Smoke and Mirrors

In the quest to criticise where we live you forget that you no longer do. You haven't in a decade. Sure, an objective opinion from an outsider's perspective is welcome, even desired. But I don't bombard you with articles about how your country is at the end of its rope; how chaos (Hah! Anarchy even!) is the next step; how you must leave, NOW, to save yourself.

We live here. Millions do.
Leave us to our ordinary lives.

Deurmekaar

Ek besit nogals 'n hele paar digbundels, meestal in Engels. In Duitsland het ek my eie aanmatiging ondersteun deur tweedehandse Penguin digbundels in die U-Bahn te lees. Nie dat ek baie van die gedigte verstaan het nie, dit het eer daaroor te gaan om nie te lyk soos 'n Duister nie, om nie iets in hulle taal, wat tog ook myne is, te lees nie. Duits was oorals, en ek wou wys dat ek iets anders as dit ook kon wees. 

Maar al die gedigte was eeue oud en geskryf deur mans wie se wêrelde nie dieselfde gelyk het soos myne nie. Dit was soos die kunsuitstalling wat ons gister by Fried Contemporary Gallery bygewoon het: ek kon die prag wat ander sien verstaan, maar het self nie gevoel as of dit my besonders geraak het nie. Met kuns wil ek my hande oor die werk laat gly, ek wil elke deel voel en sien en met die macro-zoom-lens van my oog elke besonderheid opneem en nooit vergeet nie. Met gedigte wil ek dieselfde emosionele reaksie hê, ek wil voel hoe woorde oor my lippe vloei en deur my tong gevorm word en hoe klanke by my bly. 

Deesdae hou ek van Danie Marais se woorde, oor wie ek van tevore al geskryf het. Maak seker om na sy digbundel Al is die maan 'n misverstand te kyk. Dalk hou ek van sy gedigte omdat hy 'n paadjie wat vergelykbaar aan my eie is gestap het, en ek op die oomblik moet begin keuses maak oor die Toekoms (met 'n groot 'T' want mens moet altyd bietjie bang bly vir die môre). 

Ma

Ek moes geweet het, Ma,

geweet het ’n mens kan nie wegkom nie,

nooit

van jou eie stem,

van Afrikaans,

of verlange,

of die suburbs,

of niks nie.

Maar ek het probeer.

Ek het gehardloop,

gefokkof,

heen en weer,

Duitsland, rock bottom, en terug;

was elektries van hoop,

vrot van ambisie,

maar die lewe is sekuur

en die hart, Ma, is ‘n sagte teiken.

Ek moet met jou praat, Ma,

want die tyd versand

en alles lek weg na verderf.

Jy moet my vergewe, Ma,

want ek weet nie altyd wat ek doen nie.

Ek is nie goed met my hande of geld of aanvaarding nie.

Ek het jou liefde soms in die gesig geskop –

oor ek die almagtige stilte nooit kon bykom nie,

oor ek in volle beheer van my eie verleentheid moes wees,

oor niks anders binne bereik was nie.

Ek het jou liefde met klippe gegooi, Ma,

maar jy het vir my gekyk soos die see.

Jy weet maar te goed,

hoe ek voor jou betoog en my hande in die lug gooi

soos ‘n ortodokse Jood voor die Klagmuur

elke keer dat ‘n droom in my skoot kom vrek.

Wat gaan ek alles aanrig,

as jou liefde gaan lê?

Soms droom ek

hoe jy jou rug op my draai

om dood te gaan, Ma;

Hoe jy my

soos ‘n sleep, Ma, agter jou aan

skeur. 

Die gedig is nie my eiendom nie. Van sy gedigte is as Engelse vertaling ook hier te lees.  

Devil's Spoke

"If you are not nervous, it means you don't care enough."

When speaking in public, we are often advised to picture our audience in their underwear (the PG13 Glee version) or completely naked in order to take away from the power they have over the speaker. As a collective, they can be more judgemental, protected by those around them. As Anonymous states, "None of us are as cruel as all of us". It has never worked for me. Maybe I lack imagination. I tend to think a degree of nervousness is good, because it makes you excited about presenting, and pushes you do do well.

