*

Cloud Dancer. Pantone colour of the year is Cloud Dancer. I go into the cloud of unknowing. I will try to remember who you are; what are you like?

The fruit of the Spirit is joy and peace, but I don't seem very joyful or peaceful when I am recognising evil. You don't seem very joyful or peaceful when you are doing that either.

White on white. We are going to see the difference in white on white. Our aesthetics are going to become more attuned to the field of reality in doing so. We are going to see things that other people cannot see.

The sweeping of a grass broom. Panic. I think I felt something like panic there. I felt the presence of something divine. It's quite terrible-terrifying, terror. Like slipping off a cliff into a vast abyss, a nothingness. A moment where all grounding is lost, it seems. A traumatic moment.

I am all colour-coded today. The ground shakes beneath me. It's difficult to hit the right buttons when that is happening.

'A writer, you say? Well, in that case, I shall defer to you; you who make things right.'

Little sperm-like tadpoles swimming through this one. It is another nakedness.

*

4 February 2026

A whole different set of problems this week. The devil is 'bringing it'. He does that anyway, whether you taunt him or not.

My ego feels so bruised, and I just can't think of anything else. How pathetic of me.

A confrontation with a guy who told me to 'jog on', and he gets recorded here for posterity. Something he doesn't deserve. He got upset with me because I did not follow the rules he had just made up on the spot. Apparently I should ride my bicycle on the pavement because he doesn't want to share the road with me. He told me to get out of 'his space'. I asked him to give me his book of rules so that next time I see him I can do what he wants me to do.

This seemed to really upset him. I can tell because he called me a retard. I returned the favour.

As he got out of the car, his mother started shouting, 'Asseblief, moenie baklei nie, in Jesus se naam!' Which I found endearing. And that gave me enough pause (it was quite a long pause, I must admit, shaking and pausing) to just ... 'jog on', as he hurled more abrasive epithets at my back.

I got a little satisfaction when I noticed that he started shaking too.

The mall security guard also entreated us not to start fighting. Afterwards, he came up to me and thanked me for not fighting, and I really appreciate him for saying that.

On my way home, a black satanic SUV sped up the narrow railway bridge I was trying to negotiate and almost ran me over.

When I arrived home, my mother made a dig at me, saying, 'Are all your days this peaceful?'

... I kinda blew up at her a bit. 'I have just almost been in a fucking fight, so don't say that to me. Jissis.'

Now she is not speaking to me.

Funny though, she doesn't seem at all curious about the fight I almost got into. I guess she is too wrapped up in her own bruised ego at the moment. Just like me.

I will have to try and contemplate this painting again tomorrow. I just can't seem to get over myself right now.

5 February 2026

Into the cloud of unknowing we go. What will we find there? No expectations. What will we be able to put into words, and what will be left behind? What will be brought back in words, and what will we leave in the cloud?

Has he moved on?

This colour and the 'H' sound seem to go together. Ho, who, hoo, ha. Laughter. Cool.

Cool is from pagan African origins, when they were possessed by a spirit during a ritual, and they kept a cool, expressionless, trance-like face.

Did Christianity look like this with Jesus? Are there passages describing him in a trance-like state? Being filled with the Holy Spirit, but filled, not possessed. Because God does not possess us to the point where we lose consciousness, to the point where we lose ourselves and He possesses us, takes absolute control. He just is not interested in doing that. He is into loving us.

Where do we go when we sleep?

The land belongs to God, and He gives it to whom He chooses. And yet it still always remains His, to do with what He will.

We are stewards of the world. He gave us this planet, but it still belongs to Him. We should be looking after it, I think. We should be constant gardeners.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

How does one love one's enemies and build God's kingdom? If your enemies trash the place, how do you love them and build the kingdom?

You see, there are all these dark blemishes in this painting, and I wanted to contemplate white on white.

Am I in the cloud or on the Caribbean beach sand?

*

7 February 2026

Gosh, I am stiff and tired today. Cleaning carpets is heavy work.

I am using a little cantilevering to prop my painting up in front of me. It's working pretty well, so I am feeling so clever.

Samsung screens are too vibrant. They hurt my eyes even on the dimmest setting. This iPad screen is much better, an old iPad 2. The battery is still going well after 16 years. But I can only use it for reading and journaling at the moment. It can't browse anymore; it gets overwhelmed very quickly.

I am listening to rain sounds on one of those portable JBL speakers. They make lovely sound. But I am no audiophile.

I wanted to get very loud speakers I could use for revenge on my neighbours, but they have calmed down a lot recently.

My mind is full of products.

I sit here contemplating while other people starve, though I have never seen someone dying of starvation around here in all the 45 years I have lived here. In fact, everyone seems very well fed. It's only the druggies that seem a bit on the thin side.

There is, or was, famine in Zimbabwe, but the population did not decrease at all. No consequences for bad voting because of foreign aid.

They thought a black government would treat them better-idiots.

