Monday

The following things are happening in my flat right now:

• James is harvesting the hops from the vine on the balcony.
• Hayley is dancing to Paul Simon's Gracelands and cooking with chokos and ridge gourds.
• Shannon has just returned home from diving and is cleaning a bunch of butterfish.
• I am suffering mildly from ennui and considering knitting some more.

Yesterday I finished reading Linotte and Doctor Zhivago on the same day. I loved both, which are pretty good odds, I think. Linotte has rekindled my Anais Nin love which is - a tiny bit worrying, to tell the truth. The Anais obsession can lead one to some very dark, Freudian and incestuous places. However, given previous Anais-obsession times, I feel well prepared and thus I'm now re-reading this strange fictionalised biography of Anais that I've had for some time. I haven't re-read it at all though, which is quite unlike me. 

Oh, Anais Anais Anais. Why am I so obsessed with you?? I had a conversation about Anais with my colleague Ian and I had SO MUCH TO SAY. Another thing that came out of that conversation was the possibility of writing (yet another) Anais biography. Can there be too many? She's just given so many primary resources it's almost like resisting temptation not too. I shall be like Anais and put it on my list of things to write some time in the future when I'm feeling all boho.

WWAD? Why, she would go and write about it in some high falutin' language in a hardcover notebook.

Four more days until WOMAD. I have made some lists and my picks for "must see" are Hanggai, The Barons of Tang, Horace Andy (for old times' sake) and Tanya Tagaq who I am drawn to with a kind of horrified fascination. You should go to this website and watch the first video because she gives a super amazing and very emotionally intense performance. Actually cannot wait. Coincidentally (or not??), two of my must see acts feature throat singing. I'm of the opinion that going to WOMAD and not watching at least one throat singing act is probably cheating oneself of the true World Music experience and I could not deny myself that.

Today I am grateful that my house has not been washed away in a tsunami or destroyed in an earthquake, and that I am not digging myself a latrine and living off tinned soup. Tomorrow is payday and I shall be sending money to Japan. I don't know what else to do. But I guess that the ocean is made of drops, so even another drop helps.