The Hot-ness.

If assy blondes are your bag you better buy a ring cause I ain't gonna last long on this shelf over here.

I recommend you come and witness the extent of my assy blond-ness by coming to watch me jog between 5 - 6 at night.  Now hold on you eager beaver.  You have to stand in line.  That's right, qeue up buddy.  There are other drunk and homeless people who like to watch my junk jump.

That's right.  It jumps.  I know this because it was shouted at me as I jogged by a collection of men who have teeth missing, smell like pee and could be my father.  Wait, that's not fair.  That one guy might have been fifteen for all I know.  Dirt, lack of sleep and abusing substances from the time you can say "pass the glue" would age the best of us.

Happy new year friends.

May TwentyZen bring out the best in all of us.

love and appreciation,

Alice

Sylvia Plath

Elm
for Ruth Fainlight

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults

That kill, that kill, that kill.

Dinner.

Feeling unhealthy?

Is nutrition sorely lacking in your diet??

Why not make that old family favorite tonight:

TUNA DORITO SURPRISE!!

Let me pass on the secret recipe to you, as taught to me by my food gurus at the Burning Man.

Ingredients:

Ramen noodles  (or 2 minute noodles in SA)

Canned tuna

Doritos (your favorite flavor)

Meex it up.

Chow it down.

Voila!

(Guaranteed to put a smile on your face when you're a broke-ass bitch.)

I know what comes next.

It’s the comfort that I’m afraid of. And the predictability standing behind it and patting  me on the back.

Too much comfort will kill you people. The most comfortable you’re ever going to be is when you lie down in that big wooden box one day and get lowered into the ground where no one can disturb you. Now that's comfort.

Let's think for a moment on the characteristics of Life:

1. Movement is a biggy.  You stop moving, you're out of the game.
2. Followed closely by action.  Think about any book/movie/play you have recently gone to see.  The good ones are action packed.  No one cares about watching someone talking their head off, no.  We want to see them physically struggle with something, otherwise it's not really that interesting.
3. Breathing.  Which causes your chest to move and is deepened and activated by action in the body.

Ofcourse you can get by with the minimum of all of the above, but do you really want to?

My life before I went to the US was more predictable than time. There was nothing, and I do mean nothing that happened that was surprising, exciting or fun. My life had turned into a giant cushion of comfort and security and I was the main feature. And when I say main I mean big.  Large.  Spreading exponentially.  I closely resembled the cushion towards the end.

I could feel it happening but thought nothing of it at first.  We all know the drill: you move in with someone and instantly drop into homemaker mode.  You nest.  You spend time together at your new home because you're so goddamn proud of it.  You think it's ok because you're not going to sit on that couch forever, it's just for a bit till you get over the nesting phase, which should happen at any moment except it doesn't and your life becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until you don't know how or when it happened and there's no going back.

At some point about a year down the line I knew it was happening and I tried to move things a bit.  I started walking and jogging, but it didn't really help seeing as the high point of my day was what I was cooking for dinner.  Seriously, some days I would go to buy food just so I could see other people.  (If you are considering working from home I hope you have a live-in family or good friends that live real close by.)  No matter what I did I couldn't jolt myself out of that place.  I just couldn't shake it. 

The only way I could bring myself back to life was to give it all up.  It was a high price to pay, and I'm still paying it, but perhaps that's why I value it so much.

I don’t want to go back to Comfort Land. I want to stay active, stay surprised by the world around me. I want to remain an adventurer regardless of what happens. How do you do that when you live in one place and drive to work everyday the same way to do a job you’ve done for years and can do with your eyes closed? How do you do it without going completely bonkers?

I’m scared, dear reader. Before I left I was going to bed at 9pm and getting up around 6am. Then I would have a little snooze in the afternoon, after having read some of my book. I would listen to classical music a lot and spend enormous chunks of time on my own, and guess what I’ve spent most of my last week doing???
Please Universe, please. Don’t let me go back there. Help me to create a new life, to find a new challenge. Help me to better myself, to live life to the full, to grab it in both my hands and savour every single moment of it.
There is so much to see out there, the world is so big.

Only slightly scared out of my wits,


Alice

Yearn.

Today I dream of far away places.

