As Time Passes Quietly

Dear Sister, Dear Friend, and to
Those of Us who remember... days
Of hopeful anticipation, butterflies,
That prickling sensation, those
Moments before flight, when there
Was air under my feet, oh the joy,
Oh the lightness of breath… stepping
Forward into an adventure. Knowing
I'd never really know, but still...
Leaping, prancing, twirling with
Abandon, because life was spring
All was new and my spirit was free.

Now my dreams are muffled in
Coats of daily challenges, whether
Fair or not, it does not matter,
Really, truly, they do not define my
Self. Time slowly, quietly dances
Amongst the leaves of such splendor,
Such sublime lightness. The falling.
Who would have known? Certainly not
Me of the past. Thank God for that.

Green Flash

Seeing a green flash is somewhat similar to sighting a whale or having an iguana silently approach you while you sit still and silent at its water source... it is magic.

I am not sure you can capture the moment, or even should try. The green flash is all about anticipation. How can that possibly be anything by flighty?

The Strange Thing Is...

The strange thing is that most of my friends and many of my acquaintances are under the false impression that I am very computer suave. Sure, I've been at this a long time, but that does not mean that I necessarily know what I am doing.

What my friends do not realise is that sooooo often my son receives calls from me similar, truly, similar to these spoken on Byran's voicemail,



Dearest Long Suffering Son of Mine, thank you for your amazing patience when it comes to all the troubleshooting you have done over the years. Thank you for sending the link of the video above to your mother.

I don't know if there was any hint-hint-nudge-nudge intended... even if, you message well taken.

Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Doctor's

MakeUseOf is a brilliant site to get information just about everything to do with technology. If you want to know the who's who of media, or learn about new trends, or just gather new ideas, this is the site to go to.

This morning I stumbled across a description of a new web app called Ovulation. The app helps you figure out (presumably for those women/couples wanting to become pregnant) when you ovulate.

(mmm hmm...sipping my hot tea)

Initially, my reaction is, wow, we've sure come a long way since my young adult years, when fertility and ovulation cycles were not a topic of public discussion. Instead, here was a totally refreshing blatant proclamation,

"Numerous methods exist to solicit feedback after an event. However, sometimes the feedback is more timely and helpful if it can be gathered during the performance and Ovulation lets you do exactly that."

(letting the steam from my cup steam-up my glasses)

OK, my mind did a little trip... performance... what do they mean, when it's happening, or when you are performing that marvelous act of trying to make a baby during a time that increases your chance of it happening?

(my mind going into early 1960s primp sex education mode)

Then I read the final sentence,

"... It is a web app that allows you to create a page for your event, which your audience can go to using their smartphones."

(double take)

Ovation is a web app...

Usually, I am terribly tried being dyslexic. This morning it gave me ten minutes of uncontrollable mirth.

Anniversary Overlooked

I just realised that I forgot my sixth-year blogging anniversary. My heavens, how could that happen! Many marriages don't last that long.

And, yes, the first flush is long over. The "is this all" hit the wall, was rather messy, but I managed (hopefully) to clean it up without anyone noticing (thank you Charlotte and Kristi for your help on this occasion).

It almost makes me teary to think of all the ups-and-downs that I experienced over these six years. Would I start a blog today knowing what I know now?... to be honest, probably not. Would I want to miss out on blogging, no matter how sporadically it has become?... definitely not!

Directly connected to all approximately 1,200 blog entries are the nearly 250 collages I have made. It boggles my mind... here are a good slice of my favourite collages. (I know, you've seen them all, but I thought it would be appropriate to post the slideshow once again.)



I have met great people through my blogging, have developed deep and meaningful friendships, discovered brilliant ideas on other blogs, explored a lot of my inner landscape, and probably left behind the most important document in my life for my children to explore at their risk some time in the future.

Long live the internet!

New World

Many many years ago, I wrote three scripts for computer games for women. It was an idea before its time...the games blended video sequences, digital storylines, and mini-games into a gaming experience that was quirky and entertaining.

In order to try and find a game publisher, I attended a few game shows. And, while I was there I did manage to speak to people (men) involved in the business. They kindly introduced me to the ins-and-outs of the publishing business.

The gaming business is huge and exciting and a massive sub-culture many people never "get". Yet those who know their way around in this world have great stories to tell.

