the human state of lonely

emily dickinson's voluntary term of prolonged loneliness not only led to notable creative expression but also influenced the subject matter of her poems.

however, many of us are not lonely by choice.

a very human state, and a conscious one at that, it may seclude and isolate one from contact with other people. so you see, a very human state though it may be, it is the very device of separating one's soul from connection with the rest of the world.

unbearable. profound level. there's a difference between prolonged solitude for spiritual clarification and an unholy manifestation of emptiness and grief. yes, grief, because one grieves this severance of connection between minds and souls.

frequently occurs in populated cities. we feel cut off, empty, alone; and though crowds of faceless figures pass us in the street each day they remind us of our apparent misanthropy, an ailment from which we all seem to suffer - perhaps not wittingly.

i know that my heart moves in my chest, because i heard its persistent beating through a stethoscope. is that not enough proof? she recoils at physical touch, except for a surgeon's hands, keeps her distance, this mistrusting one. physiological symptoms: chest pain, nausea, sweats and overactivity of sympathetic nervous system.

existentially, loneliness is the essence of being human - part of the human condition. we are birthed, alone, and in the final hours we die alone. it is the puzzle of being contained within a body, a soul seen through veined eyes, an imagination enclosed (and perhaps restrained) by bone and skull.
she feels disengaged, no longer part of a perpetual universe...clinical loneliness? as a form of torture? solitary confinement, in a crowded room.

die tuis is waar die naelstring begrawe is

scrabble (peaces)

pieces of world peace?

portrait of my mother

this is a portrait of my mother.











a roman nose, she says.



i just know that i didn't
inherit that particular feature of my mother's profile.


i find beauty in any old imperfection. after all, whose skin really is flawless, without a fold or wrinkle, blemish or disgrace? portrait photographs should expose these imperfections, without shame. in this way, the camera does not lie. never be afraid of your photograph. i believe we should all accept our portraits without complaint, as the lens sees fit.





mother of people, mother of earth, womb and seed and birth-giver, life-offerer; the carrier of the divine-formed bud, deliverer of humanity, she gives us safe passage into a foreign oxygen-rich place, oh, how could i forget, she ensures my first breath of air?



she is the bearer of unborn life, appointed woman, keeper of chastity.

the severance of the umbilical cord cuts their blood-bond, but her blood still runs in his veins (in his veins). from this moment she'd die for him.

she'd rather go hungry to save the child.

rather, she'd die to let him live.





mother, madonna, your grace is my fortitude.

turpentine

document:

mural painting project, harbour, hout bay - August 2008

give us a bit of blank wall, some thinners and a little prime and paint, and let us colour it for you. so that the children (god bless them) may find cheer and sustenance in our one good turn.

let them be reminded of their youth, as we were reminded of ours. me, in my old painting clothes with fingers and feelings alike, a paintbrush in one hand, my soul in the other.

remember that you can always paint on the walls, whenever you feel the need for knocking them down. it is better to paint together and forget your grey skies, yes, and paint your blue skies.

so, to conclude: this was my good turn; let there be many more to come.

warwick avenue

when i get to warwick avenue/ i'll tell you baby that we're through/ i'm leaving you for the last time baby/ you think you're loving but you don't love me/i've been confused outta my mind lately.

we could talk for an hour but no more than two.


i'm at the entrance of the tube. too late for talking baby. we could've talked a little more, but that was before i was late for this train.

when i get to warwick avenue, fall will be outside my window, october months are red and gold and burning orange. i'll be walking down the avenue, spread wide my arms and scarves in the wind, scatter leaves across the avenue. the past upon the avenue.

i didn't want the train to come/now it's departed, i'm broken-hearted/all the days spent together, when i wish for better/and i didn't want this train to come.

the green objective

i think i'll be barefooted. no shoes today.
this is my pledge to environmental consciousness. although i said before that i never gave a damn about the weather, perhaps i should correct myself. i do not give a damn about conversational weather . however, when global warming is mentioned, i start to sweat. we're feeling the heat. this it may just be all our fault. sustainability? just use it all, take it all, exhaust me, exhaust our planet. burn, combust, pick at the earth; clear away ancient forests and drive away the birds. what happened to the responsibility God gave to Adam at the beginning of spiritual time? what happened to the beasts and the birds and the insects, and the names he gave them? the Garden of Eden is a wasteland.

oh carnivorous beings ! devestate the fields, oh! and your machines. Man, your greed is overwhelming the Earth. I'll swear that God is weeping. please, O LORD, weep rain upon these devestated lands. give us something to believe in, because it seems that our faith is lost. noise and disquiet, the rattle and snarl of our factories, fires of industry, computed destruction, plastic ambition...oh i don't believe any of it.

since it's sunny out there (after i drew the curtains to let in the light) i supposed i should do some gardening. the grass seems far too long and overgrown. the spiders have spun webs all winter. the wind has torn through my tousled garden and ravaged its last-spring splendour.

now, let's see.
i'll plant new seedlings and bring the birds back. they'd forgotton my garden,
yes, forgotton the time it was once in bloom.
i believe the birds will return, one day when my garden is again in bloom.

hmm crouching under the shade of my sugarbush, toiling the sleeping soil with my trough, not afraid, not afraid of getting a little dirty. i make friendly conversation with the small ladybirds and Christmas beetles (the ones that fly onto our bathroom window-sill around the festive months - come to think of it, they should be here soon), gently taming the feral places, pulling up the wicked weeds, once choking up the good ones (for want of space and sunlight for the young ones).

you know you're better than this

i don't believe any of it. I know you've been hiding. you're always posted at your station. waiting for the bombs, artillery, gunfire in your head. i'm the girl with the bomb. you're the boy with the grey eyes. you're selfish partialities. your stubborn tenacities. you make me mad, and loving is madness. is it too late to start? headstones, headlocks, you're still on about the day you should have won that fight. i thought i knew you better than this. turns out i didn't know you at all.