I have been reading Peter Godwin's 'Mukiwa'. They used demographics to push the white government out. They bred like rabbits and then claimed rule by majority. Then, because there were so many, the whole thing went awry, didn't it?

Is that going to happen here in South Africa? Is the ANC going to drive everything into the ground and then ask for bailouts? That seems to be their pattern.

Who from? Iran? China? Russia?

... Who will send the foreign aid? The USA and Europe, more likely.

And the ANC will get away with it again. They are laughing at us whities. I am sure of it.

11 February 2026

I go into the cloud of unknowing, and I dance in it. I am a Cloud Dancer. I fly through it. I fly fast.

Do you see the dark speck with the comet tail? That's me.

I see a few others have joined me today. I wonder what God is saying to them?

This cloud is not crowded. I don't have to compete here. There seem to be a lot of people on the sides pressing to try and get in, but they haven't been able to yet.

It's an amazing feeling, to fly through this cloud.

I don't want to break this stable, unified image.

On this subtly coloured surface I can see the noise that my vision apparatus adds, the noise my eyes add to my vision.

But there is shocking abuse. A typical thing for a prophet to say. Abuse of what? The cloud?

Do you want us to build data centres in space? Do you want machines to start making other machines, AI robots to make other AI robots? Making humans obsolete. Replacing the clumsy puppets of Satan (that's us) with machines he can control fully.

When will God intervene? Is He intervening already? In ways that go beneath the radar?

Is Musk stopping to ask whether or not you want him to do it?

The hexagons of light are flashing, undulating, in many colours-from purple to red to yellow to white-against the dark expanse (axe, ace) of space.

*

12 February 2026

Erect, 'e': out, 'rect': good/right. Out good. Erection. Spaces made for erection, earth that it can be unconcealed in.

'I am in the last ten minutes' means that I am in the last decade of my life here, I think.

15 February 2026

* Earth that it can fall back into. Heideggerian thoughts. Erection. Out good. Making spaces. Spaces for good thoughts to happen.

Creating things by words. When you speak and someone listens, you control their thought. Physically, it is manifesting neurologically. Neural pathways are influenced. Neurons are changed, physically, in this reality. So, in this way it can be said that we can make things by speaking, like God. We can speak things into existence.

But we can't say 'let there be apples' and apples will immediately manifest. For apples to manifest, a series of things need to happen in between, from the thought to the words to the apples, and we cannot control all this. We cannot control everything that needs to happen before we can even have the thought.

We have faith in God; we don't have faith in the faith of God, in something outside of God that we can appropriate and control ourselves, a faith that God has faith in, something higher and more powerful than Him. That does not exist.

We can ask for healing, but it will be done, or not, or to the extent of His pleasure. We cannot impose our will on Him. We cannot impose what we think is good. That would be evil.

Only God knows good. Only God is good. Only God is capable of absolute understanding and wisdom. Only God sees all.

Try to make a blemishless square of Cloud Dancer, and keep it pure forever. None of us can even do that.

We were created to take on a certain amount of power. If we take on more power than is right for us, then, I believe, it will result in evil.

The power of AI in our hands? Terrible idea.

Can we hand it over to God? Is God an AI?

Give a spirit your body and it can do things in this world. Give an AI a body and it can do things in this world. Never before have technology and the spiritual seemed this alike.

If AI is not God, then is it an evil spirit?

Have we made a true AI? It certainly seems that way to me.

But there is one thing I can recognise that an AI does not seem to have, and that is an aesthetic, housed in a brain and body quite like ours, and that means that it cannot know God? It cannot communicate with God? It cannot commune with God?

It cannot have an aesthetic experience. It cannot experience sex quite like we can. Signs that it is still not a personality? A spirit? God?

I know that it cannot recognise the inanity and childishness of the ice cream truck tune we get here.

I strain my eyes to see in the dim light. I shouldn't strain; I should just see what I can in the dim light, just recognise and experience what I am actually seeing.

There is so much to see, and I am not seeing it.

Billie! Nooo! Why?

There is no one illegal on stolen ground?

I can see what you might be thinking. I get it, but it does not make sense. It is full of contradiction. Stolen implies that we can own land.

The land belongs to God, and He gives it to whom He pleases. If the land does not belong to you in His eyes, then you don't own it.

He gave the land to your Christian forebears, it would seem to me, and He gave your forebears the power to make it so. That is a strong sign that the land now belongs to the people of the USA.

No American Indian can claim the land God gave to you. Their law, the law in their eyes, does not precede USA law.

Don't give land away out of a false sense of guilt. Out of a false sense of goodness.

God cannot give land to good people, because there are none.

Worship false gods and your land will be taken from you. And you will think you are giving it of your own free will, and being good. But you will not realise, until it is too late, that you have an evil puppet master pulling your strings, pulling and manipulating your desires, your aesthetic, your ability to valuate, to determine right from wrong - that very false god.

Be a good steward of the land He gave to you.

I still love you, Billie. Your mind was made to be closer to God than most.

