life

in daylight

at last!

After a dreadfully long gestation period, the bookshelf was there; the sheer pleasure of placing the books is almost too much. The resident carpenter designed and built a magnificent structure, perfectly fitting against the wall.
And DO notice the floor! Two handy Dutch brothers performed wonders on the chestnut flooring. I almost lost it completely during the process: living through the chaos is not what I consider pleasant.
But, it was well worth the wait!

new views

too much to do yet

The books are still on the floor, the floorboards remain stacked against the wall. Steps are being built into the garden, a toilet is in progress. Things are happening, yet...yet...

work in progress

While we work on installing the new back-of-the-wineshop, we have a special niece visit us from the Nederlands. Lotte agrees that the skateboard installation has a charismatic godlike presence. This evening we could once again enjoy our skemerkelkie (my translation from Afrikaans is evening chalice) in the bright new back of the shop. All this while the last days of the school holidays are upon us.

The kitchenette needs work but to mark territory we have moved in with kettles and coffee machines.  The resident plumber has installed the dishwasher and  basin and things are functioning. I have to be positive so I shall admit that now the list is indeed getting shorter: install toilet and basin in guest washroom, build book shelf in living room upstairs, place hardwood floor upstairs, create courtyard terrace, build stairs to this terrace, install heatpump before winter, paint walls up-and downstairs, fix and finish unplastered door openings etc etc etc...  Summer has been a whirlwind balance of visitors, frantic work, management of tools, clearing living spaces and if there is a flower to symbolize such dedication, it has to be love-lies-bleeding. Janet, your amaranthus caudatus is still flowering!

book in hand, tool in hand

A blogging friend of mine wonders if the end of the (physical) book has arrived. He thinks not and I think not. It reminded me of Rushkoff saying we have a choice: to programme or to be programmed. I want to programme me. I want to read a book in bed at night, lie in a hot bath holding a book. I want the book to remember where I read it. I want to remember the book, the very page where I read those words. I want to own the book if I can, re-read it when I want, re-examine the pages I liked. Reading an e-book will not be good enough.
The new bookshelf is still in the form of a pile of wood, a stack of planks on the floor beside the very books that will eventually furnish the shelves. But once the books go onto the shelves, I want to arrange them according to colour: all the black spines together, lined up on a shelf. The white spines together, the reddish spines together. I know my books by their colour. I know them as objects. Beloved objects.