Muscle & Bone

Outside the sun shines as green leaves are tickled by the slightest of breezes.

Inside, I wait to head out, feet frozen because wearing shoes inside will never be normal for kaalvoet kinders. Today may be the day I find my own place and move out. What a difference space makes.
And it is desperately needed - earlier on I was skyping with a friend and had asked which room would be best, where would I least disturb, where could a conversation be had behind a closed door. I asked, I adapted, I offered to change if/when needed. In the middle of our conversation about politics he busts in, fumbles around behind me, listens in, mumbles approvingly at some of the things my friend is saying. I ask whether he wants to work, if I should change rooms because I'd like to speak in private and not have my entire conversation surveilled. He goes off on a tirade about how we share space and that he has the right to enter where he wants when he wants. Which is true, this space belongs to them, and I am a tenant of sorts, a presence that one has to tolerate because it is what familial expectations dictate. But is privacy not also a right? Is having a moment to talk to a friend on my own without the hearing ears of others not also just a sign of respect? It is a constant challenge navigating these waters.

Yesterday I was again skyping (thanks Skype for being such a lifeline to sanity), this time with my mother. At some point she made the thumbs-up sign and said "Shap". How easy that was. Shap Shap. All good. Everything's ok. The reassuring sign of my mom indicating that everything was as it was supposed to be.

Focus Sabine. It's all good. This is nothing.
How you doin', you good? Ja man, hundreds.
I'm hundreds.

Step out

It's a weird time of the year.
Idealised memories of Christmas spent with cousins cluster like grapes around the realities of the non-season here. In one we are all at my grandmother's first house, the one with the patio above the garage (above some other room?) where one had a startling view of the sea. My aunt asked someone to play Santa Claus and to a pack of preschoolers the man in the red suit arriving at our doorstep was everything.

In another memory we are again at the beach, always at the beach, and my grandmother has tossed the traditional idea of a Christmas tree by using the long branch-bloom that extends from the middle of some type of succulent. She has made little packets for each grandchild containing a host of tiny 'onbenullighede', things she has picked up at farm stalls and convenience stores during the past year in her pursuit to be fair to us all. The families are all there, the aunts and uncles and my mother and sister.

A different year sees my grandmother, always my grandmother, with us in 2000, the first one without my father. I remember him gifting me a Celine Dion CD, a sign that he had not noticed I had moved away from 'My Heart Will Go On' to falling for my sister's Backstreet Boys collection.

Then there was the one year my sister and I spent Christmas alone. The sad year, the bad year, the one where we fought and ended up in our separate rooms.

But it is the Christmases of my 20s that I yearn for now. I miss planning how to get my grandmother to wherever the celebration will be; coordinating a menu with everyone doing different dishes; thinking up cool presents; bickering and fighting and the feeling of needing distance from the overdose of family; having everyone unpack each present individually, stretching the time spent with one another; hanging out with cousins that are so very different from me and still so relatable; sitting outside in the sun with whomever is there at the moment, sipping on a glass of wine and catching up; and lastly, more than the event that is Christmas I miss the sense that blood is thicker than water.

This Christmas will surely be its own shrewd kind of miracle, and I look forward to spending it with people close to my heart. And last year was experiencing Christmas as an observer more than as a participant, by no fault of the kind family that hosted me. It was still a lot of fun and I enjoyed getting to know the little rituals of a family quite different from mine.

Nevertheless, none of this is Christmas. Forget about the religious aspect of the season, dismiss the name and the particular date all together, and center on what it is that makes the time spent together on those few days so memorable: the people. Sometimes, it is as simple as this - I long for my people.

The happy sinner

I don't have a bucket list.
I don't want to parachute, or climb the Great Wall of China, or go shark-cage diving. All this YOLO* stuff is just the current generation remaking Carpe Diem into something more hash-tag-able to add after Twitter statuses.

Certainly, there are things I, too, want to see and do, but if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. I'd really like to go on a train trip through India, à la Darjeeling Limited, including Louis Vuitton luggage and Adrien Brody and some soul-searching. Or go to the Arctic Circle to bond with some polar bears. Or to spend 6 months travelling across the US and Canada, East-to-West.

But the only thing I really want is this:
Happiness.
Not a lifetime pursuit, not a conquest, not going in search of happiness, and of what one usually associates with it. People ( jaja, generalising, as always) tend to believe that when they have found the perfect job, or the perfect partner, or the perfect apartment, or the perfect car, they will be happy. I think that perhaps these things are to big to provide happiness, and gives them too much importance. Sure, it adds to how content you can be if you have a great place and person to return home to after an enjoyable day at work, but you need to find happiness in the small things.

In the perfect pain au chocolat. Or seeing the university's Camera Obscura. Or the radio playing Walk like an Egyptian on your way home. Or seeing your mom after weeks.

There is a lot of happiness in the everyday, we just miss it.

On a similar note, though, (and the original reason for my post) is the recent launching of a friend's blog about her happy place. Check it out on the Square Bucket.

Also, here's the link to the post title, Miss Li's The Happy Sinner**. Listen to it after a weekend of excess when you've told yourself you'll never drink/smoke/go out ever again.



*You only live once.

**Sliv, für dich.