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.

The takeover/ The sweeping insensitivity of this still life

3 Weeks.
3 Graduations.
2 of them mine.
Now it is all done with : no more waiting anxiously to walk across a stage for a full 20 seconds; no more balancing your hat precariously because it has chosen this (!!!) moment to slowly slide from your head; no more photographs in with hundreds of others just like you in the background.
Now there is nothing I actually have to do, to attend, hah, not even community patrol to drive.

A friend of mine posted a photo of himself five years ago and now, stating that although he felt much the same, he also didn't. And that he still wanted the same things.

In one month I'll be 25, and damn, this quarterlifecrisis thing has hit me over the head with a baseball bat before kicking me in the stomach a few times and then proceeding to steal one of my motherfucking kidneys. It has been nice enough to leave me my other kidney, because, you know, life goes on, and I should just man up. For a while there I felt like Charlie the unicorn heading to candy mountain: everyone asking you stuff and you're all miserable in your blanket of self-pity and then, in the end, it is all dreadful in any case.

But then, somehow, everything got better. I sort of might have a sort of job. I might still leave to teach English somewhere. I might still apply for Masters programs starting in the fall (well, northern autumn, southern spring). I might do nothing but Coursera courses this year. I might just do anything I want. There is no more findaman-marry-buyadog-buyahouse-havechildren-workworkwork-die. Perhaps that, and not the Internet or gay marriage or black presidents or female chancellors or whatever you like, is the fundamental change of the 21st century: the "knowledge generation" has the option of opting out. We (not all, of course) are choosing jobs we love and fulfil us, not work that pays the bills. Or ideally it should be so.

I am fortunate enough to have a mother who says I can still stay at home. I am equally fortunate to have chosen a degree I enjoyed very much, and where I was sure I was heading in the right direction somehow.

And I am fortunate to know how to write. This might seem trivial, I mean, EVERYONE can write. With millions of blogs/Twitter accounts/Pinterest/etc. everyone has a platform from which to promote their writing. However, an actual talent for writing is still a skill. Look, I very much doubt what I write and the words I choose and the self-obsessiveness that a blog seems to require. In order to write about your life constantly you have to admit to a degree of narcissism, but you also need to see the light and the dark in what you write. I went to this spoken poetry event, and it seemed as though everyone believed their poems to be excellent, even when they weren't. Nevertheless, it is easy for me to criticise because I am an uncourageous audience member, not daring to speak the words I dare to write.

But after having read the submissions some of my peers have made to one of the Coursera courses, writing well should be one one of those things you mention when the interviewer asks you about your strengths, because it is something to be proud of. The ability to structure an essay well, to spell correctly and to bring across an argument without blabbering on forever is admirable because not everyone can write, well, well.

And that has been enough to stop the lull in my life. Enough with this "meh"-feeling.
Writing. Writing. Writing.
And moving on.

I heard the party's here

And I'm back.
Joh.
I previously stated that roadtripping to Rocking the Daisies could be at either end of extremes: awful or awesome. Maybe it was a bit of both, a bit of loneliness and fun and happiness and depression and incomprehension strewn in between just to mix it up. Maybe it was better this way.

When going to Koppi, I remember groups of people, camping together; making a fire; chilling in front of the stages and enjoying the music; and, partying at night together. The camp site there is an important place, since it is where you spend half of the time. Also, it is not unusual to just pitch up at some stranger's camp site, be offered a drink and make new friends. Oppikoppi is gezellig.

By comparison, RtD is not. Since it purports to be some kind of hippie-hipster-eco-festival, camping and cars are kept separate, and no glass is allowed in. Also no fires are allowed. Therefore, there is no reason to have a camp site to chill at, and the tents are just pitched at random. At Koppi you try to get a few trees, here you don't give a f*ck since you'll probably just be sleeping there. What neighbours? What sharing a beer? Not these cool kids.

Shock number two came after queuing for two hours to shower for a full five minutes. To me, showering at festivals is nice, but it is optional. You are there for the music, not to make sure you look your best. Again I was very wrong. These girls have ghd-straighteners and hair dryers. They also don't leave the shower-tent without putting on their made-up face. And I'm not talking just some mascara here. Hells no.

The outfits are also worth mentioning. I am used to taking semi-old clothes so that if something happens I don't mind throwing them away. Ahhhhhhhhh non. All these girls appear to be in dire need of nourishment, and they all wear their mother's high waisted jeans, but cut off just short enough to show the rounding of the gluteus maximus. The crop top, angle boots and large hats were also a staple. The gentlemen all looked like they weren't trying to look cool but that they were secretly spending quite some time on getting their hair looking just messy enough. The boys I went with spent more time in the bathroom getting ready than I did.

I mean, this is not necessarily a negative thing, but I felt as though at RtD the festival is a constant fashion show, and that music is just something happening in the background. Except for when Bloc Party played. They are INTERNATIONAL, after all. Rocking the Daisies was somewhat of a disappointment. No one seemed to respect the local bands, like the Dirty Bounce Collaboration (with Mr Cat and the Jackal contributing members), Machineri or even hip-star of the moment, Jeremy Loops. This festival felt as though it was more important to be seen, to tell others afterwards "Ja, bru, sorry I missed you at Daisies, hey, Ja, it was awesome", to have been there without really caring about any band past Bloc Party.

A festival is definitely not the place to be lonely. At Koppi, even when I went only with my friend Sliv, there were always others around to go party with, there were always random people that were willing to meet new people and just have a good time. Here, the cliques were already established, and no one new was cool enough to break into the established order of coolness. The Capetonians were constantly remoulding themselves to be more avant garde, more advanced, more hipstamatic than even the app. Me? I was stuck, rigid, a piece of unwanted, a Nokia 3310 in a sea of iPhone 5s.

Perhaps it is my own fault. I was pretty pissed (not the drunk pissed, the pissed off one) because my homeboys had their own agendas for the festival, which is fine. But it wasn't my fault that things had changed, that the original party was not going, and after three days of being supportive and understanding and adapting to other ways of doing things I just felt a bit die moer in.  If I could try to be understanding, so should they. On Saturday we had a tent-round-table, and sorted it out, which was great, since after that the last night of RtD was quite fun despite the rain and the cold. Nothing a bit of Havana Rum and freshly squeezed orange juice can't fix, hey.

The roadtrip, the Daisies, it was all an experience, neither best nor worst. Like gezellig, I am trying to find that one word to describe the festival, the one that will capture its essence. Beautiful? Eco? Different? I'll settle on oppervlakkig.