Floriography

At some point in high school we were doing The Merchant of Venice. Our teacher was a tall dame nearing retirement. She was always impeccably dressed, with a hint of expensive jewellery. Frau something-or-other was intimidating yet friendly, intent on teaching us to have ambitions whilst also making us appreciate the beauty of the language. 

This day, we were nearing the end of the play, and I knew the scene would come. The one I had heard quoted before, the one I (mis)wrote on my jeans, the one thing Shakespeare wrote besides 'to be or not to be, that is the question' that I can't forget. 

Always these lines: 

SHYLOCK

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we willresemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

The Merchant of Venice,3,i.
  

Reckoner

One day last week was filled with my people. My far-away people. Somehow it lined up wonderfully and I caught up with various friends and family, hearing about their everyday, chatting about silly and not-so-silly things. These are the moments where I think: hmm, maybe, when the end of this M comes, you should go back. They are all there. You could make something of yourself there.

I should probably get rid of the binary oppositions that I see as 'here' and 'there', as being 'far' or 'near', since they aim at differentiating emotions into clear, definable sets of rules. But this situation is not so clear. It is not so easy. Everything changes, evolves, into a different beast, but the same heart beats at the centre of it all. 

I read Why I’m Moving Back To South Africa by Jonny Steinberg, and could relate very well to some of his reasons for returning to the motherland. South Africa is hands coming from the earth and grounding you, keeping you, irrespective of where you might go. Despite the violence, the corruption, the load shedding, despite everything that is bad and that makes you want to love it less, it always pulls you back in. We leave to build lives in other places, safer places, and yet I feel as though elsewhere it is precisely this safety that frustrates me. 

Of course it is wonderful to walk home by myself at 4 in the morning. Public transport is a blessing. The currency having value equally so. But nothing is risked. Life consists of insuring yourself against the possibility of something bad happening. Everyone has their own hardships to deal with, and I realise that here all I see is the exterior of a house that I did not build, but it seems that people live such comfortable lives. They are afforded the luxury of not having to worry about survival since all the insurances are a bubble wrap for bad times. And yet they still worry, still bicker, still constantly criticize a system that to a foreign eye seems to work despite it being a bureaucratic nightmare. 

Steinberg writes: 

I can take in the washed-out light and the expanse of green and I can feel melancholy or light or get lost in private thoughts. But the people who pass are wafer thin. I cannot imagine who they are. It doesn’t matter enough. There is too little at stake. I am in essence alone.

This is complaining at a higher level, I know this. I know that I am privileged to be able to study here, to receive support from the government, to live unafraid and not be as suspicious of strangers. I know that my friends here are good people; I know that this is a good life. And yet there is an undercurrent of not risking anything. I need risk to know that what I am doing is worth doing. If there is no chance of failure, how will you know to work as hard as possible at something? It is asking "what sort of life is worth living".

 Steinberg concludes:

That is what going home means for me. It is to stand outside myself and watch my bourgeois life prodded and pushed and buffeted around by lives quite unlike my own. It is to surrender myself to a world so much bigger than I am and to the destiny of a nation I cannot control. In this surrender is an expansion, a flowering, of what it means to be alive.

At this moment, I am not returning home. In 6 months, perhaps. Or in 4 years. But at this moment, I also know that not going home is not an option in the search for a life worth living.

(The irony of me posting an ad by an insurance company that exemplifies SA when I complain about Germany being over insured)

Feite

via Die Erfenisstigting on Facebook

Peacock Tail

I start helping out in a crèche today, so this seemed fitting. 

Blue umbrellas

by D. J. Enright

'The thing that makes a blue umbrella with its tail -

how do you call it?' you ask. Poorly and pale

Comes my answer. For all I can call it is peacock.

Now that you go to school, you will learn how we call all sorts of things;

How we mar great works by our mean recital.

You will learn, for instance, that Head Monster is not the gentleman's accepted title;

The blue-tailed eccentrics will be merely peacocks; the dead bird will no longer doze

Off till tomorrow's lark, for the latter has killed him.