P.S. The scripts are still in their numerous binders in a storage cupboard. I got as far as having a few meetings with production managers of Sony Europe. Their final thought, "interesting, but too expensive to produce". One of these days I'll take the scripts out again and brush off the dust and see whether there is anything worth salvaging.

Strange Experience

Just came back from lunch at our local Mac-fast-food-place. Haven't been there for a while. Certainly not just when all the schools have closed for the day. It was very strange experience... the machines peeping endlessly away, much in the same way the monitoring units do on intensive care wards, the crowds of hungry teenagers, the rows of hamburgers being added to from one end and taken away from the other, very Tetras like...

Rambunctious Fun

Sometimes making music is a rambunctious sweaty fun sort of affair where the noise and foot stomping lends its vibes to the music on stage. Video in point. Can you feel the audience jumping up and down on each others toes?

The Art of Living Life Barefoot

There are two types of sailors. Ones that see the deck is wet and carpeted with sharp objects and wear the appropriate footwear. And those who slow down and get the feel of the danger by being barefoot. I was raised in a sailing tradition of the later.

If we put shoes or boots on while on-board, it took away a vital means of sensory perception. Instead of letting our feet help us “see” our way across the deck, we would blindly bump our way around.

The reason I am babbling on about this is because I spent a good part of the night (sleeping badly at the moment) thinking about the art of living one’s life barefoot. How there are whole groups of people or cultures that go through life so.

My early childhood in Venezuela and Grenada was completely barefoot. In my later childhood we were always so at home. We even tottered down the frozen driveway in deepest winter barefoot to dig the newspaper out of the snow bank without shoes. And there were the blissful summers where our feet never touched anything but stone, sand, grass, and hot pavement of the roads coming home late in the day.

Then nearly thirty years ago, I moved to Germany. A culture that doesn’t embrace bare feet. I’m sure you’ve seen the German tourists that wear sandals with socks. This just shows how clearly they don’t get the concept of going barefoot.

Ok, in the privacy of their homes, or while sitting in their gardens… yes, you can get a glimpse of folks here wiggling their toes. But that is about it.

I’m not saying this is wrong. It is just other. Not bad other or good other… just other.

Living here so long has changed me in many ways, but in no way as much as in this matter. I see American tourists walking through airports wearing flipflops, and shrink into myself. All those bared toes… in public… how inappropriate. I look at teenagers wearing bare feet in the cities during a hot summer day and think, spittle, grime, and dog poo.

Oh no, I’ve sold out! How could that happen? Could it be possible to retrieve that feeling a naked innocence of times past?

Would I have to take off my soft and warm slippers this cold rainy morning to do so?

Fashion Dork

Somewhere along the way from metamorphosing from a child who liked to climb trees and didn't give a thought to whether my socks were matched or my t-shirts were on the right way around, and becoming an adult who was trying to make herself as attractive as possible the James Dean types out there, I missed a critical step... learning about fashion.

Last Friday I attended my first fashion show. Actually, I attended the general rehearsal for that evening's fashion show. I spent more time wondering what drives the (amateur) models to want to become models than I paid attention to what they were wearing.

Danny Macaskill- Doing what he does best

I'm sure I've shown one or two of Danny Macaskill's cycle stunt odysseys. My son sent me the link to this one, The Industrial Revolutions, and I was struck how marvelous the film team managed to gather a balance between intricate and sweeping movements, between the mind and gut feelings.


Danny Macaskill - Industrial Revolutions (by cutmedia1)

I'm not sure what made Macaskill the hero of a brigade of young people who spend their lives doing stunt cycling... but I am glad he is succeeding in doing what he wants in life.

Slow Return

When I started this blog, all those years ago, I promised myself not to apologise, not to explain away bad blogging behaviour... but, I do want to say I am sorry for not idling here for such a long while.

The summer was a delightful one of continual guests. Oh, how easy it was to become distracted with friends and family knocking at my door daily, "Do you want to come out and play?" What better an invite could I wish for?



Not that you left my life... I did read you, one and all. And now that summer is more of a willful bedmate showing signs of wanting to leave, I promise more attention in the weeks to come.

Life's Wisdom

Link from my son today. Thought it would be good to share with you. Don't know about you, but Tetris is one of those games I played forever.

Trying to make Amends

During a recent visit with my younger brother and his family, it was pointed out that I had not included any photo or story of him in a family journal I created for my children years ago. This was a grave oversight.

