on the birthday of Bronwyn

we-e-eeell. this started out as a wall post on Facebook and then it morphed into something so gastronomically long that even i didn't want to read through the whole thing. so you know what i do when that happens? i turn the wall post into a blog post. VÓILA! maaaagic, i tell you.

as the title of this blog post suggests, today is the birthday of the glorious Bronwyn (or, erm, "Brownwyn", if you are our old Design 3 lecturer... derp).

if you have not had the privilege of meeting and/or getting to know Bron, i have two things to say to you:

1. ag shem for you;
2. you can sort of make up for the clear lack in your life by heading over to her blog and giving it a read.

i've known Bron for a good 4.5 years, and she's my straight-up homie. we first encountered one another at some point during O-Week, because we were ickle firsties in the same res - at that point bearing the glorious moniker "New Residence 2" (i kid you not) - and so we learnt our first year serenade together with the other, like, 60-odd girls who were newbies to the res and the university, too; we danced and sang, likely alongside one another at some point, in the cold street outside res in front of half-asleep first-year boys and on stage in the Great Hall for RU Jamming; we sat through all the obligatory introductory lectures and house meetings together. 

now, psychologists and clever brain-people talk about first impressions of people being important, which i am going to poo-poo thoroughly (sorry, clever people) because i can't distinctly remember my first impression of Bronwyn. to be fair, i met her when just about everyone in the University World was new to me so it's probably there muddled up with my first impressions of the other 500+ people i had the duty of meeting in my first couple weeks at Rhodes. but, like, first impressions are dumb, guys. (i say this probably mainly because i get the sense that i make a profoundly unimpactful first impression... ha!) what matters way more is who you find when you actually get to know a person, and over many years of Journ- and English-bonding as well as in the fiery furnaces of Design 3 and 4, i found a gem in Bron.

i will, at this point, compare my dear, beloved friend to a gateway drug. stay with me here, folks. the more time you spend with her, the more time you want to spend with her; it's very difficult (read: impossible) to get sick of her. i have also noticed that she has an uncanny knack for getting me hooked on other things, too (hence the gateway comparison). only good things though - things like coffee, and Bebas Neue (which is a typeface, if you are uneducated), and the song "BO$$" by Fifth Harmony. (Bron, this song came on while i was sitting in Twing Wok with my sister earlier this week and i was on the edge of getting up and dancing while shouting the lyrics very confidently when they skipped to the next track. i feel like the waitress had some sort of premonition about my course of action had the song continued...). now let us all partake in the glory.

"BO$$" is the epitome of Bronwyn. she is confident, independent, strong, smart, focused and hopefully making ALL the Oprah-dollars because she is intensely talented and hard-working. mostly, she is unapologetically herself,  and that's more than pretty miraculous in my books. 

i love her because (unlike a gateway drug) she has only ever had a positive influence on me. isn't it amazing when you find a person about whom you can say that? lucky lucky me. 

i love her because she inspires me to work my very hardest at what i do. 

i love her because she lets me cry when i need to, and she is able to tell me i'm being a fool in the nicest way possible. 

i love her because she understands the true necessity of Dylan Moran in one's daily life. 

i love her because she believes that sometimes you can have copious amounts of coffee for lunch. (we did this together the other week. supreme dining, let me tell you.) 

i love her because she is #kakpleasant. 

i love her because beauty - she has much of it. 

i love her for creating the best fictional teen girl magazine with me, that one day i have growing confidence will be a reality. 

i love her because she gives more than a damn; she gives many damns. 

i love her because she doesn't hold the truly painful blind drawing i did of her faaaace in art class that one time against me (true friendship, yo!). 

i love her because even though she now lives some distance from me (very much boo), she will send me random whatsapp messages that turn my day around. 

i love her for being a fellow typeface nerd (see: that one time when we had a whole freakout session about how glorious FontFabric was and your mom was just laughing at us). 

i love her for her wicked sense of humour (see what i did there, Bron!). 

i love her for being one of the two girls (you too, my Lucy-Lu) who remained the longest with me the night/morning before our final portfolios were due last November, when i was a wreck and we were all vulnerable as vaaaark and we were each other's emotional lifelines. (yoh that got very deep very suddenly.) 

mostly, i love her because it is the only sensible thing to do when faced with someone as glorious as she is.

so hi, Bron, i hand-lettered you a thing today (in memory of my incredibly terrible self-defined project, haha!)...

