I am currently reading the autobiography Walking Tall by Simon Weston. Weston was a British soldier who got badly injured during the Falklands War in 1982. The ship he was on at the time, the Sir Galahad , was struck by a 2000 pound Argentinian bomb and he received terrible burns on forty six percent of his body. What followed were years of rehabilitation, countless operations and many adjustments. Simon at a parade shortly after the Falklands War Although the bomb exploded about 20 feet from where he was and his face was burnt beyond recognition, there was astonishingly enough no scarring of his eyeballs. As a military surgeon told him before one of the operations to his eyelids: “The blink reflex is a remarkable thing and it can usually outpace any foreign body flying towards the eye, or any flash, so it is very rare that the front surface of the eye is directly burned.” Since reading that line I’ve been blinking a lot, once again reminded of and fascinated by the h...
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.