In the open

Sometimes my view makes up for what this city lacks. 

Time is getting away from me and I don't know how to make the seconds tick more slowly. The past week people have taken pieces of me, have surrounded me with whatever has been going wrong in their lives, and that is what I am here for: I will listen, if that is what you need.

At times I wish someone would listen, to me, too. That what I say is not dismissed so easily by others, and by myself. Whilst walking with a friend today I told her about a confrontation (was considering conversation/debate/argument, but it was one-sided) I had with my father where the utterance 'fuck you' was thrown at my head more than once. A few weeks have passed, and I tell it like a story I was not part of. Her reaction made me realise again that the behaviour was not ok, that I needn't accept it, that being treated like that was not deserving.

What a thing, to talk about your own life as though it is not yours to live.

Fracture

You can shout at me to my face,
Slam doors,
Throw things,
Do whatever it is angry people do.
But don't yell at me over the telephone.

All I need to do to silence you is hang up,
and never pick up again.
One little gesture stops the nagging, puncturing "Ja?!" at the end of every damn sentence,
and suddenly you'll be shouting at the "doood doood doood"
of someone having left the conversation.

Maybe I bait you, maybe I know which buttons to push,
but the fact that you do not know the names of my friends,
or what I studied,
or who I am,
(and don't ever ask)
well,
it makes it necessary to increase the crevasses of our relationship.

One day it will split, there will be nothing left of me but some memory of times past
when I was too young to realize
you are not a nice person.

I'm coming up only to hold you under

They were mock-fighting. Pushing each other's buttons, because after a lifetime together one knows the other and what will drive them close to an edge of sorts. Both got cramps in their right legs. It was fun to observe a father-daughter relationship when mine ended about 12 years ago. I mean, we live, but they are lives apart that connect through the occasional forced phone call where nothing is said because I don't know (or want to know) his life, and he has no real interest in even remembering the names of people we have been friends with since school. Condescension towards what we do and where we live does not help. 

My cousin has a mulberry tree in the back corner of the garden. There used to be one at the far corner of our school as well, and in the afternoons, before sport started, we would go and stain our white polo shirts with handfuls of berries. My cousin wanted to get some before returning to Cape Town, and I wanted to get some to make jam because the  last time I tried it wasn't that successful. It was dark already and we had only one flashlight and a very dim (almost non-existently dim) head-light. Is that what one calls it? I don't mean a car headlight, I mean those tiny torches you strap to your forehead and that make you look ridiculous. And others get irritated when you then proceed to shine directly in their eyes continuously. I assume my uncle thought we shouldn't be hunting for mulberries at that time of the night (haha, it was close to 19.00), but he came to help us. Sans torch I sort of felt my way around for the ripe ones, but my uncle kept dumping handfuls into our zip-lock bags, so we had quite the stash.

In primary school we used to get silkworms and feed them the mulberry tree's leaves. The end result of a worm was a little round silken bookmark. Don't really know where the bookmarks have disappeared to, but watching the worms' whole transition into moth was cool. These days I'm not that fascinated as easily any more. Well, no, that Consol Solar Light is supercool, in the whole "suck it silk worms, this is technology" manner.

Haha, and later, when the mulberries are done marinating in sugar and cooked, they'll probably be put in Consol jars for preservation. Ag I don't even know what I'm rambling about. It's one of those days of procrastination where I'm waiting for my conscience to kick in and tell me to start.

By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed

He phones. We always know when it is him calling, mostly on weekends. Under the pretence of connection, of family and of catching up he talks without end. He has no interest in listening, only telling what is happening in his life, how wonderful it is to live in a city "wo immer etwas los ist"*.

I want to reach through the phone, travel thousands of kilometres with a raised fist and smash it into his face. We live here, where not much happens, where Radiohead will never perform, where having been robbed and getting your third driver's licence in five years is normal. Fortunate, even. So don't tell me you won't go see Nick Cave because he comes every year. Don't tell me about the film festivals you won't attend because you are tired. Don't tell me your work is 10 minutes away by bike, or 5 minutes by metro.

Do not tell me these things that I cannot do because here does not facilitate the same lifestyle. And do not tell me about your adventures when for a week we have been sitting in front of laptops and readings and books and have worn the same sweatpants-tshirt-hoodie combination. Don't tell me about the possibilities that you are not embracing.

Look. Here is great. Here the sun shines in winter. Here you need playlists for long drives. Here is home. It is just that sometimes home is a bit boring and usual and then being informed of all the things you could be seeing and enjoying, but won't because it's overcast, fuck, that just makes me kind of furious.



*where something is always happening.