...and yes, that is Oswald and Bebas Neue, and yes, i think you are, in fact, the original BO$$. i love you more than all the horrogs in the world and i hope you have had only the most incredible day of your life today (or at least a really flipping awesome day; there was no Han so i dunno if it could've been the BEST day ever ;) ). i can't waaaait to see you so soon and drink some Homeground goodness with you and freak out over Dylan Moran with you and find cute onesies at the Village Green and coerce you up to the Cue lair with jub-jubs (i had to work the jub-jubs in somewhere)! you are a special kind and a true friend, and i hope you know just how treasured you are. now look at these photos of us and tell me why i am always on the left and you are always on the right... it's like we just KNOW.

ok, das all... Han eeeout. *air-kiss*

my fifteen favourite: feelings

one of the craziest things i find about being a person is how much you tend to FEEL things. that might sound dumb to you, and just reading back that sentence it sounds a little dumb to me, but our propensity for having strong opinions, reactions to and emotions about the things that go on around us is a pretty crazy notion when you really start to think about it. don't get me wrong: this is not a 100% awesome thing. oftentimes we let our emotions cloud our judgment, or stubbornly refuse to let anyone who doesn't hold the same opinions as us have the time of day. feelings also sometimes make you feel (ha, no kidding), well, kinda crappy. on the flip side, though, feelings can be just amazing. The tremendous Hank Green (one half of vlogbrothers awesomeness) tackled this idea last month in one of his vlogs. His video description summed up his thought process so brilliantly that i thought i'd share it here:

When we're confronted with negative experiences, we want to analyze them and think about them and remember them for future use. But with positive emotions, we often just feel them and enjoy them, which is wonderful, but also leads to us putting less weight on them and it seems like they take up less space in our minds. No one feels comfortable shouting at the world about how great their day was, or what a cool person they met. Recognizing and harping on the positive experiences we have is a great way, I think, to both have a better outlook on life, and have more positive experiences. So that's what I did in [this] video.

he's awesome, huh? some other cool vloggers have since picked up the baton and listed their 15 favourite feelings, and i caught wind of the idea through my brilliant friend Bronwyn's blog post the other day. since reading her post, i've been compiling my personal list in multiple places (first my brain, and then scribbling on a notepad so i wouldn't forget things) and now i've finally gotten around to typing it up here. so grab the popcorn, strap yourselves down, prepare yourselves in whatever way necessary for the discovery of HANNAH'S FIFTEEN FAVOURITE FEELINGS. (i have accompanied them with my favourite illustrations from LastLemon's 'Happiness Is' series, which is the best thing in the entire world. check some of their illustrations out here.)

1. hot-mug-in-my-hands feeling

yay, i get to experience this feeling right now! it's around 8 degrees Celsius today and my supervisor/boss just made me a mug of coffee. i love wrapping my cold hands around a nice warm mug of something and feeling them heat up. i drink hot beverages pretty quickly (case in point: my mug of coffee is already finished) but even after i've consumed all the coffee/tea/hot chocolate, i'll try to soak up as much of the residual heat still left on the mug as possible.


2. oh-goodness-the-airplane-is-flying feeling

there are two components to this feeling. the first is the literal feeling you get as you're sitting in an airplane and it's rolling down the runway and suddenly it lifts off the ground. that first second of airborne-ness, the feeling that your stomach is a couple metres below you, the crazy almost-weightlessness - i love that so much. the second component of this feeling is the excitement that usually accompanies the literal take-off because you're going somewhere. it's so very lovely.

3. woah-you-get-me feeling

sometimes it's hard for me to communicate my feelings (hahaha clearly not in this post) or make someone see something from my perspective, and that can be super frustrating. i often prepare myself to be misunderstood and have to explain my position further. other times, though, i'm having a conversation with a person and one of us will say something and the other will say YES YES YES and it's like fireworks in my brain exploding the words "I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS THIS WAY WHAAAAT" into the night sky of my universe. (shoooo that metaphor.) this also happens to me with literature and poetry all the time, which is mainly why i love it so much. there's little better than reading a book and reaching a paragraph that resonates so deeply with you that you feel like jumping up and down and punching the air triumphantly. even Ms Dickinson got it....

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog! 

- Emily Dickinson

4. workout-and-a-hot-shower, let-me-now-take-on-the-world feeling

i am not a morning person, and yet almost every day i drag myself out of bed at 5:45 to go torture myself physically for an hour. (i also am prone to hyperbole; i wonder if you've noticed?) i originally started doing this because it was the only real time during the day that i could commit to getting my exercise in, but now that it's a part of my routine i find that it's just about the best way to get my sleepy body out of bed and started with my day. i absolutely love giving the workout my all, taking a freakin' blazing-hot shower and thinking, "if i could get through that workout i can sure as heck tackle anything today has to throw at me".

5. pillows feeling

...buuut also i love sleep. and i love comfy sleep. and comfy sleep for me means all of the world's pillows on my bed, around me and under my head and back and and and... yeah, i'm kind of pillow-obsessed. my ideal pillow situation is now at least two poofy pillows under my head and at least one poofy pillow between my mattress and my upper body, and when i achieve this equation it's the greatest feeling to just lie there and feel comfy and cocooned.

6. reunion feelings

i'm in a situation now where so many of the people i love are all around the country and the world. while this sucks while i can't be with them, it means there are constantly opportunities for reunions with my friends and family whenever i go somewhere. i absolutely adore seeing people i love after a long time apart and just being able to catch up and feel like no time at all has passed.

