This playful image is a personally owned photo enhanced by BeFunky AI photo to art editor***

A little story for big hearts

There once was a girl who cared a whole lot.
She cared SO MUCH – she would often get stuck.

She cared about forests and animals and planting trees.
She cared about plastic pollution and saving the seas.

But she also cared about birds and bees and only eating organic veg
She cared about it all so DEEPLY, it nearly drove her over the edge.

She wanted to help, but she didn’t know how,
What could only 1 person do?
Surely you needed a crowd!

Then one day, the girl made a friend.
He cared about Oceans,
But he was at his witt’s end!

His cause had all the data and details, the most convincing facts,
but what he couldn’t quite figure out, was how to stop people in their tracks.

“I know what you need”, said the girl.
“You need a funny face,
Something creative….
to fill their hearts with grace.

So the little girl got working
on a mascot for this cause
It would be a creature from the oceans
that would beckon people to pause.

Oceaneers was all about food choices,
that what you eat reeeeally matters!
Earth breathes lighter when we all eat more plants,
Instead of giant meat and fish platters.

She fashioned her mascot from wetsuit,
bit of leather and an old bicycle tyre.
And so Iggy the Iguana was born
A grinning face for all to inspire

You see Iguanas are an ideal example
of a creature that eats only plants
they still swim fast and climb big rocks
but with their diet, they do no harm.

This doesn’t mean other fish who eat fish are bad…
Nature takes only what she needs
it’s some people who don’t know when enough has been had.

So we send out great big vessels
to TAKE and TAKE and TAKE
from the sea in great big nets
they catch turtles – not just hake!

Iggy’s biggest wish, is that we can overcome this challenge
because if we learn to eat for the oceans
we can restore nature’s harmony and balance. 

This children’s tale is based on true events. Head this way to read about how I really made Iggy the Iguana for an organisation called Oceaneers.

If you liked this writing for children, drop me a comment – my studio pens run on more than just ink!

***If you’re wondering why an artist type would dare use an AI art generator, it’s because illustration is NOT my forte and because sometimes in life we needed a little help getting to where we’re going. I am currently doing children’s book illustration courses and until then, this will have to do.

Dear Marion

I’m doing the thing we talked about, the eating in silence and solitude thing..

I’m sitting on the wooden floor

Just inside my own front door.

The door is flung wide, wide open.

The floor is a little uncomfortable, but I can smell the jasmine, I can watch the bees – 

see them gather their evening meal from lavender buds and pollen-heavy trees.

I don’t have my bowl on a table – 

It’s on the floor, where I sit by this door.

With each mouthful I bow deep, leaning forward

Scooping up some broth, my gaze, distant, outward.

The air is ripe with impending rain,

This sitting is arduous, but it’s a comfortable pain.

When I lift up the noodles, with my chopsticks, 

I remain bent over longer.

Slurping in broth, I quell the hunger.

I realise, I am bowing to my life,

paying homage to this home,

this portal of brick and stone.

I am in humble prayer to that which sustains me

This food, this floor, this roof, this door.

On the fear we feel in our hours of silence and solitude:

Why don’t we eat like this all the time? I know it’s less comfortable. But still… what else…?

There are a lot more questions than answers for one. I can’t control the world outside, the temperature, the community raucous… it all just is.

But so are the tiny twittering birds, calling in the dusk. Eating takes longer this way. It seems to take an age – it’s true though, life moves slower when all of us is involved in doing just that one thing.

Eating soup. Folding laundry. In the moment, we live eons.

All the things I am a little bit afraid of come to visit.

Thoughts of not finishing work on time, even though I rarely miss a deadline…my art…. will I ever find it…..babies… anxiety about less actively preventing the will of life…our workshop and travel dreams…is finding balance a rouse..?

But then I feel quite ‘eh’ about it – like it will just all work itself out. It will because it has to. This, it dawns on me, is one of my core life philosophies. I believe it with every particle in me. Doubt of ‘how’ often covers me like goosebumps. Doubt ‘that‘ doesn’t even exist in the whispers between the hollows of my bones.

