I've come to the conclusion that skinny people travel well.

First of all, do you even sweat? No, why, because in the middle of a South African summer you can wear short shorts to the airport with a barely covered midriff and look fantastic. Well guess what? Some of us travel for work and yes, we sweat, we look frumpy and at the end of the day catching a redeye to another city we know better than the GPS, that’s definitely wine you smell, because we just drank all the free wine. And we’re late, always late. Why arnt there boarding notices in the airport lounges? You free wine giving devils.

I left the house this morning wearing fashion. I arrived back at the house looking like a Mr Price Sale. Why? Because there is NO WAY to travel in style.

Once I tried to wear heels to work, work being in Cape Town and home being Joburg. I had seen it being done by at a thousand commuter models in the last week, so I tried it.

1x taxi ride, 1x long ass haul your bag down the Gautrain escalators, 1x km walk to the check in desk, OBVIOUSLY boarding at the last gate in the airport and walking down that gawd awful ramp to the plane that makes your toes curl to support your poorly chosen attire, 3x apologies whilst plumping into your window seat later, whilst 1x eye murdering the bitch next to you whose heels are 5cm higher than yours but clearly had botox in her forhead as a sweat bead hasn’t broken in years you realise… she’s a 1x robot.

How can I not get this right? Ive flown more than Miley Cyrus’ private jet, yet when it comes to the security queue I can’t get my laptop/s out fast enough. The first bit of travel anxiety starts to tickling down my back and it’s settled, No matter how prepared I am the pressure you other travellers give with your beady eyes as “Amateur” drains across your face, give us, other well seasoned travellers enough to put me off travelling for life. I want to float, I want to be that girl that looks like she travels, but I feel like I am that girl that looks like she left the farm for the first time.

Do you do a pre-flight prayer? You know the one that as you start to queue after the 5 minutes of boarding calling, you start to survey the “manscape”.. At this point I’ve lost a bag to the air trolley, so I start to feel nimble and light. It’s at that moment I begin…
“Dear God, Please may I sit next to the most attractive man on this plane, see the one I’m looking at, yes, him, no, no not him, HIM, but if you’re paying more attention to saving cats on roof tops I understand, you are God BUT if you can’t get me next to him, please, please may the person be mute. A skinny mute. A skinny mute with no arms or legs, that hasn’t eaten anything gassy and is poor so he can’t enjoy the cash bar….Thanks.”

It bring me to this reason I am writing this rant. Not for the lack of my travel skills but for the love of ALL THINGS unpleasant. I am unfortunately writing this whilst post pre-flight prayer in between two of the most disgustingly gross humans I have ever come across. (A friend of mine posted last week that people that travel often would never get the middle seat, well my luck, and organisational skills, properly ran out this time). Whilst burping ALL the free food they consumed before the flight, “is that chicken?” I decided to write about my 1000 thoughts of how badly I travel. AND sincerely hoping that the two Shrek’s beside me are reading this and respect little humans like me to leave the food alone! Oh God, the guy on my left just ordered a beer. Sweet baby potatoes, my eyes are starting to water.

As I left the plane walking at a seriously “get me off this damn air-bus” pace, I hear a small but obviously male voice behind me.

Tiny voice man: “Miss, miss, sorry miss”
I will not turn around. I am done here. Whatever you found of mine, you can keep it. 
Fuck. 
Me: “Oh, hi.”
It’s one of those beer consuming, small people crushing, silent burpers. 
Tiny voice man: “Sorry Miss, are you a journalist?”
Me: “No. I just like to write.”
Tiny voice man: “Do you write for anyone public?”
Seriously? This dude.
Me: “ Yes, I have a blog.”
Tiny voice man: “Oh.”
Giving a small smile, I depart this conversation.
And then…
Tiny voice man: “I’m really sorry, it’s been a long day. I didnt mean to you, you know, make you uncomfortable.”
For the love of all things, I become a human again. 
Me: “It’s ok, neither did I”

As I walked to the train, I couldn’t help but think… I’m not the worst traveller in the world.

*Air Punch!*

A great read, for a great day. - Day 19

Today I have been in Joburg for 3 weeks. Dudes! THREE WHOLE WEEKS! Where did the time fly to? I have been in a thoughtful wonder what to write all day, until this literate gem swooshed through the airwaves onto my iPhone screen.

It's romantic, without trying to be. Real, yet disturbing and catapults you to the wonder.

Find ten minutes of your day to be insulted, angry, and in agreement, as this truer than true piece of literature unfolds your fantasies.

