I dreamed that Werner Herzog was giving me a lift home. His forest-green car shapeshifted between Porsche and VW Beetle, and when he remotely controlled it out of its parking space it turned over in a ditch. Not to worry. Herzog threw a rope over a tree limb and hauled it out by hand.

The dream is true to the spirit of the film. It’s a documentary about a French cave found in the 1990s that is full of paleolithic art. Herzog, being Herzog, found the stone eccentrics: a circus-trained scientist, an “experimental archaeologist” and a master perfumer who snuffled his way around the Chauvet Cave before announcing it didn’t smell of much. Oh Herzog, how I love you! NEVER CHANGE.

The paintings, though, are ungainsayable. Despite a couple of weird layering artefacts, the film is worth seeing in 3D because of the way the painters used the contours of the rock. There’s one frieze that made both me and Jeremy laugh because it could have been the Picasso we’d seen earlier at SFMOMA.

Very comforting to me to know that for as long as people have been people, some decent proportion of us has been spellbound by horses.

It turns out I am a sucker for little girls who just lost their grandfather. Required to amuse the children for three hours this morning, I took them to Centennial Stables, where they had pony rides on Benji and Bonnie. Afterwards we went to a fantastically well-appointed and well-maintained playground and sat in the sun and ate ice creams. In short, I spoilt them like a freakin’ aunt or something. (Sydney turned into Paradise while my back was turned. One side-effect of the resources boom is a state that can spend mouth-watering amounts of money on its infrastructure. The very bathrooms in Centennial Park are sleek and modern and clean.)

Later, when the clouds rolled in and the wind grew chill, Claire searched the apartment in vain for her favourite striped cardigan. Jeremy, Janny and I joined in the search, but it was nowhere to be found. I get very anxious about lost things these days. In the evening, after I had retrieved my mother from Central Station, I borrowed a [torch|flashlight] from Jan and hiked back to a different playground that we had visited yesterday, after lunch with Kay and Kelso. On my second circuit of the park, the torchlight picked out the cardigan carefully laid out on the brick wall, waiting for me to find it. The world is full of people who are thoughtful and kind.

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Originally uploaded by yatima

Would marry again!!11!

Seldom has there been a more opportune book. (Opportune is a fantastic word. Let’s use it more.)

…those who felt the lowest amount of stress possess a personality trait called “dispositional resilience,” which was defined by three components: they remained connected to other people, rather than isolated; they felt that their grief was manageable and under control; and they embraced and learned from new experiences, rather than avoiding or feeling threatened by them. They were psychologically hardy, optimistic and able to rise to the challenge…

I already know that happiness is a choice. Now I am starting to believe that strength can be a choice, too.