i have no intentions, just to throw a stranger an unexpected smile and carry on walking (without a care in the world) down the street and between traffic. just keeping in time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Distant flickerings, It's greener scenery,This weather's bringing it all back again.Great adventures,This isn't in condensation,I'm going outside to take it all in.Is it too late to start got your heart in a headlock,I don't believe any of it.Is it too late to start with your heart in a headlock,You know you're better than this.Wear a different pair,Just something out of stead,Throw a stranger an unexpected smile.With big intention, Still posted at your station,Always on about the day it should have flied.Is it too late to start got your heart in a headlock,I don't believe any of it.Is it too late to start with your heart in a headlock,You know you're better than this.(how can you lose?) Afraid to start, got your heart in a headlock, I don't believe any of it.Is it too late to start with your heart in a headlock,You know you're better than this.You've been walking,You've been hiding, And you look half dead half the time.Monitoring you, like machines do,You've still got it I'm just keeping an eye. You know you're better than thisCan't make a start, got your heart in a headlock,but I don't believe any of it.Is it too late to start, with your heart in a headlock,You know you're better than this.(how can you lose?) Afraid to start, got your heart in a headlock,I don't believe any of it.Is it too late to start, with your heart in a headlock,You know you're better than this. "

-Imogen Heap

i'm waiting on your signal

i'd let my guard down for you, nobody but you.

but when will you let me in? when will you lose the chase? i know it's one of those days. but could you just let me come in? i know there are walls, but have you got it in you?

i'll take your hands from your weary eyes and place them on my heart.

maybe you'll let me love you. there's no hurry. don't be afraid, i feel your fears, i feel your despair, though you try to hide. could you be anymore blue? guarded child, hurt child, damaged. i thought i was damaged, though now i see that i only carry my safety vest in hestitancy, in my doubt. but you, oh offended you, broken lover, take cover.

i'm waiting on you. i'll be waiting. just please don't refuse me.

dear lucy alice (stop).

lucy alice,

your news is like manna (from heaven)
here is my telegram in reply, and thank you for the stamps. my personal collection is growing.
stop.

winter here, too much rain, umbrellas everywhere. stop. is it warm there? is it sunshine there? stop. hope you are well. stop. we miss you every day, especially sophie-lee. she watches from the window every evening before bed. stop. lucy alice, heartbraked though you may have been when you left, do not lose your faith. stop.

so here's to you, lu. milk and honey.

regards and much love.

ana jane

never gave a damn about the weather/no it never gave a damn about me

i wonder, have you got it in you?
how well is your mind

no, i never cared much for the weather, or conversations thereof.
this is where my heart and my head are in a headlock.

i thought i knew her better than that, but it seems all she feels nowadays is bitterness and surreptitious anger.
angry-faced, angered heart . this is a restless anger, like something alive in my chest.

no i never gave a damn about the weather, because the weather never gave a damn about me.

turn me off, turn me on. my voice through a harmonizer/just synchronize me with sonic joy.

it just gets me right here, and then i don't quite know what to do. don't bother capitalizing. don't shower me with your prayers. don't try to call my phone, i've given up on late night persuasions. just leave me be and let me be, because it's one of those days. one of those days, and don't push me.

are you afraid of heights? just tell me everything you feel.

scene 1:

night-time, after eight, drunken laughter from dimly lit downtown saloon

she sees him on a friday outside some run down saloon. he is smoking a cigarette, leaning against wall thinking about someone who had left much too soon.

she said "hey boy, don't you cry tonight, let me take you out on this town. "
she wants to know, 'tell me everything, everything you feel,' and she takes his hand in the dark, in the dark, with all his fears.

scene 2:

up some stairs and they're on a rooftop above the city

she takes him to a rooftop.
"are you afraid of heights?"
the boy replies no i am not, so they dance on the roof, under a sky where only stars can witness this strange serendipity of a meeting. there is no music, but they do not need any. the moon hangs over Soho and she counts some sixteen stars. he points at the brightest one and says, 'now that one's ours.'


scene 3

a rainy Union Square, midnight, after some years have passed.

down in Union Square she sees him walking all alone. Skipping puddles she walks a little slower just so she remains unknown. he meets someone on 17th, and he knows her all too well. she watches as he takes her hand under the midnight clock and then they walk away.

she realizes she wouldnt see her boy after today.

the day she lost the fight

sand through her fingers, sand in her hair, seaspray on her face, sunset in the waves.

sunburnt shoulders, white crush, like i was born only yesterday. the sea, the same for tri-million years, yet changing all the time with each new tide and each waxing of the moon.

nothing unusual, nothing strange, just a little older that's all. saw a space ship/fly by your window. did you see it disappear?

holding hands in the surf, taking pictures without him knowing, jumping waves, toasting champagne: cheers to the sunset and all things golden before us. here's to the horizon, and here's to excellent weather, a hot long summer and a tempestuous romance.

you know when you've found it/there's something i've learned/cause you feel it when they take it away

and so out comes the panic light, holding on with fingers and feelings alike/ she wants to be like

water.

and can you still love me when you can't see me anymore?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i am tired of excuses. i am tired of harsh words without time to think. right now, i'd rather be alone and fortunate, not among a crowd of faces without a name, feeling sinister and complicated and avoided. don't try to reason with me. it's me and my own reality, and you won't change it. let me see it how i want, even if i am wrong, or mad, or over the edge.

oh, but our graduation class!

dear graduation class of two-thousand-and-eight
years have passed us by since we first met/ i remember the younger days/ of sticks and stones and high school blues.
i have often wondered when i’ll see you again/ in decade or two/ perhaps after a world tour or two/ when shall we look back again/ and think of those years when we made it count.
thank you for the laughs, thank you for the tears, thank you for the clashing, thank you for the loving/ i’ll have to leave you all, but reluctantly/it’ll be grey but you must know/ i’ll keep two-thousand-and-eight near my heart/ near my heart wherever i go.

(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
-e e cummings

la vida es una colección de recuerdos

One Wednesday afternoon in September I visited a seaside fishing village (named Kalk Bay by the locals) in Cape Town, South Africa. In search of memories, I might add. But where should one start when searching for a memory? A memory is intangible, transient yet strangely permanent, finding rebirth in a strangely familiar smell, touch, sight, or sound. It is as if a memory were an old forgotten object stowed high away on a dusty shelf, without existence until one day somebody remembers, and takes it down to have a closer look. I find memory to be a personal recollection of thoughts, thoughts that were once strewn apart like newspapers during the South-Easter, which then suddenly come together again and form rhyming words. Memories are things that look good in shop windows. Souvenirs of our past, memoirs and traditions and courtesies and curiosities and small children in 50s bathing suits, all tucked neatly away in a box marked ‘memories of old’ in black ink. Memory is only made by the passing of time, and so a watch, a broken watch-face, stilled in time, frozen in its very essence, is a memory in itself. A memory of a moment that will never happen again.

