On beauty...

I know you're not supposed to feed them but.... how can I resist? They're completely beguiling, surprisingly tame and I am totally seduced by their beauty. 
My rainbow lorikeet friends. These two come visit me every second day and if they can't find me, they fly around to each window and peer in and tap and trill until I appear like a dutiful slave to appease their every whim. Ok so producing a few seed-filled breadcrumbs isn't that hard, but the point is, there's something magnetic about them that is impossible to ignore. 
My very wise friend in Africa always tells me birds are the messengers of the gods and when they come calling we must listen to them. My very wise Aboriginal friend also speaks of the wisdom of birds. She tells me that the birds will only come to you because they choose you, and they have knowledge of the world that only they can see because they fly above it and look down and see all that goes on in this place...
Birds have always been a rich source of inspiration in mythology, legend, symbolism and literature and when you see these little fellas on your balcony the obvious question is: how did the birds get their colours? 

The Word Cup of Football

My sole interest in the 2010 FIFA World Cup lies in checking out the space-age stadiums and trying to spot my Japie mates in the crowd. Hello Thorntons hello Spencers hello BreadHead!
Then Doris from Sandton sent me this enchanting fan photo from the Boston Globe, which was crying out to be shared, so I got to thinking about the World Cup and literature (which incidentally, if you make a typo when spelling as I just did, comes out as Word Cup...ha!).
Anyhow, there is a link. Ben Schott, author of Schott's Original Miscellany and subsequent volumes, writes a blog for the New York Times called Schott's Vocab, which he describes as: 'a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles - some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy...'
He's created an almanac of facts and statistics pertaining to the Soccer World Cup which kicked off in South Africa last Friday.
Soccerphiles can check out all the gory details in his Schott Op-Chart: Soccer World Cup Miscellany.
To see the complete collection of images in the Globe's brilliant World Cup photo essay, click here.

Best books countdown - an aviatrix and a seductress

Christmas rain is fantastic for two reasons. 
Because our great, thirsty land desperately needs it. And it's the perfect excuse for enjoying a post-Christmas cook-up repose with a new book straight out of Santa's sack.
With only three (!!) days left of 2009, I've come up with my three best books of the year... 
Today's choice is a brilliant biography which I've loved for years but it gets a mention because I re-read it this year and it was no less gripping. Sign of a true classic I say.
The book is The Lives of Beryl Markham, by Errol Trzebinski and the front cover tags her as 'Out of Africa's hidden seductress'. (Try a secondhand bookstore - it was first published in 1993.)
Beryl Markham grew up in Kenya and throughout her tough, primitive, glamorous and often amoral life she stirred the feathers of the colonial elite in East Africa, courting fame and admiration across the globe. As well as a fair dose of scandal.
In 1936 Beryl was the first woman to fly solo west across the Atlantic. 
She was also a champion horse breeder and, on earning her wings, ran the first airmail runs across Africa in the days when pilots still repaired their own aircraft on the fly and the plains of the Serengeti were blanketed by magnificent herds of wildlife roaming free from the scourge of poaching and land-grabbing.
This is the story of someone who took life by the horns and rode it to the edge of the earth, constantly challenging herself and those she influenced to seek out new horizons both internally and externally.
In a captivating twist, one of the great loves of her life was safari hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, famously portrayed by Robert Redford in the film Out Of Africa. It appears Karen Blixen was not Denys' only mistress...
If you like a great bio and are looking for something un-put-downable - this is it!

Who wants to play magnetic poetry?!...

This is for my friend Crabbs who celebrated a big birthday in Africa this weekend. 

It's inspired by recent reminiscence over a weekend gone bush with the gang in northern KwaZulu Natal years ago. Specifically, a night of magnetic poetry around the campfire (it took some convincing I might add) that produced some surprisingly impressive works.

Luckily (!) our efforts were recorded for posterity and are treasured in the Rubyfire vault... 

Magnetic poetry doesn't just have to be a drinking game. 

Think of it as throwing an aerosol into the bonfire of your imagination and fanning the flames of your creativity. Whooshka!

The rules go like this:

1. Pick a handful of words out of the magnetic word bag.

2. Create a poem out of them.

3. Don't worry if it doesn't make sense. That's what poetic license is for.

In defence of our Sobhengu anthology - which, should it ever see the light of day, might be displayed in the 'bawdy and purile with flashes of self-proclaimed brilliance' section of the poetry aisle - it's more difficult than you think. So today's effort is certainly no Pulitzer Prize contender...but at least it's clean.

Catch me if you can...

This may look like any old wardrobe to you, but it's a 50 x 150cm piece of local apartheid cultural history in South Africa.

This is my friend Taryn's wardrobe and it has a wonderful story.

