The Restory Retreat Centre

Photo from the Tumblr Account alittlebitofsillinessreally For a long, long while now I've had no inclination to write. I love writing, but for a couple of years now, there’s been a void in me as to subjects or reasons to put my thoughts on paper. Typing the words “a void” my head sounded it as one word, “avoid”, and I’m wondering whether or why I would have avoided writing. Since I believe in being simply a channel, albeit a unique one, through which creativity can flow, why wasn’t I open to this flowing? It wasn’t a complete creative block. I was creating on other levels; busy building out ranges of functional ceramic art, sculpting, facilitating workshops and retreats.   I often felt that I didn’t have enough creative energy to go around. That doing pottery and sculpting are “using it all up” in a sense. Lately, thoughts are starting to gather like sparrows in a rain puddle. I delight in how they splash around, but I’m aware of their wariness, their mistrust of ...

Years ago, while still living in Gauteng, I told Matilda that my big wish is to live in a place where, when you switch off your bedroom light at night, it must be pitch dark. I do not want to see lights of any kind. Least of all security and flood lights. I am definitely not striving to be anachronistic, singing the praises of the Stone Age, but electric light in all its forms symbolizes for me a type of infiltration and colonization. In our human advances, we no longer plant flags when arriving on  terra nova , we switch on a light. On moving to Barrowfield my dream came true. The stars are bright and near, the Milky Way arching majestically overhead, everything wrapped in black velvet.  I felt spoilt, immensely privileged. The date my ideal world was shattered I cannot pinpoint exactly. But one night, on stepping out of the front door to check on the kiln in the pottery studio, a pinprick of light in the far-off distance, maybe 30 km away...