An oversight I can only explain by the fact that those childhood memories, or the ones that I recorded, happened in my early childhood. Up until the time I was about 10-years-old. My brother, seven years younger, just didn’t figure into those times.

Later, when he was a young child, I was gone, having left home at 14. Now, I am perfectly aware that this is all just talk. So instead, I decided to try and make amends by creating this collage and writing him a poem.

The boy in the collage reminds me of my brother. I imagine the boy has been asked by an older brother to take his bicycle and put it into the garage. The boy is too small to ride the bicycle, but pride and excitement allow him to skim over the ground faster than any bicycle could.

(If you look closely, both his feet and one of the wheels are off the ground.)


Little Brother

We grew up in two different epochs.
Where those sitting at our family table
Varied in numbers and vulnerability.

You, with your joyous youthful naivety,
Were able to run light foot over ground,
Not once touching that precarious surface
Vibrating with its undercurrents of

Disgruntled teenager murmurings and
Old people’s loud whisperings,
“The times are changing. The end is near.”

Your world was filled instead with a
Giant imagination that transformed
All our adult pettiness into something noble
And worth worshipping, though we were
Not the heroes we could have been.
Should have been. The ones you deserved.

Homage to my Umbrella IV

To tell a story. To do so with self-depreciation and humility. To make choreography.

Heather McHugh does so brilliantly. I was going to quote the last words of the poem, the sage words, but that would be taking away the soul of the story. Do enjoy.

Hats Off To Akala

Hats off to Akala for rapping, ranting, raging, rhyming with heart and sharp eloquence. Please watch to the end. You can even listen twice. Pure energy and tension and still loose.

Homage to my Umbrella IV

There are no childhood memories more filled with sounds, smells, and touch then those summer days spent near water. Timeless moments with sand between my toes. Salt from the sea caked in the crevasses of my skin. The feel of the sun hard upon my scalp. Digging. Digging. For gold. For China.

Stopping briefly to run into the water. Quickly, secretly, I flip my bikini bottoms down so the cakes of sand can dissolve away from between my legs. Quickly. Joyfully. I dive deep down into the coldness. My breath sucked away. I struggle to surface. An intake of breath a triumph. The wind slaps waves into my face and up my nose.

Rushing back to shore, I plop back down in my hole to China.

Such memories are divine. They transport every cell of my body back in time.

Homage to my Umbrella III

Spending some delightful days in Amsterdam with friends. It rains. It shines. The talk flows. The laughter bubbles over.

This city holds many fond memories of youthful escapades I shared while visiting a South African dancer friend. Riding through the city on the back of his rackety bicycle in the wee hours of the morning. He'd rush into the company ballet class having consumed two cups of strong Dutch coffee. No sleep. He'd finish the day's rehearsal with an empty pack of cigarettes. Manage an evening performance, which he'd get free ticket for me to watch. Then we were off to a bar with theater friends.

Homage to my Umbrella II

The sound of the sea greets me in the dark hour before dawn. Salty foam from the white caps out at sea mingle with the turbulent sandy swirl of waves breaking over the coral reef just outside me open bedroom window.

There is a rhythmic intake of silence then a swooshing sound, and thankfully the thunder of a wave breaking below. My mind drops back into a dream on the plains of an Arabian desert. Sultans. Silk. Caravans. Salt. Spices. Images that jumped out of the pages of the book I am reading. It lies half open with my thumb marking my spot. The reading lamp draws night creatures even in the coming dawn.

Bird song. First tentatively. Chirp. Breep. Cheep. Then a sudden wild burst of abandonment. A symphony.

My breath changes. My limbs shift. My mind wakens again, but this time to the day.

Homage to my Umbrella I

Summer is here and the only thing I can say is, "Are you kidding?" I'm not going to talk about the weather, no matter how strange and horrible it might be. Instead, I've decided to do a series of "Homage to my Umbrella" collages, with little or no comment.

Long ago, there was a time when I loved nothing better than going for walks during storms. Ah, my early 20s, when primal fears and melancholic indulgences ran amok. Fortunately, I had some chums who would accompany me on these excursions. Snow, sleet, fog, torrential rains... all good elements to batter down my moodiness.

Looking back on those days, I imagine the me-then calling up today and asking the me-now to go out for a walk and the only thing that comes to mind is, "Are you kidding?"