• happysophia
      • hello Happy Sophia
      • Username: happysophia
      • In response to: "If you were in a movie right now, what music would be playing?" if I were in a movie right now, the music would be from Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen. Because they live in that space between midnight and 3am, when the creatives come alive.
  • happysophia's latest answers
    • Driving home

      • Kwa Zulu, Natal, South Africa, 1967

        We drove through sticky heat. Like soup, I've heard someone say. Nowadays, it's when the stickiness hits you that you know you're close to home.
        At first, we didn't talk all that much. He'd been drinking and the pain and the hole that was left by that that we were breaking free from, kept us quiet.
        But then, slowly, as we got closer and the skies opened up, the words came. It came like the clouds that roll in over the Babanango hills, like the cows and aloes that dot the landscape.
        I stuck my head out the window and felt the thick wind whipping at my hair. I put my feet on the dashboard, I watched the cows, the mountain, the river, the dirt road, the highway. I listened carefully and I drunk it all in. Grass whizzed, insects splattered, the heat simmered.
        Like the animals standing in line to fill up Noah's ark, memories queued up in me.
        We drove and drove and drove, and he told and told and told, I wrote and wrote and wrote, and finally we were here. And my heart hasn't left since.

      • answered by happysophia on 09/17/2010
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    • the right light for waking up

      • windows fenetres early morning misty dawn calvados france

        She likes waking up quietly. She so likes it that when the telephone rang that morning, with all the shrill reality that announces something is wrong, she jumped up to kill it and got back into bed as quick as she could.
        She closed her eyes and tried to take her mind back to where it had been, in that sweet dark deep place where it feels like you're swimming and floating at the same time. Only then, when the damp darkness wouldn't properly stick, did she allow it to slowly rise up like a hot air balloon.
        First she heard her fiancé's mumbling. Then the rustle of the duvet. The filter of light through the drawn curtains. The wind. A bird. She opened her eyes.
        There it was, that magic quality of light that only the morning can have. Like the texture of a perfectly baked oven cheesecake. Fluffed, delicate. The lightest of yellow. Brown edges.
        She stuck her hand out to touch her fiancé's hip. Only then, when he had turned and held her hand, asked her if she wanted coffee, did she decide to call back.

      • answered by happysophia on 09/12/2010
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    • It is not déjà vu, it is nostalgia

      • Blue Sky Big Clouds Street Lights Palm Trees

        I think of KwaZulu-Natal so often that sometimes I think I live my whole life in a state of déjà vu.
        Every holiday, every memory, every house, even friendships, get held up to that place.
        When the sky turns a bright open blue that stains your eyes with it's glare, I think 'the sky looks just like a Natal sky today.' When the air gets that slightly cooled down atmosphere, not cold, not hot, not damp, just nice - and fragrant, I think 'This is the perfect weather for a picnic at the lagoon.' When the neighbors take their dogs for a walk, it's like I'm walking the dogs with my dad in the sugarcane again. I can still feel the sticky heat of mud and excitement, their dirty warm bouncing bodies on the back of the bakkie.

        But I am not there anymore. It is not really déjà vu. It is nostalgia, I must admit.

      • answered by happysophia on 09/12/2010
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    • hot day for a wedding

      • James & Amanda's Wedding

        I imagine the wedding I'm going to would have looked a lot different had it taken place in Natal, about a hundred years ago.

        There would not have been a lot of white guests. Not a lot of cold drinks. Of course the few cold drinks that there might have been, carefully preserved in the single primitive fridge that the elite wedding party somehow got hold of, would have been sweating. Droplets quietly bulging from the glass as if called, while the preacher droned on and the guests, bride and groom perspired in silence. Just slightly impatient.
        The guests would have been Zulu and English. The women would have ululated. Some Zulu people would have worn a shirt and pants, others traditional wear, but everyone would be in their Sunday best. I would have needed my hat. Perhaps people would not have frowned at it as much as they probably are going to today, because if I recall correctly, people had to always wear a hat in church back then. But then again, this wedding would not have been in a church. It would have been on the bridge.
        The bride, a simple girl not worried about a lot of frills, would not have been able to stand in the light, summery slip dress she was going to wear today, but she would probably have convinced her mother to allow her to wear a single layer dress instead of all the petticoats they wore back then.
        "You'll look like a labourer," her mother complained as she described what she had in mind to the incredulous dressmaker. But Betty would have gotten her way.
        So, in a single layer dress with frills around the sleeves and neckline (her mother insisted on this at least) she would have stood blooming - as she will today - next to him. The man who changed the way she thought about life. The man who brought back her belief that life can indeed be just good.
        Good like a cold glass of cola on a hot, humid summers day such as this.

        But I? I would have sat exactly where I'm going to sit today, in the same hat I'm wearing today, the one everyone is going to frown at, the one with the pink ribbon hidden on the back seam. On the sideline. Watching as my sister marries the man of our dreams.

      • answered by happysophia on 09/11/2010
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    • A Children's Book Every Child Should Read

      • It's about a little boy (or prince, if you want) who shows a pilot stranded in the desert why people love each other. It is profound, and I'm sure there are a thousand other people out there who would say the same thing.

      • answered by happysophia on 09/10/2010
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