There’s an ashram in India where I scrub the floors for hours on end and meditate for the rest.
An Irish pub where I’m hanging out with my work colleagues.
In Scotland I meet the most beautiful man in the world.
In Peru I become a monk and live a pious life surrounded by mountains.
In Australia I hike up a gorge and when I look over my shoulder it’s just wild wild wild.
In America I live on a farm in New Mexico and grow my own vegetables.

This time I would know what to pack.  I would get better bags and buy an ipod before I leave.  A new pair of sneakers would be good, I already have a netbook... 


I dream. I dream.

Released.

Today is Tuesday the 29th of December 2009.

One month has passed since I waved goodbye to the cousin, got on a plane and landed back in Cape Town 22 hours later where ye old dad was waiting for me.

So much has happened, so little.

This morning I finally managed to track down my favorite cushion from the mountain of my posessions gathering dust in the garage.  I also finally managed to find my cd's which has made my day a smiley one.

Last night I had a 20 minute conversation with the X concerning posessions and cats - it's the longest we've spoken in 2 months - and this evening my trusted friend Poxy will swing by his house to get my stuff and bring them back to me.

One month exactly, to the day.  A month spent praying, negotiating, fighting.  Perhaps today I feel released of all things gone and past.  And since I don't have to think about what was anymore I can finally really start thinking about the future.

I hope month 2 delivers a home and a job.

Or perhaps the opposite. 

May it deliver the opportunity for more travel.  (The lottery would be nice.)  A new job abroad? 

More than anything, I want new adventure, a challenge for yours truly.

Don't hold back Universe,

I'm ready when you are.

Take me to your dealer.

Writing a blog when you have no life is an interesting dilemma.  (Luckily I'm more of a "glass half full" kind of person, which is probably good under the circumstances.)

It's not the easiest thing in the world to enthrall a readership when you do little more than cruise the internet for a place to live, eat food, sleep, stare blankly at the wall... 

I know.  You're riveted aren't you.

Go on, admit it.  You're sick to death hearing about me struggling to let go of the same old things, the same story over and over again. 

Let me tell you, it's getting to me as well. 

I need adventure.  Some new juice in my bones. 

Now if I could just find a dealer...

Anyone?

A balancing trick.

Western ideology demonises the chaotic, the unpredictable, the cyclical, the feminine and the destructive element inherent in every single thing. In all other traditions (that I know of)the opposing nature of the world is embraced, praised and accepted as a fact of life. Voodoun, Greek mythology, Indian mythology, all of these pay tribute to the darkness, the Kingdom of death, destruction in all its different aspects.



Perhaps the fact that the society that I grew up in doesn’t acknowledge these things is partly responsible for the devastating way in which we deal with death, with turmoil in our own lives and the lives of those around us. We push it away, shove it under the carpet and refuse to fully acknowledge it, knowing somewhere in the depths of our being that it is the villain we need to keep at arm’s length. We don’t want to be associated with it. We fear the unknown.


Both the “good” and the “bad” are necessary in the creation of something whole. Is it surprising that the American preacher that everyone believed in was having a sexual affair with a man on the side? In my world view he was merely acting out of the base of his core, trying to naturally balance himself. Is it also so far fetched that celebrities set themselves up to fall time and time again? Tiger Woods, considered one of the most powerful men in the world, that he would be such a philandering womaniser, is it really such a surprise? Perhaps he was merely seeking to right the balance in his own existence. In truth, he has done a great job of it!


We all have interactions with the dark, be it through an experience in which we are abused, mugged, attacked or victimised or whether it only happens in our dreams, whether we create it for ourselves, we are always aware of it crawling on the periferies of our vision, just out of reach waiting for an opportunity to engage.


Should your life be lived in squalor and darkness, there will always be a ray of light somewhere on the perifery of your life, ready to stand in whenever you should require it. The world supplies us always with what we need, whether we like it or not. The world supports us in all its awesomeness.


As we live, we die. As we prosper, some part of ourselves seek out the destructive and the under handed to balance out the light. The more we try to hide it the more demanding it becomes, in fact, the more it may control our lives.


The darkness challenges us. It offers us power by ripping us apart. It gives us the opportunity to put ouselves back together in a new way we could never have done without dying a little.


The past six months ripped up my previous life down to the roots and I’ve fought it every single inch of the way, even though I wanted a new start so badly. Even though I asked for it.