7. my-cats-love-me feelings

of course, living away from home means being away from my furries, too. every time i get back to my small town and we pull up outside our house, i love seeing Roo trot up to the gate expectantly; i love jumping out of the car and having Gimli come up to me for scratches. the best is when i'm watching something with Mom and Gimli or Roo decides my lap is The Chosen One for the evening, or in the middle of the night when Roo jumps up onto my bed and meows to be let under the covers and snuggle with me. like Hank says in the video above, it's awesome when the cat chooses you. it makes you feel special ;)

8. hair feelings

okay, i have a lot of feelings about hair. hair is the best thing. i have narrowed it down to four main feelings that i go crazy over (ja, really, there are more - i'm not joking about this love of hair business). first, and tops, is the feeling of the wind in short short hair. if you've ever shaved your head, you'll probably know what i'm talking about. since i've always had long hair, when i shaved my hair off a few years ago i wasn't prepared for the amazing feeling of your scalp tingling when the wind blows, even ever-so-gently. it's giving me goosebumps just writing about it. since i can't get that feeling these days, i resort to the other three favourite hair feelings: the someone-playing-with-or-plaiting-my-hair feeling, the fuzzy-ends-after-a-haircut feeling and the oh-yeah-my-hair-is-clean-and-smells-fantastic feeling. hair is the best.

9. breakthrough-moment feeling

there comes a time when you have been puzzling over something for a long while and trying and trying to get something right or think of a solution or a creative approach to a problem, and suddenly it hits you, like you've been struck by a (very lovely, not dangerous to your health) bolt of lightning. the AHA! moment. i live for that feeling.

10. exhausted, i-worked-hard feeling



okay, this is the one feeling that i couldn't really find an accurate accompaniment for, but these two combined kinda make it work ;) when you've been working on something for a forever-long time and you've poured your heart and soul and energy and life into it, seeing it come to life and feeling that good type of exhaustion, where you know you've earned success and done a great job, that is a joyous feeling to experience.

11. this-music/book-is-brand-new-and-awesome-and-giving-me-goosebumps feeling


aaaaah. finally getting to settle down with a book that you've been anticipating for months, or with some newly-released music that you've just been burning to get your ears on, and not being disappointed - that, my friends, is the life :D

12. my-food-approaches feeling

the image describes this perfectly, but i still want to talk about it because FOOD. so i will just say... FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD HAPPY BELLY FOOD FOOD YUMMY FOOD GOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD FOOD.

13. trying-on-clothes-and-NAILING-IT feeling

sometimes you go clothes-shopping and nothing is fitting and you feel really stupid in everything you try on and it can be pretty frustrating... and sometimes you pick something off of the rack, walk into the  change room, put it on and feel elated because OBVIOUSLY this piece of material that has been crafted into a garment was made specifically and only for you, and it fits you like a glove, and you feel magical, as though you are from Harry Potter. it is a goooood good feeling, seriously.

14. boyfriend feelings

like hair, i struggled to narrow these feelings down to a single one, so i have grouped them together into the feelings i have thanks to my guy, Chris. (i love him more than my hair, though.) the first one is that "oh-hi-you" feeling, when i look over at him and i get crazy shivers and remember the first time i remember seeing him and loving the fact that i love him and he loves me so much. (eeeeuw.) the second is the cuddle/tickle feeling, when i fit perfectly in his arms and then he decides it is right and good to tickle me because he knows i will lose my head completely. connected to that is the next-level-safety feeling. what i mean by that is that i am able to be totally vulnerable around him and i have found such a safe place with him, and it is such a wondrous feeling. i also get proud feelings on the regular, because Chris is smart and strong, connected and reliable and funny, and an all-round winner at life. (for instance *brag brag* he was just very recently awarded a scholarship of a sizeable amount to go to a philosophy conference in the USA... i know.)

15. soft kisses

alright, this is also technically a 'boyfriend feeling' but i separated it from its kind because it is hands-down the best feeling ever and deserved its own place of honour. tender, vulnerable kisses with Chris say so much and they give me goosies and make me the absolute happiest person on earth, and so they get the final and top feeling on my list.

OK I'M DONE BEING GROSS NOW... those were all of my favourite feelings ever :)

ALSOTHESEOKBYE:

insta-time: June

hello-hi!

disclaimer before we even get properly started: i am an Instaddict. i love me some Instagram. i am crazy about Instagram. i Instagram many things on a regular basis. so, now that we've cleared that up, i've been quite inspired by a number of dinges i've seen on Instagram lately and wanted to share 'em with ya! :D that way, you can see how very cool i am by all the trendy things i like, and you can maybe follow some new cool people and be grateful that i shared them with you. then everyone will like me more and the ultimate purpose of this blog post will be achieved! (i'm just joking, by the way. jokes.) whattaya say - care to take the journey with me?...

first up is the incredible Emily Blincoe, who is an awesome photographer who takes really stunning pics and also likes to arrange things according to their colour. it makes me so happy! look at these salmonberries...

follow Emily: @emilyblincoe.

the next thing i saw that i loooooved was this donut typography. i'll say it again: 

D O N U T   T Y P O G R A P H Y .

i love it because:

a) donuts (Happy Donut Day for Friday, everyone!)

b) typography

c) puns

d) just.

this piece of magic was shared by The Daily Type: @thedailytype.

d'you know what else is nice? i do. Maria-Ines Gul's watermelon socks, that's what. (duh.)

she is here: @mariainesgul.