The dictionary is opening, the gay umbrellas close.

Oh our mistaken teachers! -

It was not a proper respect for words that we need,

But a decent regard for things, those older creatures and more real.

Later you may even resort to writing verse

To prove the dishonesty of names and their black greed -

To confess your ignorance, to exiate your crime, seeking one spell to

life another curse.

Or you may, more commodiously, spy on your children, busy discoverers,

Without the dubious benefit of rhyme.

Hartklop

My ma stuur vir my poësie uit die moederland.

Grense

My naakte siel wil sonder skrome
in alle eenvoud tot jou gaan,
soos uit diepe slaap ons drome,
soos teen skemerlug die bome
opreik na die bloue maan;

gaan met al sy donker wense,
en die heilige, nooit-gehoorde
dinge sê, waarvoor die mense
huiwer, en wat om die grense
flikker van my duister woorde.

~NP van Wyk Louw

Memphis, Tennessee

I am wrapped in two blankets like a piece of chocolate inside a croissant. It is -1° outside. I can't remember the last time I saw, never mind felt, the sun. I intensely miss sunshine, not only for the warmth it brings but also for its ability to make people feel happier. Here we're all bulbs, hiding underneath layers of black cloth, waiting to bloom.

This lack of sunshine reminded me of a film a friend gave me a few years back, entitled That Evening Sun. Based on the short story I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down by William Gay, the imagery in the film reminds me of life at a slower pace, of cicadas, of sipping mojitos and not doing much because the heat is all-consuming. I'd like to be there, now, chilling with Abner Meecham on some porch and contemplating life in a strong southern accent.

According to the weather report, it is just going to get colder. Here's hoping that with the cold the wind stops, the rain becomes snow and the sun can finally peek from behind the clouds.

I change shapes just to hide in this place

I don't really like Sci-Fi/Fantasy books. My library had no neatly stacked copies of the Discworld series or Philip K Dick novels. Neither did I finish 1984, or start with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yesterday I said I was reading Lauren Beukes' Zoo City, and it was so engrossing that I had to know, I had to finish it. I know I've missed the bandwagon somewhat, but this is a really cool book. It's set in the Joburg you know, with Hillbrow being rebranded in name only to Zoo City. It is still equally dodgy, with prozzies, drug dealers and gang wars whilst people live in derelict buildings and the police rarely shows up.

However, people who feel guilty about something are 'animalled', meaning that after the guilt sets in, an animal shows up which gives them a magical power and which they cannot stand to be separated from. The main character, Zinzi December, carries around a sloth. A sloth. How cool is that. Like a giant furry backpack. She also has the power to find lost things. If you have seen that Eskom 49 Million ad, where everyone is connected by pieces of string, you can imagine how she sees lost things connected to the person who lost it.

I don't want to write a review, because enough others have done so. Also because I am lazy and just really liked the book. A sloth. Magic. Mystery. Non/Real Jozi. The cover. It is just all very cool.

*As if we were endlessly condemned to become what we see

The quote really refers to an opinion on Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher (1983), but to me is valid for more than just a literary analysis.

word for word

via Becky

Resurrect

I found this book by James Bradley ( his blog is also noteworthy) on my grandmother's shelf and after a year of only reading "proper" literature ( as in the books that form part of top 100 lists, but are tedious to get through), this was a good read. I like books that transport me far away from my reality, into another time and another country, where the mindset and the circumstances are vastly different from my own.

The Resurrectionist follows the life of Gabriel Swift, who is orphaned at a young age and as a teenager starts working for an anatomist. Through various choices he is fired and "descends into a hell partly of his own making and the violence of the London underworld" ( read the full description and listen to three readings by the author on Faber & Faber) . The story is also loosely based on the Burke and Hare murders, where two Irishmen killed 17 people and sold the bodies to Dr Robert Knox.

What I liked most was Bradley's preoccupation with how our identities are shaped and how the fragility of life is often ignored. We take living for granted, without considering that it all has to end, sooner or later.