The presentation at school went fine, well even. Maybe going back was a good thing, if not only to see what has changed, but also to realise that teaching teenagers may not be for me, if I had the choice. I used to be part of the youth, now it is this strange in-between stage where you are neither completely an adult, but you have lost the idealistic arrogance of adolescence.

To celebrate the success of the day (and it being the start to the weekend), we went to watch the Hipster Event of the year, Dear Reader performing at Open Window. Not that the band itself is excessively hipster/underground, but aided by the setting and the audience we earned ourselves enough hipster points to be able to not wear skinny jeans for a year and still be considered 'cool'.

They performed in a small lecture hall, with around 50 people sitting on the floor and on a few chairs. I thought it was a bit audacious, charging for admission and then not even providing enough seats. We had to go to the auditorium to steal some chairs. It is not like I mind standing during a concert, but if everyone is just going to stare at the stage for an hour and a half and not show any emotional reaction, I prefer my butt to be comfortable in the face of such restrictions.

Ordinarily, I would expect people to at least sway around or tap their feet to the beat for a bit, but the height of expression was one guy uttering "Brilliant." after each song. Sure, there was clapping, and it was an entertaining enough concert as such. I just felt as though the mood transmitted by the setting was one of seclusion, elitism,  and hipster-ness where one is not allowed to be into anything too much.

If you live in Germany, you can check Dear Reader out live since the main member resides in Berlin now, for the rest there is YouTube.

I would find a way

Child at tuckshop/caravan in Swaziland

At my school we had a Hexenhäuschen (the witch's house from fables) that during break-time would sell square slices of pizza and fizzers and chips and sweets to the primary school. But then it closed, and everyone had to go to the main tuck shop. I found it very intimidating, all these Grade 8s and above.

Tomorrow I go back, and am still intimidated. Damn, school stays with you. In some episode of Modern Family, Mitchell tells Manny that at school, every one wants to fit in. But as soon as we leave school, we want to be seen as individuals and stand out. It is like flipping a switch, where at school cool means being like everyone else, and then, with that Matric/Abi/Bac/whatever diploma in your hands, you suddenly, with all your might, refuse to fit in.

It makes me nervous, because my decently great PowerPoint might be a failure, I might not find my words, or most of all, yes, worst of all, I might realise nothing has changed in six years. You know, the idea that after school, you evolve into the person you were supposed to become, not hindered and stunted by high-school expectations. But what if it never changes, and there is always some hegemony involved which you can never break free of. What if what we were is all we'll ever be, at the core.

While I am reasoning these insecurities out, all I am actually thinking is "Screw that. That was then, this is now, we constantly change and adapt, and (not to be all 'yay, for tomorrow is another day') you can handle anything the world throws at you".

nothingwrong

He said that by writing, one takes away the opportunity for another to write the same. Therefore, when writing one has to be considerate and reflexive. Weighing every word, making it count. I write because it is my act of courage for the day. It is wrapping my world in words and presenting them as a gift to whomever would want it to take it, even if just for a moment.

Others have touched with words for far longer and far more eloquently.

For instance: 

Sonnet
by Elizabeth Bishop

via Song of America

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

----

Привет, Россия. Очень приятно. Я надеюсь, что не имеют никакого наступления ошибки. Это все перевести Google.


I cannot speak Russian. Nor write in Cyrillic. That was all Google Translate, hopefully semi-correct.

As a child, language never meant anything to me. I spoke one to my mom and another to my dad. As easy as that. Then, when I started school, suddenly there was a third one added into the mix. It wasn't hard to learn, and soon I progressed to the intermediate class. I remember being in that class for the first time. About twenty six-year-olds being told some story about how the little fish travels from the stream all the way to the ocean. At that age my eyes would occasionally start to water at random times, and I swear it was not crying. During the account of Mr. Fish's adventures my eyes chose to start producing tears, and the whole class was very concerned about my sadness concerning the fish. All I could say, very embarrassedly, was "Meine Augen tränen nur." Not even in French. Well, at least I was not the girl who peed in her pants during class.

