Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.
Do the hard times come to a screeching halt at some point? Do things start making sense and all of a sudden you know, you just know, what it is you are doing?
These are restless nights, man. And not just for me. I am not restless in isolation. All around me there is fear mongering towards a generation so unsure of ourselves that we are deer in the headlights, unable to move in any direction even when we know the fucking 18-wheeler is barreling down the highway at top speed and won't stop to spare us. From all sides come the nagging questions about what our plans are, what we intend on doing with our lives, whilst at the same time being told that there are no jobs, that by the time we retire the retirement fund will be empty, global warming will have killed off all the polar bears, China will take over and disasters upon disasters upon disasters will happen. And this is not even considering the small catastrophes that happen at 4 PM on an ordinary Wednesday, the ones where the unthinkable occurs to the ones we love.
So I am in a constant state of panic about not being able to manage it all, about unsuccessfully multitasking, about where to come 2016. For now there is a plan, for the next 6 months there are barely hours left to breathe. But come 2016, the Fates are reinventing my wheel for what feels like the umpteenth time.
Logic and experience tell me it will be ok. Everything will be ok. You can't plan this, you have to leave some things in the hands of whatever comes next. Logic and experience tell me I can handle all of it. But still. At times I wish I was made of lesser stuff, that I needed someone besides myself to tell me it will all be ok, that I could remain in one place for the sake of one person, that life within boundaries would be my choice. Instead, an anxiety about wanting more than walls and 9-to-5s and a daily dullness challenges the fear I have of being much too far out all my life and not waving but drowning.
Jy stuur foto's van skape voor julle twee weer op pad is. Hoe anders ons verhouding is in vergelyking met julle s'n. Vandag het ek met G. gesels oor ouers, oor wat die ander helfte gemis het deur nie daar te wees nie, watse verskil dit maak as mens saam deur die vuur moet stap. Ek verlang na jou, na die lang pad, na kos soos wat net jy dit kan maak, na tye met die hondjies, na die reuk van daai grys-blou truitjie van jou.
Ek wil voorberei vir die gesprek met die sielkundige, die voorbereiding vir 'n nog groter/ander gesprek einde van die maand, ek wil notas maak in my dagboek.
Toe kry ek dié, van 'n tyd net nadat ek weer terug was in die land waar selfs die wolke in gelid marsjeer:
Vanaand maak ek my bed met 'n laken wat jy oor 12 000 km 2 vliegtuie 3 treine en 'n taxi gebring het. Dit is niks besonders nie, vaal blou. Dis al. Maar selfs deur my verstopte neus (verkoue in die somer? waar op Gods aarde?) ruik ek hy is van ver, van die tuiste af.
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.
There is something about pilgrimages, about being on the long road with a certain goal that appeals to my inner wild child. Travelling, moving somewhere out of the ordinary, means breaking away (at least for a while) from responsibilities. My mother and I have road-tripped together most often, so it is hard for me to hear about her driving alone to fetch my gran in Jeffrey's Bay. It is hard not being there, not helping to pack the car, not taking the longer shifts. I know the road they are taking: Jansenville, Graaff-Reinet, Middelburg, Colesberg, Bloemfontein. When driving down from Pretoria my grandmother would call at intervals, asking where we were, calculating how fast we were reaching each milepost along the road.
The family was trekking into the heart of the country for a reunion of epic proportions. Cousins, great-cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone related in some way, everyone wanting to see how the others had changed. Underneath it all a current of familiar strife, people having fallen out and not spoken to one another in years. This frustrates me extremely. My cousin Emce calls me 'kwaai katjie' and the other day my mother and grandmother laughed as they said I was a 'kwaaitjie kabouter' (it translates into an angry kitten and an angry little gnome). They say this without listening. I am angry, it is true, but at them, for never talking about anything. Avoiding conflict and pretending at everything being a-ok runs in their veins, with the end result being no one talking to one another. If we do not speak about it, it is not happening.
I fully understand that not everyone wants to talk at length about their feelings. We are not on Freud's couch, there is no need for psychoanalysis. But I will insist on honesty. I will insist on making things a-ok, on working at it, instead of feigning ignorance at the problems in our midst. They do not understand this being-far-away-thing. I appreciate the videos, the voice messages, the photographs of togetherness being sent over social media more than they know. I thank the Gods for WhatsApp and FaceTime. Yet the sentence "When are you coming for a visit?" stresses me, because I have no answer. I don't know if or when I'll come back. Personal aspirations clash with familiar desires, wanting to see more with wanting to be there.