I made a fascinating discovery at the Kalk Bay Trading Post while hunting for age-old ‘souvenirs’ – that is, the memories of people who had lived, but are no longer known, yet their black and white prints, wedding photographs, military badges and greeting letters (stamped sufficiently) from holiday places somehow found their way into a penny box for strangers to delve through at a trading post (we buy and sell). It was a piece of sheet music for a song called ‘Among my Souvenirs,’ which reminded me of memories, so I bought it and took it home. Only later did I see that it had been signed by the original composer, Horatio Nicholls, 1927.

When I think of memories I am reminded of a son’s return home from war, alive and well, in uniform, and with his appropriate decorations and aviator shades. I think of the waving goodbye of a thousand passengers on the maiden voyage of a Liverpool ocean liner, bound for a journey across the Atlantic. I think of stamps, well-travelled all around the world to bring news safely to the envelope’s addressee. I think of sheet music, forgotten for decades, and found, like I found it, in a dusty box and suddenly the dust is shaken off and the music resurrected when the notes are played once again. I think of a still life, an arrangement of objects in a shop window, displayed like pieces of memory. Memory. It means that old book smell, the musty yellowing old pages of a grandfather’s Bible. Perhaps a postcard from a Briton beach holiday or family anecdotes from past generations. Perhaps memory begins in the most human of condition, in a mother’s womb at the beginning of life’s anatomy. A memory may be past eras, bioscope dates and dinner invitations, discos, railways and sepia tone loving. It may be seen in the eyes of a family portrait, or in burnt out cigarettes, letters from a soldier to his love, or in oily marks that appear on walls, where pleasure moments hung before, Tom Waits lyrics (‘note the rain washes memories from the sidewalks’?). I may have memories of cracking crème brulee with a teaspoon, of washing lines, film negatives, foreign language poetry and taking photographs in photobooths. I have memories of wreckage, of abundance, of abandonment, breaking down walls and remembering pleasure moments, because now I’m going to gather all the courage I have, knives and brushes and hands and eyes, and just paint paint paint !

dirty pretty things

why conversation dissapates over coffee meetings, and why i am afraid to trust, afraid to love, because love is not something even i can define.
i thought love would be the cure, crack my ribs and repair this broken heart, but to my dismay i realized the heart, broken, was the very result of love. so you see, perhaps love is a losing game?
now i find myself tearing out the sutures.

[this is when she says 'it's not you, it's me,' and then she walks away. ]

i think i've see too many turned backs, too many exoduses, too many impossibilities.

i would for once, like to believe that i am ready for acceptance. I would only be at peace, it's all i want; but my soul is restless yet, pieces instead of peace. i have no sanctity, no sanity, none of that, nothing like silence. i have never known a quiet mind. I have only known noise, colourful noise, dynamism, nervous, rapid-electric noise, in my eyes and ears and throat.

and now, all i want is closure. so close me up, close up the wounds, call a surgeon and repair this broken heart and let me be.

project summer "two thousand and eight"

now I'll have you know that summer was never my favourite time of the year. I know that in America summer makes the romance, the new friends, emerging bands and road trips. That sounds rather fantastical, because summer's never been quite the American dream for me. Yet I have decided to expose my skin to the sun, naked I feel, but what, a little vitamin d?

in South Africa, December is sunny and warm and bright. We don't build snowmen; instead we visit the beach and eat and eat and wait for New Years Eve. I have myself a new haircut, shorter, let go, cut it all off, and watch cuttings of conformity litter the floor around you. Chop it all off and tease it and make it all shaggy.

so you see, i am feeling rather trapped at the moment. I'm feeling so last summer, wanting to be free of this, clean of this, yet the rock and the hard place are still yet to come. I wake up with the day, and end with the day, as if nothing's chnaged, as if i haven't moved in a forwardly direction. as if i haven't taken enough photographs to satisfy my love of the lens, as if my reality is somewhat blurred and misfocused, as if my friends are fading without word or a letter in the post, as though every project i wake up with is without birth by the time i go to bed. I would like to have some kind of liberation, without constraints of the part of the System i have to fight, without torturance of my own mind. I suppose i've got to break out before i break (by break, i mean fall apart) because nothing seems right, nothing is good, enough, and as i've protested before, 'enough' is never the ultimatum.

i would like to contain myself-because i think too much and that is my vice as well as my birth-gift-perhaps within poetry and words, when brushstrokes are enough, and i never go to sleep feeling dissatisfied and empty, as if i were not filled to the brim, but merely draining away lifeblood that is creativity.

please don't let me break.

defying the city sky.line

for want of what is real i have decided to live what we call .life. without the aid of a countefeit currency/i won't entertain the masks/nor will i wear them/because what i am, is what i can only be/and though i haven't found that yet/i'll get cha babe/and we'll skip along bridges/and sleep under a radiant cosmos/watching pidgeons on the fire escape/and yelling down the city from the top most floor/raining these words upon the streets/while the rest look up in perplexion/squint in the sun/and walk on, under umbrellas.

pavements are for the safe. but i tread upon the edge.

we'll toss coins to the street muscians, because on the streets, they were born; we'll ride elevators to the very heights and amuse at the smaller the people become, down,
down
down below.

boy, you make me melt like a popsicle on the 4th of july

if you'd be rich or poor
wherever you come from, babe
the tracks, the penthouse, the seaside, the city babe
if you'd be anything but you
well, i'd love you for just what you are
and nothing less.

I want to belong to somebody...but not just somebody, you.

"it has been a while. it has been too long, too long and i had begun to lose hope. i saw street vagrants hang washing on the fences on the edge of the highway, the bridge their roof, the streets their doors, but no welcome mats or doorbells, because they don't get no visitors. "

when you smile, it's like you're smiling for me. when you smile, i melt, like a popsicle on the 4th of july. (we dont even have 4th of july here. But you get the picture).
with you, i need not worry about punctuation. with you, i need not feel unsure, because the surest thing for me is that you'll be waiting at the terminal, when my train pulls in.

when the moon is big like that, big and bright, yellow, harvest moon, i know it's happening. because everytime the moon was full,
i saw you.

and you remind me of the timelessness of that moon
and you are reminded of me, when you pin me to your wall.

they'll seek to burn me, north and south.

This feels like when I stand in front of an empty canvas, when I become frightened by all the possibilities that could be painted upon that vast blank space. There are combinations of letters that could make up so many beautiful words upon this blank page today, various and beautiful combinations, yet I can only think of one - i am incomplete.

