The Restory Retreat Centre

More About George If I want to tell more about myself, the very best might be to just start by saying "I love..." and then list things that I love. So: I love...... ....Tafelkop. The big world of which I am a part, silence and to walk. The Conversation ...time spent with my M. Where we talk for long stretches, and laugh, or are just quiet together for long periods of time. Elements From The Conversation ....our granddaughter, Ariana. Who loves books very much and keeps asking: "Oupa, tell me a silly story!" ....books. And dogs. And cats. And tea. ....a good conversation. Sculpting and woodwork. To write. ....poems. More so by the day. Basically impossible to pick a single one, but on my birthday, this one from Billy Collins. It talks about things one thinks about at 60. Design I pour a coating of salt on the table and make a circle in it with my finger. This is the cycle of life I say to no one. This is the wheel of fortune, the Arctic Circle. This is the ring of Ke...

  The Depth Dimension Thank you, Heather, who has sent us this after listening to last week's conversation.  The Conversation Elements From The Conversation " Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?  As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.  Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe? To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise.”                                                                                                                     Anthony de Mello  Reporting On A Move Tuesday morning Friday evening The "store room" filling up. Friday afternoon in the cottage at Tafelkop.  Matilda lost in though...

     A Wide Conversation  The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation  Music In this version of the well-known Stand By Me , the musical conversation takes place across continents and the diverse contributions make it beautiful and unique.  With our love. George en Matilda

Photo by George Angus  In recent weeks I ordered and sorted our books again. It was long overdue. We want to declutter and simplify. However, taking books of a shelf and putting it in boxes to give away and pass on is more than that. It is a spiritual act. It is letting go of holding on and hoarding. It is making room. For what? For whatever needs the space the books filled. It is the handing in of identity cards. “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be...” (Joan Didion) The people using and reading certain books don’t live here anymore. Standing before the sorted shelves I meet myself. George

Image by Igor Morski                                        I recently finished reading the book The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn. With its ingenious use of old black and white suspense movies as a backdrop, and applying the main character, child psychologist Anna Fox’s agoraphobia that restricts her to the space of her apartment to full effect, I was not disappointed. I had the psychological thriller I was looking for at this stage.  It is well written and reflects a sense of fine observation by the author. A sentence like,  “I zoom in on his feet: oxblood oxfords, slick with polish, collecting the autumn sunlight, kicking it off with each step”  within the first few pages testifies to that and got me hooked.  But it’s not the book as such that I want to talk about, however good it may be. A.J. Finn is the pseudonym of American author ...

“Vertel vir my ‘n storie” is ouer as honger, dwingender as koud.                                                                               Cecile Cilliers Ek het dit al tevore genoem – dat daar op ‘n spesifieke tyd in my lewe temas en onderwerpe aanmeld waaroor ek nie doelbewus beheer het nie. Dis nie asof ek daarna gaan soek of daaroor uitvra nie. As ek maar weer sien staan hulle voor my deur. Sulke tye weet ek dat ek iets moet hoor en ag moet slaan. Die afgelope paar weke was dit weer so. Eers het ek en Matilda ‘n gesprek gehad met iemand wat baie jare onderwys gegee het. Veral tale, op die ou einde byna uitsluitlik Engels, tweede taal. Sy vertel hoe sy aan die begin van een skooljaar die voorgeskrewe boek, Lord of the Flies van William Golding uitgedeel het en toe s...

Der Bücherwurm Painting by Carl Spitzweg “If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them - peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”                                                                       Winston Churchill Yes, I know. On average it is cheaper and some even free, when you order over the internet you have it almost immediately, the search facility is very handy as well as links to the internet, darkness isn’t a problem as it comes with a built-in light, the carbon footprint is small, it is so compact th...

It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.                                                                                                          - Wallace Stegner Boxes, boxes, what to throw away, what to take, "oh, look at this! I made it in grade 2", returning what has long forgotten been borrowed, what must be so close that it is unpackable, and the books and books.... We're packing. George and Matilda

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,  finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,  sermons in stones, and good in everything.  I would not change it.”                                                         William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Discovering Prague's delights Writing my recent post  Any pair will do , reminded me of one of the most memorable summons we've had to a bookshop and the cache awaiting us there.     During our visit to Prague in December 2011, Linda showed us around the city just before Christmas. As we crossed the famous Charles Bridge, she showed us one of the sights we were heading to - the Franz Kafka museum.    But she had a few surprises up her sleeve and one of them was                                                            Shakespeare & Sons As far as we know, it is the only second hand bookshop in all of Prague dealing in English books! Being in the part of the city called The Old Town, the building is many centuries old and coming in from the icy cold through the huge wooden door on street level...

Internet image -Source unknown The way some, OK, many  women are drawn to shoes, I am drawn to books. Or to be more exact, to second hand book stores. I couldn't care less what pair of shoes I'm book browsing in, but the feeling of finding the perfect book is very similar to finding the perfect fit.      It is rather uncanny how, out of the clear blue, an image of the interior of one of my favourite haunts will pop up and stay with me. Every now and again gently nudging me with the view of a shelf of books, the smell of old print when I open one of my own collection. And I know: I am being summoned. There is a book waiting for me.      As with the Sunbirdish , it didn't happen overnight. It dawned on me that something was afoot when, almost without fail, I was told by George as I presented him with a find, that it has long been on his wish list. I know about his wish lists on Loot, Amazon and privately kept, but to keep track would mean carting a...

Painting by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy It is a good rule after reading a new book,  never to allow yourself another new one  till you have read an old one in between.                                                                             ~ C.S. Lewis  On the contemplative journey, we find Lewis’s advice not only interesting and helpful, but almost inevitable as well. You come across all these wise modern authors and companions on the journey, but as a rule, they constantly remind you of the deep and rich tradition from where we find guidance and nourishment. We are members of a community of believers that span over centuries. It is an adventure with many rewards to be part of this ongoing conversation where the voices of the desert fathers, Julian of Norwich, ...

     Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything—only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories.      Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life. Excerpt from Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Est é s      Even as a little girl, I knew that some stories worked, while other stories tried, but didn’t. Stories that had an obvious lesson to them, like Pinnochio, caused me to feel only guilt.      But stories that leapt off the page and tickled me pink with descriptions of animal antics and beautiful places stayed with me like good friends and somewhere deep inside, they set to work at bringing me to   a higher understanding of things.      I read ferociously all through my growing years. Books exposed me   to things my m...