And then all of a not-so-sudden, the little worries drift away, like ghosts departing after their haunting, and I feel peaceful again. Just me in this garden, with my soup. Resting in trust.

Is it crazy to think that Nature wants me to succeed, wants us to succeed?Those of us that see her, really live with her, call out to her and know all her names? I’m honoured to acknowledge that way of life in myself and stand proudly among many I know who live by this same principle.

Surely Nature, in her infinite expansive wisdom knows that only a populace of people who place her wellbeing above all else can sustain her? It is ultimately in her best interest that we be fruitful. 

I scoop the last of my soup up out of the bowl. It’s a miso rich mouthful.

I gather up the bowl with its little chip and blue porcelain spoon. Crosslegged I rise to standing. This time the wooden floor creaks more than I do, as if her planks of pine are saying to me, “time is finite for both of us.”

I realise on this wooden floor, I am literally standing on the tops of tall trees, rising from the shoulders of giants.

And so –  who will one day rise from my legacy? Who will find form in the life I have built, the oxygen I have exchanged for energy?

May they find a sort of sanctuary in my sacrifice, in the words penned from my woods, read off the torn pages of my spine. 

Feature Image Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Whenever I feel jaded by the pace of the world, I rewatch Back to the Future. Something about the feasibility of going back in time – back to “simpler times” soothes me.

It’s a very stoic, middle way, taoist, zen, dharma-aligned (pick your personal tonic of spirituality) philosophy to be ‘in the moment’ as it is, not willing it to be any different by accepting that change is the only constant. We suffer most when we resist what is. I find this to be true and on most days, and in many modern mis-alignments, I try to shape my outlook that way, tumbling like a shell in the surf. We are all subject to the waves.

You may ask –  so why would you want to go back in time? We left a lot of shit in bygone eras – for good reason.

Our environmental negligence, normalised second-hand smoke, alcohol-numbed problems, and systematic exclusion of minorities and women – shedding these societal ills signifies a welcome march toward becoming collectively BETTER.

There is one modern affliction that makes me long for the ways we’ve left behind. It’s by no means a new observation – but I have found a sort of time travel cure for it.

I was in Woolies recently and I observed a woman in her mid thirties, her 2 year old toddler, sitting in the front of the trolley. To the handle bars of the trolley was strapped a steriestumpie-pink clip on housing for a tablet playing an animated cartoon. The screen was less than 30 cm away from the little girls face. She appeared totally unaware of her environment. Seeing that filled me with a sharp contrast of empathy for the mom needing to use this strategy to mitigate her own sanity and simultaneously it flipped a switch in me. I felt angered. 

In my work with forest school I read dozens of scientifically backed articles on the influences of screens on children’s and adolecent’s development and mental wellbeing, as well as the impact on adult mental health and cognition performance. 

But my anger about the little girl in the trolley was less about that mom’s coping strategy and more about the normative use of high-speed tech and screens always in our faces.

I may not have grown up like that but on most days my face is 30cm from a screen, often spending hours producing batches of quick-to-consume, 7 second reels.

I’m not even one of the many who feel overwhelmed by a deluge of WhatsApp messages and still, I loathe the expectation that one must be available to be contacted by all and sundry on what’s top of mind for them at that moment. I recently heard about a 9 year old girl who expressed concern at not being able to join for a waterfall hike with her family because she had 109 unanswered WhatsApp messages from her friends to attend to. That’s heavy stuff for a kid to deal with.

As an adult I struggle to ‘stop’, to switch off from the work aspects of the phone when I’m in the woods or seeking a quiet evening. The device’s all-encompassingness means everything is ‘on’ all the time. 

Being contactable and “smart” has left me feeling fettered and dumb.

I take more photos in nature than I would like – for “inspiration”. It’s so pretty I can’t help myself. It leaves me looking less and capturing more.