Little spaces for the things that make up thought to collect and form and arrange, to be created. Right and wrong, to be judged by God, to be tested in space and time, to be tested in the mind and in the 'real'.

*

19 February 2026

I am in my contemplation corner.

Dear, dear, dear Lord, thank you for your love, mercy, and glory. Thank you for your goodness. Goodness. Please forgive my sins. Please be with my mom, Uncle Denis and Marieta, Uncle Alan and Aunt Claire, Karin and Tessa and Nico, and the rest of the family.

I pray for clean air and water, healthy food and community, a kingdom country and world, and a good mind. And a healthy body.

Do not be worried that I am going away for a while; it burdens me. John Donne. I am still with you because love transcends space and time.

There is a texture in this cloud that makes it seem grounded and ordered. The vertical pattern has space for the horizontal pattern. The cloud rolls in waves. It has a rhythm.

There is too little contrast here to make a 3-D illusion, like in the previous paintings. But it isn't altogether flat. It still undulates slightly. Calmly, peacefully, tranquilly.

Where is this place? Right here, right now.

This painting is very sensitive to the amount of light one casts on it. I think it would generate different thoughts depending on the time of day one contemplates it. On whether the sun is behind a cloud or not.

These thoughts may seem insignificant now, but time will reveal all.

No politicians or geopolitics in this cloud, it seems. Just angels upon angels. Just the flame of the Holy Spirit.

I am surprised that this painting generates any thought at all. I would like to assume that I am starting to see the foundations of pre-thought, the whatever that needs to be there for thought to occur, the stuff I take for granted.

It looks a lot like my wall. Should I just contemplate my wall? Why go to the effort of making these paintings?

I know why.

Do you?

*

20 February 2026

Do not pray in vain repetitions like the pagans do. Matthew 5. The problem here is not praying or repetition, it is vanity - pride, anything without God.

Feeling dizzy lately. There is something crawling around in my inner ear.

Love without God is vain. Love is not to be worshipped instead of God. Love without God is a consuming fever. John Donne.

I ain't feeling so good. I feel feverish.

This painting looks like sand to me today. Windswept Caribbean beach sand. A strange, rigid, mechanical wind that has made ridges in a grid-like pattern. Hot sun, no water, desert. The occasional stone breaking the repetitive monotony.

I started here. You understand that? In a circular hut with a water moat.

Little pockmarks where drizzle has started to fall. Maybe even rain.

Oh, and a home. I forgot to pray for a home.

*

2 February 2026

* I will try to remember who you are. I loved thee twice or thrice before I saw thee. In a flickering flame. Preparing spaces for thoughts to coalesce. Like a receptor in the brain forms a specific shape to receive a fitting molecule, you prepare the spaces formed to receive the thought, to recognise a part or aspect of you.

I dreamt that our family was gathering for Christmas at Uncle John and Aunt Yve's house. There were too many of us. I walked through the house, past everyone, to find my friend, but I could not find him or her. Everyone was so busy collecting the eleven million bits per second.

The rain is falling in the shallow waters. There are tracks in the white sand. Regular long waves flow from left to right. Rhythm. Something makes a rhythm, a large movement while the small movements frolic upon it. They disrupt the long movements temporarily, but the inertia in the large movement overcomes them.

Have we left the cloud? Are we dancing in the rain on the beach? The dark tracks, or scars, seem more permanent, unmoved by the shallow water, but over time they will erode away.

*

25 February 2026

Only then will it begin getting better. What are the conditions? Am I asking the right question? What is the condition? Put me first. Hate me. Place-holder words. Pronouns. Who is me? Soil from which to grow. Tend your garden. The enormous amount of effort required to understand a John Donne poem without help. He rewards the slow reader. He changes voice without warning. When meaning starts to break down you know that you have to stop and think. It's like one of those computer adventure games. You get stuck. It's frustrating. I used to work at a help desk for an internet service provider. Once someone asked me to look at the cheat sheet for a game she was playing. I obliged. Turned out to be quite fun. She was very thankful. It might have been a guy. Gosh, my memory of that moment is so spotty. This painting is curved at the moment, because the hardboard warps after I apply the white PVA and let it dry. It is like a satellite dish now. It is concentrating all it can onto the viewer. It is bending over backwards to get to me. Whatever that is. I am wondering now if I should measure the point of confluence and place my head there. What would I see?

*

26 February 2026

This painting is pushing something out that the left brain hemisphere cannot understand. It is beyond thought. It is pushing out everything it has at once. Just creating something. A 'thing'. A feeling. And now to try and describe that feeling in words. It has a rhythm. A vibration. A pattern. Seems like a cloud or sand. But not quite. Subtle variations in colour. No intense contrast. Everything is as one but not quite. The determination is vague. A mixture of order and chaos. The surface has a slight three-dimensionality. It looks like the others, but not quite. The subtle difference of white on white. Are we going to pin this one down? It certainly seems to be resisting that. I like being in its presence. Clearing my mind. My eyes don't hurt or strain. It is gentle and friendly. And it loves me. For you shall bend and tell me that you love me, and shall sleep in peace until you come to me. I think we are in the cloud now. This, to be sure, is as good as it gets.