The next step in language learning was Mexico. All the other children were either Mexican or could speak Spanish. Not I. For a year, the fat boy next to me kept calling me tonta, until I could one day retort, very eloquently, "Tu eres tonto." For a year I stalked my sister during break time since no one in my class wanted to speak to me in a language I could understand. I missed the good old days of watery eyes about wandering fish, now crying for real in my room after school. And then, after a year, hello Spanish. The language coming out of my mouth was the one of a native speaker, the looks not so much. I was asked to join the cool girls' group, la bola. Things were looking up.

But then, wham bam, we up and left. Next challenge. English. I had heard it but had never really spoken a word of English. My mom sat outside with me in the sun and I learnt things like As dead as a doornail. It was no use though, because initially I had no idea what the teacher was saying. Once I asked the girl opposite me to tell me what we were supposed to being doing, and Mrs. Nöffke asked me to leave the class. Well, that is what the girl translated. But then she added in a whisper that I should just stay seated and be quiet.


I had a few years on non-language issues. Puberty and hormones were of greater concern. Then, at university, I volunteered to attempt to learn Latin. The other languages had been easy, and this was their source, so why should it not be, too? Ah, the ignorance. All I remember now is puer and puella (boy and girl, I think). The rest is a complete blank. The origins of Romance will elude me, it seems. 

Now, what remains? To try to learn another? To try and regain the one's out of practice? South Africa has eleven official languages. Two I've got, should the next one be one of these: IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, or Xitsonga? It is a blessing to be able to learn as many languages as possible, but I believe that without some kind of immersion in the original culture, it is of no use. You need to hear the way others speak their mother tongue, the accents and nuances that only someone who has heard this since birth (or even whilst in the womb?!) naturally uses and which are so hard for language learners to understand. An accent is a sign of belonging, of having others like you. An accent is something to be envious of.

One of my cousins has grown up speaking mainly Afrikaans, which means that he has quite a strong accent we he speaks English. Normally, we treat this imperfection of pronunciation as something to be ashamed of, as a marker of the uneducated, the lower class, the one's who could not manage perfect language acquisition of a tongue not their own. I disagree. We aim at speaking like native speakers, but I am not French, nor Spanish, nor English, really. So why must I speak like someone who is? I don't mean the stumbling massacre of language executed by local politicians. There is a difference between having a charming accent and an intentionally dumbed down accent to make you appear closer to the masses.

But what of the baggage that language carries with it? How are we embarrassed by our speaking? When I had to read my short story, I was petrified of mispronouncing the words, of making the story I told in my head different from the one I read simply by saying it wrongly. This Friday presents another linguistic challenge. For four years, English has dominated my brain's language centre. Now I need to present in my father tongue, my school tongue, a language used irregularly over the past years in a colloquial mix of slang and words borrowed from other languages. I have forgotten how to speak in the way that cursive handwriting looks on the page, the Dichter and Denker part having been somewhat neglected. 

It is interesting to note that the two languages my parents taught me have both originated from cultures hated by others for old atrocities. Before launching into "Igh libbe dish", non-Germans comment on the hardness of language, the harsh mix of sounds foreign to their ears. For Afrikaans it is the same comments. Occasionally someone will say it is ugly.

I think there is beauty in words on pages, words reaching ears and even if no meaning is understood, the sounds can still effect some reaction. You know how people say French is such a beautiful language? But it is the same thing as telling a dog in a soothing, friendly tone that you will not feed him for a week. We react to the sound of things, not to the truth of it.

Jailbird

We are everywhere, taking over every space, claiming rights to land and littering the landscape with our presence. All else is locked away, 'safely', for its own protection, and our benefit.

I wonder if ultimately our claim to ownership of all we see, our feeling of 'it is my right' when it is not, is not humanity's greatest hubris.

We went on a game drive in KZN, searching for animals to spot, to photograph. All carnivores eluded us. It is a bit ironic, isn't it, killing and culling for centuries before realising that we have nearly exterminated what we now so dearly wish to capture in an image, to show our children for when all the rhinos have been poached, when all ivory has been taken, when all leopards have been hunted, when the only wildlife can be found in zoos and online images. I don't know.

