Monday, November 30, 2009

coin-operated boy

quit my job today. feels good. I am not a quitter. But it was time.

what did she say?
she wouldn't sleep until he apologized.
"he won't tonight."
"then i will not sleep tonight," she said.

"Give me another chance to be a man."
"Not until you give me one reason to believe you ever again."

i hope you'll never live with yourself. may it haunt you, cringe you, irksome little guilt. you got trouble.

Friday, November 27, 2009

where love is, no room is too small.

another.




Sonnet XLIII, from the Portuguese.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


when my heart begins to stretch and the room is never too small and everything feels like the movies. and love songs are caresses to music. and i don't understand. then, i'll sit down and write my own rendition.

boom! i got your boyfriend.


there's a sly little line between love and infatuation.

love is a pick among poets and philosophers. there are many takes on the true definition of the word.

my personal take is in biblical form, from 1 corinthians 13.4.


Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love

if you can swear by all of these and remain true in every respect, then you can say you have loved.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

tom tom club

the history of disco:

boom! i've got your boyfriend
discotheque friday revivals
new world order in the form of synthpop, wonky pop and dancefloor nu wave.
a safety dance by men without hats.
a technotrash's take on love
i love the bloody beetroots.
talk boxes
boogie boogie
cupcake parties
electro ambition
wah wah pedeal distortion
promiscuity in manhattan
polyrhythms
the warehouse
54 encounters
trammps disco inferno
saint-germain-des-pres cafe and nu jazz numbers
animated cocaine spoons
stairwell hedonism
backlash and decline

Friday, November 13, 2009

she wept.



in unencumbered passion, tainted vows and hardly a breath between his kisses i have found myself breathless and unyielding and woken up with a stone in my chest. a yoke hung cumbersome around my neck. i walk without a spring in my step. i have a heaviness within me. i don't want to speak about it because i feel i've spoken too much. i don't want to look at you because you're no sight to my eyes.
instead i cry tears of stone. my body becomes a marble statue at the very thought of you. believe me, i have wept.

Friday, November 6, 2009

we will always have paris

it's always sexier when you say it in french, but everything also is 'worse in french'.
art movements and existentials were born in paris cafes. they all smoke filter cigs and make it look good. they can wear anything at all and pull it.
they talk and talk and eat and talk. the men are old and rich and buy fancy things for younger women. they're all talk and promises too. they take you back to their third storey apartments. their wives will know but turn away in blindness.

love in the afternoon - billy wilder
les enfants de paradis - marcel carne
chacun cherche son chat, cédric klapisch
the last time i saw paris -
the valet -
last tango in paris -
private fears in public places (cœurs)-
forget paris -
under the Rooftops of Paris
les triplettes de belleville
funny face
casablanca

Thursday, November 5, 2009

just like every child.

i pray for him every night.

that he'll find his way
please watch him as he goes
i pray he'll trust in you
show him the truth
give him the grace
to find his own and his stride
let it be a prayer, for the man who lost his way
for the boy who said he'd stay
lead him to a place
guide him with your grace
keep him safe in your counsel
so that he may please you in all his trials
do not forsake him although he has forsook
watch over him God in all places he goes.
just like every child.
just like every child.

well-painted passion



i had hoped...
and so, the alleycat and the thief.

a thief in the night

i've been told to stay away from you. you told me so yourself. i should have listened and just
WALKED AWAY.

like a fool, i believed in you. once again, i've been stolen, dismayed, told a lie.

i can't say you didn't warn me. i just chose not to believe that you were no good. on the contrary i saw only what i wanted to see. i thought you were my saviour. i was pretty stupid in thinking that. i could not resist the prospect of my true love finally found.
this is a mistake as human and as old as time. every day i live i see more and more of the treachery of humanity. i become more and more weary.

from now on i shall calculate my steps. from now on you will listen to everything i say, so that nobody gets hurt. just don't move, and i won't pull the trigger.

i am at war.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

eliza mackenzie

looks like a silent movie star when she applies red lipstick
is equally as striking in black and white
chain-smoker (malboro)
plucks eyebrows religiously. eyebrows are quite thin and unassuming
hair like katharine hepburn, swept back at the crown, tousled in jest but so that she still maintains a certain composure.
she has terrible cuticles
she spends a good deal of time leaning over bars
she has a habit of reading the last page of every book
she is no good for boys
cheekbones with definition
she finds humour in the everyday
she likes old things and old people
she cannot say goodbye
she misspells words on purpose
her eyes are gleeful with soul. she is her own continent.
her mirthful laugh is admired by everyone who hears it
she's a hazard.
she likes to be photographed.
she finds her inspiration under window, with a good view.
her scalp bleeds easily, especially when she has too many thoughts.
she enjoys mustache parties.
her smile is never presumptious. it always makes you want to kiss her and laugh along with her.
she likes to think she's an intellectual
she prefers to take the train
she owns a pair of magic opera glasses that allow her to see things that weren't there before
she writes and enjoys unsweetened black coffee
she has a best friend called hannah

a room with a view



it is amazing how coincidence can be found in situations that did not even relate to each other in the first place. i am reading e.m. forster's a room with a view, slowly. i watched the movie yesterday, a delicate helena bonham carter before her more villainous roles. it's amazing how mr. forster's themes are so like my own writing, even though i hadn't read a word of his book when i started my own. i could well call my own novel a room with a view and the title would fit absurdly. maybe writers who think alike are equally as mad. still, he's brilliant and i wish i could write like him.




preview

the following is a preview to the novel i've been trying to write my whole life, with a state of permanent writer's block. this condition has been known to be fatal, by the way, abolishing entire careers in course of abandonment, or a terminal disability to write a single thing for years on end.