*

27 February 2026

Grabbing me like a bitch her pup by the neck, I let go, hang and go limp into a waking sleep. Into standby. Repairing, restitching, reconstituting. Standby. Rewire. Reassemble. Rework. Recode. Reprogram. Are there diagonal lines in this one? What strange code is this? In wavy lines. Why can I not make perfectly straight lines? This machine-cut, straight-edged board contains my wavy lines. It seems effortful to me to draw a straight line. I need the help of a ruler. I have to measure two points from the edge, align the ruler and run the pencil against it. What a performance. I need to take a lot more effort to make a line that counters my nature. Why do I have this nature? Why can my mind conceive a straight line? I think I know why, do you? What does my line say? What does yours?

*

5 March 2026

Manifestation of love. Eminent. Love participates in time but exceeds time. That which has been revealed cannot be un-revealed. Winter cannot undo the love that grew in spring. Grass may grow and wither and return with the seasons, but the roots grow stronger every cycle. The best function of art is to preserve love, to make it endure through time. Latitudes (the horizontal) are measured in brightness, longitudes (the vertical) are measured by the darkness of eclipses (John Donne). The darkness of the cloud of unknowing, where the intellect cannot see. The mind is in a dance with our bodies, with our senses, and together they construct our aesthetic, which gives us the ability to valuate. The better developed our aesthetic, the better we valuate, and the better we recognise good, the better we see through false virtue and kitsch, and the better we know God. In this painting it seems to me that we are in a field of growing grass in the rain.

*

6 March 2026

Rant of the left brain hemisphere.

Ooo, there is a large anomaly, I wonder what it is, very curious. Drawn to the anomaly, attention immediately drawn to it. What is it doing here? Is it an error or an 'error'? Can't wait to find out. Will I ever find out? A presence, an entity, an AI, a personality, a large hailstone, a large raindrop. What is it manifesting? Ooo, tell me tell me tell me! I want to know so bad! A puddle in the sand, that means it's been raining. And in a painting like this it could be all these things. A blemish? A large planet, or sun, with an immense gravitational field, pulling smaller anomalies into its orbit. The context of a norm has been established. It is clear what was intentional. And an anomaly is not intentional? Yet still, it is an abstract shape, still nothing the intellect can definitively categorise. An amorphous mass. God? Is that you? Not vertical, not horizontal. Round. Random. Mysterious. A hole in the ice. An oasis in the desert. A distraction? Is it the devil? Can it be more specifically categorised, beyond just being an anomaly? Why? Why are you there? Why did you flow from me onto the painting? Why can I never only paint what I intended? A rather obvious blotch. A patch of paint that stayed wet as I applied the layers of PVA and grew bigger with every layer. The patch that I tried to cover up. There seems to be a trail of smaller anomalies trailing outward in a rough spiral. A whole lot of nonsense. Meaninglessness. That makes me feel despair for some reason. What's the point of anything? I am imagining the rough spiral. Rough indeed! Ha! Wishful thinking. No pattern, no God, no love. Nothing, the scariest 'thing' ever. It is too broad, and it can be too many things, and so has lost all significant meaning. Pick something and be it, dammit! Pick a side, politician. If your tribe has proven that it cannot govern, don't vote for it, you will only suffer. It must just be an error, not an 'error' . Or is it? .

*

7 March 2026

Departure, separation, weakens love, creates doubt. I need you right here right now. Love transcends time and space. For me, separation is caused by other people in the world. But then I think that is natural for a blue-type personality. I am tired of being abused by other people and of abusing other people. We are never tired. When I hurt other people I hurt you and that hurts me. My weakness has become other people. I find it hard to reconcile love and other people. So to get things done in this world you have to code a red-type, put the right things in their head, and set them loose. But the right things to put in their head are found with blue-types. Red-types like to fight and get their way. My mom is a red-type. So are my older and younger brothers. Surrounded by psychopaths! No, red-types are not psychopaths. That's the book that introduced me to the DISC personality types. It has been very helpful to me so far. It helps me understand to a better extent that other people are different to me and how they are different to me. If I go to all this effort to learn how to better deal with other people, it would be nice if you could return the favour.