Mid conversation juxtapositions in cars are always handled with: “Well let’s look it up”. There – it’s settled.

Drives to new places don’t require any pre-planning or attention given to the neighbourhood because I can just listen to the robotic’ British women’s ‘turn left’ while I also listen to a podcast. And so I notice less of my world because noticing isn’t required.

And whenever I reach to send my husband a message “I’m thinking of you”, or my mom: “need anything from the shops?”, I also have to ‘just quickly’ deal with the various brands I work with because it’s all right there – mixed together into a milieux of everything-all-at-once.

That night, my wall of anger instigated a change. Out from a box of bygones and travel trinkets I fished out my granny’s old Nokia. It charged up overnight (after not being touched for well over a decade) and, with a new SIM card inserted, I can begin to reclaim my quietude.

Photo by Merri J on Unsplash

Much like the key invention of Marty and Doc’s Delorian, I acknowledge that my smartphone is, well, the flux capacitor, of modern day living.

But I’ve decided to veer away from it being my 24/7 phone, on me at all times. If I’m being really honest – what it is, in its most required state, is a Mobile Authorisation Device ( a MAD?!) – sending me codes, approve-it messages and security pins so that I can do the rest of my work and admin. Everything else my M.A.D. provides, when not viewed under the auspices of innovation, feels for me like a distraction, noise or a shortcut and a rouse to genuine productivity, learning or human interaction.

We learn languages better when we talk messily with other humans

We retain word definitions and language context better when we flip through the dusty pages of dictionaries.

We take in stories and experiences better when they’re longer than 7-30 seconds, and often told slowly with laughter over wine and a good meal.

We connect more truthfully face to face, where we can listen with more than just our mind.

Disagreements on band names, historical facts or general knowledge trivia almost never require being settled in the moment and, if anything, holding court for these nuanced disagreements makes us better conversationalists and more open-minded individuals.

I’d be willing to bet, I’ll even create better, more feeling-rich art when I make sketches and observations of the flower, rather than a photograph. And even then will be more likely to convert inspiration into action when I can swim in my own boredom and inanity again. These days, I can’t go 1 min on any social platform without being overstimulated and inundated by other people’s art or the plethora of courses that vow to make my art better.

Photo by Goashape Studio on Unsplash

My creativity is too fragile, too untethered a thing yet to handle seeing an entire world’s established output. I used to feel this made me weak. But I’ve noticed when I curb the input, my willingness toward output resurfaces.

And so, I’m currently undergoing an experiment of self. Considering the core functions and times where I need my phone, I’ve decided it can live mostly in my home office by my desk.

I’ve switched the colour scale to black and white and have acquired a mat screen protector – both very effective strategies in reducing the stimulus of a smartphone.

I check my WhatsApp only at my desk, the way I deal with email. A tiny handful of people have the number of my little Nokia for emergency calls or deliciously brief SMSes – ‘Get milk please’. ‘Gonna be 5 min late’. No emojis. No gifs. No check this vid on Facebook. And no boredom scrolling in queues. More importantly – when I now go out into the world on daily errands and nature walks, I am uncontactable. 

As a recovering people pleaser, being uncontactable gives me reprieve from the obligation to be at beck and call.

I’ve also since purchased a vintage twin bell alarm clock online (yes, not all 21st century inventions are detrimental to our collective mental wellbeing) and in my mountain satchel is a sketchbook and a pen.

I’m looking into getting a map book for navigation, relinquishing Spotify to a home culinary companion and instead enjoying the classical radio station in the car, returning to room for my own thoughts.

I’m curious to see whether more analogue-oriented, self-directed living without prompts and on going dialogue will enhance my internal compass.

Look, don’t get me wrong, when we travel, smartphones make being able to have the everything-all at-onceness very convenient, and I’m not about to abscond any and all technological aids or innovation in all circumstances.

Understandably, many lives, many homes and many situations or lifestyle scenarios and types of employment cannot do without the myriad functionalities of smartphone technology. My necessity to change and ways of going about it are not prescriptive. Merely anecdotal.