if you maybe don't know this about me, i love words. i am 100% a book-over-movie person and i adore poems, quotes, phrases, snippets of insightful conversation put down in writing... the whole shebang. i also thing handwritten stuff is the way of the future, so this pic by Nikko Purnama Lukman made my heart happy :)

Nikko is cool and founded @TheDailyType which i've already mentioned before, so you should follow him: @nikkopurnama.

another thing you might not know about me (if you never speak to me, since it's bound to come up in conversation with me at least once a day... hahaha) is that i am really into CrossFit and the CrossFit Games (which is essentially like any other big sporting tournament). like all sporting tournaments, the CrossFit Games has a series of competitions prior to the final tournament itself, in order to determine which athletes from which areas of the world should compete in the final tournament. these competitions are called 'regionals'. at one of the regional competitions which took place throughout last month, Julie Foucher - an athlete i admire a lot and who has been a competitor in the sport for several years - was competing and during one of the events, she suffered an injury to one of her Achilles tendons. this is her last year competing, just to heighten the emotion. she nevertheless continued through as many of the events as she could without worsening her condition, and showed a lot of heart and commitment in the process. watch this video if you want to see her perform an incredible handstand walk (and no, i cannot do that yet) while wearing a moonboot. a lot of the people i follow on Instagram are CrossFit related, and just about all of them had something to say about Julie's injury and her spirit. i particularly loved this photo taken by Hannah Hayworth:

if you'd like to follow Hannah, who takes really awesome photos: @hannahhayworth

or the incredible Julie: @juliefoucher

and if you'd like to read what Julie herself wrote just over a year ago about CrossFit and risk (because a lot of people worry about that sort of thing), here ya go. (she's a med student and i want her to be my doctor. just sayin'.)

next! remember how i love words? erasure is so fun, like this one by Austin Kleon:

great, huh? Austin posts a ton of erasures and other superb pics; follow him: @austinkleon.

the next pic doesn't really need any explanation. it was posted by Street Art Globe, and it's a piece of work by Ernest Zacharevic in Georgetown, Malaysia. also, it's just lovely!

follow Street Art Globe: @streetartglobe.

i love this royal lion paintbrush posted by Dinara Mirtalipova, a very cool illustrator :D

if you like quirky paintings and illustrations, follow Dinara: @mirdinara. 

halfway there... to celebrate, let's look at some awesome badges that proclaim love for pizza (!) and America (!) and the letter A (!) - a post by Angela Stewart. how beautiful are these? i want them all, please and thaaaanks.

follow Angela: @homework_party.

Becca Clason is awesome because she makes ALL the cool typography out of STUFF. like this JOY word (which i hou van) made out of ROSE PETALS! 

Becca is so great and her work is so fantastic and i'd like to be her one day so much that it makes me talk in CAPITAL LETTERS. Follow her: @beccaclason. seriously, follow her. her work gives me JOY!

then, this. this is where i want to live someday, so props to Kyle Kuiper for finding it for me.

Kyle is from California, so of course i think he's awesome, but he also posts some really incredible photos and you should check him out: @kdkuiper.

lookit how lovely this is! (i should maybe also mention that flowers are something that i enjoy, too. i enjoy many things in life; i wonder if you could tell.) this is a post by Casey Ligon, who is an enormously talented letterer who also does a lot of stuff by hand (like Becca).

Casey is really fantastic and you oughta check her out: @caseyligon.

and heeeeey, CrossFit again! i WILL keep this paragraph brief ;) suffice it to say that this is Kara Webb, and she's one of my favourite athletes; here she is rowing in her backyard with her doggie Willow watching.

Kara's funny, down-to-earth, talented and driven, and she's always a fun addition to my Insta-feed - check her out: @karawebb1.

MORE LETTERING YAY. this is by Lauren Hom, the creator of Daily Dishonesty and one of my favourite people on Instagram. her caption for this? "The only savings account you really need... am I right?" you are  R I G H T, Lauren!

she's here: @homsweethom.

i love this illustration by The Crafty Type: plain and simple!

they are here: @thecraftytype.

and finally, more lettering (did i mention how much i love lettering yes i did). a piece by the proudly San Franciscan Dirty Bandits. this is the best and only time to use the term "bae" - when referring to the City By The Bay. yep.

follow Dirty Bandits for lots more lettering awesomeness: @dirtybandits.

now, it's your turn - what are some cool things you've seen on your Insta-turf? who should i be following? should i get a life outside of the Insta-net? let me know ;)

my first country.

today is Mothers' Day, and it's the first day that i'm blogging in over a month. (we can talk about that a little later, if you like.) for the length of the day, i've been met with pictures of the most beautiful women on my Facebook timeline as friends from all around my town, the country and this world acknowledge their moms and the blessing each of them has been. i've had several people (my father included - nice one, Dad!) remind me to tell my mother how special she is today; i've had others arguing that this day should be celebrated with caution because not all mothers are amazing, and yet others maintaining that it shouldn't really be celebrated at all because it's exclusionary. (everything's exclusionary if you look at it long enough, but i try not to pick fights in corners where i don't belong.)