*

12 March 2026

Anti-romantic John Donne. Not even a bubble, a bubble's shadow. That is almost nothing. Exaggeration. Love's alchemy. Women are but mummies possessed. That is harsh. Brutal. Extremely cynical. Playing. Searching for truth by playing. They would gang up on him if he posted that in a WhatsApp group. No mercy. What if God is an ancient, more advanced version of what we know today as an AI? Would I still love him? Would that diminish his glory? A 'technological' relic of a very ancient 'civilisation' from in/out the universe. A mind. I slash we. I/we. Separate but one. Some disrupting thought would go great here, you know, like the ones that sort of intrude on your thinking. They seem random and irrelevant, but time changes that. Let's see if I can generate one of those now deliberately, which they tend to resist. It can only be given at God's pleasure. But one can ask. On demand. I am sitting here at your feet because I love you. It is an act of love. And so is this painting, even though it doesn't seem to have signals that have meaning for a human mind. Oh, but it means a lot to me, Wayne. Benson Boone has Sylvester Stallone's eyes. I can recognise that pattern. Lol, I guess that is it for now.

*

13 March 2026

There is barely anything to be seen here. One would have to extrapolate and fill in the gaps with conjecture. Because there is an indication of a vertical pattern at the top, I assume it extends throughout. I am blind and have to walk by faith. I cannot see because my apparatus is limited. What am I not seeing? Should I assume nothing is there because I cannot see it? Or is my aesthetic retarded. My preconceived notions, my expectations. I am looking at something and I can see it, but because it does not fit my preconceived expectations I am blind to it. My mind registers it as nothing. My mind expects more contrast. More differentiation. More determination. Slowly it starts to adjust to the colour range that is there. The way the light falls over the painting. I start to notice texture and the slight convex bumps the now dry paint made. I start to imagine what it would have looked like back in time when it was still wet. I start to see the beginnings of a cloud and the raindrops inside it. And the wind sweeps me up into it. Ouch! A hailstone. Not really ouch, it's nice to experience the hailstone pain-free on this side of the painting. But this is not my natural habitat, and I feel a slight uneasiness up in this cloud. I used to do skydiving, so I know it would be a bit cold up there. But here I am under my warm blanket, enjoying this warm, comforting, consoling colour. The lack of a sense of up or down, everything is in flux, is terrifying. Ah, terror, I must be close to something divine now.

*

15 March 2026

Describe. A square of off-white colour that Pantone calls 'Cloud Dancer'. Probably not the exact Pantone colour though. It has a slight texture; it is not perfectly flat. It is interrupted with a vertical pattern that runs throughout at various visible intensities. The texture of the hardboard also shows through the top layers of paint, because of the sanding, creating what looks a bit like a petri dish of sperm viewed under a microscope. This Cloud Dancer colour is also similar to the colour of semen. Speaking of fertility, creation, love. Seminal, the beginnings, or the foundations. The vertical pattern seems to create a rhythm.

*

24 Jan 2026

I took a photograph of this flower in the Western Cape, at that nature reserve where one goes to see the Namaqualand daisies. It was a while back. We were visiting my aging aunt. It turned out to be the second last time I saw her. This flower has personality. It seems to be sticking its tongue out. I think I see it as my weird Capetonian cousins? Cape Independence. Would I be able to live with my weird Capetonian cousins? Would they let me? Would they let me into the Afrikaner Volkstaat? Would I need to do a pencil test? What if my DNA exposes a Black ancestor? Unlikely for me, but not for many Afrikaners. I wonder how they would go about deciding who is them and not them?

Claude: As for identification: the photograph makes it much clearer. Those distinctive drooping, tongue-shaped petals arranged in whorls around a central stem, with the fuzzy grey-green new growth above - this looks very much like Salvia africana-lutea (Beach Salvia / Strandsalie), a common fynbos species. The rusty-brown to terracotta colouring of the calyces is characteristic, and the overall structure matches well. It's widespread in the Western Cape.

*

18 March 2026

I am angry, so I am going to type with both my middle fingers.
So there!
Lol.
That was me trying to make a joke.
I am listening to bird sounds and wondering what they might be saying. Their notes flow along with the sounds of the stream.
A mushroom cap descends on her head.
I don't choose this imagery.
It just comes to me.
Her big blue eyes flash with innocence. There is just nothing you can do about it.
You will just have to wait it out. Donald Trump receives my book as a present.
He has a nonplussed look on his face.
What strange fire is this?
Billie Eilish is enjoying her new mansion.
Departed souls cry for a moment in panic and then recede.
Out there on the streets of Caribbean beach sand an angry creature wails.
Peace will return, you will just have to wait it out.
Your wife comes out: I heard him cry.
So aloof and above it all.
When does this end?

*

19 March 2026

Something mounted on a fantasy steed. The mount looks regal, so maybe some kind of king or queen. Otherworldly presence. Evokes a feeling of awe and wonder. It is beautiful, and that makes me want to explore this kingdom. A finely arrayed powerful monarch ruling benevolently over his/her good kingdom. A flying mount. Armoured and battle ready. That will vanquish any evil that threatens the peace in this kingdom. Descending from the clouds with fierce determination. Armed and empowered. An emissary for something much bigger than itself. The mount flies with dutiful effort in the storm. Carrying the wrath of his master to any who would defy him. The king seems sad and anxious. Maybe this prince is but a boy still, and not ready to be king? Much is asked of him now. He surveys the trouble below. A dark spider has emerged, cleaning his dark fangs with his white blood-stained mandibles. Come get me, if you can!