I appreciate it’s not for everyone. If you like the way you feel and behave in your life with bigger screens, smarter phones and more digital connection, then you probably have stronger boundaries and mental wherewithal and I admire that.

But for me – this move feels right. As Maya Angelou says “ Right may not be expedient, it may not be profitable, but it will satisfy your soul.”

What my soul hungers for is to find the path towards living my most artful life and just maybe…fast forwarding to the past will re-generate all the very best things about truly ‘being in the moment’ . 

Note to the angered: If you’ve read this and you’re feeling bothered by it, I want to tell you that sharing these reflections and observations didn’t come easily. It came with anguish. But I’m open to engaging in dialogue about this topic because it really interests me and matters to me and we can all only benefit from learning about perspectives we hadn’t considered. Please leave a comment and let’s chat.

Featured Image: Photo by Merri J on Unsplash

I spent a great deal of my last December assisting at the holiday club programme run by a Forest School I usually do content and marketing work for. It’s nice when as a creative marketing consultant you can interact with the product from time to time.

This client’s “product” is the ever-changing beast of a landscape that is early childhood education. ‘The product’ – much like an octopus with not only 8 arms – also has multiple different little brains and personalities and can, from time to time, get unwieldy and emotional, but also deeply entertaining.

During December Holiday Club, 15 parents and/or grannies and nannies drop a hoard of 3-5 year olds off at a quaint little house nestled along the green belt in Constantia every morning for around 3 hours. The parental units leave and the well-skilled and, dare I say, infinitely patient band of forest school facilitators take over the reins.

I am there, in a similar capacity to David Attenborough, to just observe and play along with the wildlings, absorbing the spirit of forest school.

Forest school is an early childhood education model that encourages learning through play in nature. More specifically, deep learning through unstructured, often risky, play in nature.

Most days involve a smorgasbord of nature-based observational and interactive activities, creative crafts and tasks, running, building, jumping, rolling, climbing, story times and general undirected slow child’s play under the shade of several great big oak trees.

On this particular holiday club day, the kids were making animal masks. Real or imagined. A plethora of creative bits and bobs were laid out to facilitate their imaginations coming to life through colour, arrangement and glue.

One particular little girl had taken her cardboard mask to a nearby stretch tent area and was in the process of furiously scribbling oil pastels all over her two adjacently glued masks. The animal in her head apparently needed two heads. Beads were stuck on. Cork bits were blobbed in place. Leaves were poking out of the corrugated ruffle on the edge of the cardboard. And still the wild back and forth colouring continued.

Marina, we’ll call her, was not satisfied. Tufts of her hair were teased out of her ponytail. One sleeve was half rolled up. A pant leg too. Marina was also missing a sock and shoe on one foot. For all intents and purposes, she appeared to be deep into the warren of her making.

“Everything okay Marina? What are you making?” asked a nearby facilitator.

She stopped. Sat up right away from her project, her blue crayon clutched tightly in her right fist not unlike the grip on a garden trail hacking through stubborn roots.

“It’s a.. it’s.. I’m making a…”

We waited with bated breath and furtive shared glances.

Then with a great inhale and both arms raised high, she blurted

“It’s a vewy….. SOMEFING………. I-DUNNOO!?”

Snickers and giggles bubbled up from both our mouths.

A very-something-I-don’t-know. Yup. That’s pretty much what we’re all trying to do with our lives, Marina, I thought.

In fact, that’s been literally my WHOLE life. Trying to just do a VERY …..something….. ?I don’t know?

Picasso said we are all born artist. But I wonder whether we are not all born philosophers too?

In that moment, her comical display of impassioned honesty brought me great comfort.

She had inadvertently opened up one of philosophy’s greatest unknowables – what are we doing here? Any of us – be it in our jobs, our lives, or our creative projects and pursuits.

But she hadn’t only opened up the unknowable, but in not answering it – she answered it.