Two days ago I finally gave up and stopped fighting.


I think I can breathe again now.

Accountability.

I had not paid attention to it, but once Don Juan made me aware of it, I also noticed an incredible silence in the desert around the house.

"Don't get jumpy," he said calmly.  "There is nothing in this world that a warrior cannot account for.  You see, a warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose.  The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything."

                                                         -   Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda.

The sound of Bells.

Dear Universe,

It's flippin Christmas!  Which means time to eat, drink and be merry. 
Mine will be spent with a psychologist who’s also a tarot reader, a lesbian who’s a medium, a medium who’s a hair colorist, three Americans and a pitbull. Parts of it will involve sushi, other parts barbequeing in Sea Point. (I might also get a free haircut out of the deal.)


This will be my first Christmas not spent with close family, either mine or my significant other’s. It means I have grown up this year. It means I hold my own.


Happy, happy Christmas to you, Universe.  Thanks for the kicks, the dreams, the people and the laughs.  Thanks for the pain, the suffering, the hardship and the joy.  May we still be doing it this time next year.


Yours truly.

Burn the maps.

I drive through the streets of Cape Town. 
They map a tale of lost love
like a faded photograph
a song I used to sing.


I drive through
Stellenbosch
Kogel bay
Wynberg.


This is the street where we held hands.
Where we kissed.
Here we had a fight.
Here we laughed.
We talked.
We understood.
We witnessed.
We held.
We kissed.
We kissed.


I drive through Bloubergstrand
I drive through Melkbos
in the rain in December
and I think:
What a strange day for rain. 

Your maps were burnt a long time ago.


I will need a cartographer
to etch out new lines on mine.

Bring it home.

My knack for annoying people seems to have branched out. It now also includes small furry animals.



On my first day in the flat in Stellenbosch I saw just the sweetest little squirrel running around outside. I watched hypnotised as it ran along the rafters, once with a nut in its mouth, once without, once with, once without. Such a great example of diligence I thought. What a sweet neighbour.


That was till I actually opened the back door. Well. Let me tell you, everytime I do that squirrel pops out of nowhere and puts up an academy award winning performance in which I’m the husband who’s just arrived home at 3am drunk. The tail taught, the scream high pitched, running forward and backward like it’s calling the troops and showing the enemy in the distance. Except I’m like two meters away.


After the squirrel has finally gotten the award, thanked it’s parents, God and it’s lover I attempt to water the garden. Here I have to contend with a small brown mouse who inevitably is in disagreement with my decision to wet everything. It runs from this bush to that, and back to the first. If it’s screaming at me (which is suspect it probably is) it’s in a pitch foreign to my ears, and if it’s attempting to get rid of me all and all it’s not doing as good a job of it as the squirrel is.


Perhaps I should follow the example set by one of my American hosts. They were resident in New Yersey and had bear cut-outs in the back garden which supposedly kept live ones at bay.


Perhaps I shall make myself a collection of mouse- and squirrel family cut-outs and position them amongst the plants in the backyard to see if this strategy really works. Perhaps I shall indeed.


This is what is called bringing the knowledge home and applying it at grass roots level people.

Blondie

Schedules.

I watch the news. They say it’s snowing wildly on the east coast of America. I think about my cousin and her husband in their little house in Great Neck. I imagine them huddling together, not able to go anywhere really, just watching tv and eating and sleeping and working. I imagine the snow falling and falling.



My original scheduled flight was for the 17th of December. That was before Standard Bank lost my money. (I still haven’t gotten it back.) My flight would’ve been canceled according to the news. All the planes have been grounded. Who knows what would have happened.


I wonder if it would have been any easier if I came back only now.


I doubt it.

In one spot.

I walk out the door because I have to walk. Everyday I find myself sitting more: in my car, in a restaurant, behind a computer. I am sitting again. Gone is the exploring, the getting lost in strange cities. I have to walk but I know this place well so I just pretend to be going somewhere and I walk all the way to the bottom of Dorp Street and then turn around and walk back. I watch the foreigners walking arm in arm and pointing and laughing. They are mostly Dutch and German. They think Stellenbosch is Eden.