It won't be an easy choice, when I eventually make it. It won't be a permanent one, probably. But it will mean more years in far away places, not coming to Sunday lunches, Christmas dinners or helping to drive the long road. It means building a life so apart form them that I fear at some point the voice notes will stop, the photographs won't be shared, and I will no longer be one of them.
The car I learned to drive in was more of a ship than a car. I steered a ship on the road, not some plastic sardine box. The old white Merc 190 from the late 80s was my great-uncle's car, which my father had bought off him somewhere when we were living in Geneva. The car traveled with us to Mexico, and then was placed in a container and shipped back to South Africa, full of cases of red wine if I remember correctly.
The problem with this is that the Mercedes is a left-hand drive, and South Africa has right-hand drive cars. So any time the driver would have to turn right, seeing the oncoming traffic was made harder than necessary. Before the white Mercedes there was the blue station wagon, also a Mercedes, and much more of a ship to steer than the 190. It was a solid steel block, relentless in its stability. Someone clipped the station wagon while my sister was waiting at a robot and she barely felt it (probably an exaggeration, but I quite like the idea of her not noticing she is in a car accident).
Beyond these two cars there was another green Merc somewhere in the dark recesses of my childhood memories. My father still drives a silver Merc station wagon, and the white ship was my ride in Cape Town during last year's holidays. Somehow, we have remained fairly loyal to the brand.
Sticking with the horse.
In Stuttgart, we had the option of going to the Mercedes Benz Museum or to the Porsche one. Since Mercedes has an older history, we headed there on Wednesday morning. The percentage of Mercedes cars increases exponentially the closer one gets to the imposing building that hosts the museum. The idea is to start at the top and then spiral one's way down automobile and world history whilst also seeing the various cars from different eras. Nina and I are both not car obsessed and I think one could spend a lot longer in the museum than we did. It is beautifully done, but after having spent two hours on the top three floors alone we speedwalked through the remaining six levels. In any case, the classic cars seemed more appealing due to their Great-Gatsby looks than the ones that appear from the 1970s onwards.
First patent.
In the end we got slightly lost on the sales floor (where no one tried to sell us a car, wonder why) before eventually having to go up two floors again to escape the gigantic museum. Next time I might stick to art again.
With many travels coming up in the next few months I realised I had never spoken about the get-away to Stuttgart at the end of March.
We never wanted to go to Stuttgart. My friend Nina came over one night and we spoke about Germanwings' bling booking option. We were both feeling drowned by this place and in need of different air, so on the spur of the moment we booked a flight to an exotic place. Or so we thought. For an agonising 45 seconds we were giddy with excitement at ending up in Budapest, Manchester, Geneva or Paris. We spoke about acquaintances in those cities that we could stay with, and what adventures we would have. Then the site showed us our destination: Stuttgart. We wouldn't even be leaving the country. Getting to the airport in Hamburg from here would take longer than the actual flight. Disappointment washed over us, and the need to say that we'd make the best of it. Hell, we'd both not been there before. And we'd get away, at least.
So on a Monday morning we boarded a plane to Stuttgart, where we spent the first two days at Andrea's place. Andrea is in his early forties, has an enormous bush of black ringlets streaked with grey that frame his face and speaks a strange German that is tinged with both his native Italian and the local Swabian dialect. He has lived in Stuttgart for 17 years and works at some IT company. The first night he showed us around a bit and made a great supper consisting of pasta with broccoli, raisins, pine nuts, generous helpings of olive oil and even more generous helpings of Parmesan. The raisins complemented the dish fantastically, as did the wine he generously offered us (his entire kitchen is stocked with wine since his friends keep bringing him some and he does not drink).
Tuesday was spent exploring the city. Since I am slightly OCD about seeing things in new places whilst not spending any money, I had trip-advisored myself though the Internet and written down what might be interesting to see. Our Tuesday started off with walking up the inclining hill to the Corbusier house in the Weissenhof neighbourhood. but the trip was rather pointless since the Curbusier museum was closed and we both aren't so interested in his five points of architecture to truly appreciate the areas designated style.
Corbusier House.
