The Durban Dolls and Louis' Braai.

I like Afrikaans girls. I like it better when Afrikaans girls have birthday parties on the beach.

I went to a birthday party of an Afrikaans girl and yes-sir-ee indeed it was on the beach. This summer has by far been one of the best yet. My usual experience has been to come home from Cape Town and be so overwhelmed at sheer abnormality of having a television with DSTV that i sit in it's bluish glow for days on end in reaction to its prowess and my laziness. Make no mistake, i venture out of my house on weekends, but during the weeks i spend quality time with familiarizing myself with all the latest movies that DSTV have purchased the rights to. A sad existence that is indeed. It's not that i had any sort of visionary purpose this year, rather it appears that things have magnetically been falling into place, as things from time to time do. I have had the privilege of spending time up in Ballito, down in Umhlanga, across in Westville and nearly all the way up to Johannesburg. I have fraternized with Australians and Americans, have ridden my bicycle until i nearly fainted or vomited - it was hard to tell what my body was reacting to - and i have attained for myself a very literal red neck.

Summer, however was encapsulated in this one day on this one beach. I think my memory stacks are piled high with senses of what i saw and who i saw it with. Yesterday i saw some old friends and saw things that i have not seen in the longest time. It was Leandi's birthday and she decided to spend the day on a beach, two down from Thompson's Bay. This is only important to take note of when you and Louis are assigned to carry the cooler box stacked with liquids, that was designed by sadists. Basically there was no way, bar tele-porting the cooler box, that you could carry the blinking thing without crushing your knuckles against the royal blue sides of the royal pain in my neck. And my knuckles too. After circumventing (I'm almost positive that that word does not mean what i want it to mean there) two incredibly large molehills which Louis and I both feel we have the right to inaugurate into mountain status, we arrived at a fairly secluded spot on the North Coast map of all things beautiful. Every now and then a group of people would cross our little hole cut out of the mountain - but for the most part it was all ours. The rocks out front made this ridiculously cool tidal pool and the rocks out back gave us enough shade to shelter in after. I would say the day was perfect. I would love to carry on and describe the awesomeness of this day with all the adjectives that I can muster up but if a picture is worth a thousand words then indeed a touch is worth them all.




My logic of perfection however, I will take a moment to deliberate on. I have come to the belief that heaven can and will and is achievable on earth. Maybe it is also somewhere up in the sky, but its hard to imagine what else we could have described yesterday as being. My understanding of heaven however must always include people. Other people mostly. The whole ubuntu deal, you know - I am a person because of other people and if that is true then I ought to be doing my upmost in making the humanity of my brothers and sisters and indeed enemies as meaningful as possible.

But yesterday we did not go to the beach to help other people, I suppose in a sense we went to the beach to help ourselves which in turn I am not completely convinced is utterly evil. You see someone much cleverer than I, with a lot more insight than I into this subject pioneered and explored this subject of useless beauty. If I have understood the theory correctly, basically it surmises to say that there exists a ton (not literal) of beauty out there that might never be witnessed by any human eye or heart. The question then arises - well what is the point of all the useless beauty - because surely this multi-verse and the earth sustained within is functional. Everything that exists must have a purpose, or according to Charles and his friends, will face extinction at the hands or feelers of a fitter species. What is the point of all that ridiculous beauty out there just off to the side of Thompson's Bay? Sure it's not entirely wasted on the human heart or eye, but on a cosmic scale - it pales into insignificance. I am not out to suggest either, that God made that beach for that one day and for Leandi and her friends. I wouldn't be that presumptuous or arrogant, I am however out to suggest that I can't help but be in love with the Being that can and does create absurdly beautiful days that mark as specks on the timeline of history. I will gladly look past obvious wonder of what met my eyes yesterday and look full, with my heart to the sustainer and giver and yet in all it's complexity - the taker of life, and in the compoundment of that all - the renewer of life.

I think we got a little bit of heaven yesterday. But the great thing about that whole experience was not that we were by any means a perfect little community of people. I mean, the conversations had weren't incredibly profound or anything like that. In fact Between Louis, Zac and myself we couldn't even provide a Braai for the girls to cook their food on. But mostly it was Louis who couldn't keep the fire going. Even we, as sturdy and proud as we are, needed a little rescuing by the hand of Leandi's Dad.



