The Restory Retreat Centre

Scholars, I plead with you, Where are your dictionaries of the wind, the grasses?                                                                                                                                        Norman MacCaig English painter, John Constable, did more than looking at clouds. He spent much of his time collecting and classifying them. In a letter written in 1821 he expressed his conviction that clouds carry the mood of a painting, calling it the key note. He would leave his house in the morning with a bundle of papers and his pocket full of brushes and spent hours on t...

Delmas again. (See the post Christ plays in ten thousand places ) The young receptionist and I enjoyed the silence that settled around the two of us in the waiting room. She was paging through some files and I was busy filling out the form with all my dad’s information. In one of the procedure rooms I could hear the dentist chatting with my father while working on the problem tooth.   The bell at the security gate rang. The young woman on the outside struggled to open the gate as the receptionist pressed the release button. I got up to help her. In a strange blend of confusion and determination she stepped into the room and walked towards the reception counter. Her thin dress did not provide much protection against the chilly winter morning.  Neither the receptionist nor I understood what she was saying when she started talking. By the sound of it it must have been one of the foreign languages from another part of Africa. The receptionist tried throug...