Namely that the creative process exists to exist. It is a doing unto itself. Doing it doesn’t necessitate an explanation as to where its going. Nor does making a thing require any form of succinct answer in order to justify what is being made.

To create simply is.

And sometimes it wants to move through us languidly and slowly, eked out over years. Other times it comes in a flurry of apparent chaos. The thing to do at that point is not to engage the mind in explaining it.

No. The thing to do then, is simply lean in, get crazy and go with the flow of making your very something I don’t know.

Just be the conduit. Let life move through you. And maybe in the process, loose a sock and shoe. Caring what we look like while we’re in our wild becoming is so overrated after all.

As Paul Simon sings, ‘why deny the obvious child?’

So, thank you, Marina.

For liberating me from some of the shackles of grownupness.

Not all meditation is created equal.

I gathered all my shoes and lined them up in a row.

The sun was streaming into the lounge, flooding warm light over the wooden floors. It dawns on me – my shoes are all leather. My favourite suede boots belonged to my mother as a teenager and have been patched and resoled more times than I care to count.

I retrieve a pair of sharp nail cutters, beeswax polish, and super glue and set about mending. 

Those threads along the sole stitching poke out like stray hairs – these I trim away. The scuffed toe tip and heel bloom under a good rub with polish. Where the suede leather inlay curls up from the edge of the sandal, a dot of super glue restores its clean line.

It’s true – leather in fast fashion serves only to incentivise the beef industry. But there is a way to care for natural materials that stands apart from consumerism.

As I work, I find myself settling into the quiet rhythm of mending and tending. 

The discipline in this practice is different from what we usually imagine.

It exists in a life that calls out to you. One that asks you repeatedly to tend to it, to give it your time and care. Responding to this call, rather than rushing out to buy new whenever things look worn, becomes its own form of meditation.

The needle meets resistance in the leather. A thought surfaces – “I wonder why she said that?” I reach for the pliers and pull the needle through. The thought dissolves with the motion. In time, my mind finds rest in this repetition of mending – like breath in meditation, but exhaled in stitches.

This careful attention outlasts the rush of shiny new things. It frees us from chasing bigger incomes to replace what was never really broken – just well-worn and full of memories.

With my shuffle of shoes sufficiently restored, I put the kettle on for another pot of tea. I find a spot in the sun, looking on as the cat sits in her own pocket of sunlight, gazing at the bird on a sunny branch, eyeing a worm.

Bird mends nest. Cat tends to her tail. Woman rests.

An excerpt from my travel log on the island of Bali, while in the region of Lovina, not doing any of the things you’re supposed to do when in Lovina.

Lovina has been a simple and sweet immersion into living in the suburbs with Balinese locals. We’re nowhere near a beach lodge, spa or villa, or even a vaguely picturesque hotel. It’s my second time on this tiny Indonesian island, with mother and husband in tow. 

With every morning’s pastel sunrise the air swells with children laughing. Nearby a rooster makes his proud presence known while the cacophony of tiny birds twitter away among the wafting canopy of frangipanis overhead. 

Kretek, like many words in bahasa, is onomatopaic in origin. ‘Kre-tek’ resembles the sound of burning cloves.

The house we’re staying in is a Dutch lady’s home – the inside walls are painted in bright yellows and sky blue. The furniture is decorative first, practical second – all authentic Balinese wood carving. Even the door to the outside bathroom is ornately adorned with a detailed, carved frame. Above it hangs the skull of a Menjangan deer and throughout the garden, a myriad Buddha sculptures hold watch. 

Large wooden geckos – or cecaks as they’re known here –  hang on the walls. Cecaks come in two sizes here, as in much of Asia. Regular size (these are the cecaks) and then, as my friend likes to say, baby-godzillas. These are known as Tokes (pronouced ‘tokeh’) An adult female of the latter variety can be as large as elbow to wrist from head to tail. And true to their name, they make a delightful ‘tok-keeeeeh‘ sound, preferring to take up residence in the bamboo and palm leaf rafters of most homes. I always thought the wooden gecko sculptures in my grandpa’s house were grossly exaggerated in size but it turns out the Balinese don’t dramatise much in their art. Perhaps Ganesha does indeed have 4 arms? How else would you remove all those obstacles?