"They are such little things, these lives of ours; cheap got, cheap lost, mere flickers against the ever dark, brief shadows on a wall. This life no more substantial than breath, a light which fills the chambers of our bodies, and is gone."

Books on my walls..

There is a box of books under my bed. The two long shelves above my bed are already stacked so high that I am afraid they won't hold and books will tumble on me while I sleep. It wouldn't be the worst way to be woken though. My studies involve buying lots of books, reading sparknotes and pretending that I understand the intricate story lines and subtext, so every year I acquire a couple more. Also, every time we go to the hospice or walk by a second hand book store, I walk out with a stack of books.

I have two favourite books. The one I even bought twice : once in an English book store in Berlin, and then, thinking that I would never get it back after having lent it to a friend, I bought it again at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. The book was looking at me, and my friend Adam said that it was fate: I had lost the book but found it again. I had to buy it. Well, a few weeks later I was back in SA and my book-borrowing friend was moving to the Netherlands, so I got it back. Now I have two copies of Joseph Heller's God Knows, but I don't think I'll ever part with either copy.

A quick word about Shakespeare & Co. : it is at the same time the greatest book store and the most pretentious. It is located on the left bank of the Seine and manages to sell a great number of great books in a tiny space. Upstairs there is a little corner with an old typewriter in between all the children's books, and in the next room there are benches against the wall and old, valuable-looking books. My memory might fail me or they might have changed, because I was last there in 2009. The environment is great, but the employees seem to be hipster-coolkid-American-students who look condescendingly at every purchase you make. It was probably just a long day and I am certainly not cool enough, but I thought the people there were ruining  the atmosphere a bit.

Back to my books. One day, I would like to have an entire room dedicated to them, with one of those rolling ladders and comfortable sofas and it should smell like happiness.

Here are some cool home libraries I found on shelterness:

or this one is quite cool as well: 

from here

57th percentile

I am a person that achieves. Not necessarily top of my class or best at something, but I like doing well. I guess everyone does. We like knowing we can do something better than others, that we are not just average and mediocre and that somehow, this being good at something enhances our individuality. Perhaps our achievements and talents are what set us apart from the other 7 billion.

English is not my strongest subject. At school I loved it because the ways of language made sense to me and it was enjoyable to learn. Now, however, English as subject has become tedious. I don't want to read Middlemarch or Portrait of a Lady. There is nothing in those words for me. 

Emma was great fun. I previously saw the BBC TV series with Romola Garai and the book was more fun having a specific image in my mind. It was therefore quite a surprise to get (only) 57% in my assignment. Normally, I do the assignments and I check that I answered what was asked and I move on. This was a punch in the face, a big red letter screaming at me :" HA! you underachieving shell of a person!" Somehow how I see myself is still always linked to how I achieve academically.

Sure, admittedly marks do not constitute a personality, but with a bad mark comes a lower average, and the lower average in English brings down my average in general, which could impact the amount of scholarship money I receive from the university for my degree. The better I do, the less I pay. So perhaps the disappointment is threefold: the work was not as good as I thought it was, my talent for English isn't either, and this will reflect badly on the amount I will have to pay for tuition next year ( since it is my mom who pays, it is even worse). 

There was a girl in school with me who always went to the teacher if she thought she could get just one more percent out of an argument. Even if she had 98%, it was not good enough. I also went to talk to my lecturer, but more to find out what I had done so that in future I could do it better. There are times when fighting for marks is the right thing to do, but here it was more of a learning curve. I still think marking is a subjective thing in the humanities, because it is hard to give the reason for each percentage. But I must admit my own mistakes. Also, there is no use in crying over spilt milk.

Now, after that lesson learnt, is another remark I have to make. 

Giving. 

There is a monstrous egotism that lives in people and they choose to feed it instead of combating it. Why would you give your old clothes to your cleaning lady, ask her to sell them to people living in poverty, and then still ask her to give you half of the profits? I know, you bought the clothes originally. But by now, you will not wear them any more. If no one would take them, you would probably throw them away. Furthermore, you have already replenished your wardrobe, I don't really see why you cannot just give your clothes away? 

