I stood beneath an orange sky

We are here. Now. 

OMGITM Supermix 38

It is 4AM and I am sleeping on the back seat of a moving car, heading home. It has been a great night, very unexpectedly so. A friend won four tickets to EDMfest, but initially I didn't even know what EDM stood for. As I know now, it's Electronic Dance Music. Thank you Wikipedia.

People have been re-pinning the quote "Life begins at the end of your comfort zone"(Neale Donald Walsch) all over the Net, and EDMfest definitely falls into that stepping out of my comfort zone. I mean, it was House/Trance music (I might be wrong, it might be some subcategory of these). I was expecting that repetitive bullshit that SABC1 and 5 FM keep playing as party music on weekends, the kind that loops the same beats without any variation for 10 minutes, the kind that I cannot listen to. But this was pretty damn cool.

The entire fest took place at Nasrec, next to Soccer City, in one of those halls that look like an airplane hangar. It wasn't excessively full, so everyone had enough space to move and see the four hott (yes, hoTT) dancers shaking it in smaller and smaller outfits on stage. There were lots of beefcakes walking around shirtless, and as the night progressed, even the not-so-buff gentlemen were uncovering themselves. I didn't really get the shirtless thing, because a) it wasn't so cold and b) anyone with a needle could deflate those muscles in a second, but it was fun to observe. The ladies were also not wearing much: it felt like being at a beach party with people wearing too much glow-in-the-dark facepaint and building intimate relationships with glowsticks.

I am unsure of how we managed to stay til dawn because none of us was extremely into this kind of dance music, but it was a surprisingly good night.

Es ist ein Ros entsprungen

While waiting to leave the city for our annual pilgrimage to the coast, I am leaving everything theoretical in the recycling bin and doing stuff with my hands. Last week a friend and I were invited to a Christmas party at the house of Voer. Riette from Confessions of a Pretoria Chique (click here for her post on a Voer Christmas celebration) brought along templates for making paper ornaments, and whilst some spent the afternoon gluing and painting, others were baking cookies. Nom nom nom. Granted, I am not very precise and gluing tiny tiny Christmas ornaments together makes me say "ag fok" more than once, but the end result is quite cool. Riette gave me some sheets to try at home, and this is what came out.

The templates are all via Mini Eco, which you can find here:

Christmas ornaments
Paper gems
Platonic solids
and for the most adventurous of crafters, the 3D paper diamonds.

Leisure Suite

Wrapping madness. 

I am going a bit crazy with my gift wrapping this year, but it is too much fun. Also, I recently went through all the stuff I own, and before throwing things away I am using them to decorate the gifts. As mentioned in a previous post, many of the readings that we had to read for class are being recycled as wrapping paper. How very eco, haha.

Staying with the whole recycle, save-the-planet, local-is-lekker aspect of this post, I found a few different local designers that offer semi-affordable gifts.

Wren design recycles flour bags, cement bags, corn starch bags, desiccated coconut bags, coffee sacks and antique linen grain sacks. Yes, if you were sensing a theme, basically they take bags and make them into more hipster-approved bags.

Then there are these cool notebooks by inspired by our country. In keeping with good hipster behaviour, I suggest writing your thoughts down in one of these whilst sipping something ending in -chino at Seattle Coffee Company and while your MacBook Air makes use of the free WiFi to download TED talks (coincidentally, brandchannel has an interesting article on SA brands mimicking overseas brands):

batch sells these cool bookends by Fanie van Zyl, as well as other designery-looking lights.

We'll be fine

This song plays at the end of an episode of Elementary. If you like The National, get No's free EP. (Yes. Free.)

Separator

Dedication in Christian Bök's Eunoia

The new ennui makes me organise four years of past papers, collected images and photocopies I'll never use again. I thought I could just recycle it all, because I had backed-up the pdfs to my hard drive, but since it failed on a whim I have to actually look at everything again. Now my brilliant plan is to somehow use it all as wrapping paper. Here are the earrings I bought you, and some Foucault on the side. Win-win.

Summertime

You called it enjoying the ease of summer. At the moment, it feels neither easy, nor summery. More like I am simmering in my own sweat when I am not allowed to sweat. You see, there are two very expensive stickers on my back, containing fourteen chemicals often used in cosmetics. This patch test stays on for three days, during which they cannot become wet. So all showering, swimming, and sweating of any sort, is out. It is advised to bath. I like my water streaming down, not sitting in a cold pool of it. But it is only three days. Hopefully after that the mystery allergy that sneaks up on me on occasion can be identified and avoided. 