So we went back down the hill and into the city library, which is often featured online for its distinctive design. It was wonderful simply being in a library with a large collection, so we investigated the different sections and then went to the roof terrace. I was expecting benches and maybe a roof garden, but it was just concrete and steel-mesh flooring, with a view of half a dozen cranes.
Books books books.
Our walk continued through the business district towards the central station and then to the Hans im Glück fountain, which is surrounded by little restaurants. In the hopes of finding something similar to Hamburg's Sternschanze or Joburg's Braamfontein we went to the Bohnenviertel (Bean District), but were sadly disappointed in finding only a handful of interesting stores and quaint restaurants in the entire area. Our quest to find the beating heart of this city led us onwards to the Feuerseeplatz with its lake and then we took the S-Bahn out of the city into the winelands. Thinking we'd go on a drinking tour of different vineyards we started climbing the Rotenberg. Again, we were mistaken: none of the wineries were open yet because spring hadn't really started and there was not a grape in sight, never mind some wine. We soldiered on in what felt like sweltering heat, conquering the mountain in wingtips. At some point we took a short-cut up an endless row of tiny stairs between the vines, and collapsed at the top. The time it took to recover from the vertical incline would've probably amounted to the same time it would have taken had we snaked our way up the hill like normal people.
Feuerseeplatz
"No time, I have to live!"
Upon reaching the top we sat down in front of the memorial site of some dead Wüttembergian queen and enjoyed the view. No ocean in sight, just a sea of hills. Late afternoon lead us down the mountain again where we bought a cold beer and relaxed next to the river. When it started raining we took the train back to the city and indulged in a Swabian meal of Spätzle with cheese or Geschnetzeltes (strips of meat in a creamy mushroom sauce). Spätzle is a dish I associate with various parts of my family: when I was younger we'd sometimes visit distant relatives in Wiesenbach (a tiny town in Baden-Württemberg) where they'd often make Spätzle with Geschnetzeltes. My German grandmother also fed us Spätzle with Rouladen the few times we visited her and my grandfather in Paarl. Lastly, my mom would make double the amount of Spätzle and bake one dish with cheese in the oven whilst freezing the other one for the times that she could not be there. Strange how a noodle is more than a noodle at times.
Love never ends.
View from the top.
Beer time.
Dinner: Spätzle with Geschnetzeltes.
Tuesday left us exhaused, so we headed home.
I'm also exhaused, so I'll continue the tall tales of adventure time in Stuttgart tomorrow :)
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.
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:
Almost every Tuesday the nameless Zimbabwean would come to deliver the free weekly paper. I'd make him a sandwich, grab some fruit, and come out to hand him the food in between the bars of the enormous black gate. Me in the prison of my own home, handing him what probably amounted to the only sure meal of the day.
In light of the recent wave of xenophobic attacks I wonder what has become of him. Moreover, what has become of us. What have we as a people chosen to be, in this situation? When do other people cease to be people? When does one think it is within your right to take two Ethiopians, lock them into a container, and burn the container down? How can any person not see another as sister, brother, mother, father, as someone worthy of life? This I cannot understand.
In 2008, when the first wave of xenophobic attacks happened, I was also safely far away. I was a foreigner in a foreign country, deserving of necklacing simply for existing there if one follows the logic of the perpetrators. Now, again, I am far away, a foreigner in a country I happen to have a passport for.
This hatred for another, an Other one does not know, is overwhelming. At this hour, the personal, the political and the public fuse into an aching in the night for something to be better, at least for a moment. In South Africa, locals are murdering foreigners just for being foreign. In the Mediterranean, 800 people escaping their home countries in the hope of a better life elsewhere capsize and die. In Johannesburg, my friend worries because her insurance will not cover a treatment she needs. In Switzerland, after a glimmer of hope another friend has had unnecessary complexities added to her life. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, my mother is dealing with her own mother, forgetful, demanding and impatient at 86. My sister is ill and we are talking past one another, if at all. I worry about having saddled myself with too much, about the work interfering with the thesis, but depending on the money earned for survival nonetheless. I worry about what will happen come September 1 2015. I worry what will come next.
In this light, in this hour, darkness drowns out the light, causing negative epiphanies. Everyone worries mostly about themselves, perhaps it is time that I follow suit. I am reminded of the Steinberg article about how things don't matter enough here, because the everyday is not tinted with the presence of danger and risk in most of the things we do. If I don't finish the thesis in time, I can get an extension. If the move to wherever doesn't pan out, fuck it, I'll stay another month. There are back-up plans in place for everything.
