#Lamis McCann Loud

[liloskull343]

A happy Halloween from the Lynndler family

[loudhousecomicsandstories3]

SIXTEEN AND COUNTING PAGES 15-18

[running-like-water]

Good Things

A non-comprehensive (current and archived) list of good things and reasons to live. For holding onto in this time.

- Yoga early in the morning. Downward dog. All the bendy spine things - The tall white candle as the only light on - Sunrise. Sunrise. Sunrise. Every single one is the best one (never knowing how) - Waking up next to the boy I love, a slice of light through the curtain in his eye - Opening my eyes underwater - In the old university swimming pool it looks like a tiger’s eye if you open your eyes - Imagining that I’m staring into the eye of the underwater tiger - Holding my breath underwater, almost-flying (this is the closest thing) - Swimming in the rain - Realising that it’s funny and weird that people don’t want to swim in the rain - Being endlessly amused at small dumb personal-clown jokes that aren’t even real jokes in my head - Being my own secret clown - Saying, in latin, ‘To Be Serious Is The Greatest Joy’ (Res Severa Verum Gaudi) - The tattoos on my calves that say ‘unfettered sunlight’ from the poem about Spring by Pablo Neruda - That rainy smell — after the rain. When the snails come out - Blue pencils - Loud inappropriate early 2000s pop - Dancing dancing dancing in my bedroom in pajamas - Dancing as if to redeem the years of cringe of my preteen self - My yoga teacher with her funny accent and beautiful shoes - My coach. My therapist. There are many mentors. - Chocolate-beetroot oats - All oats, oatmeal for breakfast every morning, unlimited oatmeal, no oatmeal rules. The love of oatmeal - Coffee - How are cats even real? Idk. I cry - Long run Sunday. There aren’t words for this. Not needing words — the world of the moving body - Arriving in my body. The few miraculous ways that it’s possible to feel like I belong in my body - Those small round yellow flowers that are called ‘little goose eyes’ in Afrikaans - The first duffel coat of Autumn. The cashmere one I bought in a market in Istanbul - The poem ‘things I didn’t know I loved’ my Nazim Hikmet - Racing. Fast running that doesn’t feel fast. Catching myself by surprise. The ‘oh! I didn’t know that was possible!’ - Telling stories. Writing stories. Every moment can happen so many times - The absolutely perfect hummus that my brother makes - Autumn leaves. Star-hands all over the ground. Impossible to paint. Enough on their own. - The feeling that this list is so long and so important that I could never begin to scratch the surface - Having so much to love: not even needing to ask. Here I am. The world is huge. I want it - Kissing in the empty painting studio at 5:30pm with paint still on my hands and salt in your mouth - Oh my god! Kissing! Never will I underrate kissing! Like two wordless fishes pressing their oval mouths together for an eternity! So silly! How is this never boring? - All of the dogs in the dog park. Dogs in the water fountain. I love love love - Black Parker ink and my white Lamy fountain pen - The sea. Tidal pool sea. Big wild swell of sea. Flat grey sea. Unknown far-away smell of sea. Big cold turquoise. Swimming after running. Picnic in the sand. - Water when you’re really thirsty - The dream of the desert - The moon - All of the dreams. All of the un-visited places - The novel ‘Fugitive Pieces’ by Anne Michaels and ‘Let the Great World Spin’ by Column McCann - Your home city seen at night from an aeroplane. Light-pricks that get bigger - Falling in love is a real thing. Walking towards you through the city after class, playing ‘Jesu Joy Of Mans Desiring’ as loud as it could go - Surviving heartbreak. Going temporarily insane and thinking that it is impossible to continue — and continuing. Messily, remarkably - Peanut butter peanut butter peanut butter PEANUT BUTTER (THIS SHOULD BE VERY HIGH UP ON THE LIST) - Chocolate. Everything cocoa and chocolate - I have never found a four-leafed clover but I will continue to try - Buying myself flowers from the flower-sellers on the corner. Tulips just for me - Standing under cold mountain water, internally chanting ‘I AM ALIVE’ - Moss - Black-eyed Susans - 78 Million swallows migrate between Southern African and the North every year - Playing a perfect beautiful song on repeat until I kill it and need a new one - Birkenstocks - The unfathomable awful and fabulous internet?? - My brother playing the piano - The fact that the default colour of the sky is blue, and not any other colour - Barefoot on grass - Moths - The myth of Icarus - Mary Oliver - Table Mountain that we live in the lap of - Clean linen - My whole head leaning out of an open car window while we drive towards the farm - I feel like there are so many people who I have never met who I will love? - I hope, I love, I hurt, I trust, I write, I make rubbish art and I make non-rubbish art, I try, I try, I start again - LIFE! - THE WORLD - I want to write this list forever — it will never be complete — it is a tiny metaphor of the real thing

[loudhousecomicsandstories3]

SIXTEEN AND COUNTING Pages 19-23