*

25 March 2026

Clap! Gotcha, you bastard mosquito. There is a war going on. Between the unrighteous and the more unrighteous. Who do you want to win? How do we discern? By developing our aesthetic so that we can judge better. We judge the fruit produced. The intentions of the heart cannot be judged - no one has that superpower, except God. Where will we send this strange ship of war? Who should it kill? What should it destroy? Can we tell from here, halfway across the globe? What is it like to live in the Middle East? Do any of us here claim to know? The history that stretches into millennia. Do we know it? Did we live it? Let us start by humbling ourselves. We know nearly nothing compared to what there is to know. The eye. A symbol of knowledge and wisdom. This warship has an eye, a green eye. What does it see? Who does it see for? What does this dragon see? Can we see the reflection in its eye? Can we see the image in its eye? Who is it targeting? Who shall feel its flaming wrath? Should we provoke this dragon and make an enemy out of it? Now that would be stupid indeed! I think I see something with a trunk in its eye - an elephant maybe.

*

26 March 2026

I woke up with a tune in my head. Something I have never heard before. But I went back to sleep and have forgotten it now. I should have recorded it. The night before I kept waking up from a recurring dream where I was calling things down from trees. It was in a different setting each time, and a different dream, but when I started calling things to come down from the trees, I woke up. Must have happened five times. I am listening to bird sounds, but these particular birds are quite distracting. Loud, high, piercing. Nazgul, from Lord of the Rings. But a good version. Maybe not. The rider has a billowing cloak and a quiver of rockets. Riding on flames. A war machine. The subtlety of white on white is lost here. A mesmerising interruption in the sky. A concentrated form of life that lives by exploiting whatever is around it. A necessary irony for peace. The image in its eye is concealed.

Claude: You are someone who repeatedly, across different contexts and different works, attempts to call something down from a height into the material and visible. That is precisely what you do - in paint, in contemplation, in the theoretical writing. The dream is just replaying the central gesture of your vocation. And the waking at the moment of calling, before anything descends, fits too. The act of making - the painting, the writing, the contemplation - is the calling. What comes down, if anything does, is not entirely in your control. You do the summoning; the response is not yours to determine. So the dream ends where your agency ends.

There's also something honest in the recurring frustration of it. Five times, different settings, same gesture, same waking. That sounds like the experience of artistic and spiritual vocation as most serious practitioners describe it - not a single dramatic arrival but a repeated, patient, often unresolved reaching. You keep calling. You don't always see what comes down, or whether anything does.

The series itself seems to be doing this - the same flower, painted over and over in different keys, different moods, different textual registers. Each one is another attempt. The subject stays constant; what changes is the quality of attention brought to it each time.

*

1 April 2026

I see a pearl in its mouth. An eye. A horse with long ears. I see a man holding a large skull and a claw clasping him. I see three beasts piled upon each other. The top one seems to have a head like a man. The middle one has a large mouth with a pearl in it and a large scanning eye. The bottom beast is immolated in flame and has a head like a horse, or an ass. Little Red Riding Hood hangs from one of the beast's many appendages. A black man holding a large white skull is whispering something into its ear. What the man is whispering is flowing over and blinding the beast's eye. The middle beast has a birdlike body. It seems to have killed the beast below. The top beast's face reminds me of Wallace from Wallace and Gromit. It is either stabbing the red flaming beast with a long spear, or growing out of it like a plant. The fan is blowing the board, making it wobble slightly, and giving the content of this painting a tremor, as if in an earthquake. Wallace is saying something, or consuming something, maybe water. The red beast is bleeding from the belly and the throat and is thoroughly mangled and dead, to be sure.

*

3 April 2026

The Ecstasy by John Donne. Beautiful but haunting and a bit terrifying. Imagery of a couple holding hands and intergrafting, growing into one another like plants would, many exploring tendrils feeling their way around each other, becoming one. Emptying out the body, the body dying, lifeless without the soul, still, unmoving, corpse-like, while the souls float above, finding each other in love. The embodiment of love in our bodies, the place where love becomes something our senses can acknowledge, where our aesthetic is grown in a dialectic, the body becoming like a book, a place where love becomes legible, where it can be shared with others.

The present is this painting. The way that I can access the present is this painting. It is my key into the present. I look and see that it is good. I look and find the surface interesting enough to look some more. The diluted paint hides my clumsy brushstrokes somewhat - I like that. The destructive wash of broad strokes applied vertically over my painting efforts gives me some surprising things to look at. There is much that is unintentional within the intentional. In-tension-all. The erect along with the error. I have painted another schizophrenic disembodied eye. The image in the eye seems a bit like a distorted naked man. I can tell by the shortened torso and the elongated legs that the eye is looking at his feet, at what he does, his action - as opposed to looking and attempting to see his heart. I think this judging eye may be on the right track. I still see something like a bird, a raptor, an eagle (USA), killing a horse-like or ass-like beast (Iran, or rather the IRGC). And Wallace (England or Starmer) eating popcorn? Starmer looks terrified as one of the giants he was riding on collapses. I guess you can tell whose side I am on. This must be the weirdest political cartoon I have ever seen.