At the bead shop I stop and buy two packets of beads: one red bag and one blue. I’m going to make bracelets out of them. I will wear the red beads on my left arm and the blue ones on my right. It will be the first time since I left that I wear beads because I decided to take them off for the first time in 8 years before my trip. I took them off.


I have an extensive (and expensive) bead collection of my own but it’s at Roxanne’s and I keep forgetting to take it when I’m there. I get home and I think I forgot to take my beads again and then it’s too late and I’m still not wearing any. I’m taking matters into my own hands you see.


My legs ache at night. I’ve been thinking about joining the gym but we all know how that story ends. So the last couple of days I’ve taken to jogging on the spot. Yesterday I jogged in place for an hour and a half. I jogged in the lounge in one spot till the sweat poured down my face and my legs hurt.


But actually if I think about it I’ve been jogging in one spot for about a month now.

A wish.

2009 will go down as a year of great highs and lows for yours truly. Many things have been discovered and many things lost.

Perhaps the most painful was losing the same person three times: first as a lover, then as a companion and finally as a friend. (The last being by far the most painful.)

A Year of Great Love Lost, Found and Destroyed.
The year my heart couldn’t walk but my body went everywhere.


Dear Universe,
My wish for the future is simple:


May I be less disabled in 2010.

Lost. Found.

My life is still in boxes. They’re standing in the garage of the flat where I’m living in Stellenbosch, and everytime I open the door they eye me from afar. I’ve opened a whole lot of them, searching for my favorite things: a very expensive cushion for my weary head, my cd collection. Neither has been found and slowly but surely it is starting to drive me mad.



However, on a small outing into town this morning I found large quantities of the Butterfingers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that I dragged from abroad for my nieces and nephews, and further down the road I even found the Redken Shampoo my mother wanted from America and that I couldn’t find and spend days searching for.


Those I could find.  But my cd's...

Reward.

This week I put together my entire blog in a word document, edited out the pics and the entries urging you to join, and then triumpantly printed out all 128 pages of it. I had it bound beautifully and brought it home (word used very loosely) where It can now be found lying on the table next to my bed. It’s big and thick I’ll have you know. It looks rather impressive.



I feel like I actually accomplished something whilst I was away.

Sucka.

It has been my hope to move to Stellenbosch for quite some time.  However, after spending the last week or two driving to and from Cape Town like a woman posessed I am reconsidering.

For the first time in a long time maybe moving back to town sounds plausable: it will be great to be surrounded by friends.  One of the best phases of my life was when I was staying in a block of flats where one of my best friends was also resident.  We both had our own flats but were close enough to drop in for a sundowner and far enough away to not feel cramped.  What a great set-up!  In reality this is probably what I desire with a future mate.  After having lived with four different men in my life it has become abundantly clear to me that I have about a year and a half of co-habitating before it all goes to shit.  The year and a half can be divided into 3 distinct parts:

Part 1:  Love.  Nesting.  Happiness.
Part 2:  Comfort zone.  Feeling stuck.  Frustration.
Part 3:  Figuring out how to split.  Splitting.  Moving.

Arrrgh.  I don't think I could do it again.  But then that's what I said last time... 

I wish I wasn't such a sucker for love.

Oh balls.

With the hair colour job on the house and feeling absolutely gorge, a free haircut is promised and after some telephone action a date is set for Thursday. 

Now, I need to cut.  The hair on the back of my head has gone more of a cheesy yellow than a platinum blonde and although it doesn't really bother me, being on the back of my head where I can't see it, it totally has to go. I am planning on growing my shag out a bit  though and at some point in the future envision having lovely long locks again, as inspired by my new bud Marilyn, so really its just a trim.  What could go wrong?

My wonderful friend Rox is my hair connection.  She works at a very upscale hair salon in Sea point as a colorist and has organised out of the goodness of her pure and lovely heart for one of the appy's there to cut my hair, mahala.  (Meaning for free Julie!)   Now who turns down a free haircut my friends?  Certainly not me.

I knew I was getting an apprentice from the start, which seemed totally fine as I was certain that she had had lots of training and had in fact practiced on other human beings,  but when I realised that my appy has to be overseen by a professional and when she starts off saying things like "So am I cutting up or down?" it's cause for some concern. 

