66 Square Feet: Terrace in August

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Terrace in August

Someone came to see the terrace yesterday evening. She ate a fig and looked around and took photographs of everything with her iPhone. I named all the herbs. I drank a Pimms, she drank water.

3 comments:

meemsnyc said...: The terrace looks so green and lovely!; August 5, 2010 7:15 PM
Devon said...: How mysterious!; August 5, 2010 7:27 PM
Thomas said...: Oh wow. I love your terrace. It's looking mighty lush these days.; August 5, 2010 10:56 PM

Manifesto

What is 66 Square Feet About?

It's about gardening in tight spaces. It's about how to live with a man and a cat in a tiny apartment with a tiny terrace. It's about photos, and friends, and inspiration and blackspot on the roses. It's about food and cooking over an open flame. It's about wine. And water. And watering...And picnics. It's about seasons without and within. It's about New York, and about South Africa. It's about where I go, and what I come back to: a terrace twelve-and-three-quarters by five-and-a-quarter feet wide.

Afterwards in the street, she looks around the neighborhood. "Yes, it is certified now."

She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere."

The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

"Die kierie kom uit Indonisie, gesny van 'n tak wat van jongs af omslinger was deur a wildevy se rank. Hulle het saam grootgeword, en die rank het sy spoor op die tak gelos. Daarom is die slinger ook oneweredig, en hier,"se hy, "by die punt van die kierie moes daar iets gebeur het - die slinger en die tak het inmekaar gevleg en 'n knoop gemaak. Die natuur het die kierie so gemaak."

"n Kieriemaker sou dit eweredig gedoen het," se ek.

"My kind," se meneer Boje, "vermy die reguit lyn."

Petra Muller, Koendoes