The same goes for Matric Ball dresses ( = prom) . Mine was supposed to look like the one Catherine Zeta Jones wears in this ad: 

Needless do say, it didn't. 

But perhaps now someone else could use my dress. I won't wear it again. 

So if you are in the same situation, consider donating your ball-gowns to The Princess Project. I am unsure if they only take celebrity-owned ones, but that seems a tad silly. I mean, it is not as if SA has a lot of celebrities. 

Bride & Co has a similar idea in Johannesburg, so if you are in that area, you could drop your dress with them. 

Maybe I am a hypocrite. My dress has been hanging in the closet since 2006. I wore it once to Halloween. But I've never gotten round to donating it. However, I do clean out my closet about twice a year and get rid of everything that I haven't worn in a while. As in a year or three, not a month. Our cleaning lady takes the clothes and I assume she keeps what she likes and either sells or gives away the rest. I don't care. I am not wearing them any more and if someone else can use them and profit from them, that is my charity for the day. 

Increase your vocabulary

My friend Ilse gave me a book to read : "Little Ice Cream Boy" by Jacques Pouw. Sounds quite innocent, doesn't it. Or maybe slightly pedo. But it is none of the two - it retells the story of of an Apartheid era assassin, now sitting in maximum security prison and serving three life sentences.
Even though the book is billed as being a novel, I understand it to be based on the life of Ferdi Barnard, who killed the academic David Webster, and was part of the Civil Co-Operation Bureau (CCB).

The book reminds me of Al Lovejoy's "Acid Alex" because both tell real-life stories about people and their actions that I could never have imagined. Both Gideon Goosen, the main character in Little Ice Cream Boy, and Alex from Acid Alex live in a world I would not be able to understand: violence, drugs, sex and rape intertwine to form the basis of their seedy existence. Life and death means nothing, it all revolves around the next hit, be it snorting coke up your nose or beating someone almost to death. Where does such violence come from?

Gideon kills a brothel-owner because he got the prossie Gideon likes pregnant. But not only does he beat him to a pulp, he empties his entire magazine into him. He flies into a rage and enjoys hurting people physically. He even tells of how killing someone is the greatest aphrodisiac.

I know this world exists, but I cannot imagine it. A world where it is normal to spend your weekend in a brothel banging under-age girls, smuggled in from who knows where, while you have a wife and kids at home. And then, Monday morning, you return to your job as a police officer , having been absolved of your crimes by chilling in the church for an hour on Sundays.

The idea of killing someone is so absurd to me. How can you? I can comprehend self-defence or it being an accident, but planning on doing it, I don't know how anyone could do that. Stalking someone like prey and then blasting them with a shotgun when they leave for work. And then just tuning around and calmly walking away. It is very strange to think people exist to whom life is not sacred.

The book was a page-turner but also very difficult because I could not relate to the main character at all : yes he comes from an abusive family, yes he has dodgy friends, but how can every choice you make be wrong. I mean, really, at some point you have to say to yourself : I choose not to fuck up my life further. At the end Gideon tells his friend to turn state witness in order to save himself. This was the only scene where he seemed human, because he is willing to sacrifice himself for his friend. But on the other hand, Goosen was going down in any case, so it probably didn't really matter.

Also, the novel vastly increased my Afrikaans dirty vocabulary:


groeps-woeps : group sex
bosbefok: people who suffer from post-traumatic stress after having fought in the Angola/Namibia border war
draadtrek : masturbate
fok-kop:  I would have thought it to be a fuck-head, but apparently its a fuck-hill
gabba: a friend
genotgrot=slymslot= well, hmm, let's say a woman's lady-parts
pomping= procreating
sif: I always took it to just mean disgusting, but it comes from syphilis. who knew?!
kleinkoppie: male sexual organ

Read the book. Not only will you be able to swear like a skewetiet spoedvark  but the story is actually quite interesting as well.


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