Recently restoring her beautiful home in the affluent and leafy suburb of Greenside, Johannesburg, she discovered the bricks and mortar hold many a secret, including this one... Deep within the quiet darkness where her husband Andy's denims now hang, this wardrobe frequently gave shelter to Oliver Tambo and various of his ANC comrades, hiding their tracks from authorities.

O.R. Tambo, along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, was a founding member of the ANC Youth League in 1943. He became Deputy President of the ANC in 1958 and a year later was banned by the government from political activity for five years.

During this time he'd meet his comrades in secret at Taryn's house, which was regularly visited by the cops trying to sniff him out. In response, the ANC sent Tambo to London to rally support for the anti-apartheid cause from his safehouse abroad. Like many others, there he stayed virtually in exile until returning to his homeland and the promise of freedom in 1990.

Did you notice the window? Strange to put a cupboard in front of a window you may think. Not really, when one needs to beat a hasty escape from a handy hideout into the dark night.

When you stand in front of it and touch the windowsill, you can almost smell the sweat of fear and feel the adrenalin of thumping hearts, crammed into the closet while police inquisition the hosts downstairs.

To have been a fly on the wall during those meetings, among that furious and driven brotherhood of men, would be a storyteller's dream. I love the mystery and history of this hiding spot... but the hellishness of having to take cover, among the trousers and shirt tails of others, in real fear for one's life gives me goosebumps.

A wonderfully whiffy tale...

'Did you do a poo on Mole's head. Well if not - then who?' The 'favourite characters' conversation has generated some lively discussion in Africa. My nine-year-old friend Josh presented a fabulous fictional character to his class in an English oral assignment recently.
The brief was to discuss his favourite animal character in a story. Without hesitation he chose Mole, from The Story Of The Little Mole Who Knew It Was None Of His Business, by Werner Holzwarth and Wolf Erlbruch.
It's a book I had given him for his third birthday, a cheeky tale of a mole trying to identify which of nature's beasts was responsible for pooping on him by investigating a myriad of spoor samples from the animal kingdom. Mole's story delighted Josh then as much as it does today.
Apparently it's a topic of hilarity and endless fascination among his cohort - poo.
His mother was worried his choice of character might kick up a stink but according to the teacher, Josh's speech brought the house down and he earned his best English grade ever.
Today's reading recommendation is enthusiastically endorsed by Grade 3 at DPHS Prep...!

In Africa...

Just arrived in Africa and stepping off the plane in Durban, South Africa, after a thumpy-bumpy flight through an early summer Kwa-Zulu Natal thunderstorm, the words that came to mind were:
"Ah but your land is beautiful..."
A quick reading recommendation, the third novel of renowned South African author Alan Paton, Ah But Your Land Is Beautiful.
Paton's more famous novel, Cry, The Beloved Country achieved international acclaim during the apartheid years. Both worth a read for anyone interested in a writer who speaks from the heart and with an intrinsic knowledge of his land and its people, that resonates even with those who have never set foot on the great continent of Africa.

On dreaming...

dream /drim/ n: A vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; Daydream; Reverie; A wild or vain fancy; A hope that gives one inspiration; An aim. - Macquarie Australian Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Not sure which one of those best describes my dream - maybe all of them! - but I do know that when your dream starts pounding ever louder in your head it's time to start listening.

Sir Laurens Van Der Post was onto something when he wrote of the Kalahari Bushmen: "Only a fool ignores the tapping within". (A Conversation with the African Bush; Wilderness and the Human Spirit, 1996.)
Living a nomadic and stark existence on the world's oldest continent, the Bushmen were way ahead of their time. Van Der Post recalled an incident just after WWII when he was on an exploratory mission in the Kalahari Desert for the British Government. 
One day his Bushman tracker broke apart from the group and parked off under a thorn tree. Impatient to continue, the intrepid adventurer asked his interpreter to get the man moving.
"No," he was told. "I can't do it. He is doing very important work. He is listening to his tapping." He went on to liken the Bushman's tapping to a white man's telegram.
"Don't you know we Bushmen have telegrams inside ourselves. This tapping tells us of things that are still to come, things so far away that we cannot see them yet, and that man there is listening in to his tapping to see where he must take us today. Only a fool will not listen in to his tapping when he hears this tapping starting up inside himself."
Here hear.
I'm hoping the tapping of my dream will match the tapping of the keyboard over the next 12 weeks as I try to give voice to my dream of writing a book. This blog is more of a self-motivator than anything, to track the process of writing. And maybe, just maybe, it might even be a story in itself... Wish me luck! R

9.20am today: my writing room, engine room for my dream. 

9.21am: watching from the balcony as 16 yr old Jessica Watson sails away on her dream voyage around the globe.