You Should Date An Illiterate Girl.

Date a girl who doesn't read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you've unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn't fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn't, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn't read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn't read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.

- C. Warnke

Whoever you are C. Warnke, you deserve an applause. Thank you to my friend who knew that this would pull at my being-strings. It only makes me want to write better, and embrace being a reader.

Inspiration, who?

I had to ask myself yesterday, whilst sitting in a pile of my own to-do list, where does this inspiration to create awesomeness come from? As once explained in a TED video by author Elizabeth Gilbert, inspiration is like a breath of wind whooshing through an open window, we can either choose to let it float past us or inhale it and let it transpire through our veins and use it to create something us.

Inspiration comes in different forms for different people but the way in which we look at the world around us can determine whether we embrace this wind of inspiration or let it float by to the next available soul that is willing to take it in. I for one have been feeling this excitement to do more with my life almost everyday. From the great African skies on my drive home to the song selection on my iPod. I see inspiration come to me from my best friend's words over a late coffee, I feel it like soft hands searching for pleasure on a loved ones torso, inspiration so close it's like the last exhale before a first kiss.

If inspiration had a friend I would call her Love. As the only way in which I can explain this feeling of being over come with inspiration is the same I have felt when falling in love. It is an overwhelming energy of mixed emotions, nerves, expectations and aspirations. A frustration of confusion with no marked path to take.

So what do we do when we find that inspiration is swirling around us like a cyclone Irina? Do we look up into the sky, laugh and thank the universe for this over flowing awesomeness then get back to our scheduled lifestyle? Or do we pick up a pen, write an email, strum our guitar and use it to create a better life?

We start.

Life, among other things...

Let's talk about taking chances. How many of you out there have done something so out of your shell that it shocked those around you? Did it work out to be one of the most awesome experiences of your life? I bet it did.

I am turning 25 this year. Yes, I am still viewed as a little girl with many more experiences to encounter but jeez man, I am fully wide awake to the fact that in FIVE years I will be THIRTY. Five years is not a whole lot of time to take chances and 'fingers crossed' decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. But, is it ok to sometimes think, "What if I don't have it all figured out by then?" Will I be thirty, still single? Happily single? Married?! Working a job I only half love? Will I even have a job?! Would I have set up a house in SA? Will I even be in SA? And scarily of all, will I even be alive?

Have you ever looked back on your life and gone, I didn't do that. I would NEVER have done that, but you did. It wasn't dejavu honey, it was frikken real. It seems like everyday that I see my 20 year old self, her carelessness, her utter joy out of life and think, gosh she really did have it all sorted out. What happened? Well, one big regret happened, one which would have probably changed where I am today.

Taking chances with love. Two years ago I applied for a position as Beauty Editor at very well known international teen publication. I was tired of Durban, and ready for a move, a change, an opportunity to grow my talent. I flew to Cape Town, knowing that an interview over Skype would have sufficed but I needed this. So I took a chance. During this time I had met a guy in Durban and fallen head over heels in lust. He knew about this job opportunity and supported my decision. But, his support was littered with selfishness.

I got the job. I got the job I had dreamed about, a one way ticket to a door that was lying open waiting for me to walk in and I turned it down. I turned it down for a one month old relationship that had me clouded over in little smoke bombs of lust.

Eight Months later we ended it. I was jobless, single and heart broken. With no flashing red arrow pointing me in any direction.

The moral to this life experience still haunts me today, as I know that I broke down a lot of bridges whilst taking that chance. But, (there always has to be a but in a good and bad situation) I learnt one thing that will forever carve the path I walk on. Never give up something that will better you for the sake of another person. If that person loves you enough, you will find a way to work it out. Take a chance on your own life, not someone else's.

So here's to the next five years. May it be spontaneous, eventful and may I have at least taken one chance on my own life that will change it forever.

Daydreaming

I keep having this reoccurring daydream. It finds itself spreading an enormous smile across my face, tiny giggles escaping my already grinning expression and fills my body up with, the super cliché, of tiny bubbles.

I am two feet out the window of an old muscle car, somewhere beneath the summer flickers of sunlight and moving trees. My head is rested on the shoulder of some amazing human who has taken my heart and thrown it to the warmth of the summer sun, which now falls softly on me. My long blonde hair is floating in the wind and distantly, a song I like to call ‘Happiness’ circles around us.

I don’t know if it is the fantastic human next to me that is making me so happy, or the feeling of freedom in my heart. But it makes me yearn, yearn for the feeling of me loving someone whole-heartedly or just to be on a road going softly nowhere.