Yesterday, after an extended morning of breakfast and pool play, we headed into the hills for a visit to Brahmavihara-Arama, the site of a lesser known Buddhist monastery. After ensuring we were all sufficiently saronged and covered, we ascended the steps to peaceable living and learning. The monastary is open for lengthier stays and meditation retreats so some rooms remain closed to day visitors.

Time became a non-concern as we explored the compound, the grounds and the meditation rooms and yoga halls. Every direction offered tantalising details for the eyes to rest on.

Incense offerings swirled from bowls of sand at the foot of statues and sculptures. Some were carved from wood, others painted yellow-gold and others – a pristine, pearlecent white.

The garden grounds of the temple were possibly even more breath-taking than the chambers for sitting in stillness. Below the arcs of pink, yellow and white frangipani trees, oleander boughs and marigold-like blooms stood an endless gathering of Impala Lily bonsai trees. They’re not called that there though, since they have no Impalas. In Bali they’re known as Adeniums. Yet, a bonsai by any other name doth bloom as sweetly. Those not growing from pots stand with stretched necks from between the crevices of Brahmavihara’s rocks. “Here I am”, they all seem to say. “Watch me be.”

Every body of water holds a dreamscape of blooming nymphaeas. Waterlillies in every shade of woman. And among them stands the ever graceful lotus flowers, unfurling her pink, cupped petals like upturned palms, grateful for the rain.

Vic and I sat for a long, still pocket of time without bookends on the moss-terraced steps. They faced the homage monument to Borobudur temple – an impressive, dark stone-grey likeness of the original Mahayana Buddhist temple on Java – complete with iconic bell shaped turrets or stupas.

The wind blew in sweeps and waves, warblers swooping and singing in response. The sunlit backdrop gently faded to a kinder, late afternoon glow. That one space could hold so much serenity marvels the mind. Imagine if all the world lived in such stillness? A dream that starts with one.

Strangely, or perhaps not so much, everywhere I walked and paused to look, a this little old lady appeared, a waif of a woman, sweeping the grounds clean of fallen blooms.

Her figure may have been elderly, but she held her form with strength and agility. A folded, damp towel lay perched a-top her head, probably serving to cool her down. As though it was a permanent fixture of her form, she would drop to her haunches – an effortless Malasana, or what some know as ‘Goddess Squat’ – to gather up the withering buds and petals.

She seemed as much a part of the walls of Brahmavihara as the gnarled roots of the fig tree and moss-covered, cobbled pavers – an integral part of the peacekeeping. 

I found myself wondering if everyone could see her. Not in that she was a figment of my imagination, but in the sense of really seeing her, seeing what she was doing here, how she was serving us all.

We left the monestary as dusk set on, feeling that we really ought to find somewhere worthy to watch the sunset. Lovina is known for two things – dolphin tours and iconic sunsets. Urgency told us we should head down to the beach bars where we’re guarenteed to catch the seeping colours of sunset. But also the hordes. Impetus guided us in the opposite direction and with my spontenaity-loving husband at the helm, we were curving up into the winding neighbourhood streets before consensus could be agreed on. Higher and higher we went, the nectarine tinged clouds slipping further and further from view.

After much winding into the dense jungle thicket sloping up the backs of the Lovina mountains, we let go of a sunset vista that evening and embraced the adventure of a new landscape. Just as quickly as we’d settled into acceptance, the road we were on turned a sharp hairpin bend over a crooked, low-lying bridge and began snaking its way down the other side of the valley. Down down we looped and curved. The sky stained ever deeper orange. Without much warning, out of the thicket a structure emerged off the side of the road.

“What is this?”

“Is this a restaurant?”

“It looks like a house.”

“Shall we do it?” 

