Young and Beautiful

Earth Day slipped past me, unnoticed as we enjoyed the glorious rays of sunshine by the harbour. This is happiness, if only temporarily: the feeling of easy conversation, of trusting those you are with to be yourself.

Once at home the National Geographic's Instagram feed gave me this:

Still

The holiday is over, daily life is almost back in full swing.
I sat in the plane crying because this time there is no certain date for me to go back home. This time it seemed more final, the lightness of my country and my people giving way to dark clouds and a hovering sense of never fully being myself here. I pretend at belonging, at finding a rhythm, but perhaps first must come the acceptance that home always remains home and at the same time no longer is.

During this tumultuous diaspora of the individual a friend posted this on FB, a guiding light when I was about to get lost again:

“We must be willing to get rid of

the life we’ve planned, so as to have

the life that is waiting for us.

The old skin has to be shed

before the new one can come.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.

When we hang onto any form,

we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.”

Excerpt from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Ouma

Waarheen jy ook al jou trëe rig,

Sorg that you hart in elke trëe is.

- My grandmother

My grandmother wrote that in a birthday card for me. Roughly translated it means "Wherever you may go, take care that your heart is in each step". I thought it was good advice. 

I am now in Flensburg, have my own room overlooking the harbour, my roommate is supernice and everything is working out well. Now the university just has to start and I'll be a-for-away. Seems like I went in the right direction.

The view from my room this morning

Fireproof

Today I quit the gym. One more month of Zen Pilates on Wednesdays and Zen Yoga on Fridays, and then my card won't work any more. I've been going there for 5 years, not religiously, not fanatically, always slightly dishevelled looking, but regularly, at least. I've hated on all jock-y personal trainers, been embarrassed by a room full of nakedness, gotten athlete's foot, fell flat on my face and avoided the V-box class like the plague. It's not like I'm quitting exercise in order to join The People of Walmart or anything, I am just moving to Germany for, well, at least 2 years.

This means a lot of admin. I hate admin. I wish there was no bureaucracy, no paperwork, only (if need be) easy online forms that are designed so that a 6-year-old could fill them out. I would like not to feel like a criminal every time I need to complete paperwork, or to have my mom vouch for me as soon as I need to apply for the silliest things.

At the moment I am sorting (read throwing away) through my CDs, putting books in boxes and seeing which stuff could go to the less fortunate. Strange how we are all hoarders somehow. Not as excessive as the TV show, but we hang on to things because we're afraid without objects of memory we won't be able to remember everything. Maybe that is a good thing though. Maybe not every incident of life need to be enshrined somewhere in our brains.

It is rather emotional, this throwing away of things. I look at the Celine Dion CDs I took along on our trip of Mayan pyramids in Mexico as a child. After two weeks of almost exclusively Celine (I also packed Disney's Greatest Hits Vol. I and II), no one liked her any more. I find clumsy artworks, old photographs, a stack of SL magazines. It is hard to decide what to keep and what to let go, because somewhere in me there is a nagging voice constantly saying: "But you might need that again, someday."

Hah. Someday.

This moving away is harder than I thought. I am like a manic depressive, changing from being elated to nostalgic, teary-eyed and battling against a wave of sadness. Here is where my people are, it is home.

And although I've been all like 'needtoleaveneedtoleaveneedtoleave', actually leaving my very comfortable nest makes me almost shit my pants. What if this is a bad idea. What if everyone is stupid. What if I am the stupid one. What if there the sun won't ever shine. What if someone dies, here. What if, what if.

Luckily, my friend Michael left me with great advice : No experience is wasted.

Better make the best of what I have here, still, and what awaits.

Choose your own adventure

My cousin posted this on FB, and I wish my graduation speech could have been like this. I can't even remember what we were told. Something about "go out there" and then "give back to the university". Pshhhh.



THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

Without You My Life Would Be Boring

The photograph is an edited version of a film photo I took at Wilderness, 2011.

Art is perhaps the embodying of different ways of seeing, and without things to look at and interpret for myself, my field of vision would be much diminished. So thank you, art and artists, for  helping me see.