There is too much that needs saving.

Nobody Nowhere

The three of us get off at Lognes. Or is it Torcy. I can't remember. We walk towards her house, past the bushes where the homeless sleep, past countless rows of apartment blocks and tiny suburban homes that look like they were taken from the Weeds title sequence. Little boxes in a mostly Asian neighbourhood.

Three older, Muslim gentlemen approach. Since we are the only people on the road, I say hello. They don't greet back. My friends also think it was weird. Why would you greet them.

But here, I do. Not everyone everywhere. It is not as though I walk around campus or shopping centres or the gym uttering hellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohellohelllo to anything that moves. Nevertheless, when my butt has been flattened by a day of sitting on my ass in front of a screen, I go on a walkabout in my neighbourhood. Mostly it is around the time that people return home from work, or walk their dogs or go jogging. So when someone passes, both parties ordinarily acknowledge the other, we nod or say hello. I don't think it is all that strange. Better than staring at my feet and ignoring that someone just walked past me when we are the only ones in the street.

In Germany we never really saw the other people living in our building. In France, I just saw my room mate, but it might have had something to do with the fact that we shared 18m². There, you just saw hundreds of people in the bus and the metro and the RER. Maybe it is that here we are privy to a lot more space, so seeing the neighbours is not considered a negative thing since we don't live on top of each other and can't hear what they are doing at all hours through thin walls.

Who knows. My friends might have been right and I should stop greeting random people, or I could be right and others should try greeting, too. 

Have Love Will Travel

Advice for taxi passengers in a national comic (SupaStrikas)

I have been in a taxi once, when two friends and I went to Menlyn (a shopping center) and paid R5 to get there. What an adventure. Taxis have a different set of road rules that they adhere (or not, as can be seen in this video) to, driving wherever, whenever they want, and passengers use various hand signals to indicate where they want to go. In the Cape people hold out money bills, in Swaziland/Lesotho they held their passports to show they want to go to the border. 

  

 

Everything in its right place

Back in town.

I took too many photographs on the road, so I'll post them in selections. 

Today we have signs, of any kind. 

    

 

    

   

    

The last one reads: "Are you hung-over? Solution inside".

1234

I wonder why we like little images with all types of inspirational words on them. Are all our lives so mediocre that we look to the words of others to guide us to something better, something more, a life lived in it's width and not just in its length (Yes, I read that on one of these cards)? Do we just want to show off our skill in combining a photograph with typography in Photoshop? Maybe we would simply like to imagine that what we do has meaning.

In any case. Here are some advice-shots.

via Pinterest

also via Pinterest

Hello someone on Pinterest again

I can't remember where I got this. Best of the lot?!

Molotov/Wonderful Life

One week of road-trippin' ahead, destination semi-unknown.
This one will be at the top of my playlist.

Je m'en fou

You are reading. Not speaking, not presenting, just repeating words I don't understand and pronouncing names I have never heard of.

Before, there was another you, tracing words on paper with your index finger, like a child learning to read, although your beard is salt 'n pepper and your hair getting there. Dark hair, dark jeans, dark long-sleeved T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, everything is dark. You talk about the artist's book and heteroglossia and dialogism and Un coup de dès jamais n'abolira le hasard and synaesthesia and again, I don't understand what you want to say. Not even the French makes sense.

A third you follows, old and preachy, constantly scratching something behind your ear. An inability to go back a slide in Power Point makes me wonder who made the show. It is humorous and embarrassing, this inability to present what you should have prepared. Saying things like "Oi lurve dis gui", "dese old fuddyduddies" and "Aur fryend Nietzsche/Schiller/Schopehauer/Kant" (and, faux-pas, Hitler) whilst fumbling with the controls and the slides and the music makes you a figure of ridicule and not respect. I'd write 'weak' in red on your work with a permanent marker.

