notes on love and light
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. — Rainer Maria Rilke I started feeling blue towards the end of last week, when it looked as though winter was coming to a premature end. This was particularly unfortunate because winter is my favourite season. I like its cold, its cloudless skies, its long evenings and the general sense that the world has slowed…
Because it had just been payday, the bank account still looked reasonably healthy. Because it was on a 15% discount plus another 20% for already owning the base game, I treated myself on Saturday to Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand. It is a standalone roguelite spin on the original game. Instead of pushing relentlessly across Europe, you dig in, build layer upon layer of defences, and try to…
The Highveld is in deep winter—its driest season. The grass has long since surrendered to shades of straw and ash, waiting patiently for a spring that still feels impossibly distant. Oddly enough, though, winter has not been particularly cold this year. Apart from that one bitter, sub-zero morning during our little escape to Rayton —the same morning that left the veld covered in delicate flowers…
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, whoever knocks! — The Second Witch, Macbeth There are seasons when the world announces itself long before it arrives. I have developed a sixth sense over the years. I know when darkness is on the move. Not the ordinary sort that evening brings, nor the kind that yields to sleep, but the heavier darkness that settles…
Apparently, old habits travel well. A week ago, on the very first night of our holiday , I rather overdid my weekend pour . To save space, I'd packed a gallon of cheap, dark sherry instead of a bulky stack of six-packs. Let's just say the headache lasted two days. My intestines are still negotiating a ceasefire. Anyway. I must have stumbled into bed somewhere around five in the morning. Just after…
It was surprisingly difficult to get out of bed this morning. Even Eva—who had steadfastly refused to suspend her dawn walk schedule merely because we were on holiday—declared a temporary truce with responsibility and burrowed back beneath the blankets between us. The reason was simple enough. The moment our feet touched the floor, our little retreat would begin drawing to a close. We'd have to…
I was happier than usual when I clocked out yesterday afternoon. I suppose it's time to let you off the hook after last week's little cliffhanger. The Kindle survived. Well... it survived by not being bought. Instead of giving my love a conventional birthday present this year, I had one of those impulsive brainwaves that somehow make far more sense once you've already committed to them. So rather…
My days—and perhaps even my hours—are numbered. Remember this: in sorrow, seek happiness. — Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov My Kindle is dying. Not dramatically. There will be no smoke, no sparks, no mournful electronic chime. It still turns on. It still holds a charge. It still opens books with the same quiet dignity it always has. It is simply becoming... obsolete. Fifteen years after…
Kuebiko is a scarecrow from Japanese mythology: a weather-beaten deity who stands rooted to the earth, watching the world pass by. He cannot move. He cannot intervene. Even so, he becomes sagacious through aeons of silent observation. In recent years, "kuebiko" has taken on another meaning: the exhausted bewilderment that follows tragedy after tragedy, when the world reveals itself to be stranger,…
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace. — Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Eva's second birthday began with a pilgrimage of sorts. Months ago, back when the year still looked orderly on paper, and the future had not…
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. — Robert Frost Though not the first frost of the season, we had the first proper frost this morning. The sort that lingers long after sunrise, reluctant to surrender the lawn to daylight. The grass still crunched beneath our feet when Eva and I returned from our walk shortly before seven. It had been a subdued and…
Ticking away The moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours In an offhand way And then one day you find Ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run You missed the starting gun It's been on my mind lately, how quickly the last ten years have disappeared. One moment, I was forty-two. My mom, at least, was alive. The future still felt spacious. There was time to…
Lately, life has seemed determined to happen indoors: beneath fluorescent office lights, beneath layers of grief, beneath deadlines, obligations, phone notifications and the endless small catastrophes of ordinary adulthood. With my sister’s employer having moved offices, she now drives significantly farther to work every day. At least the new premises — perched on the fifth floor of a shiny…
Hartbeespoort Dam has been popping up a lot lately. Thanks to the very wet rainy season, the sluices have been opened a number of times, and the videos have been everywhere. It’s the sort of thing social media can’t get enough of. Water thundering over concrete, mist in the air, everyone suddenly a hydrology expert. It sent me back. My little family lived out there in the late seventies. My…
Beloved Mom Today is the first Mother’s Day since your unexpected departure. For the first time in my life, I don’t get to say “I love you” out loud and spoil you with silly, mismatched gifts that always made you smile more than anything else. I keep catching myself thinking I must tell you something — a headline, a change in the weather, some small absurdity of daily life. It still feels as if…
I'm getting out, I'm moving on And from now on, address unknown Amanda Lear, Follow Me We’d just started believing the water issues in the area had finally been sorted out when—like a bad sequel nobody asked for—another round of outages began. This time, courtesy of a major pipe relocation across Garsfontein Road. Progress, apparently. There have been so many outages now that I’ve stopped…
Eva woke me up at 5:30am this morning. Weekend luxury. A full 35 minutes later than during the week. The last couple of days had been all rain and no sun. A damp, creeping chill had settled in, with night temperatures dipping into the low teens for the first time. Still, the intrepid lab and I set off within five minutes of getting out of bed. No hesitation. No negotiation. This morning, though,…
Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was a cold corpse that was being sent for forensic analysis. After, they would give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn her. She would turn into smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then she would come down to the earth again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of grass. This seemed warped and misguided, and…
Taking Eva out for her bedtime constitutional after my last post , I noticed the sky had cleared. There it was — a full moon, steady and unbothered, hanging above the lawn. The sight of it softened the edges of what had been a hectic birthday. The moon has been calling for our attention again. After decades of relative obscurity, it has returned to the news — fly-bys, renewed ambitions, plans to…
My 52nd birthday started with a bang. I took the day off, imagining a soft sort of celebration at home with my dearest and Eva, instead of spending it at my desk, absent-mindedly chewing at my thumb while jobs stacked up around me. Perhaps stubbornly, I decided to keep to the routine. There is comfort in repetition, even on days that insist on being different. So Eva and I stepped out into the…
It’s been a strange, almost psychedelic stretch since my previous post . To be honest, it feels like I ate one of the mushrooms growing all over the lawn. Not metaphorically. Literally. As if I picked one, wiped it on my shirt, and swallowed it whole. Everything has felt slightly wrong lately. Too bright. Too loud. Too urgent. Like the world slipped half a degree off its axis and nobody told me.…
Sonder: the quiet realisation that every passer-by is living a life as complex and vivid as your own — a story unfolding beyond the small circle of your awareness. I've always maintained that The One leads a charmed life, of a kind. He hardly ever deals with the forbidding world outside. His contact with the restless monsters beyond our gate is mostly limited to fleeting online encounters,…
Glimmers are the opposite of triggers. They are small, almost imperceptible cues that tell the nervous system: you are safe. You are connected. You are still here. Where a trigger tightens the chest and narrows the world, a glimmer softens the edges. It steadies the breath. It lets a thin ribbon of light slip in. They are rarely grand in scale. Most often, they are sensory. Fleeting. Easy to miss.…
After a brief hiatus, I resumed scheduled reading sessions a couple of weeks ago. Grief has a way of scattering time. The days since my mom passed on have felt both heavy and oddly elastic. Whole afternoons dissolve without warning. Evenings stretch. Sleep comes when it feels like it, and sometimes not at all. So I decided to impose a little order on things. I moved my dedicated reading time from…
Ever since my previous post , I’ve carried a peculiar kind of guilt. The sort that whispers that perhaps I should be done by now. That the world has moved on, and surely I ought to have followed suit. That I am clinging too tightly to my mother’s absence, as though grief were a garment I refuse to take off. But the truth is this: it will be a long, long time before I am even remotely okay. I…