“I don’t know?”

“Are we getting out here?”

All dialogue unfolded into a flurry of excitement and confusion. In the background, clock ticking, the sky pigments saturated a burning hue into the horizon.

A mother dog and her puppy appeared out of nowhere, yapping urgency and excitement at our feet.

As it turned out, the wooden house on stilts was in fact a new warung recently opened. The timing of travel is like that. One moment, you feel the furthest from any cohesive plans. The next you feel as if the universe curated your heart’s most unrealistic desires. There we were – the only three people sitting on an expansive wooden deck, cold-enough beers in hand with grins like grapefruit wedges plastered on our faces as the sky god swept her bold brush of honey dipped hues across the washed out blues of her canvas. Java’s dusky, purple volcanos stood, ever silent, silhouetted in the far off distance. We had caught the sunset. Or perhaps she caught us?

My thoughts drifted back to the old lady of Brahmavihara sweeping up her own carpets of coral-coloured petals.

In the end you can build the monestary of the mind as beautiful as you like and sit in stillness at the base of your Borobudur as often as you care to practice. But peacefulness is not a state of blissful non-doing. If we don’t also invite the notion of sweeping together our wilting ideologies and fallen intentions as part of our daily practice, then impurities of the mind will always tarnish our inner temple.

Contentment is not so illusive if we allow the chores before us now – gifts of comforts gone by – to be a constant loving labour.

Sweep, sweep, sweep – 
even the scent of fallen flowers is
sweet, sweet, sweet.

 So, I’d love to know what you think in the comments below. If you’ve tried it, if you haven’t, if you’re gonna or if you think we’re just plain nuts!

Either way, it’s an honour for me to share it with you and to have the origin story of the peanut butter and tomato on toast combo live here on my website (or at least ‘an’ origin story as it is known to me).

Eating this little treat of strange deliciousness steeps me in gratitude for my grandfather’s life – that they were able to survive their time in the concentration camps in Indonesia and set up a life here in South Africa, is a testament to the resilience that runs in my family and I guess their quirky ingenuity too. Both are traits I’m proud to pay homage to. And if a little old toasted snack can bring about some reverence for life then who am I to deny it?

I’m not sure what combination of events lead me to developing my trait of ‘waiting things out’. You could say it’s remarkable patience, but if you’ve ever seen me pack a dishwasher you’d realise I have little of that in the collective sense.

The particular brand of patience I’m referring to is better described as an obstinate refusal to cave into the immediate gratification of Capitalism, the buying of material acquisitions, when I believe that – with the right ingredients, making the thing in question is not out of my reach. 

In the wake of these thoughts, a brutal storm by our usual winter standards, has battered the coastlines of the Cape. Aside from the damage to homes and infrastructure, the beaches lie under a turbulent expulsion of seaweed. Mounds of it. Entire forests of the ocean, tangled and unmoored from their swaying vertical beds.

It was a storm just like this several years ago that resulted in my finally being able to make something I longed for, but refused to buy.

Several years prior, browsing an upmarket home design store I came upon an enormous mirror framed in driftwood. It was breathtaking. Shades of time sculpted by the soft see-saw hands of the tides contrasting so beautifully with the slick mercurial reflections. It was a creation right up my ally but well without the bounds of my back account. Still, my fingers trailed over all the many jigsaw bits of washed up debris neatly arranged into this flotsam frame. One day, one day, was all I knew for certain.

I walked away wondering where or how I could bring something like that into being, but released the urge all the same. 

Then the storm came. Coffee cups in hand, a misty morning called my husband and I out from the warmth of lounge and curled up cats to the echoing chant of gulls along our nearby beach.

That storm too had ripped seaweed by the tons from their barnicled roots. But I guess the current must have come from a different direction. In among all the kelp we scooped up one after the other – bits of sculpted wood, boat hull or abandoned ocean debris – each one more peculiar than the next. Victor could see the twinkle of realisation in my eyes. We rushed off home, returning to the beach with buckets and containers large enough to carry all we were about to collect.