What is the point of conferences if all anyone does is out-quote another and aim to prove that they know more than the speaker. Networking and making new contacts is high on my hatred list because it is done not out of a genuine interest in meeting people, but out of an interest in personal profit. I watched my father network and skipping anyone who was of no gain to him. I watched the other diplomats do the same: "Oh, you are from (insert 3rd world country)? Excuse me, I have something to discuss with the American/French/Chinese ambassador". And today I watched the conference attendees to it, too. All this pretentious "it's who you know not what you know" stands diametrically opposed to a liberal, supportive, respectful exchange of information.    

Today was a spectacle of mutual ego-stroking, self-promotion and over-analysing art, not of Visual Dialogues: South Africa in conversation.


 

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends

When we were little, our mom read us a book by Helme Heine called Freunde ( 'friends' in German). It is the tiniest, thinnest little book but it has captured the essence of what friendship is supposed to be better than any literary doorstop. It is about three friends: Franz von Hahn ('Franz von Rooster', von Cock somehow sounds too dirty for a children's book), Johnny Mauser ('Maus' is a Mouse in German) and der dicke Waldemar ( 'the fat Waldemar', he is the rotund pig).

Here they are:

In the book, they spend all their time together, but when they decide to sleep over, it turns out that the mouse's hole is too small, the pig's barn is too smelly and the rooster's perch cannot hold their combined weight. But although each one then spends the night in their own bed, they meet in their dreams, "because real friends dream about one another". 

I like the idea of not having to be bound at the hip to be good friends. Some of mine are closer than others (in distance, not in the way I appreciate them), but every one brings something different to a friendship. Friends are like a deck of cards : not every card is suited to every hand you play, but you need the whole deck to play a game. I know my simile is not the most complete since one could argue that some cards are never used and that the Joker is often ignored, but I still feel that every person contributes/contributed to the way each individual sees the world. 

Often, we lose sight of one another, or we go on different paths and only communicate by sending the occasional sms/BBM/WhatsApp message. We might even only spy on each other via social networking sites and stalk old friends through Facebook updates. On the one hand, it has enabled us to stay in touch and to be aware what is going on in other's lives without putting too much effort in it. But it has also made us impersonal: I should not know what is going on in your life without you wanting to tell me, without us actually communicating. Or is this the way friendship is going? Twitter updates and @friend statuses? 

I don't know. I'd rather be Waldemar and have my behind be used to stuff the hole in the boat so that the Freunde can go fishing in the pond together than to spend all my time with my electronics.   

Hope Tomorrow

I think that in between the adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine, hope is sequenced into our DNA. It seems we always have the ability to hope for a better tomorrow, to hope for what we cannot possess today, to hope for what we could not achieve in the past.

True, what we hope for changes just as our circumstances do, but there always remains a little something, an esprit de corps that continues rooting when nothing else remains. Perhaps I am wrong and too privileged to have experienced the loss of hope.

No. Even the dying, the disillusioned, the sick and old and suffering, even those in the abyss will cling to "these last strands of man in me". Hopkins writes in Poem 64 (Carrion Comfort)

"I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. "

I don't know when one would give up hope. If I understood L'Étranger right, all life is senseless, and there is nothing after death. When one accepts this fact, one has two options: kill yourself, right then and there, because essentially life is pointless. Or, alternatively, rage, fight, squeeeeeeze as much life from yours as you can, since we are confined to earth for a specific time and before and after there is nothing. Our souls aren't eternal, just as our bodies aren't - better make the best of the here and now. Better to hope for the best in the here and now?

When I originally wrote this post, I liked this idea of living for the moment. But now I wonder if it is not just some hippie cliché. Sure, make the most of your day and make a point of enjoying your life. I mean, I used to think that as soon as I leave here my life will start. As soon as I am done procrastinating, I will achieve something more meaningful, more important to the world. However, one must plan ahead, pay bills and buy food and spend nights watching brain-dead television series. Not every day is an adventure, not every damn day is filled to the brim with experiences that you will treasure forever. 


I agree with an existentialist worldview because I never had a very strong faith in a godly power. Life and death happen, if there is and afterlife I'll see how it goes then. Perhaps our potential for hope is really the thing that makes us take action in the everyday: we hope for something and we (mostly) know what choices to make in order to get there.