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...
The Restory is a Retreat Centre nestled against Tafelkop, a singular mountain head near Wakkerstroom, South Africa. Here we live a simple life as contemplatives. It is a place of re-connection: with ourselves, people, Nature, Silence and Creativity. Our retreats are aimed at this. Our conversations, writing and art centre around the univocity of life. We need a place that reminds us that we are all one. The Restory hopes to be such a place and space.