Compassion

"Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors."

- Andrew Boyd

Always Look Again

Everything you are

“ Everything you do right now ripples outward and affects everyone. Your posture can shine your heart or transmit anxiety. Your breath can radiate love or muddy the room in depression. Your glance can awaken joy. Your words can inspire freedom. Your every act can open hearts and minds."

— David Deida

The Satorialist

              A Sartorial meeting : Scott Schuman, Dindi Ndzekeli, Nolundi Walaza, Sibulele Walaza 

 

“Taking Women Students Seriously”

"Women and men do not receive an equal education because outside of the classroom women are not perceived as sovereign beings but as prey…. the capacity to think independently, to take intellectual risks, to assert ourselves mentally is inseparable from our physical way of being in the world, our feelings of personal integrity. If it is dangerous for me to walk home late of an evening from the library because I am a woman and I can be raped then, how self possessed, how exuberant can I feel as I sit and work at the library? How much of my working energy is drained by by the subliminal knowledge that as a woman, I test my physical right to exist every time I go out alone."

—	Adrienne Rich, feminist writer. It is from a chapter called, “Taking Women Students Seriously” from her book called, On Lies, Secrets and Silence.

Interesting things

“There is no evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.”

Jon Ronson

I know that girl

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it...

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory."

▼

  Marcel Proust

This is just another Love letter to Paris

I have a thing for Paris and with Paris and it is going to last a lifetime. I know this because what she and I have is Love. My sister and I spent the best of the summer days there. That city is a thing of beauty and I fall in Love at every avenue. It is breathtaking and sometimes even that expression is not good enough.

Hemingway was right "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast”

The 'N' Word

Learn how to say “no”.
Cram that word inside your mouth,
the whole thing, make sure all of it
gets in there. Let it walk on your tongue.
Practice with it in the mirror, push it
out, make faces, learn to love the salt
and bitter of it. Teach it to perch on your lip,
buzz, collect pollen from your sugary gloss.
Make it swarm between your cheeks. 

 Jeanann Verlee, ‘Swarm’

People, help the people.

The young and the talented 

Birdy_People help the People

The subway Love story.

Today, in the subway I watched the sweetest Love story. I sat next to a Lovely young lady and a boy walked in, he must have been between five and six years old. From the moment he marched into the train he couldn’t take his little brown eyes off my now equally smitten young neighbour. There was a lot of blushing, jumping around, some glances to his father for approval and a few punches to his older brother to show his new found Love his strength. When the family got off he blew her a kiss in a shape of a gun as if to say ‘I’ll be back for you, a few years of this growing business and I will come back for you’. Now I am pretty sure he picked this up from those American movies with badly synched French voice overs on Saturday nights he was up longer than most days. But I hope he holds on to his all his boyish charm, careless determination, purity and chivalry stays with him.

Life is a party | Ibiza, Spain

Life is a party on this Island.

When my friend Busi suggested we go to Ibiza I thought it might be a cliché. I had visions of drug fueled parties and a teenage wasteland and of course it is! but you can choose to be part of it or not. There is a lot more to do on the Island. We found a hidden beach, we had a great time sun baking watching sunsets, eating, walking and listening to music.  If you ever make your way to Ibiza don’t try fit plans into weekend. There is no need; a Monday is as good as a Friday or even better.

You Are

From Prague... with Love

A traditional meal from Prague _Duck and Dumplings

I’ve always dreamt of Prague. Eastern Europe has always been a charm -hidden, far and old. I am looking foward to more visits to the east soon.

I desperately avoided looking at any information especially pictures of the city because I wanted to keep it an enigma of sorts. I was not disappointed.  It is as charming and grand. I went with a great friend and Love of mine Jay. We laughed, we saw, we ate, we ate and boy did we eat and we walked, these are all the great essentials of a good city.  I also met with Kris a friend I have been trying to meet and hang out with for years now, the sweetest surprise.

I am a traveling man

This photo was taken by a lady who sold me popcorn in what used to be Eastern Berlin. It is now trendy spot in an old building.


I Love travel. It has been one of my greatest teachers; everywhere I have been I have taken and left parts of my soul. It is one of my greatest Loves. I am incredibly Blessed to be able to do what I Love. This summer I have had the best time on the road, an absolute joy with old and new friends. The story of my travels started in in a farm in France and then to Prague, Ibiza and Berlin. I It continues till the end of August and It is likely to end in Paris and then Summer is set to start all over again in my beloved South Africa

Dear Paris

A great video by Education First, for one of my favourite places on earth.

A lesson in French

Say 'Hello'

Pizza night

I Love being in the kitchen because I Love good food. I decided long ago that I would learn to cook the best meals; so the kitchen is one of my favourite spaces and I use it a creative outlet. Needless to say I fall short in other domesticating duties. Cooking is an art… you understand.

This is great pizza.