But perhaps it is exactly this sense of things mattering that am desperately looking for again. Making that sandwich mattered. Giving mattered. Today an acquaintance asked if I could organise some bread for him (I work at a bakery) and although I was not working today, I gave him the contents of our freezer (which amounted to 3 loaves, 15 rolls and some scones) for an impeding trip. I enjoy giving without consequence, I enjoy being able to help. But this, this was strange. This felt strange. This was not a sandwich. This did not matter, because although here I might know his name, this person is flesh not friend and the bag of bread an empty gesture.
I was watching the newest episode of Black-ish, a sitcom about a black, American, upper-middle class family with four children and their trials and tribulations. In this episode, the wife discovers Facebook and sets up a dinner at her home with her old college friends, whom she intends to impress at this very dinner with how great her life is. Some of her husband's work friends are also in attendance, and as they linger around in the kitchen drinking Scotch or Whiskey or something the first couple arrives. What follows are two minutes of manly appreciation for the wife having lost a lot of weight (going from "fat" to "phat"), but now looking really good. A bit later in the episode, one of the colleagues comments that the women he sleeps with have all been recently dumped: he waits for the ones with the smeared mascara next to a food truck in front of clubs, so that when they drunkenly and sadly stumble towards a burrito he is there to catch them, so to speak, and tell them that they deserve better, just "not tonight" as he adds.
This may seem just like ordinary sitcom scripting. Haha, the joke is on the drunken, dumped girls. Or the fatties who are now phat. But for all this show could be, this episode just made me angry.
Ask yourself:
Why is it ok to spend 2 minutes of a 25-minute sitcom on the male description of a female body?
Why is the conversation by the colleague not seen as extremely creepy? Irrespective of how drunk a girl or how much she is crying or what she looks like, it should not be ok to imply that any girl is "easy" and does not deserve to be treated respectfully.
Here, I am not being oversensitive. I am asking you : what is popular culture teaching the next generation of of young people about how to interact with other humans?
Consider this scenario: a young woman sends the guy she has been dating a text, saying "It has been nice knowing you", and next thing you know he is standing in her bedroom, surprising her, and they have sex. How did he get into her house? How does she not call the police and say a stalker is in her there and instead reacts overjoyed by dropping her panties?
Well, this is a scene from the box office hit 50 Shades of Gray. I realise this is a fictional story. But considering the audience of millions that the books and film(s) have, I cannot help but wonder why women have to regress into these subservient, superficial roles and why society (through portrayals of women in the media) seems to encourage this?
Dove has been campaigning for years to 'real' women to accept themselves as beautiful. Always tried empowering young girls through its #LikeAGirl campaign, where doing things "like a girl" equals doing it well as opposed to weakly. Beyoncé sings about women being 'flawless' ("I woke up like this"). There are so many women fighting for gender equality, and yet as soon as the word 'feminist' is mentioned people seem to lose their minds. Feminism does not mean that one gender is better than another, feminism wishes to promote the quality of the genders (if that was not clear). I certainly have to read up more specifically into the history and objectives of the various waves of feminism, but that is the central argument: we are all equal.
Why then, in 2015, is it still a contested idea? Understandably, there are numerous cultures across the world with a strong history of patriarchy that is hard to erase. But I think that that is exactly the problem: what is the point in women fighting for equality when men do not do the same?
I dislike being seen as a strong woman. The reason I believe I can cope with anything, the reason I chose to think that I can do anything, is because there was no one else. There was no man to save me, so the only option was to do it myself. Women are not stronger for having had to fight, for having had to do everything on their own. Women are not intimidating for having opinions, for standing their man (so to speak), for living proudly. Instead of falling into a trap of binary oppositions of gender and strengths/weaknesses, I think one person's belief in him/herself should be encouraging to others to do the same.
Recently, a friend posted Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDTalk We should all be feminists, where she recounts how a friend asked whether she was not afraid that men would find her intimidating. She replied that she had never thought about it, because she had no interest in men that would see her that way.
I would dare to take it a step further even: rejecting gender stereotypes, we should (idealistically) not be afraid that anyone might find us intimidating, and instead see it as the opportunity to learn from someone who has more knowledge in a particular field than oneself does.
It snowed. 31 of March and it snowed.
The crocuses had bloomed. I had gone to sunnier places with just a thin leather jacket.