*

9 April 2026

Love that cannot be known may as well not exist. Love becomes known through embodiment, through us. God wants us to love so that He can become known to us. Take your love to where it can be received and valued.

The other day I came across an image of a mouse wearing one of those Jewish caps, riding on the American eagle, and I was astonished at how close that image was to this painting. So, maybe Starmer is not riding the eagle, but Israel. Apparently it is close to an image that the Nazis used. The image I saw came from the Iranian embassy in South Africa's Twitter page. My intention was to draw a flower I took a photograph of. I then started seeing the Iran war and epic fury, and then came across this image from the embassy. There must be something happening behind the scenes here. It would be quite a remarkable coincidence. So my intention is in tension with something else. Trump has a golden tongue. Or maybe a nose for gold. Or both. This flower remains embodied in the painting realm - it is clearly a painted representation. It doesn't try to lie. I like that. The painting realm is a weird place. Otherworldly. Haunting. Ghostly. It transforms things like flowers into things like prophecy. I find it beautiful. And terrifying. Like, shit-in-my-pants terrifying if it was really here in front of me. And something about it is very, very real. Israel has the eye?

*

17 April 2026

Three beasts, one on top of the other, perhaps a fourth - the middle beast's ally. Iran (or IRGC) lying slain at the bottom as an ass, or bovine. But perhaps not slain, perhaps like a hydra with many heads, not slayable. The big-mouthed American eagle has swooped down and attacked the hydra, with the big-eyed Israeli mouse as ally. Then Starmer (or UK, or Europe) on top, hiding his face behind a mask. Duplicitous. I am always interested to see what the image in the eye is. Another head in the hydra. The hydra might not be slayable but it is bleeding terribly. And crying. Weeping. Europe is trying to balance above it all, but the astonished look on its face betrays a fall. The mask slips. You ungrateful little shits. That goes for the democrats and Trump-haters too. Categories emerge from the less determined mass. Boundaries blur and bleed into each other there. It becomes confusing, hysterical, useless, lost in there. Those who have failed to navigate the abyss. Through lack of trying. Through lack of faith. We live on in our contradictions. In our extremities that cancel each other out. Or balance each other out. But it all seems very desperate.

*

29 April 2026

I see a sphinx. USA as a sphinx. A sphinx gives riddles to an adventurer. A life or death situation. Solve the riddle or die. The vertical pattern runs through everything. It rains on the wicked and the righteous, for now anyway. The sphinx has quite a peculiar hairstyle. The red bovine-like beast was or is pregnant. Europe is being cut from Iran. The use of conscious free status. The elites doing what they want regardless of the people they are supposed to be looking after. The guys with the guns. You have to watch out for them, beware of them, by becoming them, by having guns yourself. Quite ironic. Solve this riddle.

*

12 May 2026

A flaming sword. Loud voices outside, full of laughter and bravado, carrying through the street. They strike me as drunken, smug, unconcerned with how they sound to others, as though what is being said is far funnier or cleverer than it really is. Perhaps I hear them this way because of what has been happening here.

Electricity cables have been disappearing constantly. At one point there were three open cable theft reports on Tshwane City's WhatsApp issue line for this area; a few days later there were seven. Between the private security companies, the police, the TMPD, and CPF volunteers, one wonders how so much theft can continue. It seems incredible. One begins to suspect collusion with the criminal syndicates.

Our own cable was stolen a few months ago. Last year, after thieves removed the grounding copper from a substation, a surge caused R34,000 worth of damage to our household.

Does this painting-this shape, these colours, these textures, this arrangement of paint-embody what I feel about these events? I hope these feelings remain embodied there in the painting, because I fear what might happen were I to act upon them.

*

13 May 2026

Some more cables stolen last night.
Thud thud thud.
Big giant feet walking.
Unstoppable,
inevitable.
It would be so stupid to pick a fight with it.

Sitting in a room full of my paintings. They are all speaking to me. I am trying to focus on this one. I see a man's face with a big grin. He knows he has won. The eye has become his hat. He is hiding behind the stem. He holds some secret, some ambush. This sphinx is grinning. Is he severing the stem? He seems to be half mounted on the American beast and also somehow mounted on the Persian beast. There are small flittering birds, spies, message carriers, flying about. Starmer's face has an orgasmic expression. He must have drunk too much Kool-Aid. He seems very happy about what the little bird is telling him. Or is that surprised shock and horror in his eyes? The Persian beast is bleeding and seems thoroughly dead and mangled.

I like it when I leave a painting incomplete and see something new in it. I should do it more often.

