The Restory Retreat Centre

  It is said that Calvin Coolidge, or Silent Cal, the 30 th  US president, didn’t work himself to a stanstill.    Taking into account that he generally slept 11 hours a night, supplemented by daily naps and some  three-month extended vacations, the conclusion that he worked a maximum of 4 and a half hours a day doesn’t seem too far-fetched. And the times he was in the Oval Office, he often pulled out  the bottom drawer of his desk, put his feet into it and counted the cars passing by on Pennsylvania Avenue.   When he passed away in 1933, Gertrude Stein reportedly remarked: “Coolidge dead? How can you tell?”   In 2 Kings 6 we are told of another leader, King Jehoram of Israel. With his city under siege by the Syrian army and Samaria experiencing a terrible famine, he walks on the  city wall. While doing so, he hears the horrific story of two mothers who started eating their children in an effort to stay alive. On hearing that he tears his clothes in anguish and as he walks along, the pe

  I often use the image of stringing beads when I start to write about things that announce themselves over time. I’ll hear a song or read a line or passage, see a movie, and an unexpected element of a theme that I didn’t choose in the first place will gently arrive and take its place among the other elements already waiting.   Lately it is the relationship, or romantic love, between two people. How we search for it, what we expect to find, how it plays out, the mystery in it all.   In Alexander McCall Smith’s book, The Full Cupboard of Life, the main character, private detective Mma  Precious Ramotswe comes to the conclusion:  “If you were  in the mood for falling in love, or marrying, then perhaps it did not matter very much whom you would see when you turned the corner. You were looking for somebody, and there was somebody, and you would convince yourself that this random person was what you were really looking for in the first place.”   A full amount of limbs and a breath seem to b

Photograph by George Angus We hear the beginning. And see the end. Only occasionally do we witness the middle where everything happens.   It starts with worn-out pick up lines, shaken by the dozen out of a box: “Hi gorgeous! How was heaven when you left it?” “Well, here I am. What are your other two wishes?” “Aside from being sexy, what else do you do for a living?”   On and on, right under our window. Up to a point where we lean out and shout: “Please! Enough already!”   The end is messier. No, really. Like in dirty. Where you can only explain it as a mixup of vowels and bowels. Poetry in motion of sorts, I guess.   You are lucky if you catch him in the middle. Unaware, totally taken up by being smitten.  Leaning against the love of his life, his soulmate, his purpose for living. Whispering short affectionate phrases, staring into the eyes staring, nibbling on a beautiful forehead.   What puzzles us is how he knows there is love to be found in the bakkie mirror in the first place. Or