I wish I knew. I wish I knew so many things, like whether I'll be in heaven one day, or if I'll ever find the perfect pair of jeans, or whether I'll become famous and make movies about global warming and quests for true love, because I sure can't seem to find these things in my own life. I suppose it's a human kind of thing. We all wonder from time to time whether or not we are making it count. Are we the cool kids, or the band geeks, or high school drop outs, or the ordinary girls from the small towns? I am not famous, so does that mean I am ordinary? I am not beautiful, so should I end up on a dusty shelf in a thrift store, where one wouldn't pay a penny more than I'm worth? I am not smart, so should I put down my books and do something useful, instead of wasting my time with mathematical figures I'll never quite calculate. I am not brave, or royal, or strong, or happy, because I count my pills every morning, and drink to my chemically induced happiness and health...I am not popular, because I cannot list my friends with figures greater that one hundred. I am no movie star, or socialite, or mogul, or daddy's little rich girl. I am not on the Forbe's List of Billionares, and I never will be. So then, I ask you, what is my worth? Is it the saltiness of my tears, or the beating of my heart? The redness of my blood in my veins, or the words from my mouth? Is it the strength of my love, or the measure of my hurt because of loss and love - together they go hand in hand. Should my life be a period. or a question mark? I suppose I answered that myself.

a prayer for the one I called my true love

To a boy, whom I have never met:

You'll walk unscathed through musket fire
No plowman's blade will cut thee down
No cutler's horn will mark thy face
and you will be my ain true love
and you will be my ain true love
And as you walk through death's dark veil
the cannon's thunder can't prevail
And those who hunt thee down will fail
and you will be my ain true love
and you will be my ain true love
Asleep inside the cannon's mouth
the captain cries "Here comes the rout"
They'll seek to find me north & south
I've gone to find my ain true love
The field is cut and bleeds to red
the cannonballs fly round my head
The infirmaryman may count me dead
when I've gone to find my ain true love
I've gone to find my ain true love...


I send this blessing to you, my love, my true, although I have never seen thy face.

I pray that someone will find me and relieve me of this insincere feeling, the one you get when you feel alone, and write poems and listen to lyrical songs; when you feel like you'll never find peace and solituide, when all you want is to say things you shouldn't say. I've held my tongue so many times these past few days, when all I want is to scream and shout until I cannot speak anymore. Perhaps that would be a good thing. Perhaps I need to be silenced, or allowed a moment in which perpetual silence is found, only to have it broken by the unharmonious voices around me, which tell me to make sense of the music around me, though it's all out of key.

I want to be forgiving, yet be forgiven. I want to wash away regrets, dust them away like shards of glass upon the floor.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. - Psalm 23

a desert road from Vegas to nowhere...

Remind me to watch My Fair Lady; did not get to finish it the first time. It will be playing at the opera house in September. Also, Baghdad Café. I’m the coffee machine that needs some fixing.

Today's Green Piece:

Are Christmas trees environmentally-detrimental? Every December we engage in the pagan ritual of chopping down pine trees, thus contributing to the breakdown of the ozone layer. Christmas is generally a time of indulgence and over consumption and I am sure it takes its toll on the environment when people are eating so many mince pies and slaughtering turkeys.

My Green dress, the one with the beads in the shapes of leaves, is my save the trees statement, my pledge to Greenpeace contradictory that I’m arriving in a Hummer, which eats fuel and contributes significantly to the hole in the ozone layer.

things that look good in shop windows

There are so many things I could say, so many words and feelings, but I must be contained. There’s so much I could laugh about, cry about, shout about...he would change everything, everything, just ask her. Caught in the in-between, this beautiful disaster.

Long street must be my second favourite place in the whole world. My first favourite, well, I haven’t found that place, but I’ll be getting the passport to that place soon enough and I’ll send you a postcard, okay? Wish you were here.

I’m interested in township life, social issues, South Africa, human beings, small things and touching things, like stories of how children walked miles to get to school, in the rain, with broken shoes, or stowed away in dairy trucks to get to school despite violent riots and protest marches. I am appreciating our history, despite the propaganda our education system forces down our throats to get us to understand the dangers of classifying – classifying colour like a palette, classifying ebony against ivory. Worthy against unworthy. Money versus poor.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky

-sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
no one can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

In Longstreet on Saturday afternoon I found the Che Cafe, where the guy wearing a Communist cap said we could have cocktails or Cuban coffee if we wanted.
I went thrift shopping for vintage clothing, bought some postcards and looked at these awesome shops that sell makeshift art clothes, like skirts with safety pins and tshirts that say I ♥ ESKOM...not that I’d actually wear any; they’d just look so good in windows or on canvases. I searched a dusty bookstore for an anthology of ee cummings, but no luck, I guess.

He asked me to dance, and well, he looked into my eyes. I found myself moving closer to him. He took my hand. I felt my heart go into my throat, and then swoop down to my knees.

I suppose eight is the date. Eight pee-em. That's the time for most standard courtship meetings. Eight it is. He'll pick me up then?

(Still no word).

'reduced to clear'

Recent googled topics:

Nuclear warfare
Atomic bombs
Apocalypse
Clockwork Orange
Xenophobia
Sustainability in business

It’s amazing how many songs suddenly speak to me even more, how I can relate to them on a deeper level now that I’ve experienced being sorry in the morning. I watched Grey’s Anatomy, and like Meredith, I feel like the president of people with crappy lives. Meredith, and her tequila thing, her inappropriate men thing. Why does she do it? She’s insecure, doesn’t’ know who she is, and perhaps feels entitled to do some moaning and then some drinking, because she’s had a bad day, what with sutures and choosing between two hot doctors and all. There’s something ‘dark and twisty’ about her, even though she tells her friends that it’s not her they should be worried about...yet she is ‘scary and damaged,’ kind of like how I feel right now.

I am 'reduced to clear.'

I find myself asking where on earth I fit. It's as if I have the label - I'm on sale., I'm on the shelf to be inspected and admired...or criticized. Whichever you choose. Maybe I'm the second choice, the one who is left over, once all the others have been sold. Once the dance floor has been cleared I'll be there, still waiting for the one whose two black shoes will never appear before my lowered eyes.

I feel like the girl from the bar...just a girl in a bar, like Meredith. I don’t trust boys anymore. I know that this is in the ABC of growing up, though I need some juju. I need a sign. I need to be loved, yet I’m not willing to let anyone close. My judgement (or lack thereof) is now going to be contained in my head and not in a glass bottle.
I liked to push people, to see how far I could go. I liked to play with my food, but I never ate it. I was curious, I was impatient. Now I don’t care for games anymore. No more engagement for me. I’m making sure I am not misunderstood again, and misjudgements will be saved for baking muffins and not for stupid boys.
I don’t believe anymore. I am a stranger to myself. I never counted on this. Now, now darling, it’s just text book stuff...now, now darling; now don’t lose your head.

and everytime [I touch you] you just tremble inside

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for." [Dead Poet's Society]

Human relationships fascinate me. The love hate relationship between two people who won’t admit their attraction for one another; a domestic dispute between two people in love; the good girl from Park Avenue and the street boy; the untamable shrew wooed by the rugged stranger; the misdirected burnout who takes Mary Jane to the prom. The bad girl over the good girl, it seems.

