Happiness ...

Today was another glorious day - I went to see The Band's Visit - an Israeli film about an Egyptian police band who get stranded in a godforsaken little town in Israel. It is a lovely movie - probably the best picture I've seen in the past 12 months. If you're into quiet films about human interaction and its capacity to change us in subtle ways, please go and see it!

But the best part of the day was arriving home and finding a thick envelope in my mail box - not the horrible kind containing tax forms, or documents from your investment broker showing you that your little nest egg is now almost non-existent, but the GOOD kind, containing lots of delicious inspirational bits and pieces, from a lovely friend who lives 20 inches away!

The generous-spirited Linda Sue sent me a whole pack of goodies for use with my journals and crafting - a beautiful Happiness card ...

A sweet embroidered lappie - I am going to put it on my dressing table ...

... and lots of the most delicious vintage ephemera - an old library catalogue card, book pages of various types, vintage luggage tags, claim tickets, admittance tickets, pictures and playing cards! (Thanks to the page from an old French grammar book I can now say, "Linda Sue, je suis heureux de vous voir", but oh bother, I want to replace 'voir' with the verb for 'know', and that page is missing ... and I want to say "very, VERY heureux" ...)

This little bad karma cure-all manual - to send to the publishers, she says. (But I'm keeping it, being in dire need of it having inadvertently crushed a snail while gardening yesterday.)

... and this sweet little card - Linda Sue says it's a price tag. My goodness, that is one artistic price tag - I would have bought the item just to get the tag! And I love the picture of the little girl - it actually reminds me of myself when I was little - blond hair in a funny bob, and the bow! Oh, that bow! My mom was Applicator-of-Huge-Ribbon-Bows-in-Hair Supreme...)

Linda Sue even thought of Mirabelle and sent her some miniature money - good thing too, as Mirabelle is quite annoyed with me at the moment - I forgot her in the box over Xmas, and I mislaid all her outfits, except for the top of her pant suit. So she tootled off to The Space, Linda Sue's gift clutched in her grubby little paws, to do some clothes shopping ...

Thank you so much, dear Linda Sue, from the depths of our hearts (even though one of them is a little paper heart....) I am going to have a great deal of fun using these!

Dollar bills

Won Park folds these beauties from dollar bills.

I think it is time I expand my origami repertoire from its two-item (Flying Bird&Heart) state ...

(found via yatzer)

Movies, Books, Art - what more could I want?

I had a perfect day - went to see this movie ...

(There are two kinds of people - those who love Woody Allen movies, and those who don't, and I fall into the first category.)

Then visited the Book Lounge in Roeland Street (this view is from its side door), and it was indeed delicious - to the last drop ... I got a (signed - whoo hoo!) copy of Jesse's graphic short story collection - I Don't Like Chocolate (which in my case could not be further from the truth!)

It was quite hot, so we crossed the street to the Kimberley Hotel's bar. I've always wanted to go - it is a slightly seedy old-fashioned kind of bar - remember the days when females were not allowed in bars? I must say that I got a few looks when I entered, and I did not think they were the complimentary, approving kind. Suffice it to say that I was the only female customer ...

...so I kept my gaze firmly trained on the beautiful pressed ceiling as I drank my cider ...

Then off to the Goodman Gallery Cape to see the William Kentridge exhibition - (REPEAT) from the beginning - oh, oh, oh!! Magnificent, I was blown away!

It perfectly complemented his 8 film fragment installation (i am not me, the horse is not mine) which I saw a few weeks ago at the National Gallery.

And then back home where a water pipe had broken - once again ....

But what do I care? Movies, books, art - I have it all ...

Art Journal - a new page and an old one, amended.

" ... in the east the cloud-flower blossoms ..."
Collage with paint and marker pen. This is an earlier page which I made darker and added the image of Fat Man.

Drawing with pastels and marker pen. I realise that the column of the mushroom cloud should be much higher, but I needed to fit it all onto the page.

I did these two pages after seeing Dr Atomic, an opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the last days of testing the bomb at Los Alamos. (Music by John Adams and libretto by Peter Sellars. It is one of the Met Goes to the Movies series.)

... the beauty of doing the dishes ...

For the past ten days, when I do the dishes ...

I let my eyes travel upwards ...

... until they reach the jesse breytenbach print I got myself for xmas (from here ), and which I love with a passion ...

... and that is the beauty of doing the dishes.

a list ...

I do not make New Year's resolutions, but yesterday (after I took this photo from our garden - cool, hey?) I made a list of a few things I would really like to do this year. Here are some of them:

1. I want to travel to at least one place I haven't been before - this won't be difficult as I've haven't been to very many places, and I wish it could be Paris, or New York, but it will probably have to be local - I'm thinking Noup on the West Coast ...

2. After six years of dancing the tango, I want to broaden my horizon and learn to salsa.

3. I want to take the train into town (the last time I've done that was about 15 years ago!) and just mosey around, look at some art exhibitions, discover some new coffee shops, oh, and I want to visit the Book Lounge. And yay, I won't have to look for parking.

4. I think I'm going to take the plunge and get a teeny tattoo. Okay, maybe not a permanent one. Well, I'll see ...

5. I want to go to a play at the newly refurbished and re-opened Space Theatre.

6. I want to go to Sutherland to watch the stars.

I hope you have lots of lovely & interesting things you are looking forward to do in the new year!

2009

Dear Friends, I hope you all have a wonderful, happy and prosperous New Year!
My wish for you:

... to its fullest ... xxx Anairam