Several hours we combed up and down the seaweed strewn shoreline, picking up one after the other. It felt like Easter, finding treasures of delight tucked into the ordinary.

After a few sunny afternoons spent rinsing off all the sand and patiently waiting for one more basking of sunshine, my driftwood tiles were baked clean and glazed dry. 

We cleared some space on the dining room floor for the large mounting board, and dragged the old vertical mirror that stood at the end of the hallway out from her upright post. She was chipped and tarnished in some spots, but she was here, and I love nothing more than to work with what you’ve got.

What ensued felt like hours of deep time, acquainting myself with each and every piece of oceanic wood. Detritus to others, but in the hands of a long slumbering vision, gems of potential. I arranged them into straight bits, curved bits, wonky bits and edge bits, realising mid way through that this was exactly like building a family sized jigsaw puzzle – the kind that hogs the coffee table for many weeks during winter.

Some pieces were perfect for inside corners, others found their home on outside edges. 

It occurred to me in gentle swashes of absolution, like knowledge that lived on the ocean floor and could only be scooped out of a deep bowl with a shallow ladle a little bit at a time – that most things in life meant for you must be tidal. Sure we can control what we acquire by force, an exchange that money easily facilitates. I give you this, and for its value you give me that. An act executed by will.

But what about the things that your heart longs for that you cannot will into being or buy? A friendship, a lover, a place to call home, a family, a vocation that sits well with you. These are the things we stumble upon, pick up dust off and try to fit into the flotsam frames of our own lives, knowing full well that they don’t come to us clean and new. They come to us after their own tumbling, often stormy, journey, a little bit eroded, but uniquely beautiful in their own way. And only when walking as unexpectant gatherers, our arms empty and free can we scoop up what jetsam greets us on our journey.

You might not find it now, nor tomorrow or next month. But if you long for an experience of co-creativity and beauty, I do believe it will spill up on your path when you have the capacity to embrace it fully.

Those things, when found after many moons of patiently observing only that which already is, are worth far more, than anything ordered from a catalogue. I do believe it applies to kists, couches and companions for life. The ones we cobble together or restore and vow to love, nicks and all, will offer richer stories every time.

Writing has always felt like an escape, a channel for connecting with what makes sense. It was of course only an escape because it took me to beauty and simplicity, a place of creation with ease and away from things that felt obligatory and effortful.

the feditorial. museletter is my circling back to a place of truthful creation and the building of a legacy of transparency – this is what I’ve always been.

May the writings in these archives provide pleasant company on your own inward journeys.

– the archives of all museletters sent from the feditorial since it’s inception –

14 June 2024 – An introduction to the feditorial

21 June 2024 – What is the opposite of trying hard?

19 July 2024 – How to untangle the everywhere and nowhere label

20 August 2024 – From the archives | What is French?

30 September 2024 – It’s like a mini gado gado

18 October 2024 – Ageing advice from skeleton leaves

15 November 2024 – How you look, will define how you grow

15 January 2025 – Not all discipline is hard work

16 February 2025 – Why deny the obvious child?

16 March 2025 – Fast Forward to the past

15 April 2025 –  I want to tell you so many things

19 May 2025 – I almost said no – a commissioned portrait story

15 June 2025 – I wrote this for the children – the story of Iggy the Iguana

When is it sent out?

the feditorial is sent out monthly around the full moon to align with natural waxing energies of creativity and productivity.

Why is everything in lower case?

the feditorial is written entirely in lower case for three reasons:

one – because I know it will get under people’s skin for no other reason than that it is “breaking grammar law” – but since it’s not hurting anyone, it’s a small discomfort that acts as a nudge of subtle rebellion to lean outside of what we are programmed as and to question the things we blindly adhere to because that’s what we were taught.

two: it’s a reminder to myself to stay humble – that many problems occur when we inflate the ‘I’.

& three: because I am an artist first and I think lower case letters just look prettier.