july weathering

In the winter months of June through to August the weather is temperate. From time to time the sea begins to churn just beyond the Bay and waves begin to chop-chop as far out as I can see. Briny sea weather in the Cape can sometimes surge into turbulent storms, in which great swells break violently onto the concrete pier. During such rainstorms I stay indoors watching gutters become rivers and praying that harbour walls do not buckle beneath the furious breaks. On rainy days we discover the places in the ceiling that need work. Water drips persistently from leaks and we have to salvage every bucket and bowl to catch it.
In winter our rains come down fast and true, and there is ample opportunity to step over puddles and then jump into them. I have a collection of gumboots which I have accumulated over many years of annual rainy winters. My current pair is bright red with white daisies. On especially wet afternoons I have a tendency to tramp mud into the hotel lobby, a bad habit of mine since I was little. I always forget to wipe my feet on the welcome mat.

In the winter Daddy spends quite some time with his head in the ceiling, fixing up those pesky leaks. Business is slow when it rains, but the fireplace is always aglow and warm beverage is served. The house becomes drafty, because it’s old and creaky, and sometimes groans as if respiring. Gusts of wind blow down the chimney on wintry nights, shaking the rafters and chilling us in the beds upstairs. The house stands quite boastfully on the corner of Main and Colyn, a vision in cobalt-blue paint, layers of which have been redone over the years but the original colour remains - without a doubt the local eye-catcher on the block. Little Library stands two storeys above street level, with a flight of steps leading up to the front door. We still have the old knocker, but have since put in a doorbell as well. The house inside is home, well-polished and wallpapered. When my parents bought it over it was in disrepair, splintered by the south-easter and eaten away by salt-winds and drunkards.
In a love affair of mortar, pride and embellishment my parents got to work with a small baby on hand to restore the grand house to its former dignity. Recently married and having spent the last of their newlywed savings on the purchase of Little Library, my parents used their own hands and sweat in the founding of the place.
Daddy put in new windows all by himself and mixed cement all day. He gathered stones from the beach every day about ten of them. By this laborious task of carrying and dropping and going back for more, Daddy eventually built a dry stone wall out of those stones to show that this place was ours and nobody else’s; but a wall small enough for passersby to look over and see what it was we had built. Walls have fortified cities and castles, keeping kings and dividing citizens. Ours was built in earnest, an encompassing wall over which neighbourly greetings could be exchanged. By spring the house was complete and I was already learning to walk. My parents stood back and admired what they had done.
“It’s quite a sight,” said Daddy. “I think the colour is quite striking.”
“Quite,” said his wife. “It feels like we’ve already lived here a decade. I can’t see why. I suppose a fresh coat of paint does wonders.”
They stood for a moment without a word with their arms around each other and I, holding tightly onto my mother’s hand, gazed up at them.



It was as if wet plaster, some good lighting and a bit of my mother’s grace restored the house long before the dining tables and shutters were put in.






it's pretty much a known fact that regular bloggers have too much time on their hands. me? nooo ways. haha

i am thinking about going to see a local hipster ensemble called beatenberg tonight at the waiting room. need to bum a lift, wondering who will oblige?

my manifest of the day: okay you're cool, everybody can see you, everybody can see, okay? you're cooler than me, okay okay, i get it.

whatever makes you happy.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

infamy

that infamous bastard cevron of 8-bit-city may have disappeared off the face of the blogging portal, having allegedly 'out-blogged' himself, but the question of his (or her?) identity still nags at those imsointerestings (you know who you are) until they choke on their skinny vida lattes. cevron's blog earlier this year caused much 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' on cape town's internet-propelled/musically sidelined hipster scene. like many social/art/musical movements in the 20th century this particular scene has resulted in a response ( rather reaction) that comments, exposes and plain takes the piss out of the currently assumed state of coolness, shooting it as 'a state of idiocracy.'

i still take pleasure in reading cevron's anonymous and gratifyingly funny blogs, unshamedly ripping off the likes of we-are-awesome and hipster run-off. sure he's an asshole, but he knows it. i am using 'he' here just as a subject, as cevron (it/he/she) could well be female, and good on her if she is.

cevron has really shook up this pretentious scene while engaging a good deal of attention and publicity. oh the joy of infamy.

in my own words, there will always be a cynic.

personal finance

good morning and welcome to my weekly report on how not to blow your money on capitalist tempations and retail snubs.

go out for two-for-one pizzas.
get to places early to avoid cover charges and bad-mannered doormen (those loutish brutes).
ask for student discounts.
keep receipts and account for everything you spend. be your own accountant.
stick your salary straight into your bank account on pay day. depositing cash elimates the tempation to spend it if its available.
shop second handedly
open a trust fund
don't always buy lunch.
go out with a gentleman who will buy it for you.
comparison shopping, to ensure you get the best deal.
drink water.
debt is vice. vice is expensive.
jump into a car pool
buy stuff on sale only
borrow books from the library
DIY.
sleep in the terminal
please call me's
buy a sheep and have it trim your lawn so you don't have to pay a gardener to do it.

pie.

pie, the new term for capitalism.





everyone wants a piece of it. it's freshly prepared with layers of corporate shares, indulged with lashings of hefty profits, savoured in supply and demand and baked at a very high temperature. the pie is not always served hot. some get a large share, while others barely bite the crust. however, it tastes so good that we all just want more. we'll insist upon a large portion if we can get, our appetites unquenched and pleasure-seeking. we'll eat our fill until we're stomached and sickened, distasted and desiring but still wanting more of that rub-a-dub-grub.





in excess, an appetite of progressive lust. my pie is my dinner, my share, rationed in unequal portions. i'm happy as long as i have my piece of that pie.
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