I’m still not self-actualized; still, I have such a hella way to go. But my perspectives have been breathed into, somehow. And I’ll get back, slowly, pull myself together.
I couldn’t escape my own thoughts, feeling INside, looking only at my own self and what I felt of the world. Why, this world is so much magnified, 10 times at least, because everything I see is intensified. I must be the most self-absorbed person I’ve ever met.

People say, they say that it’s just a phase. They tell me to act my age. Well I am.

Things seem to be consuming me. It isn't any wonder that I feel like taking two steps backwards, and then perhaps another two, and then throwing up my hands and saying that I have come now to the end. I am not well enough, not smart enough, or beautiful enough, together enough, to love enough, to give enough. Enough. Enough, not enough.

I feel more than ever that there is something wrong with me. Why am I still alone? I guess I'm just torturing myself wondering when my life is going to start.

my fundamentalist oxford comma

I sometimes wish this insensible life would just stand still. Your best friend in the world is your worst enemy, your greatest burden. The boy you love is your hater. Up is down. Inside is out. I’m interested in causes, politics, rights, struggles, riots, war and peace. I’m interested in world media, issues, global warming, the environment, saving the forests, medicine, cures, vaccines, news bulletins, newsprint, posters, propaganda, North Africa, Jamaica, reggae, Rastafarianism, dreadlocks, Bob Marley, HIV/AIDS, Save Darfur, genocide, guns in America, terrorism, famine, kitsch, bright red telephone booths, that haunting hunger in girls that could so easily be fed [anorexia], glamour, old-school, curiosity shops, retro eras, the 60’s, Cuban cigars, CUBA!!, vintage magazines, fashion design prints, animal rights, graffiti and public buildings. I am going to visit the Kalk Bay Trading Post and pick up a few ideas from the dusty stash of treasures I can find there. Long Street will also have some interesting things, if you just look very carefully, like in second hand boutiques and thrift stores.

If this is brainstorming, it’s gonna be thunder and it looks like rain.

Coffee makes civilized conversation possible in these demanding times. The camera is the glass lens through which your world becomes an artwork, or perhaps the only way you can remember a particularly drunken night out. They sold their souls and put the money in the money tin or piggy bank. The fire is represented by a match box (understated by still life object); for genes a pair of jeans; for global warming perhaps an ice cube and for the environment a jar of earth. They stowed away family heirlooms in jewelry boxes, acquainting with dust and years. They wanted change but got only coins. And so on.
I am beginning to be inspired by the unobvious boldness of still life…stating the obvious though rebelling against the ordinary. It’s deeper than simply an arrangement of objects on a surface. It’s a mockery of the mundane, and I’m going to make it worth something, make it an idea, a philosophy, a message that I am going to communicate about the irony of reality. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” says the impudent statement of René Magritte upon stating that his seemingly obvious drawing of a tobacco pipe is, in fact, not what it is. Still life is impertinent, cheeky, with a kind of motionless, silent audacity that makes it so fascinatingly unreserved. I wish I was as unassumingly presumptuous as still life, with confidence to get through each day without worrying about my reflection in nearby windows.

I love the ironies in life, the bitter contradictions and the bold and dastardly arguments between chemistries. I see these ironies in everyday life, driving past in the city, in traffic, in crowded places. A vagrant rummaging in a trash can below a towering glamour poster for Gucci as rain drizzles down around him.

I want to write songs and poetry, though how can I when I have no experience of real love? Perhaps I could write about loving but never truly being loved?
I’m afraid.
I wanna stick my life all over my walls. I wanna document my life, put it all in pictures, then collage myself on the walls to remind me of who I am and where I’ve been.

Why are walls so significant to me?

i carry your heart ( i carry it in my heart)

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

ee cummings

my dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room

ever since i first knew you, babe, we've been ‘slow dancing in a burning room’
we know that what we both feel, and it isn’t right yet we carry on.
we ignore the turmoil around us, fires and arson and chaos and we’re going down and you can see it too.
you're trying to keep me away, pushing me and looking away, he who won’t look me in the eyes
he won't have the alarms raised
yet we're slow dancing, here, in this burning room.
we can both feel the temperatures raised
we're scorched and burning, as we know that together will never be a true together
except in
the ashes of our hearts.


I’m waiting. Smoked out cigarette stumps and piles of musty old books; she read them over and over. These are occupations of waiting, waiting for him to return. Die waiting. Waiting, forever.

I was thinking of writing in my novel about a girl who regularly visits a psychiatrist, however reluctantly, and gets annoyed when he speaks to her as if she is a crazy person. She also hates it when the furniture always looks the same and sterile hospital smells. She’d rather walk on a beach and let her trousers get wet and sandy. She wishes she could let go and not have to hold them up as she walked.

I’m scared because I don’t know myself. I can be fire one day and water the next. At full moon I feel off, and then I’m down and then I’m bored and tired and frustrated, I will never say ‘I’m happy’ because happiness is fickle. It comes and goes; it’s really just you saying that everything is swell when actually it’s not so just get that into your head and deal with it. Fuck it. Lately I have thought people are very stupid. I say this several times a day. "God, he’s so fucking stupid." "What the fuck."

P.S. watch Garden State

i need your grace to remind me, to find my Own.

It's as if
the only one who ever loved me doesn’t love me anymore.
It is as if
he's there but not for long
he's leaving, may it be
a rainy day
a stormy night
may it be
his last salute
it is as if
he is turning to his duty
he's going off to war
and leaving me behind.
his country before his darling.

good luck, so long, and good night.

Don’t forget me.
Just please, don’t forget me.

---

emotional [weather] report

I wrote this when I was fighting with my parents

Now I’m fighting with my parents and then trying to be better but it never works out and it ends up happening all over again. One big mess where we’re all fuckups. I often feel like the blackest sheep of all the black sheeps in every family there ever was.