24-25

On Thought Catalog, I found this list by January Nelson with 25 things one should do before one turns 25. Well. I have less than four months to make shit happen. I didn't agree with all of the points, but here are some valid ones:

 

3. Minimize your passivity.

4. Work a service job to gain some understanding of how tipping works, how to keep your cool around assholes, how a few kind words can change someone’s day.

5. Recognize freedom as a 5:30 a.m. trip to the diner with a bunch of strangers you’ve just met.

6. Try not to beat yourself up over having obtained a ‘useless’ Bachelor’s Degree. Debt is hell, and things didn’t pan out quite like you expected, but you did get to go to college, and having a degree isn’t the worst thing in the world to have. We will figure this mess out, I think, probably; the point is you’re not worth less just because there hasn’t been an immediate pay off for going to school. Be patient, work with what you have, and remember that a lot of us are in this together.

7. If you’re employed in any capacity, open a savings account. You never know when you might be unemployed or in desperate need of getting away for a few days. Even $10 a week is $520 more a year than you would’ve had otherwise.

8. Make a habit of going outside, enjoying the light, relearning your friends, forgetting the internet.

15. Forget who you are, what your priorities are, and how a person should be.

16. Identify your fears and instead of letting them dictate your every move, find and talk to people who have overcome them. Don’t settle for experiencing .000002% of what the world has to offer because you’re afraid of getting on a plane.

21. Make a habit of telling people how you feel, whether it means writing a gushing fan-girl email to someone whose work you love or telling your boss why you deserve a raise.

25. Quit that job that’s making you miserable, end the relationship that makes you act like a lunatic, lose the friend whose sole purpose in life is making you feel like you’re perpetually on the verge of vomiting. You’re young, you’re resilient, there are other jobs and relationships and friends if you’re patient and open.

I especially appreciate #6. I love my Bachelor's degree, because it taught me how to see the world not merely from one perspective, and thus be able to solve problems in different ways. If this does not work, maybe that will. Linked to the degree are the people I've met at university, the lasting and fleeting friendships, the unforgettable and forgotten nights, the 'Aha!'-moments and the realisation that although I could've become anything, being in the Humanities was like putting on a dress I wasn't entirely sure of for the first time and having it fit perfectly.

Après moi

via On the shoulders of giants on Pinterest

My meaningful distraction was putting all the books I have read under my bed and all the ones I have used for intellectual-fake-credit on my bookshelf to be read. If I am to be jobless and poor after graduation, at least I can pretend to be a writer who needs to work on what she has read.

Below my feet

Today is Heritage Day. Or Braai (= barbecue) Day, if you'd rather remember what is being advertised. I hope we share a greater heritage than just knowing how to stand around a fire and grill meat. I really don't get the appeal of braaing all the time. The drinking and sitting around and getting together with friends, yes, sure. But standing around in smoke and having to cater to everyone's desires regarding how they want their steal done and not burning anything? No. Thanks. No no. My cousin showed me once, and once was enough. Here is one situation where I'll gladly accept the stereotypical female role and make salads in the kitchen. With a cocktail, away from the smoke and heat.

I don't know what my heritage is. Celebrating Christmas on the 24th and not on the 25th? Knowing how to make Spätzle (well, knowing to find the cookbook) and melktert (again, the Kook en Geniet)? Is it burning in the sun today because I have the same skin as ancestors that got off some boat 300 years ago? Well, the other ancestry arrived here in the 1950s, so I'm guessing both genetic halves did not adapt well to an African sun. Or I should just learn to wear sunscreen, as Mary Schmich suggested. Wear it like a damn dress.

If one's heritage is connected to where one comes from, what has it become in an age where culture is simultaneously global and local? Maybe the desire to be a puzzle piece that fits rather than the one lost somewhere along the way is stupid. Maybe having different strands mixed is better than having specific roots.
Over the past 48hours I have read too much about web kids and Generation Net and our displacement and how we are everywhere and nowhere and how the Internet has made us dumber and how the sky is vanishing. I'm not sure where it is disappearing to, but apparently it is.

During our walk today it pretty much stayed where it was. Bright blue, above us. A perfect surface for the sun to cast its skin-burning rays from.