i sent my Mama a message, but didn't post anything on Facebook. yet here i am writing a blog post about her, and about today. blogs somehow seem more private, even though all the same eyes may eventually make it here. if i've coaxed you away from your Facebook or Instagram newsfeed, i'll reward you with a bit of introspection (lucky you!).

a close friend of mine lost her mom a week ago, and i've been in a bit of a fog since then. i think that a lot of this - a lot of the pain and anger i have been fighting through - has to do not only with how much of an incredible woman Aunty Jen was, but also how very deeply i value and depend on my own mom. just the thought of losing her is horrifying to me. today hurts because i imagine Cathryn and Roanne's pain; i breathe it into the cavity of my chest and the truth and greatness and gravity of it stings. today hurts because i can still remember the catch in my father's voice when he got the phone call that morning telling him my grandmother's cancer was this time and finally incurable; i still can picture two of the only times i have ever seen him cry, and both of those occasions were for his unbearably beautiful mom. today hurts because these are just two of the stories that spring to mind; because i know that there are so many people around me who do not have the privilege and advantage that i do - of knowing my mother, and even more, loving her and having every chance to tell her of her significance. so finally, here is my truth.

my mother is my hero. she has known me all of my life, held me inside her as i grew - a mysterious mini-monster, fingernails too small for their size to be comparable to anything; unknowable, and yet totally known. i belonged in her being, i am native to her country, i was fearfully and wonderfully made. she the instrument, the vessel that held me. my mother, who left a home she'd always known to marry the man she loved and live with him in a foreign country; my mother is my very first home. she and my dad raised my sister and me in a small town, and my memories are nothing but holy - running around in the yard, climbing trees, homemade meals, watermelon seed-spitting contests, silkworms, birthday cakes, cats, notes in my lunchbox. my mother, the teacher; who has mothered so many of her students and loved them deeply, much as she has loved me; my mom was my Grade 1 teacher, the woman who wouldn't respond in the classroom when i addressed her as "Mom" and who gave me a bad mark for my handwriting. i still give her grief for that; what a difficult job that must have been, to teach your precocious, year-too-young daughter, nothing but knees, elbows and opinions, amidst a sea of other faces - each of them as important as my own. my mom let me have adventures, took me on nature walks, sewed me dresses, sent me on a trip to Johannesburg with my father when i was 8 years old and set me the task of interviewing my gran while i was there. she tied my hair up every morning, all the way till matric. there are invented words and phrases in my vocabulary that are undeniably hers - how do you spell bobbley? bobalee? she knit a love of reading into my being, read Lewis and Tolkien and Rowling aloud to us at bed-time; she made Sindi and me special pillows and Tupperware dinners complete with cut-up carrots and apples for Bird Club nights, where we would drowsily gaze up at slides of raptors late into the evening, lying on the floor at the front of the Scout Hall. my mother, the doctor; she would stroke my head and back in sickness, plait my hair, get me water and ginger ale, speak to me as comfort. when i was sick enough to find myself in hospital earlier this year, it was my mother whose advice i sought, whose voice i heard on the other end of the line, sending those same words of comfort to me over countless telephone wires. my mother, the builder; who does not shy away from building into the lives of those around her, who invests her time so thoroughly in the wellbeing of others, who exhausts herself with the intentional love she pours out on her family, friends and strangers alike. my mother, who loved me at times when i was unbearable even to myself, who grew me up and watched me occasionally walk away only to find myself back again; who came to watch my U13B hockey matches, as terrible as i was, as little as she understood the game. my mother, who taught me how to use my typewriter, who watches rugby and silly series with me, who sends me photos of my cats in ridiculous sleeping poses, who encourages me to write and tells me i am talented; who loves my brother and his wife as fiercely as if they were her very own children; who prays and struggles and writes and sleeps far too little at night. she is so very often an example of Christ in what she does. she is my cheerleader and she is my rock and she is such an important friend in my life. 

"my 

mother

was

my first country.

the first place i ever lived."

i love you, Mama.

p.s. if you are reading this and today hurts for you, for whatever reason, know that i hurt with you and i am thinking of you.

p.p.s. oh yes, i promised to talk about not having blogged in forever, despite me needing to do so for NaPoWriMo. oops! i did write most of the poems for the month; i will post all of my favourites that i wrote in a few days for you to read :)

day four: ♡

day three: in/con/se/quence

it's quarter past midnight here, and i need to get some sleep, but first let me share my Day 3 poem with you all!

whe prompt for today was to write a fourteener, a poem of indiscriminate length but with fourteen syllables in each line. i kept drawing blanks when i tried to think of something with, you know, gravitas that i could write about, so at 23:52, i sat/lay on/in my bed with my exam pad paper and an old red pen and scribbled out this:

if you can't read my writing or the additions to a few of the lines (i found, as it happens, that i'm pretty good at naturally writing 12-syllable lines once I get in the groove, so i had to add a couple syllables to at least a couple lines!) i've typed it out below :)

in/con/se/quence

A poem with fourteen syllables to each line I write
Eight minutes before midnight, here I sit and sigh and scrawl
With little to inspire my thoughts or set my mind alight
I tap my pen on paper and await the speechless call
Of inspiration, words of magic in my squinting sight
Or a bright bolt of lightning, knowledge that might someday fall
And yet I sit and scribble this inconsequential rhyme
I check the clock again and find that I am out of time.