I can’t wait to get married and collect dozens of pairs of shoes and receive full dinner services and move furniture around. I can’t wait to get out of here, feel a fresh new breeze and be independent. I want to stop getting things all wrong. I want to get it right for a change. I sometimes feel like I have some kind of dyslexia in this confusing life, like I can’t just be competent and correct, I always make mistakes. Stupid ones too, because I lose my head. The future could look bright, if only I just kept my eyes on the prize. The future could look bright, if only I would just make this right, fix this brokenness, BANG! and I killed it.

---

wednesday's child, you're full of woe.

I’m Wednesday’s child, full of woe. I was born on a Wednesday, so should I be conditioned to break?

Scatterbrain
You've been crying in the rain
You've been drowning in your pain
Ain't gonna die
Do the right thing
Win or lose
Don't confuse Wednesday's child
Walk on by me Don't deny me Anytime
Scatterbrain You've been crying in the rain (crying in the rain)
You've been drowning in your pain (drowning in your pain)
Ain't gonna die
Do the right thing Win or lose
Don't confuse Wednesday's child
Scatter brain You've been crying in the rain
You've been drowning in your pain
Ain't gonna die

oily marks appear on walls, where pleasure moments hung before

There’ll be those marks upon the walls, to remind me of what once was, of what we were, what we had. I want to be reading letters, not writing them. Taking pictures of anyone...

I sometimes feel scared that I’m not the best person I can be. I want him to point at me at say ‘that’s her.’ I want to be the girl that you’ve never met anyone else like before.

this is the ransom; it was for her broken heart
that he would pin up on his wall
dearly-bought for his luckless darling
she taped up her mouth with newspaper word cut outs

i don’t believe you
but still loved you with all the pieces
you swallowed your words
spoke no feeling
i’ll rip up the imaginary love-letters
because you packed up your love in boxes
and left.

my heart is part of the furniture
not much else but something you left behind
the dust will settle soon
on my suddenly still life

[this insensible life
you’d rather forget.]
as for the girl,
well, what did she say?
nothing but oily marks on walls
hmm what did she say?
just murmurs of days before the takeover
you won’t find her waiting
and asking

no, you won’t catch her around here.


This life has become all quiet. There’s this silence, this stillness. Without you my world has become a frozen piece of time, motionless and inanimate. You put up my heart up for display. It’s part of the furniture now, just a dusty object left among the mismatched array of things you left behind when you were gone in a hurry. I am nothing to you now but a memory, an object from the past, kept high upon your shelf. I’m part of the composition. I’m useless and desperate and I’m as still and lifeless as the scattered belongings that you left behind. I’m just a piece, but you didn’t put me in your suitcase. You left me with all the other memories you’d rather forget.


as I wrote a letter to my love but on the way I dropped it. Sometimes she’d turn all dark and shut herself in her room for days. She’d say she had no appetite. She’d stare at the ceiling and talk to herself. And talk back. And then she’d complain of lethargy and feelings of emptiness, saying her arms felt strangely heavy, and although she was sad she could not cry. Sometimes she would lie on the floor. When she eventually became bored of this she’d arrange her bookshelf in alphabetical order. And then lie down on the floor again. When it got dark she would not turn on the light. She said she hated artificial light anyway and preferred the dark. It was comforting somehow. We’d come over to visit her when she was like this. She wouldn’t take advice. She’d pull at her sleeves when she got nervous. The best thing we could do for her was to tell nonsense stories and read to her from Jane Eyre. She loved that.

The easiest way to my heart is with a knife, but the second easiest is by writing me a song and singing it off-key outside my bedroom window.

Still. Life? Is there still life? Stillness of life could come around when you don’t know where to go. When you’ve lost someone. When you feel empty and everything is a mess. Still life is ironic. A tree is still but living, so it is still life. I am still but living, frozen and hurt and choked up, but my heart still beats...technically, life.

I’m going to frame words, mess upon walls, play hide and seek.

do they think that walls can hide you, johanna?

ANTHONY:

I feel you, Johanna,I feel you.
I was half convinced I'd waken,
Satisfied enough to dream you.
Happily I was mistaken,
Johanna.
I'll steal you,
Johanna,I'll steal you.
I'll steal you, Johanna,
I'll steal you.
Do they think that walls could hide you?
Even now, I'm at your window.
I am in the dark beside you,
Buried sweetly in your yellow hair!
I feel you, Johanna,And one day I'll steal you!
Til I'm with you then,I'm with you there,
Sweetly buried in your yellow hair!

I wish a boy would sing to me, while I sat in my window, above busy London’s street…“I feel you, Roseanna…”
And then he’d come and save me from the ‘asylum’….to rescue me from my prison.
I’ll steal you, Roseanna.
Because her name is Roseanna.
Where is my Anthony? I am his Johanna.

"The Star: World fuel price fury"

I seem to be caught in this stop motion picture I call my life.

I noticed, driving past the gas station yesterday, the looming billboard displaying the current price of petrol. Our lives have become leaded with prices of our unleaded and diesel. The wealthy complain about filling the tanks of their off road four-by-fours, while the poor are despondent over heating their stoves with the increased price of paraffin by 0.94c. Although oil price fluctuations may subside in the future, the global shortage of diesel will prove problematic in the long run. South African farmers and truck companies are feeling the heat while the South African population as a whole is struggling to pay the price of getting anywhere at all. And jet fuel? You can say that again. Forget that travelling by air was a better option– the increase in jet fuel price to a record $90.30 per barrel is likely to cause airline tickets to go up. According to economists ‘it’s not looking good.’ Maybe it’s just fuel sensationalism. We tend to feature too much bad report in our evening news bulletins. The news-anchor seems to often be the bearer of bad news.
As I noticed in my very own small town, petrol prices are indeed at the never-before-seen hike of nearly R10 a litre. It has been estimated that the rate could increase further within the next year to R14 per litre, not to mention diesel to R16 per litre. I suppose I should forget the road trip then, huh.
Apparently we “need to do everything we can to make the rand strong against the dollar.” We cannot control political instability in the Middle East, Nigeria and Latin America, which is the main reason for the heightening fuel price, but we can control the strengthening of our own currency. However, we pay the prices of high inflation (ever wondered why, on your routine trip to the supermarket, basic groceries such as bread and milk seem to be priced as luxurious commodities?) and high interest rates (better watch your credit card’s every move from now on).

bad fuel day
The mood or feeling one experiences after having just filled his or her vehicle with $4.00+ per gallon gasoline. (Usually consists of a sense of great economic despair, impending doom, anger, frustration, depression and/or a combination of all the above)

a series of unfortunate events

The last time it was Friday-the-thirteenth I got a fortune cookie that said success, wealth and happiness will be yours.

