Lord grant me the Serenity...

Happiness has crept back into the heart of me and I'm sort of terrified ahahaha! I'm scared because I know that it is fleeting - that it is so sweet while it lasts and then its absence hits like a sledgehammer fired in a kiln.

There has been heartache - actually so much heartache already. Two very beloved friends are going through an incredibly hard time right now. The husband of this amazing duo has been diagnosed with leukemia and has been undergoing chemo. This has been a painful and shocking time, a time of tears and reflection and prayer. I'm putting this to the universe - to any and all who read this. Please pray for them. They are pure love and goodness and they deserve a long and beautiful life together. I'm sending this your way again God. Please see them through this.

Being home again has been rejuvenating. I love my babies so much - so damn much. Our newest addition turned one in January and he is the embodiment of joy and energy. When I hold him, when I look at him my heart fills with warmth and light so intense I have to physically reach up and hold on to the place where my heart lies because its a love that is overwhelming. My niece is growing everyday into the most beautiful little woman - bright and loving and my best friend in the whole world. A doctor recently put her on Ritalin - to my unending horror - and I still feel as if there's a hand of ice around my heart when I think about her on that medication. I do not believe she needs it. I do not believe any child should be medicated. Her mother and I are seeking alternative doctors and second opinions. This shook me - this hurt me. But she will always come first, she will always be number one in my mind and heart and soul and we will find a way for her free of poison. I'm working a job I actually love. Yes - I said it. I love my job. I'm working in environmental conservation as a communications manager and everyday is like a dream come true. I am so blessed. I am so so blessed. When i arrived home in December one of the first things I asked my mom was to take me to my Grandma's grave because I had not been to see her since we laid her to rest there in 2006. A huge, huge part of my decision to leave the job I had in Cape Town, to come home, was because of the dream I had of her. In the dream she kept asking to see the new baby, she kept asking my sister and I why we hadn't come to introduce him to her and we kept saying, "MaLisi we're busy - there's just too much happening." And she said to us: Girls there will always be work - there will always be something you feel you have to do right away - but nothing is more important than family. Nothing. So bring me my grandbabies - I want to meet the new addition." It wasn't that clear y'all - this was a dream after all - but I woke up the next day, called my mom and sis and told them to get themselves and the babies to the graveyard stat! When I arrived home and went to visit her I prayed for a new way, I prayed for joy and direction because I was so lost and small and lonely. And then this job came through for me and I feel transformed. I still need to go visit my family who have passed in Klipgat to leave flowers and prayer and love and then I want to have a ceremony of thanks giving and remembrance to my loved ones who have passed. I felt at peace after I had visited her - and peace is so so precious.

My drive home from Cape Town was...just so good! It was like a slow, steady descent into sunshine and heat and sleep and sugar. I missed Xmas day at home but when I arrived home the whole family was there, waiting, and they had a huge braai to welcome me home. It was the sweetest homecoming I could have ever imagined. And now I'm living in Joburg again, doing a job that doesn't make me want to tear into my own flesh, and praying hard for the ones I love who are hurting. I'm writing too - writing with glee and ease - like I haven't done since I was 12 years old!! I'm pretty much ecstatic. I hope that the new year has brought you joy and peace. Sending so much love your way.

THE DAY I SWALLOWED THE SUN - ALOK

I did this shoot with Alok in September and shortly after that my life sort of just dissolved around me. Through the tear soaked memories I have of the time - I swear I spent every moment it felt with frozen daggers of fear and shame and anger clawing at my insides - I remember Alok dragging his delicious self out of bed after a night of hard dancing and posing, bravely, for me in the already dazzling heat of the day. He was amazing. That was a very good day.

THE DAY I SWALLOWED THE SUN - JULIE AND ANUSHKA

The intimacy of these shoots sometimes overwhelms me. It is the most ...intense experience to be allowed into the sacred spaces people have crafted for themselves and I am so grateful to be let in - even for a little bit.

