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.

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