!”

In fact she loved the story so much she would ask me to repeat it just so she could make sure her memory of it had left nothing out. I remembered all of this when I unpacked that precious book. I remembered how it had in fact been another little book that had started this whole Texas ball rolling.

So…once upon a time…once more for posterity….here goes:


I was visiting Cape Town for a friends birthday party. The Dorkus had surprised me by saying he was actually going to make the effort and drive down and join me for the party. I had recently sold my restaurant having successfully survived 3 crazy holiday “seasons” and we had moved onto a beautiful farm where I found my interest in gardening and growing things blossoming. However the soil was not of the best quality. So during this particular trip back home whilst looking through the books in my Dad´s library, my eyes did spy a little book on Hydroponics. Aha! The answer to my soil problems.

I guess the Dorkus was very supportive of all of this because when we got home he did a whole lot of research on the internet and came up with the concept of Aquaponics. This neatly melded his passion for fish and my interest in growing vegetables. If it sounds like there is a big sigh in there somewhere you’re right because suddenly my concept of feeding us from the land became a whole complicated frigging venture – one of supplying huge supermarkets with my tomatoes and his fish from no less than 45m long tunnels!
How to kill an idea in one fell swoop.
Ever the practical lass I of course wanted to see if I could actually raise a tomato before I:

a. invested every cent I might possess and

b. killed off thousands of baby fish (which would have been purchased with my aforementioned cents!)

This whole tunnel thing became a fixation for the Dorkus but I stood firm on the impracticalities of starting out so big. I did relent and agreed to buy some plastic covering that would fit a small tunnel the frame of which we were looking at building ourselves. I must say I felt less reluctant about having forked out over R1000 for the plastic when he (reluctantly) agreed to pay for one of those porta-pools to turn into a fish rearing tank.


To cut to the chase of the story a few months went by; University certification courses in Aquaculture were discovered for me (!!) to study, winter came and went, I was now employed by the farm owners as their furniture manufacturing company´s sales manager and the pool had become a rainwater tank. I was however managing to grow some very healthy  looking plants from seed so was confident I could manage a small crop.

Then my mother was hospitalized. She needed a Colonectomy. She and my Dad were quite relaxed about the whole thing but the daughter in me thought they might benefit from a bit of support so I got in the car and drove the 6 hours to Cape Town, arriving to relieved smiles as they wheeled her into her 10am surgery.

All went well and results were benign. I remember it was November. We also discussed the whole fish/farming tunnel topic. And thats when Dad had his brainwave. He told me to buy a “Farmer´s Weekly” magazine and look in the Classifieds; that would be the best place to look or advertise for a small second hand tunnel. BRILLIANT!
Any South African reading this will also know that it has the funniest lonely heart column as well!

A few days later it was time for me to get back to work so I packed up and hit the road. On the outskirts of the city I made my usual stop for petrol and munchies and there, in amongst the marshmallows and crisps lay a single copy of the “Farmers Weekly”.

OMG!! I had forgotten. But wait...just one copy...just lying there...?
Not for long it wasn't. I added it to my bounty, packed it together with the other magazines I had bought to take back to the farm and off I went.

A few days later it was Sunday and that meant I was given breakfast in bed - one of the last remaining rituals that had survived our courtship. It was also the day I languished with the Sunday papers whenever possible. That wouldn't be necessary this day as I had my stash of magazines saved for just this occasion. I opened the bag and pulled out the top one. The Farmer´s Weekly.

OMG! I had forgotten all about it, yet again!
And with that I turned to the back of the magazine and thumbed through the classified section and out popped an advert:

“Dairy farm in Texas requires services of refrigeration technician. Only serious applicants need apply”

Hmm...I thought....
“Babes, have you ever considered putting your CV out there...see what comes back?”
Hmm...he said...looking at the ad...and if ever anyone wanted to see "The Secret" in action it would have been at that precise moment. I actually saw him put himself into whatever he imagined that place was because by the following February, a mere 3 months later, he was there ...in Muleshoe...awaiting my March arrival.

So that is how I ended up in Texas....

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sunday 160 - in the here and now

Time and time again I forgave you.

I now see how my forgiveness fostered your malicious behaviour;

you had no incentive to stop.

Now it is me I need to forgive!





Monkey Man . hosts the 160 Character Challenge

Thursday, January 13, 2011

this is so true...



To know someone here or there

with whom you can feel

there is understanding

in spite of distances

or thoughts expressed --

That can make life a garden.

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

11 days that never were…

“September 2, 1752, was a great day in the history of sleep.”

Isn’t that just a great opening line? No wonder it caught my eye. It goes on to say the following:

“That Wednesday evening, millions of British subjects in England and the colonies went peacefully to sleep and did not wake up until twelve days later. Behind this feat of narcoleptic prowess was not some revolutionary hypnotic technique or miraculous pharmaceutical discovered in the West Indies. It was, rather, the British Calendar Act of 1751, which declared the day after Wednesday the second to be Thursday the fourteenth.”

Can you imagine some government trying to pull that shit in this day and age? And what’s that about the West Indies and pharmaceuticals? I thought they were renowned for their curry spices and cricket playing prowess?

So anyway, as I was saying, I tripped over this in an article called “The Curious History of the Gregorian Calendar” by Ben Snowden. At the time I was looking for the meaning of “Twelfth Night” which is when the Christmas decorations have to come down or it’s bad luck – another one of those traditions that one follows without knowing why. I’m still not absolutely sure when the decorations got involved but Twelfth night falls on the eve of the 6th of January which back in the day was a feast called Epiphany. In short this date commemorates three events one of which is the visit of the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Okay so that would also explain the groups of kids I saw here sporting kingly cloaks and crowns.


Also interesting is that in popular celebration the feast is far more ancient than Christmas so technically it is more important than Christmas. It’s still a gift giving day in many countries so retailers can relax!

Of course I whipped those decorations down, poured myself a cocktail and pondered the whole calendar conundrum.
You see for the last 2 years my life has been portioned off into 6 month-ish blocks; not intentionally …but I got to thinking about that…and why…and also where I now find myself and how I really would like to acknowledge the journey. And yes I know that is a really hackneyed word but I have literally flown around the world to get to where I am and yes I might’ve been to hell and back in a hand basket but for the first time in a long time I’ve been in one place for more than 90 days!

So thanks to ye olde Pope Greg the Xlll for the calendar, we did your whole New Year’s eve stuff but I think I’ll just get me my own Marsupial calendar for a bit. And according to that there are in fact 72 days until my Whole... New… Year draws to a close.
And what a year it has been.
I need to not forget the finer points.

When I started this post it was still 11/1/11, yet another spesh-ul date. Noted.



Sunday, January 2, 2011

Sunday 160 - giving new meaning to a new year


Resolutions

are fine but are often motivated by wishful thinking.

As such, they can become noise in our heads.

Intentions

are unfathomably powerful and uplifting!



Monkey Man hosts the 160 Character Challenge.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

the first of the first of the two thousand and eleventh



"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential."
~ Ellen Goodman