Fear is the last thing you want the appy to witness though.  You don't want to broadcast it and make her feel any more nervous than she needs to be when she's clutching your hair between her fingers.  So you smile calmly, exuding an air that clearly says: ""I trust you.  You know what you're doing.  Hair?  Who CARES about hair anyway."  When actually you're thinking "That's my sex life you're clutching between your fingers bitch.  BE CAREFUL."

As Mr Cool guy who looks like just the most fabulous hairdresser ever shows poppie what to do she keeps asking:  "But why, why do you want me to do it like that.  Ag Eric, you're such a perfectionist!" and then she laughs.  I disagree with her.  I'm quite fond of the fact that Eric is a perfectionist myself.  

It's striking that neither of them have ventured to ask me what it is I was hoping to achieve with this haircut and so after listening to them debating for awhile I offer an opinion:  (cough-cough)  You know, in my experience (it being my head and all) when you thin my hair in that way you are demonstrating there, it ends up looking like my hair has been eaten by a rat sort of.  You see, my hair is very thin," I say.  Afer a moments pause they both burst out in suppressed fits of laughter and give me that look that says: "You have no cooking clue what you're talking about," but ofcourse they don't say it, they just ignore me and carry on talking amongst themselves.

At this point it all becomes a bit blurry.  I guess I can't blame them completely because I do recall myself saying someting to the effect of: "Nope.  That's not the way the girl in San Francisco did it.  She cut it MUCH shorter."  I remember the chair swiveling, the sound of hairdryers and people chatting and I distinctly remember praying to God repeatedly and saying:  "Dear God.  Right now I'm hot.  I love my hair. I love that's it's growing and that's it's feminine.  Please, please don't turn me into an a-sexual lesbian with bleached hair.

Alack alas dear reader, God it seems, doesn't believe in me.  When I looked in the mirror one and a half hours later I saw Marilyn ducking out the door in a rush, without even a goodbye, and I felt somewhat betrayed, the friendship having been so new and all.

Dear Universe,
Does this mean I have to give the balls back?

Into the Wild.

I've made a new friend.  Sure she's invisible, but we all make do with what we have people.  We met the same day that I miraculously turned into a platinum blonde and we've been known to partake in each other's company ever since. 

Day 1.  There I was, looking at myself in the mirror and thinking: Hell, blonde is totally hot on you! When out of nowhere she materialised behind me and kissed me on the cheek. She introduced herself as Marilyn, giggled like a fountain and instantly I was in love.  Now I'm not a lesbian but she can park her white slippers under my sofa anytime.  The world seems to agree with me on that one.  She's a very pretty lady, just hard to focus on her face with a rack like that.

And then: poof, she's gone!  In a giant puff of sexy smoke.  I'm starting to get used to it but it took awhile, her always popping in and out of my life like that.  She never sticks around for very long and says very little.  Maybe it's just that I can't remember what that woman says because the cleavage just sucks you in like a giant vacuum of loveliness.

Day 2: a hot sweaty day in Stellenbosch.  I'm walking idly down the street when behind me a hear a man saying loudly:  "Jirre ma is dit nou nie a parrrragtige vrou nie."  And there she was, her skirts blowing up in the street, winking in my direction.

Day 3:  I stop to put petrol in my new sexy silver Daihatsu Sirion (for the second time this week) and the pump attendant gets all chatty:  "Now where did the missus get such a niiice car hey?  Did the missus' husband buy it?  No husband?  He-he-he-he.  The missus is too lovely mos."  And as I drive off:  "Keep on shining!" like a giant final hooray.  I look in my rearview mirror and there she is again, parked off in very little clothing in the backseat, sucking the life out of a cigarette who loved every moment of it.

Day 4.  An old lover, freshly divorced, proposes marriage over a long overdue dinner and when I look down there she is, sprawled on the ground, stroking his balls. 

Day 5.  He proposes again, over the phone this time as she sits down next to me and hands the pair over with a smirky smile and a cavernous cleavage. 

And so it seems that what people say is all true.  Blondes, and specifically of the platinum variety, have more fun, attract more attention and get more doors opened for them than any other brand of haircolour in a bottle.  (Mine does not come out of a bottle though.  God no.  I have connections in the hair colouring industry.)