Chevre/ goat cheese 

Blue Cheese

Salami

Lardons (Oh so French)

lots and lots of Rocket because it is the world's best herb

Oh! Summer Sun, you will always be mine.

Nice, France
May 2012

Redefining Success

"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and Lovers of every kind. 
It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane and these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it."


—David Orr

The road less traveled

"Be brave enough to live creatively. 

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been.

 You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. 

You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. 

What you will discover will be wonderful; Yourself. "

— Alan Alda

Like water

I wrote this for you.

"Between
the anger
and the thousand
hollow words
we’ll never share
i wonder
if i am
your greatest
failure
or you
mine."

W. C. Pelon

Ngiyababonga Abazali bami

Jabu Khanyile and Busi Mhlongo _Ngiyababonga abazali.

Zolile no Thulisile Walaza

Ndiyabulela Mama no Tata ngayo yonke into
uthando luqala ngani.
Ndinguye lo, nini.
Ngigcwele ukubonga.

Anonymity

Look at me.

"The power of a glance has been so much abused in Love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in Love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that Love begins, and in this way only."

—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

A thing for beauty

Remember me like this

"I don’t want to be famous or popular or known for anything other than that i was deep and wise and had a soul that was wildly beautiful, full of mercy and light."

—Jen Lemen

Breakfast in Nice

I was just thinking about Nice and the breakfast I made for my sister Sibulele and our dear friend Nshalati in Nice.

This is the Lovely flat we stayed in and we got used to the neighbour’s cat and his visits.

The poached egg seems to be hidden, what a pity.

 I am going to tell you a great story about our magical visit to the wondrous South of France, soon.

Do You Remember...

                                                    Ane Brun _Do You Remember

This song makes my soul dance through the pain of it.

How brilliantly she moves me into two contrasting emotions at the same time.

Oh Ane!

a Life worth Living.

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift. 

 ___Shauna Niequist

Each One, Pull One

Each One 

                  pull One back 

into the Sun.

Each one must pull one.  Alice Walker 

Light.

This little light of mine.

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
 
― Anne Frank

It all fades to black and white

Some things have the incredible power to toss you up in the air, turn you from rage to sadness and back to rage again in a matter of minutes. This happens almost instinctively often when I confront race or even race issues. This brilliant piece of TV took me on an emotional ride I often try hard to suppress. Confronting the realities of the state of  (South Africa) my home country is always an emotional experience filled with questions and very complex answers that linger in my mind and weigh heavy on my soul.

Often, I’m accused of being too obsessed with race. "Not everything is Black and White, Nolundi". Somehow people find it hard to relate social reality with race and|or race relations. It seems it is always some horror of the past somewhere else, never here. Yet where i come from and in places that hide it, it permeates every aspect of social reality and too often and painfully a lot of it determines the destiny for a black boy and girl.

To the writers, producers and the makers of the episode, Salute.

Press Play.

Emeli Sandé                  

We listened to this song twenty eight times in Milan. This song will always remind me of Sibulele and Machaka, champagne, the greatest pizza on earth and the hotel on the corner of the east side of Milan.

Lessons of a cloudy day

I saw a blind girl walk today.

I watched as she took all her steps with great conviction.

Sure of all her moves.

She had her cane and I imagine heightened senses.

She smiled; it must be a song we both heard as we walked by.  

I am going to change rhythm.

This is how I will take all my figurative steps now.

What a great lesson to learn on a cloudy day.

-Nolundi Walaza

This song is about you

Gotye performing "Somebody That I Used To Know" on KCRW

Dear Amsterdam

If you are ever in Amsterdam have lunch at La Place it will change the way you eat food

There so many unsaid things about Amsterdam - among them, are all the loaded sighs you get when you announce your visit. I heard that rules bend, break and stretch and naturally I was intrigued. I was not disappointed. The city is gorgeous, charming, quaint and untamed, I fell for her quickly and madly. I spent the most joyous weekend crossing rivers, eating and Loving.  I would tell you about the notorious side of this city and how the night falls into all shades of a morally ambiguous grey. But those stories I will save for a cup of hot chocolate and rainy days.

Amsterdam 20-24 April 2012

Full of questions and quest

"For indeed my life is a perpetual question mark

 – my thirst for books, my observations of people, all tend to satisfy a great, overwhelming desire to know, to understand, to find an answer to a million questions.

 And gradually the answers are revealed, many things are explained, and above all, many things are given names and described, and my restlessness is subdued. 

Then I become an exclamatory person, clapping my hands to the immense surprises the world holds for me, and falling from one ecstasy into another. 

I have the habit of peeping and prying and listening and seeking – passionate curiosity and expectation. But I have also the habit of being surprised, the habit of being filled with wonder and satisfaction each time I stumble on some wondrous thing." 

— Anaïs Nin

Call us by our names.

"Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right"

- warsan shire

A higher Love

 

Every so often I come across music that speaks my heart. Here, James Vincent McMorrow, Irish folk music singer-songwriter does a brilliant rendition of  "Higher Love".