In general, spring and autumn speak more to my sensibilities than the overwhelming heat of summer and the lack of heat during winter. The inbetweens are more my thing. Summer is fantastic. The time of Christmas vacations, road trips to the coast, fresh fruit, seeing family and friends, drinking too much, going out too much, tanning and relaxing in as little clothes as possible whilst holding some kind of pink cocktail.

However, it also encompasses the dreaded search for a bathing suit. This year I have started early so that I can fail more often. I really don't understand how it can be this difficult. I mean, the entire Gauteng goes to occupy the coast during December, so I assume there are boatloads of swimming costumes needed. However, all the stores have either stamp-sized nipple covers for tweens, or they have black dress-suits aimed at anyone that is older than 40. So you can either go almost naked, or looking like an elephant in a tutu. 

Not to out myself as a pervert, but I have observed that lots of South African women are large-chested (well, many are just large in general, seeing as that we are the world's #3 most obese nation). I assume that most ladies don't want their assets drooping, seeking shelter under their armpits or jumping out of their bikini tops like whales attempting to break some breaching record. I further assume that supported chesticles are more flattering than un-supported ones. So why the hell can the stupid stores not make any swimsuits that don't look like they were made either for grandmothers or people who have not yet hit puberty? 

If you are a smaller chested lady, well, I am jealous. All those brightly patterned triangles must be fun to wear. Even just the plain black bikinis look great when everything is not falling by the wayside. So this year, I will either be tanning in the nude, or wear my bra to the beach. 

* Sidenote: I did find a black creation which does not make me look like a corseted hippopotamus in heat. High 5. 

I will wait

Actually, no, I won't. Mumford & Sons got it wrong. Sure, waiting for love has this chivalric, romantic connotation. Waiting for love because it was meant to be, because this is the stuff soul mates are made of, because if you don't live for the love of another, what is the point of it all. No. I apologize, songwriters, but waiting is never this honourable, nor this great, nor this worth it.  

It feels as though I spend my life waiting for others.

My sister has a very strong penchant for not being able to be on time. It is as though being late has no consequence. Normally it doesn't, except for me waiting. Which doesn't matter because my time is not worth the same, is it. 

The Silverton Post Office is another place of waiting. Their service is so atrocious that I would like to burn the place down and dance around in the ashes, giggling like maniac before the people in the white coats come to take me to some mental institution. The post office has had the same electronic announcing board, but since 1998 it is still in installation mode: FADE / SPLIT/ WIPE/ FLY LEFT/FLY RIGHT. In the meantime the post office has had some new programme installed on their antiquated computers, which I know because of the encouraging white sign, printed in Comic Sans, that tells the customers "Service will be slow" because of the new system. Again, they have had this system for 4 months now, and they are just as slow as in the past 14 years. To collect a package takes an hour. It is as though the employees do not understand that working at snail's pace when there is a queue of more than 40 people is not an option. 

In Germany, the space to pack your stuff at the grocery store is tiny. You have to move to pack all your things into the three bags your brought along, because the condescending sales attendant won't help. Not for shit. Here it is the size of a small inflatable swimming pool. Also, there is mostly someone who will do the packing for you, and if it takes a while, well, all the better. 

I wait for things to download. I wait for Japan to tell me they want me. I wait for 2013. I wait for my HD to be replaced. I wait for the video on YouTube to load. I wait to pee. I wait for the exciting part of my book to start. I wait for you to leave. I wait for you to come back. I wait for Cape Town. I wait for you to reply. I wait for the students to finish writing. I wait for the elevator. I wait for the next song. I wait for the cake to rise. I wait for the doctor to put patches on my back. I wait for those patches to show what I am allergic to. I wait for the alarm to ring. I wait to fall asleep. I wait for when you have time. I wait for you.

                     I wait in limbo, because I don't know if Heaven or Hell would be preferable. 

The king of limbs

* From birth to death we turn on the autopilot of our lives, and it takes a superhuman courage to deviate from this course.