Mr. Leandi's Dad, ons sal vir altyd, so baie gelukkig wees op daai wonderlikke smaaklikke boerewors rolletjies. Honger is nie die beste kok nie, U is.

Westville Is For Lovers.

It has been a while, hasn't it. It is an actual ridiculosity, the state of my dependence on all things electronic, and case in point - the intraweb. Enough dilly-dallying though, there is much to tell that has happened over the last two weeks.

We have established that I am in Durban. I Love Durban. I love the sweat and motion of the suburbs, the hustle of the unfairly warm ocean and of course - the rain. Last week saw to me entertaining Nick who comes all the way from Cape Town, the highlight of which trip can be collected in this one experience. We shall call it wake-skating, or flow-boarding, or maybe tow-skate-waking. It's hard to tell what it is, apart from being downright fun. Basically what you need to do is attach a sturdy rope to the back of a moving golf cart, get your friend Tom to drive and then you hold on to said rope whilst balancing on a cheap skateboard from the last decade, purchased from Makro. I think in some parts of the free world it is actually an illegal past-time. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. And then like the shirts from Mr. Price say - it gets absolutely hilarious. Safe to say Nick saw his guava, not once but twice and at quite a speed I should let you know. He shoulder charged the kerb in a way only Butch James could be proud of.



I left the evening's proceedings unscathed. Until two nights later. The roads had a slight damp covering, and the wheels had a slight 5 Abec bearing jump up (to all us regular folk that means my wheels were 5 times as fast and fluid as they were the first night). Things were mostly going my way until I caught a speed wobble. And everything happened in slow motion. I saw it coming, I felt my legs turn to jelly and then tense up as I careened down the road on angled foot at about 20 kph. I couldn't right myself in time and stretched out my arms to await my tarred bed of slam-dunkery. It was sore. It was fun, and I'd do it all over again, except i wouldn't fall this time.

This last week has seen a bit of action on my behalf which is great because usually what I do is come to durban and sit and vegetate in front of the TV after being deprived of the tubular glory for the better part of the year. But you will be pleased to know that I have found my feet moving around.

Allow me to share a wonderful revelation I received this last week. I visited a church on Florida Road, which is odd you might think, with it being fashion and party central of Durban (the road not the church - you know its odd to find a church here) and the preacher man dropped a little nugget into my mind grapes (if, of course you will allow me to mix my metaphors). It was something to the effect of - generally speaking, young single girls and guys look for themselves in potential partners. We try and evaluate and line up people who are most like ourselves, and that this kind of behavior has a name - its called Narcism. I think that that is both true and great. Great because once you call something what it is, it's so much easier to dissect. This is only a necessity because while I am narcissistic in this regard - I didn't actually want to marry a girlified version of Tom. This earth is too rich and diverse for that.

Amongst other things that are happening all around me at one hundred and twelve kilometers per hour, my beloved Americans are leaving. It was a whirlwind romance, but like summer, it is only ever a time that can be enjoyed and never sustained - unless we are all pack up and move to the Caribbean with Kevin's parents. I did however manage to coerce a small fledgling of USAers to my house to take them on safari and if a picture is worth a thousand words then my el cheapo cell phone camera that shoots at 15 frames a second says well, like at least 2000 words - if not more. Probably more though. Take a little look see at this:





I must pre-empt this weekend however. This weekend Nick, the aforementioned not-so-savvy-on-the-wake-skating-front is quite savvy in the world of arts. Intwined in the fiesta of a weekend he has lined up in Johannesburg one such event includes him having a press conference with Maroon 5 and One Republic and the other champion bands that made the Road to V, and if thats not enough he gets to open the proceedings of the evening at the Coca Cola dome with his artistry and also his band too. What a life. I'm hoping that all of ya'll will think more of me because all of a sudden I know a famous person. Probably not though, my attempts are quite see through aren't they? But i look forward to a little hiatus in Johannesburg, the origin of my Primary Schooling. Maybe I'l bump into Tokyo Sekwale or something. The other good news in this regard is that i get to road trip it out with Doug and Heather who, right now are my most favourite respectively blonde and engaged couple in the whole world. Although their being blonde has little, to nothing to do with their engagement. I will write soon, because the inter-web has returned to me and my computer. Have a good one friends.

We are in the full swing of summer, go get a Sector Nine (or borrow a long board from Kevin, you know the guy with the parents in the Caribbean) and bomb a hill, not a country.