Do I even have the words or strength for this post? At some point I suppose I do have to find it. Kyle being one of the reasons I am who I am today. As some of you are aware my road with Kyle has been long and hard and devastatingly heartbreaking. Today was another one of those devastatingly heartbreaking days. I haven't seen Kyle in nearly 3 weeks. Yet every time I do see him it is harder than last. How as a mom do I reconcile my feelings? How do I miss but not really want to spend too much time in his company? Where did my son go? Where is the little boy I raised.... there isn't even a hint of that little boy anymore... His mannerisms , speech, body language, smell... all of it as foreign to me as that of a stranger.... not as a child I gave birth to and nurtured for 14 years. Some of you may have noticed that I have been places quotes at the bottom of my posts... my question to myself today is will I ever find Kyle's soul again... “When you photograph a face . . .you photograph the soul behind it.”
- Jean-Luc Godard There is a method to this madness... I haven't lost my mind (yet!) - although with the people I hang around with it's amazing I'm not yet stark raving mad ;) A few posts back I spoke about Parent/Adult/Child ego traits which I am working on at the moment... well it appears my child ego trait is seriously lacking in attention. She doesn't know how to have fun, relax and just enjoy life. In steps Vanessa.... After discovering I have never known the joy of jumping in puddles (nope never done it) she was determined I experience the joy of just jumping for joy in the puddles... But of course being Vanessa we couldn't just do takkies and jeans! Oh no if we were going to do this we were going to do it properly!! So at noon on Saturday afternoon here we were, dressed in our LBD's, stilettos and makeup.... standing on a little stretch of road jumping in puddles... The little stretch of road in question led to the local Jockey Academy and I'm sure the poor locals are still wondering about the 2 crazy chicks in their heels jumping in what was more muddy water then puddles!! To be honest I did nearly back out.. when Vanessa and I spoke about it I was all enthusiastic but when I got the Whatsapp message saying pick me up and bring your heels I did baulk... did I really want to go stand on the side of a road jumping in puddles in a pair of stunning heels that had set me back R400 (I'm a shoe fanatic - 43 pairs of just heels at last count...). Could I do this? I kicked into planning and control mode - where, how long, what to wear, what must I bring... no I have to have a cup of tea first... all the while running through my head were thoughts of do I really want to do this?? I'm not one for making a public display of myself. Never have been. I've always been the serious one. The one who does the right thing.... the responsible thing... the one who stands at the back of the crowd, an old soul... yet in saying that I'm also the youngest amongst most of my closest friend, a strange dynamic! So with a fair amount of fear and nerves off I set to pick up Vanessa and we went puddle hunting... finding a nice big one in Summerveld. After a fair amount of prompting Vanessa did get me jumping, laughing and just having the best time I have had in a long time... and eventually not giving a damn about what was thought of me by people driving past. So at the age of 37 I have now officially had my first taste of Puddle Jumping - will I be back, hell yes. But there is a load more of stuff to be added to that list - oops I forgot - I've got to chuck the list and just go for it!!!!! No planning allowed :) WATCH THIS SPACE FOR THE RESULTS :) :) :) Photographs by Vanessa Cracknell http://vanessacracknell.weebly.com/2/post/2013/11/puddle-jumping.html? So what do you see? Triangles? Squares? Diamonds? Bars Blue lines.... How often do we look at every day things and not really see them. Not see the patterns, the lights, the smaller details of the things that are around us. How often do we look at ourselves and not see ourselves? Do we deny who we really are in order to keep the peace? To make ourselves more acceptable to others? We all do. We know we do this in order to move through life more peacefully. We become to tired to try and explain ourselves constantly to people who either don't care or will never understand.... So we slowly lock away pieces of our soul until we don't recognise ourselves. And our soul is stuck on the other side of those bars... the light trying to get out and show our true self to the world.. if only we would let it. (PS What do you see... that is my view when I sit at my desk every morning.... ) “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible”
– Oscar Wilde I originally said I had 2 passions... but in hindsight I have 3.. reading being my third... I was never a reader as a young kid (that was my sister's domain).... I refused to read! Then around the age of 12 or 13, in my final year of primary school, I discovered a series called Sweet Valley High - and I devoured every book I could find.... and from there I was hooked. What is better then curling up in a favourite spot, book in hand, a cup of tea or glass of wine in the other... and allowing yourself to be lost for a few hours between the pages. I'm still not sold on the concept of E-books - call me old-school. I appreciate that it has its place and possibly has people reading that ordinarily would never have picked up a book. However I still prefer to turn those pages. The smell of a new book just released. Or turning the pages of an old book picked up in a 2nd hand shop, obviously well read and well loved. We all have our favourite books. Mine are to many to mention (in fact I have quite a few times gotten two-thirds of the way through a book only to realise I've actually read it before!). Some books have taken me months to read and others I've stayed up all night to finish! So what is on my bedside table? I'm currently hooked on auto-biographies, having just finished Andre Agassi's (a surprisingly BRILLIANT read!). I am now reading Steve Jobs (and have Richard Branson & Billy Connolly's waiting my attention). Also there is Nevada - a sweeping novel about the start up of Las Vegas. These are my favourite kind of novels - ones spanning decades. Also there is a Year in Provence - an interesting read and close to my heart as a year in the French country side is on my bucket list. A collection of poetry to be found in Tyger Tyger Burning Bright. Always something to do with photography and of course the books which are helping me in my quest for self-healing... dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and The Mystery Experience. With 25 years (good grief a quarter of a century!!!) of reading behind me it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to choose one book as my all time favourite. At different times in my life different books have meant different things to me. Some books I've re-read hundreds of times. Others I've never looked at again. Some stories stay with you forever, others forgotten as soon as you read the final paragraph. If I had to choose just one it would be the book that got me hooked on reading. In Standard 8 in 1992 (now Grade 10) our schools in South Africa were finally integrated across all racial lines. A new generation was born. In doing so I was exposed to new ideas and new books. The book that changed it all for me is M M Kaye's The Far Pavillions. I've read this book numerous times in my life .... an epic novel of massive proportions and each time I read it I discover something new..... and get transported back into a world I love. My day is not over until I have read at least a few pages in a book... “Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper…
the photographer begins with the finished product.” - Edward Steichen |
Love Always
You reach a point of accepting that you made mistakes,
they cost you dearly and that you can't change the past. At that point you stop raging against your history, accept it, and move forward into a calmer, less self destructive frame of mind. Archives
April 2020
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