and now? now for something super consequential like SLEEP ;)

day two: stars

the prompt for today's NaPoWriMo poem was "stars", and immediately i thought of the spoken-word poem 'A Finger, Two Dots Then Me' by Derrick Brown. if you haven't heard it before, DO IT... and if you have, listen again. it is always worth it!

now that you're all in awe of Derrick, i'll just leave the little and vastly less significant poem i wrote today down here. i was thinking of the prompt as i walked home from a friend's house tonight and tried looking up to catch some 'inspiration', but the stars just weren't visible. that in turn led to the rest of the poem :) it doesn't yet feel finished to me, but such as it is, it is:

tonight the sky wears its black-blue

like a deep bruise

and all hope of conventional star-views 

is halted by streetlights.

walking home, instead i look down

and am met with the sight

of tiny glass galaxies blinking back at me,

a million shards of beer bottle stars;

the cars

parked on the street have had their bonnets brushed

with a fine dust of drizzle and

the drops catch onto all light, dazzling;

the brightness of your imagined smile

and the crinkles that gather in the corners of your eyes.

please, world, remind me that 

i do not have to look up to see the stars.

i want to stitch all of these views

into new constellations, and share them with you.

hello, NaPoWriMo!

today began April, meaning a few things:

it is darling Lucy's birthday!

it is also April Fools Day (and i was fooled a couple times... meh.)

it is ALSO the start of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short :)

the aim for the month is to write a poem a day - for fun, for inspiration, to get back into the habit of scribbling down poetic thoughts or feelings... whatever the case may be. this will be the third year i participate (my Mama and i try to egg one another on from afar!) and hopefully i'll manage to finish this year! every day, the awesome people over at NaPoWriMo.net put up a prompt for the day, as a way to kickstart ideas. you're, of course, not limited to the prompt, but i find it super fun to follow along with their suggestions or ideas and see what i can create!

today's prompt was to create a poem of negation. their example:
if you chose a whale as the topic of your poem, you might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”

i tip-tap-typed this out distractedly and reworked it a little in between working like a packhorse on a programme layout/design, but it's still kinda rough. i like it that way, though. it's called not at all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
you are not at all what i expected.

you do not curl up the way a cat does in the middle of my bed;
you are nothing like the foamy lip of the sea, kissing at my toes, and
you taste entirely unlike the tang of citrus on my tongue.

you are not a memory; you do not linger on the fringes of my mind the way they do.
nor are you like a poem with discernible rhythm or rhyme

but i find that i'm

drawn to the way that you
are unlike a glacier
different from a shattered teacup or a weed
the negative of a photograph
the complete and utter opposite of
unnecessary to me.

you are not at all what i expected.

you are instead everything i need.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

so, there you have it - my first poem for the month :) now i'm headed bed-ward - but stay tuned for more poetry out of yours truly!

well, this is embarrassing.

oh, hi! hello! it's me again. i've decided to resume blogging after... um... over a month. *hides face in shame*

i was thinking a couple days ago about how long it's been since i've given this blog any proper thought, let alone since i've actually made the effort to whip up a blog post, and it got me a little bit embarrassed. that in turn led me to thinking about all the embarrassing things i've ever done in my life, and the eventual writing of this particular post. 

now, before we get any further, let me just make this abundantly clear: i am the QUEEN of doing embarrassing things. i will recount in a little more detail some of the really cringe-worthy occurrences in my life a bit later, but rest assured that i am a super embarrassing person to hang around. (if you're good friends with me, you probably know this already, and i'm sorry for embarrassing you on *insert number of times here* occasions... buuuuut not really.) 

the funny thing is, when i tried to remember said occasions, i actually struggled to call them to mind. i was re-reading Amy Poelher's book Yes Please a couple days ago (because duh, Amy Poelher is my lifelong hero) and she recounts going for an audition where they asked her to talk about her "most embarrassing moment". instead, she left the audition. it got me reminiscing and wondering about what my most embarrassing moment in life has been, and yet i couldn't come up with anything really solid off the top of my head. i wondered about this for a while and eventually came to the conclusion that - are you ready? - while i am seriously up there in terms of the number of embarrassing things i've gone through and put myself through in my twenty-two years, i just don't really get embarrassed about most stuff anymore.

this is the girl who, in Grade 6, got violently ill in the quad outside the library after her teacher tried to give her black coffee to kill the nausea. (it didn't work, in case you were wondering, and this may be one of the reasons i only started drinking coffee a good ten years after said incident.)

the girl who hit puberty before all of her friends and classmates and was the only pimply, really weird-looking kid going into high school. (bonus: i looked totally fresh when everyone else hit puberty a couple years later... juuuust jokes, i looked fantastically silly throughout high school.)

the girl who had the unfortunate luck of sitting right on the spot of the field where the rugby ball the boys were kicking around at breaktime was destined to land, clobbing her on the back of the head.

the girl who fell into a fairly large ditch in the ground (which, in my defense, was disguised by a whole lot of grass) in front of a good quarter of the school when the bell rang for class one day.