Today is a friend of mine's birthday, and since he is leaving for #Paris on Monday, here is some advice in French. Happy Birthday Allen :)

hahahaha

Wednesday was the final battle. The same lady comes every year from Bloemfontein to see if our French is up to par and give the final stamp of approval. Since my first year I have had some aversion towards her, but luckily I've learnt to smile and nod and wait for her to finish asking a question that is hidden somewhere in her ten minute elaboration on my dissertation. It all went fine. Now I am donedonedonedonedonedone. It is exhilarating and anxiety-inducing at the same time, this not knowing what and where and when and how.

Until the future and I see eye-to-eye, here are my summer reads, courtesy of one last meander through the university's library:

1. Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger (2008) 

2. Carson McCullers : The heart is a lonely hunter (1940)

3. J.P. Singh: Globalized Arts (2011)

4. Frank Rose: The Art of Immersion (2011)
      or a review on The Guardian

5. Ilija Trojanow: Der Weltensammler (2006)

6. Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting (1993)

7. Anna Gavalda: Ich wünsche mir, daß irgendwo jemand auf mich wartet  (1999: Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part)

8. Anton Harber: Diepsloot (2011)

9. John Kinsella: Peripheral Light (2004)

10. Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis ( 2003)

You know I can't be nobody

Done with one. Now for some air guitaring. Then one last exam, one last hand-in, two last fights with the dragon and more air guitaring.

Don't fail me now

He holds 4 years of my life. What I wrote. What I saw. What I shot. And now he is refusing to give my memories back to me. He always seemed so reliable, earning my affection more than the others, keeping everything I could need in one place. Not anymore. He is stabbing me in the back, teasing me by lighting up but then failing to deliver.

We read that there was no way to get past his barriers, that opening him up was useless. We read that putting him in the freezer might work. It didn't.

Now I have to go fight with New World to get a new HD, but nothing that was on him.

I need a map of your head

I would like to walk past all of you and listen in, because often what you say is not what you mean.

During invigilation I have nothing to do but stare at students' shoes and guess if they are on the right path with their essays. The idea is to check that they don't cheat, but here's hoping the pacing around is enough to deter any would-be cheater because I don't really wear my eagle-eyes when walking around the exam venue. Three hours is a long time to do nothing, really. The highlight is to strike out the time marked on the blackboard every 15 minutes, or if someone has to pee. Yesterday I even got to tell a girl not to scratch her back so audibly because it was distracting the students around her. Definitely the best moment. Mostly I just put my ipod on shuffle since I don't know all the music on there. Today was an Incubus/Tool/Tallest Man on Earth/Tracey Chapman- day with some Damien Rice and Seeed in between. Thank you shuffle.

So for three hours I observe. What pen you are writing with. How you did your hair. How you hold your exam booklet. If you've taken off your shoes. How you stare blankly into space. How you want to leave but are trapped in the middle of an aisle. How you shake your hand because it has become stiff from writing. After a year of being observed, of being judged on what I wear, how I speak and my skills in creating power points, I get three hours to study and make assumptions about who you are.

I would like to listen in and not just assume. I would like to hear the argument forming. I would like to hear inside, because you don't sound the same on paper.

'til morning comes, let's tessellate

I was one of the boys. We had "Who could talk to the most people"-competitions and "jis that one is hot"-sightings. I saw myself as part of the crew, not an object for conquest. Later I wanted to leave, let them have their fun, sans moi. One offered to walk me to my car, but since it was literally parked in front of Arcade I saw no need. He came with nonetheless. While I unlocked and in my mind planned to give an awkward hug goodbye, Monsieur asks: "So, wil jy vry?" ("Do you want to make out?"). I politely declined, mumbling something about "not tonight, thank you", and leaving without awkward hugging. This asking for a gevryery was bad enough.

__________________________________________

We went to school together. I was a year ahead, but not a year older. A mutual liking for Alexisonfire and Acid Alex was all we had in common. Now, I see you occasionally on campus, all black skinnies and black T-shirts and black chucks and a moustache too neatly trimmed. Hello, how you doing, well, ah, ok, I've got class, ok bye. 

Then at the place after a few drinks, my friends abandoned me and I had to listen to you talk about your perfect ex-girlfriend who dumped your ass a year ago. My advice to "man the fuck up" was met with: "You are such a bitch. But it works. Why did we never hook up?". Goeie genade. Because short men who only wear black don't do it for me. And because I am far from perfect. 

__________________________________________

We were sitting outside. I knew you from class, but not really. You asked, and I did not object. Maybe it is not the question, but the person asking. 

On the radio

When I hear songs on the radio but not the name, I try to remember the lyrics, and Google them later. These two are this week's finds: