Trying to stick to the point

Last night I took the dogs for their evening walk. We drove to the start of a deserted back road. The road runs along a boundary fence, separating our neighbourhood from a large undeveloped area covered in tall yellow grasses. I stopped and invited the dogs to step outside. Fey and Arjun flashed out the car in an instant. Shanti, however, needed a moment to reflect on the merits of walking.


I turned up the Burning Spear and jumped out into the cold. As my ears grew numb the stars glowed brighter. I threw my head back to better admire tree patterns stretching towards the moon. Then I executed a little dance. It was glorious.


Another glorious exercise was the answering of Kirsten’s interview questions. They allowed me to dream as big as an open blue-purple-black sky sprinkled with stars.

1.You've been granted a wish to spend your perfect 48 hours doing whatever you please - money and time are of no object. How will you spend your days?


I book a retreat venue equipped with tall trees, an ocean and a couple of mountains. Then I invite all of my blogging friends, other friends and family members and we spend the first day laying under the trees, lazily strolling up the mountains and playing in the ocean.


When my wolves are not running around excitedly they are dreamingly resting their heads on our knees. We sit up all night next to a huge fire and talk and talk and talk. The next day we fly in a private jet to Marrakech in order to visit Miriam’s guesthouse. Money being no object, her ingenious soul blazes with inspiration. Our senses vibrate with colours and textures, music and dance. We are wandering through an Arabian night dream where wolves and peacocks play.

2.You've won an airline ticket around the world. The only stipulation is that you can't retrace your steps. Where does your journey take you?

First I fly to Capetown to visit my sister. We swim in the sea, have hot chocolate in town, climb Table Mountain and visit antique shops hidden away in sleepy towns.


I fly to the States and Canada to visit my brother, to eat burgers-speared-with-rosemary with NotSoSage, to sit on the back lawn drinking beer with jen , to meet crazymumma and her beautiful girls, to flutter through spring blossoms and moonshine, to eat thai food with thailandchani, to laugh with deb, to go to book readings with acumamakiki, to hang around the streets with bazl, to play on her secret beach with MsLittlePea and Peanut, to take her kids swimming with Mary, to have coffee with Sober Briquette, to visit bookshops with bee, to meet Emily' and her lovely students and her earthworms, to bob to music with Lil, to sit Under the ponderosa, to see the beautiful world of jo(e), to go for a early morning walk with la vie en rose and to meet all the other bloggers I am still getting to know.

I would also love to see the great American plains where wolves still run free. Of course I will need to obtain a map of North America in order to locate you all.


Next I fly to Germany to sing with Susanne and to see Freiburg the town where Florian went to University. We bicycle through the black forest and watch a full autumn moon rising over mushroom filled meadows. I stop over in Paris after which I fly to Belgium to visit a dear friend at MuHKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp.


I stop to see Maryam in Marrakesh to drink Moroccan tea, stare in admiration at her guesthouse in process and all the treasures she has gathered. I finish my journey with a hike down the Great Wall of China and a visit to Auroville an echo city in South India.

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."


I know there are many more things to see but I’ll visit New Zeeland, Brazil, Japan, Thailand and Mexico on my next trip. Otherwise my brain might explode when millions of new impressions start jostling against each other, jumping faster and faster with excitement.

3.You've been given the opportunity to write a description of your perfect job and once completed, this job is yours. What is your new line of work?

In the mornings I do research on community based mental healthcare programs. In the afternoon I assist in implementing explorative mental health programs.


I work with a small group of dedicated professionals who are passionate yet playful. Our therapies are facilitated through the use of gardening, art and creative writing. There are plenty of women in our team. Our work time is structured in cyclic time patterns.

Although she never fills in a timesheet a mother effectively finishes a thousand tasks.


“Women's specialized responsibility for child care suggests that women have a distinctive experience of time, one that is fundamentally different from men's. Historians have drawn our attention to the link between the development of clock time and the industrial organization of labor (Landes 1983; Thompson 1967).


Since men "specialize" in paid employment, it has been argued that their subjective lives are ruled by linear clock time. Feminist social scientists have conceptualized women's time as predominantly cyclical or task oriented (Sowton 1989; Glucksmann 1998; Kristeva 1981; Nowotny 1994).


The working times of women as wives and mothers, it is argued, cannot be captured by perspectives that "separate work from leisure, public from private time, subjective from objective time, and task from clock time" (Adam 1995:95). Research on women's caring and emotional work in particular has shown the limits of a linear conception of time. “

The Rush Hour: The Character of Leisure Time and Gender Equity Michael Bittman; Judy Wajcman Social Forces, Vol. 79, No. 1. (Sep., 2000), pp. 165-189.

Florian says I’m being sexist and that all people are better adapted to cyclic rhytms. What do you think?

And now I need to run:

I have two essays to finish before next week Friday.

Question 4 and 5 to be continued….