Eddie Vedder's soundtrack to the movie "Into the Wild" is on a loop in my car.  I can't get enough of it, and in a strange sort of way I guess it's appropriate.  The film (based on the book by Jon Krakauer) tells the true story of Christopher McCandless who abandons society after graduating from university and sets out to Alaska without money, a car or any other posessions.  Let me not spoil the movie if you haven't seen it.  Suffice to say that at the end he realises that nothing means anything if it cannot be shared with someone else.
 
I relate.  Obviously he also didn't have anyone to hold the damn camera.

What have we done.

Ag my kind, I'm in alot of pain.  It's the back operation, you know I can't even type at the moment.  I don't know what I would have done if Lynette hadn't come to take care of me.  Do you remember her?  She's my sister, the one in Gordonsbay.

Louise, one of my oldest and dearest people.  I call her last night to say hi and tell her I'm back.

You must put me in your prayers child, it's been a hard year, she says.
It sounds like it has been for everyone, I say.
But not for you, you went overseas, you had a great time.
It was great my auntie, but it was hard too.  It was a remarkable experience, but it wasn't easy. 
Ag my kind, so much happened whilst you were gone.  Barbara's husband got hijacked and killed a couple of weeks ago. 
Barbara that works for you?
Ja you remember her?  She's the one who's boyfriend literally cut off her nose to spite her face all those years ago.
I remember her auntie.
When her husband died... It was terrible.  I thought of you because we had a big traditional funeral for him and I attended.  I was even allowed to sit with all the women, it was so amazing, so whole, seeing all those proud men mourn that way.  Did you know that the ancestors in Jozi wake up at 12 but in Mpumalanga they wake up at 11am?
Hmmm, I say.  In Botswana they wake up at 3am!
I can't help but feel a certain amount of white guilt you know, she says and sighs.
Why, I say.  Why do you feel guilty if her husband got hijacked?  There's nothing you or anyone else could have done about it.
Ja, I know, but you know when I went for this operation... I had 10 specialists dancing around me and poor Barbara... He could have survived if he'd been given blood a bit earlier.  They just didn't get to him quickly enough, you know?  He could have survived...

The hijacking stories really get under my skin because of my own hijacking, because friends of mine have died horribly this way.  How do you explain to people what happens to you when you've had a close encounter with something that dark?  It's like a disease that infects you and breaks open your world forever.  You can never go back to the way it was before.  Louise sounds defeated tonight.  Her voice drags on the phone.  What have we done in this country, she asks me before she puts down the phone. 

What have we done?

Disconnected.

Alice is currently offline and in search of a home, a life and a great wifi connection.

I won't be able to blog as often as I would like to, but will do my best to keep you posted.

Much love to all ya'll,

x

Lighten up.

The only thing to do in a situation like this is go for some good solid hair therapy. 

This is a tried and tested method of mine, sure to beat any bout of depression, and although it doesn't work all of the time it works most of the time.

I am now officially a platinum blonde.

Yeh baby.

Yeh!

Shell shock.

Change for me has always been accompanied by a hightened sense of death:  as the Ultimate Change it can be found in every micro-part of itself.  This time is no different.  I dream that I am shot, that I fall off the top of a building, that I am eaten by animals; gruesome dreams that shake me awake late at night.  I feel my skin burning off leaving raw open wounds behind and I wake clutching myself.

Slowly I drop back into a couple of storylines.  I am the character in the soapie that mysteriously disappeared 6 months ago and my surprise return has left everyone agasp.  I've been re-cast as the villian/bitch/disillusioned child who brings a renewed sense of drama to the scene and mechanically I play my part, as surprised by it as everyone else.

In the first week of returning to SA (exactly like in my first week in the US) I have lost people I believed I never would, fought with people I never expected to and realised that 2009 will go down as a life-changing and painful year for yours truly.

I am spinning like a top. 

Deja Vous

Hold on a minute.  This is starting to feel suspiciously similar to the first couple of weeks I spent in the US:

Let's see:

1. Jetlag
2. Disorientation
3. Doubt
4. No home
5. No car
6. No cutting clue what's happening next
7. The crazy smile that tries to say "I'm fine!" but ends up saying "take me to the closest sanitarium"

Only difference is that instead of trying to let go I'm now trying to put down roots and really I don't know who's idea that was.   

Not loving it today.  Can I please cancel my reality check doctor?