My parents were enlightening me as to the contents of tzatziki, and I was discovering what lamb tasted like cooked with honey. George arrived outside, and sat down against the store-front glass, in a nook against a pillar. In retrospect, I guess he grabbed my attention immediately as this was South Africa, and the idea of a white bum was completely outside the bounds of my experience, but at the time, I just knew he was Different. George was dressed in several layers of other people's clothes, and wore his body as awkwardly as if it wasn't his either. A shaggy mass of white hair surrounded his head, and there was no way to draw the border between what started on his scalp, and what grew from his face. Some of it probably didn't come from either.

George sat quietly facing away from us, rocking idly on his heels, surveying the late night traffic of cars and feet, as if slightly surprised to see that it all just carried on going without falling apart. He'd sat down and placed his treasures next to him, a giant flat white sheet of polystyrene, and it's counterpart of cardboard, torn ragged edges and all. I guess someone just bought a new fridge. I'd carried on watching him askance, my young curious mind always obsessed with the unfamiliar - him outside, and everything inside Kuzmas was unfamiliar, my attentions were everywhere so I didn't see where the pen came from.

I was a smart kid, or so I've been told. I liked that idea, and held on to it to this day, so I was a little surprised at what he began to write. Neatly, in beautiful loopy handwriting - I first took it for higher mathematics, but I was a smart kid, and noticed the symbols - chemical elements, compounds. I remember trying to talk to my parents about him, question why an educated man was sitting there, shivering, writing formulas on discarded cardboard. Halfway through my questions, fantasies had already arisen about what he was writing : a cure for some disease? A new fuel? I'd settled on him working on a cure for his own mental ailments when his hand moved from writing to scribbling, loops, circles, larger, smaller, at first just tailing off from where he'd written, but soon obscuring the whole sheet.

We left; an ingenuous boy speedily crossing the road, dragged behind his parents; staring back at a man from another world, who for a moment saw me. Though without expression, I knew somehow that he was glad, just to be seen.

So, something from the ol' CF card then.

Another friendly office invader

Buffalo Bay, the river

I has a boat

amo, amat, amamus

White Paws. Her and sibling are now home'd.

N, preparing for the first day of (traditional) school

T, taking joy from her instructions to pick her nose

This guy is hiding. By my toes.

6" floorboards btw.

Up on those hills,

is a place called Nirvana,

which is where Aedan came to join us.

Well, I lied. Actually I went to grab a picture of the choppers filling up. aaaanyway.

also, from the other side of the lagoon (on top of the right 'head' as seen in the above)

warning, full size ~1.5MiB

So I walked up my driveway, to the corner of my fence, and looked down

from the top of my neighbors driveway

walked further down the road, and

began to wonder if I should be getting ready too

looking back at my house

said chopper

although,

it does make for a beautiful sunset

-- update --

out of my downstairs office door. eep.