the girl who read more than she spoke, so that she mispronounced words ON THE REG (izland? aw-ree?), and the girl who often used words in the completely wrong context... oops!

we won't even talk about the stories of my unreciprocated feelings for various boys when i was a little chicken, although they could fill a very amusing novel, honestly. i could keep going, but i'd like to get to some sort of point, so i'll move along ;)

please, let me not pretend that all of these events didn't embarrass me on a major level when they happened. looking back on them, though, more than anything, they make me laugh. i think, "gosh, i was a dumb little punk to get so worked up about things that are, in hindsight, SO completely insignificant."

now that i'm no longer a young grasshopper (i just did the maths and 11 is half of 22, meaning that Grade 6 incident was HALF OF MY LIFE AGO and i'm seriously ageing too quickly these days), i seem to go out of my way to do embarrassing things. i listen to the poppiest of pop music while designing (Carly Rae Jepsen, anyone?) and dance along like a complete noodle, waving my hands in the air at particularly pertinent moments of my jams (read: when the groovy beat kicks in) while sitting in front of my computer in the labs. i wave my arms around, too, while walking home from the Journ department and listening to Taylor Swift at maximum volume; a couple times i've flung my arms around so violently to emphasise a particular line that i've lost my grip on my phone and thrown it into the air. hmmm. i very rarely don't pull a stupid face when someone's taking a photo of me; when i'm feeling particularly tired, i like to take part in a particular activity i have named "sleep-designing". observe.



(this photo was taken today, by the way. i'm in a serious state of exhaustion and i'm going to bed as soon as this post is finished.)

primarily, i'd say i've learned that if i'm not embarrassed by the crazy things i do, then those things can't really define me; i've learned to invest less in what other people think of my silly behaviour and focus more on how doing said silly things makes me feel and whether or not those actions are edifying to ME. it's liberating and a lot of fun... so maybe you'll join Tom Hanks and me as we dance out our feelings? ;)

SEE - how great does that feel?! ahhh. i'd be pumped if i weren't so tired. but i am tired. so i'm gonna call it a night and just encourage you, here in the conclusion of this silly (embarrassing?) blog post, to stop caring so much about what others think and just do what makes YOU happy and builds you up. it makes life a lot more fun, i promise ;)

currently: February edition

hi, friends!

sorry for my absence - life in Grahamstown has been surprisingly busy, which has seen me only posting my "currently" for February near the middle of the month. OH THE HORROR!

without further ado, then, let me introduce you to my monthly list of stuff i'm up to, for you to peruse and judge ;)

READING: mental health books
the Master's course which i've just begun is practice-based, which means that instead of it being completely theoretical, it involves a major component of production - in my case, design work - which intersects in some way with an area that i'd like to research and from which i write an exegesis on my findings. i'm set on working on projects which intersect with the issue of mental health, which has necessitated a TON of reading! (something i've only just started doing... eep.) it's something about which i'm really passionate and i feel quite strongly that it's a necessary piece of research, but it's SO HEAVY... so if you have some light reading that you can recommend, please do so!

LISTENING TO: Sara Bareilles (this)
also: Mat Kearney's new album Just Kids (this)
also: Angus & Julia Stone (this)
also: Lennon & Maisy Stella (this)
also: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (this)

WATCHING: Downton Abbey
i'm on season 5 now... and it is THE BEST SHOW. Dame Maggie Smith is the absolute bomb. also, everything is so scandalous! the most scandalous thing happening in my life right now is my stubborn refusal to clean my flat.

ANTICIPATING: Design Indaba
OHMYGOSH. okay, there is a LOT that i'm looking forward to right now. if you'd asked me a week ago, i'd have said the thing i was anticipating the most was my bursary money; thankfully that came through yesterday and i can eat again! now, top of the agenda is the Design Indaba, which starts in Cape Town two weeks from today (!!!!!) - i am so. excited. i get to go to Cape Town with some super awesome people, including two of the guuuurls who have made the past few weeks so great - Carissa and Amy :D plus, i'll get to see Hayley, and hopefully Lucy and Josh! also: CAPE TOWN. ahhh. so much awesomeness happening.

ENJOYING: Adobe and my office!
my reunion with the Adobe Creative Suite has been nothing short of magical. i'm also super thrilled with my new office and the amazing Mia, with whom i share office space. i decorated the wall the other day and it feels so Hannah-ish... brilliant!
something i forgot about when i made my currently list (in Adobe Illustrator... obviously) was how much i'm LOVING my new glasses! they have made me vain. see below.



MISSING: ALL the people
it's weird being in Grahamstown without Chris. it's weird being in the department without Bronwyn, Lucy, Kiera, Madien and Co. i don't like it. come back to me, people :(

CRAVING: fruuuuuit
it helps that the fruit section is right at the entrance to Pick n Pay, because that was my first port of call this afternoon when i finally did a proper grocery shop. (ask Carissa, she bore witness to my fruit craziness.) i'm currently munching on grapes, and i bought some plums and a mango, too! (i also wanted some bananas and watermelon... alas alack, while they had bananas aplenty and watermelon quarters for only R12.99 yesterday, neither such fruits were anywhere to be found today :( i am sad.)