If we all followed the advice of fortune cookies, well, perhaps we’d all be looking forward a bit more. If a piece of paper could predict the course of my life’s fortune, I’d eat a fortune cookie everyday, without realizing that each and every one contains a good fortune, and as far as fortune cookies are concerned, bad luck doesn’t exist, except if the recipe failed or the oven wasn’t hot enough. Fortuity is a chance happening, beyond a person’s control. I don’t believe it is something divine; it is merely a hiccough in the usual logical mathematical sync of the universe.

Not all fortune is a four leaf clover. Luck, as a fallacy, is perhaps ‘probability taken personally.’ Avoiding beliefs that are unscientific, a rational conclusion of luck would be to apply the rules of probability. A gambler’s luck involves denying the unpredictability of events occurring at random, presuming that if one has not rolled a seven all week, one is bound to roll one tonight.

According to supernatural and spiritual beliefs luck is ‘conjured’ by the performing of certain rituals in order to avoid the inverse of fortune, bad luck. This may be prayer, sacrifice or interpretation of omens. Numerology may also be a way of evoking luck, such as lucky telephone numbers or license plates. Both the number thirteen and Friday are considered unlucky by most English-speaking countries. Thirteen, an irregularity, is a number one more than Jesus Christ’ Twelve Apostles, threatening completeness.

Today's Friday-the-thirteenth doesn't seem like an ill-omened day to me. Perhaps my fortune cookie of 2006 will prove to be protection against today's superstitioned date. Fortune may come standard when it's a confection, but then Fortune does taste good.

my impossible complexities

I hate airports. It’s almost always a goodbye affair and rarely ever a happy hello. I’ve watched many friends depart from airports and never return. And now . Though, as much as I hate leaving cherished friends behind at the departure terminals, I can’t help dreaming of the day when I’ll be the one going on a jetplane adventure, off into the sky and away. I looked up at the bulletin board today, like I always do at airports, fascinated by such distant places ticket-holders would be flying to that very afternoon- Kuala Lumpar, Berlin and San Francisco…

I wish my family was as interesting as ana’s. She and her mum live in Soho, in a refurbished flour storehouse above a Greek bakery. I think her mum’s interesting, but I haven’t said that to ana-Jane. I’m sure I would get annoyed if my own mother tried to force-feed me soya and cursed every McDonald’s, declaring the Rise of the Golden Arches. But still. She tie-dyes clothing and hangs it out on balcony, studies Native American culture and organizes demonstrations against ‘billboard pollution’ and forestry. You can sometimes hear her practicing on her guitar and singing Creedence Clearwater Revival on warm evenings, but ana-Jane stopped having slumber parties some time ago. The Volkswagen beetle that was once a regular old rust on wheels has become a statement of colorful whirly flowers. But since the recent rise in the petrol price her mum has decided that using the car from short trips was unnecessary, as well contributive to carbon emissions in the atmosphere. ana-Jane walks to school with me now.

girl you have no faith in medicine

A certain ms. anna-jane Fray, having had much to say, her cat eyes and untied shoelaces - they say she was formidable. But I keep it all in jars. She’d tumble about in laughter. They were forever telling her to curb her enthusiasm with messages in the form of little white pills to make her well. But she wouldn’t become like the others…it was her own head or none. She told them to go back to where they came from. They were making her nervous. All that she couldn’t keep bottled up inside caused people to walk away shaking their heads. Sit still, they said to her. Wake up raw child.
I am awake. She was alive with the thoughts she would die without…of war, of peace, to shimmy and disrespect politics, [green]peace, what she planned to fight for, her fast-forwarding mind too great for her outnumbered age. TAKE ME SERIOUSLY?

(remember the days of the) old

I could have spent all day in the Kalk Bay Trading Post. If ever you’re looking for what you couldn’t find, pay a visit to that village and live for a while in quaint wonderland and the Curiosity shops.

Objets d’art.

The place is so instilled with Retroversity, you can feel it in the pots and kettles hanging from painted walls, down the narrowest alley ways with cobble stones, the vibe and energies, the swinging shop signs, bric a brac piled outside, to the ceiling and behind glass case. I would smile all day at antique spoons, Wedgwood china in dusty windows, telephones from the 50’s (you, know, the kind with the dial and shiny black receiver), gramophones (oh the golden flower!) just vintage. Oh so BoHo.
Up the stairs into the 1960’s where you find posters of old Vogue, LP vinyl bags and Marilyn resurrected. Those the wire words, chic chic chic, antique collectables – an amalgamation of artists in one sea side village, wartime posters of Drink delicious Coca Cola, radios, small liquor bottles (some still half empty). I saw colored glass bottles lined upon the window sill. I ate in a café devoted to Fauvism and Henry Matisse, complete with those bright colors of red, yellow and blue he uses in his paintings. I paged through a 1964 edition of Women’s Weekly and its sewing patterns, reminded of changing roles in society, elapsed popular culture meshed with the present, dinky toys, collectable phone cards raising awareness to the average person about AIDS and ecological devastation (‘No earth, no tomorrow’). These are the old keepsakes mementos, memories and remindings of what has passed, but still lives and breathes in all the essence of a preservation of beauty and art and all things novelty. Old tins become novelties of pop culture, Hulletts sugar, Glen teabags or Lucky Star pilchards. We’ve all seen it before, but only in this magical place can things like these become worth looking at twice It’s the whole knew revelation of it, you see things differently. It’s not the brash, cold hard plastic consumerism we’re subjected to day after day. This is the charm of individual thinking, touches of each art-befuddled mind that make it the trendiest quirk on the coast.
Oh, the railway line, the old station. The quarter and wood-finished book store with books stacked high to the ceiling. It’s the adverts in shop windows for shows at the theater, like ‘don’t understand me.’ The shops next to the ice cream store are obliged to put up signs on the door saying ‘no ice cream in here please.’

Regards,

............

Dear Mandela

Chew On This

"KFC suppliers cram birds into huge waste-filled factories, breed and drug them to grow so large that they can’t even walk, and often break their wings and legs. At slaughter, the birds’ throats are slit and they are dropped into tanks of scalding-hot water—often while they are still conscious. It would be illegal for KFC to abuse dogs, cats, pigs, or cows in these ways.
KFC’s own animal welfare advisors have asked the company to take steps to eliminate these abuses, but KFC refuses to do so. Many advisors have now resigned in frustration."