Love Stoned

Disclaimer: This blog doesn’t make any sense. I wrote the words as they came to my head – literally just put them down as the words popped into my brain with very little thought to how it flows or make sense or is contradictory or problematic or anything. This is what was in my brain and now this is what I’ve put down here. There are days I look up into the golden spill of sunshine across the sky and I want to disappear into that glow. I imagine sinking into the warm loam of the earth and being drowned in the utter calm stillness of life as love and joy and the bitter ache of pleasure-pain split my skin with that quiet, breathless sigh of completion – of satiation. My God what a year it has been! I have cried more and laughed more and felt more than I have in a very long time. I met a new me. I really did. I came face to face with a Nomonde I thought had died but then, when I thought I knew everything buried in the murkiest reaches of my soul another part of me just gleamed into being and I was entranced once more. I have resigned two jobs, lost my hair due to stress, shaved my head, found the courage to truly face my sexuality and finally, finally woken up to the power I have in this life. I know – and I am so grateful for this knowledge – that I cannot control it all and I thank God everyday that he’s got this you know? I love having found the wisdom to know and take comfort in the fact that he’s running the show and that the world is not on my shoulders. And yet I have also finally seen and experienced my own power. For the past decade I have been making decisions based on fear. It has been so hard facing up to that – I can’t tell you how hard it has been. All this time I have been driven by the urge to succeed: to live up to the myriad expectations people had of me; to make money; to buy a car; to fall in love. The last fearless choice I ever made was choosing to go to Rhodes University to study journalism. I remember the sheer calm and certainty of the moment I made that choice – and the utter belief I had in the fact that the money to go there would come from somewhere and that I would be awesome! LOL! Yes that was the arrogance and ignorance of youth but it was a fearlessness and a self-confidence I lost the year I left home and it’s been a hard 10 years winning it back. I took my first job because I was terrified of being stuck a journalist. I remained in PR as long as I did because we were broke at home and it was the only way I knew how to make enough money to keep my family going. I left Johannesburg to come to Cape Town because I was afraid I was going to end up trapped doing work I hated, that I was going to die irrelevant and on the fringes of life and then when I left my job and took the new job – also in PR – I only did that because the threat of unemployment filled me with icy dread. I’ve also been running away from myself. I want love more than anything else on this planet - and those are some fucking hard words to write down. I have so much love but it does not sate me – I’m hungry for more. And I haven’t believed – truly believed – that I had a right to it. I do not trust men. I trust my father, I adore him – I love my little brother so much it makes me ache – and I thought this would translate into a love of other men. It hasn’t and I’ve had to face the fact that I really don’t like most heterosexual male people and that that dislike is based on years of learnt mistrust, of humiliations I’ve been too slow to forget. I don't know what I'm going to do with this knowledge - I do know it has helped me to begin to heal the bitterness a little bit. I've also - terrifyingly - acknowledged my love of women. This is not a coming out blog lol!! I think I'm still far more straight than I will ever be gay but embracing my love of women, of women's body's - not just their hearts and minds and amazing spirits - has been like taking a deep breath after years of only sipping at the air. It has been a revelation learning too that I can be the multitude of people and feelings and thoughts and desires that stir my body everyday and that it really is the essence of a person’s spirit that matters and not the vessel - although my God the vessels are pretty and I am thankful for them everyday!!! Ja. So here I sit – unemployed, looking so forward to going home to see my family, and without a clue about what is coming in the new year. Right now I have no real plan – just the beginnings of one – but I am peaceful and for now I am fearless and I’m just savouring this feeling of fitting utterly into my own body, my own confidence and passion, and my own love for myself. I’ve also pried the pruny edges of my fraidy cat little heart a little wider – a little bit more open. And I am so thankful for my blessings and the networks of support that carry me, carry my pain and joy when I can’t take another step.

In the throes of thesis writing *iz ded*

I'm working on my thesis - writing this thing is just so unspeakably painful I don't even know what to do with myself. It's like every word is etched onto the page with blood and pain!! Aaaack!!!!! Really, really looking forward to it being finished.

"Help! I'm alive my heart keeps beating like a hammer..."

I am scared. My life feels like a big, uncertain mess right now and I am scared and so incredibly tired. I slept all weekend hoping that getting some actual shut eye would make the picture a little clearer. And it has - I feel a bit more able to cope but I now also see every problem in glaring sunlit clarity and I confess that I am afraid. I'm praying hard. I'm mostly cried out and just reaching out to God for guidance, a solution. I have many blessings and I am always thankful for those but right now I really need a little help. I am hopeful though and there are tiny green tendrils of joy curling under the heavy muck of fear I'm feeling right now and I know they will burst through - I know it will be soon - I just need some help staying strong while the darkness passes and the tears dry up.

"Be not afraid, I go before you always. Come follow me and I will give you rest."

The Day I Swallowed the Sun - Jamie

On Saturday the first of the Swallowed the Sun shoots took place. Jamie Tam, who is also the delectable Afrodyke, was a gracious and glorious model. There is something deeply humbling in being invited into the private thoughts and hurts and joys of people and there was a sacredness to the space we shared that day that I am very thankful to have been entrusted with.