CONSUMING: Darsha's food
at the end of last year, Darsha gave me close to the entire non-perishable contents of her kitchen, and i have been living off of this food (rice, and dhal, and chili bites) for the past few days while i waited for my money to come through. i even attempted to eat mung beans... but i don't know how vegetarians eat them on the reg, because they are basically disgusting. *shudders*

WEARING: whatever's clean
ah, the student life! i have min (read: VERY, VERY LITTLE) electricity, and i'm also a lazy donkey. naturally, that means i don't want to wash my clothing. luckily, i have stacks of t-shirts and shorts and dresses... unfortunately, my washing pile keeps growing and growing. if for any reason, then, you don't know where to find me, chances are i've fallen into my pile of dirty laundry and disappeared altogether.

so! that is my life at present. what are y'all up to? :)

for Amy

just over 24 hours ago, i was viciously fighting back the throes of sleep, willing myself to stay awake just one hour longer, checking my phone constantly to check how much time had elapsed and to ensure that i hadn't missed midnight.

why, you ask?

well, today was this one's 21st birthday.

...aaaand she is the most special chicken, whom i love ardently and cannot do without. naturally, then, i had to wish her a happy birthday as the day dawned!

it's as though my body was against me on this one - usually i'm up far later than midnight, but for some reason, last night i just couldn't keep my eyes open, resolving to compromise and doze off into a fitful bout of sleep with the lights on. thankfully, by sticking to this method, i managed to wake up just before midnight and got the message off in time. YES!

by this stage, you're probably thinking i'm a little psycho and stalkerish, which is probably fair, but i think if you have met and gotten to know Amy-Jane, you'll understand my friendly obsession ;)

for one thing, Amy and i have conversations that mainly consist of emojis. observe exhibits A-D below:


EXHIBIT A:



EXHIBIT B:



EXHIBIT C:



EXHIBIT D:


this is clearly the best way to build a solid friendship. we can communicate, nay, express deep and heartfelt emotion, in IMAGES.

there are other, more serious reasons why Amy is home and away one of the best people i know, however. for one thing, she talks AND she listens. these kinds of people are hard to find. Amy's and my friendship was forged in the fire that is the AMM's design computer lab, where we found ourselves seated alongside one another for maaaany hours. (more on that in a minute.) to survive in that soul-devouring place, you really need one another. i can't begin to describe the horror of spending hour upon hour alone in there (an experience which i lived several times and don't really wish on anyone at all). it's so necessary just to have a fat chat with whoever is around, spread some ridiculousness, talk about the most obscure and personal stuff and occasionally try to learn the dance moves in Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" music video or watch heartbreakingly cute animal clips. Amy is the best for this. if i were a worse friend, i'd hire her out by the hour as an advice-giver, or just a reassure-r. (i don't think that's a word. aaaanyway.) i shan't do this! i am a pretty good friend, but i can't hold a candle to Ames.

another thing i love about this girl is her passion and her discipline. she works. and by 'works', i mean she WORKS. i have not seen anything done by Amy that she hasn't poured her whole being into. that's a tough ask in design class, where you're bound to come across a project or two that just don't resonate with you. that's also difficult to do when working for a student newspaper, where the layout is often repetitive and difficult to adjust, and it's a lot simpler to stick with the most basic format, even if it doesn't look as great as it could. Amy won't stand for that, and i love her for it. she is meticulous and passionate and sticks to her guns. she's a fiery redhead and it's the greatest thing.

this leads on to another of Amy's many many virtues. as passionate as she is about her work, she is that much more passionate about the people that she loves. i have witnessed Amy fight for friendships, and it is something beautiful and rare in this world. she cares a lot more than many people i know our age, who have reached a point of ambivalence or indifference in relationships that is quite discouraging. instead of taking this approach, Ames will explore every angle of a situation and fight ferociously for what she feels is right, without demeaning or attacking whoever or whatever's in the other corner with hatred or disregard. when something has happened that has upset her, she refuses to attack the person who has caused the upset; she approaches them to talk it all over. she sends comprehensive messages of THIS length to resolve problematic situations. 2 and a half screens worth of willingness to meet halfway.





can you imagine this? she is an absolutely magical unicorn of a person.

there are so many other things i love about Amy. she has the most beautiful smile. she and her boyfriend Quentin have been dating for 5 years now and they are precious - not in a demeaning sense, but in the sense that what they have is something rare and incredibly valuable. she shares her chocolate with me. (this is clearly the best thing.) she keeps me sane and reassures me that everything is going to be alright, and even if it isn't, that she will be there. when you have someone like that fighting in your corner, don't they deserve a message at midnight? don't they deserve a blog post? they deserve a lot more, in fact. cake's on me when you get back here, Amesaroonie ;)

so: there you have it. my attempt to sum up the awesomeness that is the beautiful Amy-Jane, and to make you all jealous if she is not your friend. for the final time tonight, my sweet and ever-steady friend, i will take the opportunity to announce:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

i love you more than songs or blog posts or words (or even emojis) could say.