Kim Levings

Why grace and creativity need the white space of your life I've been quiet for a few weeks. The transition back to Johannesburg and into less transient living situation filled every available line — logistics, storage, packing, unpacking, banking, cell phones – the hundred small decisions that come with resettling. In the middle of it, I noticed something I've watched in other people for years, now happening in me. The fuller my days got, the less I could actually think. Not think harder. I...

Every spring, I go out to the garden with whatever version of repair tools and products I have decided on, and I patch the bird bath. I had help to build it. It is made of rock, and it is a deliberate copy of the one that stood in the garden of my childhood home. I can still hold the visual memory of that one. The shape of it, and how my dad built it himself. When I created my garden in my newly built house, I wanted that. I also mimicked his design of rockeries. So, I found the stone, got...

Why your best ideas sometimes get lost Recently I had one of those a-ha moments — a genuinely brilliant idea, surfacing in my awakening mind like a breeze, just before I was fully awake one morning. You’ve probably had that happen, too. My bad for not keeping a notebook on my nightstand. A few hours later the idea was gone. Not fuzzy. Gone. I couldn’t even reconstruct the concept that had intrigued and excited me. An idea has a shelf life That experience reminded me of something I’d read in...