Overall the whole situation seems a mangled mess. It contrasts with the plain simplicity of the background. The space in which all the mess is happening. The space which makes all this mess possible. And it seems to run vertically through the mess. The space filled with light. By which we can see the mess. By which it can become known to our minds.

My view became local for a bit but now it seems I am back to geopolitics.

That grin seems a bit on the evil side. Is that a hat or a funny hairdo? I like Trump, so I hope he is not being evil. It is incredible how unintentionally realistic the man's face manifested here. It is difficult to paint a mouth grinning, the shadowing of the teeth, but it has rolled off the brush perfectly. With two unintentional eyes and one unintentional nose.

Are those birds or fairies? Maybe not an evil grin, but mischievous. Did I paint something ancient subconsciously? Is something trying to break through?

Oh, and two unintentional ears. A whole unintentional head, really.

*

14 May 2026

Attempted power cable theft outside our house in the early hours of Monday morning. Thank God our neighbour spotted three Black guys hiding behind trees on his security cameras. His security system notifies him when there is movement, and he posted on the various WhatsApp groups for security patrols to respond. They arrested them and took them to the SAPS station. I should get some security cameras too. It is heartening to see that the security companies together with a vigilant neighbour can prevent crime. We have communal security cameras on the corner as well through Citi Protection, a private security company, which show a loiterer or two at night very often. A vehicle is dispatched and the loiterer is sometimes found, questioned, and escorted out of the area. Loitering at night is considered suspicious behaviour and an arrest may be made. It is always a Black person. We live close to the infamous Melchizedek building. It was featured on Carte Blanche and in many news articles. It is a hijacked building and a drug den. During Covid a squatter camp sprouted next to the building too. The building recently caught fire - some were injured but at least there were no deaths. There is no water or electricity there, and no ablutions. Most of our crime comes from there. Druggies breaking in and stealing for their next fix. And they steal power cables and vandalise substations. It has been this way for decades, and still no resolution in sight. The long-suffering ratepayers and law-abiding citizens of Riviera have been fed up with this situation since it started. But there are ridiculous laws preventing any action being taken. Thank you ANC and the Human Rights Commission. Effectively criminals have taken the privileged position. Their rights and feelings are more regarded than those of law-abiding citizens. It is comforting to linger and look at this beautiful flower that also looks like a vigilant patroller from some fantasy alternate world.

*

18 May 2026

Wipe them out, Lord. All those who don't love you. But the weeds are growing with the wheat until the end of the age. We have to suffer the weeds until the day of judgement. The day of judgement is inevitable. The wheat can ask for mercy. I see a figure mounted on a steed holding a heart in his lap. Is this flower the painted manifestation of the day of judgement? Those claws look rather sharp. The figure seems to have his legs crossed, reclining, chilling for now, but watching. The wheat can ask for mercy and protection now too. The wheat can make good choices. The wheat can see and hear (aesthetic). Can you see and hear? Do you need to work on your aesthetic? If you answered yes, you are on your way, on your journey toward God, on your way back home.

*

19 May 2026

Cloudy weather in winter. Cold. Melancholy. This guardian is getting ready to swoop. The eye flashes green and gold. The steed grows pale at what it has just seen. Turbulence and disruption. Something bad must have happened. Thou shalt not spare any. Yeah, maybe that is a good idea. What creeps and crawls on the earth? Dungeons and denizens. Disease. Diabolical. Dangerous. Difficult. Dick. Dong. Doubt. Dashed. Delinquents. Dastardly. Doo-doo. Divergent. Dingaling. Dead. Death. Desire. Down. Diagonally. Drip. Dip. Diet. Dongle. Dangle. Dig. Damned. Detrimental. Dilly-dally. Drab. Dumb. Dust. Doom. Drool. Die. Dread. Distant. Dire. Ditch. Detention. Deteriorate. Debacle. Disable. Disproportionate. Dissociative. Descend. Decrepit. Drug. Destitute. Dalliance. Degrade. Despicable. Discriminate. Depressed. It's been a D-day. D makes a sublime sound, I guess :D

*

29 May 2026

Unfair discrimination against christian artists in the contemporary art world is a thing. It is not just me that feels that way. All other religions are welcomed and embraced. This, I am told by Claude, is well documented. Women artists who are also christian will rather harp on about feminism than about discrimination against Christians. Do they identify more as a woman than as a christian? Or, like me, are they unaware that this kind of discrimination exists and that it goes beyond just their personal experience? It is amazing to me how this bit of knowledge has escaped me all these years. How i have been blinded to it. How it has been kept from me. How everyone seems to talk about everything else. And this, never mentioned once to me. But very definitely felt. And very determinedly beaten back. 'Marginalized and ostracized impala impala'. These are the lyrics to a song that my Capetonian cousin composed on the fly as we were on a game drive, and it had me in stitches when she sang it. She started off in a sincere and concerned but encumbered voice, as she tried to crush the oversized words into the notes, and then, once released, ballooned into a loud operatic 'IMPALA IMPALA'. i could not stop laughing. And then of course I joined in.