It had become seasonally warm (or what goes for warm in this cold place).
Now this. Still wearing your wintercoat in April is not ok. Really, I cannot handle this drabness much longer. Before, I had complained about the weather being too hot, about the sweat underneath my legs making them stick to leathery surfaces when sitting down, about fearing sunburn and being swallowed by the heat at all times. Now I long for any true heat, not this manufactured air coming from the heater under my window. I want to swelter.
What a lovely day spent walking around the harbour and discussing life.
As I was heading home I noticed everyone walking their dogs, and it made me really miss mine. He has been dead for 3 years already, and yet sometimes I miss his extreme affability and good-naturedness. I miss the thick white hair, the cold black nose and black eyes. I miss the hard skin of his feet and the too-long nails scratching on the wooden floors.
A few years back I impulsively took out Animal Poems (edited by John Hollander), and in it found a poem about an old Cocker Spaniel by Robert Penn Warren that was poignantly beautiful:
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 Africaby 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)
When the tears come I reach out to my mother.
No matter how far away she is, I have never doubted her, never felt alone, never felt like there was an obstacle that I could not face. She is the one to talk me down from the metaphorical ledge.
My mother is magnificent.
Since today is International Women's Day, I thought a bit about practically having been raised solely by impressive women, all with hardships of their own, and all with infinite capacities to love, to share and to support one another.
My Afrikaans grandmother is a very tough nut to crack. She is unyielding, unaffectionate and at times annoyingly unwilling to accept other worldviews beside her own. Then again, she is 86 now, and despite all her flaws she came back when others left. My ouma might fail when it comes to expressing love directly, and yet she tries, in her own way. She multitasks when reading books, she knows how to preserve any kind of fruit, and she can garden like no other. Although I have felt her to be disappointing in her persistence on old ways of thought, it must be crippling to be slipping constantly nearer to dementia. Perhaps when you can't remember if you have eaten it is comforting to remember your own childhood, your deceased husband, the better times of past memories relived in this unmemorable present. As much as her cracks have started showing ever clearer, she has been there, and her tiny, shrunken body crumbles even further when the time for departure arrives. And despite all her mistakes I have no other ouma.
When my ouma went home after a few months of staying with us, our cleaning lady Rosina stepped in. She was a lady in her late 50s/early 60s with patches of white skin that appeared in between the brown. Rosina always arrived dressed very smartly (after having taken the bus and taxi from Shoshanguve for what amounts to two hours if I remember correctly) and she came by twice a week. The highlight was coming home to her mashed potatoes and green beans. When I was still prepubescent she would meet me at the robot and we would walk home together. Rosina must have seen so much of the tiny intricacies and difficulties in our household, and yet I know nothing really of hers. I seem to remember a husband that was no longer present, and her sister's kids playing a role. When I was done with school she retired, and I have not seen her since. Strange (and worthy of closer investigation) how many white children have been raised (in part) by black (or coloured or Indian) women, and then how the children distanced themselves from their caretaker (their surrogate mother even) as soon as they would reach an age where racial division would appear to be socially imperative.
My sister is the fourth impressive woman, even though I think she does not trust her own capabilities at times. Over the years we have had epic fights and disagreements. We have lived separate lives while living in the same house. But she is also the one who drove me around before I had a licence, who let me borrow her ID before I was 18 to get into clubs, who has shared uncomfortable single beds with me whilst travelling, and who has offered advice I actually took. Whereas I will feel brazenly, openly (and often stupidly), my sister has a calmer, more rational demeanor that is hard to shake (although at times I would very much like to shake her until she actually tells me how she feels).
Besides these four admirable women there have been wonderful female friends whose influence I am very grateful for. They are all passionate, intelligent, embracing and I have a great respect for how each of them has faced /is facing the big, unplanned events that make life just a bit harder than it needs to be.
In that spirit, to all the women that have raised me and all the ones that keep enriching my life, I thank you for being phenomenal.
Phenomenal Woman BY MAYA ANGELOU Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Men themselves have wondered What they see in me. They try so much But they can’t touch My inner mystery. When I try to show them, They say they still can’t see. I say, It’s in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Now you understand Just why my head’s not bowed. I don’t shout or jump about Or have to talk real loud. When you see me passing, It ought to make you proud. I say, It’s in the click of my heels, The bend of my hair, the palm of my hand, The need for my care. ’Cause I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.