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?!

word for word

via Becky

Wear sunscreen

They sometimes play this song on TuksFm ( the student radio station) and after looking for it for years I finally caught the name.
The video is not worth watching ( since it is just a still image), but it is worth listening to. It reminds me of Baz Luhrman's Everybody's free ( to wear sunscreen), which I'll post below.

Un jour

This is from one of my lecturer's wall. 

Sage advice

via Warholian on facebook

What does it mean to do your own thing? Is it when you leave home, finally, and are responsible for yourself, completely? Is it the choices you make, and stick to? Is it waiting for better, thinking that at the end of this year/this degree/this job/this relationship/ this what-ever-it-is, your life will change radically, that you will finally be able to do what you want?

I think it is all not as easy as what photoshopped advice makes it out to be. We all live in a reality of our own choosing, but I think there are many factors that an individual cannot ignore. There are bills to pay and contracts to fulfil and responsibilities in the here-and-now that one cannot just run from. Perhaps this is more sage advice to myself than to anyone else because I always eye a life less ordinary and forget to live the one I have in this moment. I keep wanting more and making plans to leave and "do my own thing", without really knowing what it is at all. I'd like to say, fuck you all, but there is no one I could really say it to because in the end it is always my decision and there is no one to be angry at. There isn't even anything to be angry about. So here is to expecting the best of today and finding what my thing is before I head anywhere. Here is good, for now.

The Laughing Heart

Here is a link where you can watch Tom Waits reading it -  at the end he says "That's a beauty", and I agree.


The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

- Charles Bukowski 

via The Best American Poetry

One more

Only one more day left of 2011. It seems that at the end of every year, every one reflects on the past 365 days and says how quickly it has passed. We live year for year, with each 1st of January providing an excuse to reassess our lives and our choices, making resolutions to change and to better ourselves in newer years.

I am not one for resolutions because I don't know what I want. Silly things like losing weight or finding a husband or studying harder are not life changes. If a resolution is to be made, it should be one that you carry with you for the rest of your life. Something that not only benefits yourself, something that makes the world a better place.

Here are a few suggestions:

Be kind to everyone. Cashiers in SA seem to have signed a contract that prohibits them from being efficient workers and friendly to customers. But whatever. Kill them with kindness.

Don't be scared to meet new people. When I started at university, I had my friends from school and was not open to engaging with any of the other students because after all, I had just come back from EUROPE and was infinitely superior and I had my crew of BFFs, so I did not need anyone new in my life. Big mistake. One year later, all my old friends had migrated overseas or friendships had changed and I was a rather lonely and less arrogant person. It takes time to make friends, but after this year, I am so glad to have gotten to know many of my fellow students better. Also, friendship is a reciprocal thing and needs to be nurtured in order to grow. I like to think that my friends like me as much as I like them.

Don't judge. Joh ja, this is one of my character flaws. I judge people from the second I see them. But I remember one incident from working at Disneyland : a group of us was sweeping the area and cleaning out the dustbins when a Dutch lady with her daughter walked past, pointed at us (we were hard to miss thanks to an abominable costume of camel-toe inducing turquoise pants with a yellow strip down the side and chequered yellow-turquoise shirts) and told her daughter that she would become like us if she did not do her homework. Because of my Afrikaans I understood what she was saying, and it became clear to me that often we think wrongly of people who do menial jobs. All of the workers there were college students. I think we often judge people on appearances and on their jobs before even knowing their story. I sure am guilty of it.

Volunteer.  This is a bit hypocritical because I don't volunteer. I am always saying how I would like to and making up all of these excuses. Bottom line is, if you can and have the time, rather help out somewhere than to watch another episode of House M.D. You know, my people skills aren't so great, but reading to the elderly I could do. Or helping someone with learning a language. I don't know. This is kind of a resolution I would want to make and keep without labelling it.

To be honest, I am not sure about this post. I wanted to be all inspirational and start a movement to flippen SAVE THE WORLD and make everyone happy. But the truth is we are all caught up in our little lives and I don't think there is a collective will to have a world of peace and unity. I mean, most of the time I am thinking about what I could eat for pudding and what book to read next and what to do for New Year's Eve, and not about how we are all equal and should save our planet.

Life itself is gone

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind. "

- Vita Sackville-West

Finish something

found on Kate Voegele's website

Yes to all. Except number 5.