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I started reading essays. Michel de Montaigne was recommended by a YouTube essayist, so I ordered the collection an dived in. I immediately felt like I had dived into the shallow end, proverbially hitting my head on the hard floor of simple concepts. (In truth, I have only read 2 essays of a tome that stands 1283 pages thick). And that was after I had read the forewords, the appendices, the editor's note and the biographical pages. I'm not saying brother Michel was shallow, b

Yesterday I went on a sour dough bread making workshop . It was slow, fun, fairly technical. We were grouped in teams of three - three per table, three per set of equipment. So, we talked. I was bundled in with a couple about my age - 50's, 60's. Their first question, why was I there? I said, my late husband wanted to buy this course for me for my birthday in 2023, but less than a week later he was dead, and it fell out of mind. Till now. Really what they wanted, other than t

Is Reza Pahlavi the One?

I wish I'd saved the Youtube video , so I could give credit where it's due. Some literary Millennial talking about how he wishes people would write essays. He gave us all permission to write any kind of essay we like, and not even include the school-mandatory summary in the concluding paragraph. A quick google, and here he is: Odysseas , in search of the Renaissance Man ideal, posting his footprints so we can follow his journey. I'm inspired. He says writing essays is a grea

Years ago, while I was still living in the city, I picked up a woman from the middle of the road who was running away from her husband, blood streaming down her face. It must have been a late winter afternoon, because night fell during that hour. She was weaving through rush hour traffic around the corner from my home, and I was bringing children home from some extracurricular activity. I couldn't involve them in the situation, so I quickly dropped them off at home, and turne

Shock breaks your brain, mostly temporarily. There's science about that. From my experiential perspective, it was a familiar story. It's not the first shock I've had. At first the slowing down of time, a kind of dislocation as adrenalin, perhaps cortisol sluiced into my bloodstream making my mind clear, my actions considered, orderly, efficient. No extra speed needed, just careful placement of feet, hands, elbows and knees to manoeuvre his body into a workable position. To ge

Within a week of my husband passing away I began to look for stories on YouTube of people who had had near death experiences. I kind of wanted to get a sense of what his experiences might be now full knowing that if near death experiences expressed some kind of reality that a near death experience might not be the same as a successful death experience so to speak. What's more is I had studied to be a medium more than a decade ago and I'm very comfortable with the idea of life

The garden's getting away from me. I like it's nonchalant wildness. But also, when our gardener gets back from leave, He'll mow the lawn so that the wildness of the veld grasses and the chaos of the burgeoning flower beds will seem curated. I'll walk a bit more confidently knowing that if I stick to the paths, I'm unlikely to step on a frog or a snake. If I want to venture into the wild verges, I'll go slowly, attentively, looking for threats or treats, and usually, in this r

It's because, normally, we think we know. We are predisposed to certainty - our brains project patterns onto the randomness of the world and reassure us: "Tomorrow will be just like this." Literally, our brains are designed to do this - create a sense of "normal" in the frontal cortex, so that anomalies can be noticed, and interrogated for threat or opportunity. It makes us comfortable, allows us to believe that we are in control. And so we live our lives of middle-class, anx

Within weeks of my husband passing away I snapped into self-care mode. Better than I have ever done in my entire life before. It resulted from the thought that this is certainly what my husband would have wanted me to do. Had he been able he would have driven me to the chiropractor and paid with his own credit card. And not just looking after my health: I got my hair sorted out, I bought some new skin care products, I bought a few new things to wear - and not just the cheapes

Covid lockdown changed me. Many of us. I started to write.