-KFCcruelty.com

[save my Life from slow Motion]

I am considering. I am considering myself. I am trying to self actualize. I would like to write a book, a story of me, something new and fresh and glamorous, but real. I keep thinking about it, wanting to start but where? I can’t do it now - that would be unwise, because I have to focus on my last year of high school first. How would it be? Like this, a diary? I want to write something personal. Something that speaks, like a voice in words. I really wish I knew more about people, though I'd like to keep it that people know little about me.

A lot of things scare me. Inspiration doesn’t come standard. I’m scared that I would find my inspiration and that I’ll dry up in this heat. I’m scared of drying up and being useless, because I have gifts, but what if they were to be taken from me? Oh God, I am beyond help. Someone cure me from this self destruction. Save my life from slow motion. Make this my daily torture. I am so sick of fading into the background. I’m so tired of not feeling happy with who I am, because I am what I am…but this torture is such that I just cannot feel content being just that – me. Should I, shouldn’t I? Could we? Shouldn’t we? Would you call me perfect? That’s all I want. Perfection. I hate it.

.....
....
..
.

i just love a little poetry after supper...

What to write today…a little poetry perhaps, a song? ee cummings maybe…maybe, maybe. I’ve had too much caffeine again and now I’m up at 10:43pm writing stuff to myself.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”

I’ve been watching Amelie. She likes to skim stones at the Canal and has been diagnosed mistakenly with a palpitating heart, though the real reason for this condition is the nervous fluttering she suffered as a child when upon occasion she visited the doctor and experienced unusual physical contact. Her mother died when a suicidal woman jumped from Notre Dame and landed on top of her. Her mother liked to unpack her handbag, clean it out…and pack everything back again. She disliked wrinkly fingers from too long in a hot bath. Amelia’s quest is to track down the owner of a box she found in her bathroom wall containing treasures of a childhood from the 50’s. She feels the sudden need to help humanity, starting by leading a blind man to the subway while rapidly describing to him everything around them on the streets, lollipops in the bakery window, children, dogs, the smell of melons…then hastily bids him au revoir and leaves him standing perplexed at the subway entrance. Amelie works at the Le Deux Moulins (the Two Windmills) where the regulars include Gina’s unrequited lover who returns each day to sit in the same booth and jealously watch her every move. Georgette is the hypochondriac who works behind the cigarette counter. Another patron is an air hostess who leaves her cat at Amelie’s apartment when she’s away. She likes the sound of the cat’s china bowl on the tiles. The cat likes to listen to children’s stories. The man in the apartment next door is careful about who he meets. He never ventures out onto the landing for meaningless chit chat. He stays indoors and paints ‘Luncheon at the Boating House’ reproductions every year. Except, he can’t quite capture the girl drinking from the glass. She didn’t play with the other children. She’s there but not quite…I guess the loneliest place in the world is a room full of people in which you don’t know anyone. I. I like the smell of old books, the kinds with yellowing pages. I like to drink coffee with skinny spoons. His cards lay in a box. There were none from his eldest daughter there. She’d stopped writing him cards a long time ago. They speak so fast in this movie.

my jeans come with holes

It’s all in my genes – to be cynical, to be satirical, to be provoking. I wear them like my favourite jeans.

I wear my hair in a braid, slung around my neck, over my shoulder. I have a style. Eat that. I can’t airbrush my flaws forever. Swallow me or choke. Either way I’m going to get into you.

I’d mix my paint with my tears. That’d make a really faithful representation for the demise of my world, the crashing hopes and the nothings to replace it.

I’ll have to console myself in hope that things will change, the assurance that I’m not done yet…I haven’t even started. When I do, the world will be my coin, for me to flip either way I like. Thanks for being the dumb idiots for me to watch waste away – you taught me much about what not to become. If I go without cutting my mark in this life, then I will fucking sue God.

it's the end of the world (as we know it)

I live in a fishing village. Living here a while, you get used to the fishy smells from factories down at the harbor. Rusty old trawlers going out empty and returning plentiful. You can wake up one morning and smell the sea, or fish smells in your kitchen. Down by the quayside you can hear a seaman’s cursing on the air; a place of nautical treasures and take away cafes.

I’m anti this town. I’m sick to death of being a small town girl. I’m sick of this small town talk. Everywhere I go it’s Hout Bay this or Hout Bay that. I long for the city. There’s a lot of love about this place, the Cape, where I live… things I could capture with my camera. The colour, the noise and the audacity of this place. But I need more. I want to get out of the Bay and into the global society

Drunken people are easier to talk to, I guess because they won’t remember anything, and will think I’m pretty anyway. I am surrounded by people with an identity crisis.

One of my favorite politicians is Al Gore, who made an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming and demonstrated the rise in fuel consumptions by hitching a ride on a movable step ladder.
Jacob Zuma, with a merit of no formal education, proclaims that showering after unprotected sex will prevent you from contracting HIV. That’s promising. A man that may one day become our country’s president is only popular with his own tribe, who pledge their allegiance to him on the basis of, “He’s a Zulu, so we'll follow this guy.”
And the ANC, well, here’s to a bunch of self-important slurring black politicians, full of themselves because they think they won the struggle… well sorry, you have a lot of mess to clean up around here, boys.

I am purposefully politically incorrect, because why shouldn’t we be able to SAY IT HOW IT IS?? I’m so irritated by the propaganda of our educations system, attempting to brainwash the post-1994 generation in order to compensate for the evils of apartheid. Our society is extreme – we condone violence and sexual profanities in film and media, children with guns, yet become absurd and hypersensitive about potentially offensive terms, such that we have to think up nonsensical euphemisms for the most specific concepts that probably wouldn’t have bothered anyone in the first place had they just been left as they were.

“Where does all this stuff that you’ve heard about this morning – the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it – where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.”

Our text books tell us to be citizen of new South Africa for the empowerment and betterment of new society, but for what? To revive the cultural retardation that the majority is inflicted with? The majority being blacks, by the way. Leave the brains to the colonists, I say.
I’m so tired of this Black Economic Empowerment nonsense, and how they have to rub in their previously disadvantaged-ness. We can’t help everyone just because we drive a car and have pale skin. Does this all come down to how much melanin we have in our complexions? Those people at traffic lights tapping on your window and asking for change…but really, they’re not asking for coins. They want change.

As for George Bush, well, if ever I was interested in politics it was because of old Georgie. And he’s good for cartoons.
So here’s the thing. Is ‘War on Terrorism’ just another nom de plum for “Let’s raid those guys and see what oil they got down there, y’all”? George Bush is my home boy.