I can hear you

You know when people ask the question what superpower you would like to have? And often, the answer is invisibility, so that you could spy on people and find out what they say about you behind your back?

Well, I am invisible. You do not see me. But I can hear everything you say. Jeez you must be dumb to talk about me in front of my window. I can hear you. Loud and clear. 

And it is rather fascinating. We all gossip. But we all think that no one talks about us behind our backs. I don't necessarily mean only the mean things, only the things that make you feel better about yourself, but also the nice things, the compliments you were afraid to pay. 

So at the moment you are not being mean. You are rather being unnecessary. I apologised. I know when I am wrong. Take it and do with it what you will. But don't be this stupid and talk about it when I can hear you. Moerse apologetic se gat. 

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Choices

Today I was faced with choices in each of my classes.
Paradise Lost is ( as far as I have learned today) based on the choice of whether Christ or Satan is the hero, on whether God could have chosen to forgive sin and then Jesus would not have had to die for us. Admittedly, I have not yet read more than some passages, so Paradise Lost is still quite a mystery to me.

Then in French, again, a choice: is it necessary to tear down old buildings to make space for new ones? Do we need to destroy past artefacts in order to build our own, contemporary legacy over it? I think this is different in South Africa, when we compare our city structures with those in Europe. We have a lot more space. We tend to build in rings around a centre, and the further away from the centre, the better ( meaning more $$$$$$). And we like building repetitive enclosures, little Truman Show's. Perhaps crime has forced people to live in their own little prisons, but I think instead of trying to shut out the world, we should (have) fought. We should have said: I am not willing to live like this. I am not willing to build walls and security gates and live in a place where people cannot come to visit me because they need to prove their blood type before being allowed to enter. I remember I once dropped my friend off at her house, but because we went in with her security tag, I could not get out with the password she gave me. So she had to come and speak to the night guard and it took forever to get out. Tsss. I can understand that the guards are just doing their job and that crime creates jobs (haha) and so on, but if there were less crime, maybe people would find jobs not protecting others, but rather helping others. We could all help a little more.

Anyway. Next class. Visual Communication. And Art History. I always leave these classes questioning what I have thought before. And not in that fake "who am I? oh I'll just read some Baudrillard to relax"-way. More in the: hmm. I have never thought about that way of seeing the world. Interesting. After every class I have more choices to make. More ways of approaching everyday encounters. I am glad I choose these subjects. People think, ag, art history. Michaelangelo and that. How will you ever find a job?! But I think, economics? engineering? You will always only see a formula that needs to be followed. Perhaps you will think outside the box, but you will always see a problem that needs solving. Hopefully I will not see the world in terms of problems. Hopefully I will see it in terms of people, of reactions, of emotions, of a reality that is not mine. I do not know exactly where I am going with this.

So on to French. Again. Thursdays are wonderful for my French. Here the choice concerned press freedom and the media tribunal that the government wanted to create. I am glad that so many opposed it. The freedom to choose what to write about, what to report on, is integral to any democracy. I mean, once you start censoring, where do you stop? And who decides? People argue that some things should not be spoken about, but is that not then your choice to react to it? The information should be available to those who want it.

That is it for now. A bit of rambling. Today was just such a good day for thinking.



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Lessons Learned

Here is the full quote:

"Die meisten Menschen legen ihre Kindheit ab wie einen alten Hut. 

Sie vergessen sie wie eine Telefonnummer, die nicht mehr gilt.

Früher waren sie Kinder,

dann wurden sie Erwachsene,

aber was sind sie nun?

Nur wer erwachsen wird und ein Kind bleibt, ist ein Mensch."

Erich Kästner

24. May 2011

Oh I forgot to translate it : 

"Most people discard their childhood like an old hat. 

They forget it like a telephone number which is no longer valid. 

In the past, they were children,

then they became adults,

but what are they now?

Only those that grow up and still stay children are human." 

I like this quote because I think it is so easy to forget that simple things can be fun. When you were little, a new toy or licking the bowl your mother had mixed cookies in was the greatest joy. When you went to a party, it was the lucky packet and the cake and the candles and the games that were important. It was running around in the garden and playing with your siblings. 

Nowadays children are separated from these simple pleasures : they want Xboxes and ipods and a virtual reality. They want to sit in front of the damn television and watch Justin Bieber on MTV.

I find it all slightly disturbing. We are imposing a technological world on someone who has no real choice. Hell, children in Germany thought cows were purple because the Milka (chocolate) cow is purple. Kids in grade 1 with iPhones. Kids wanting things things things things things things. 

I still like watching the sky and playing boardgames and blowing soap bubbles. I still like licking out the bowl. I still like the naiveté with which children see the world.  




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Votela

I hope everyone used their democratic right to vote today. I know it is only municipal, but maybe this is more important than the national elections? After all, we do not all reside with the president. He has not issues with trash collection, with pension payouts, with shelters, with hospitals and clinics, with parks, with Metro Police or with roadworks. What does the president do? Represent the country overseas? Make new laws? Get married? But he does nothing really for the everyman. Correct me if I am wrong here, I have a strong dislike for politics and laws and what one may or may not do, so it is highly possible that my opinion is quite ungrounded. But by Zuma's last couple of years of rule, he does not do much.

My friend wanted to do something today. I asked if he went to vote. He said no. Vote or don't, that is your choice. But then do not complain afterwards that something is not to your liking. And he does not. He does not complain. He just accepts. This is the indifference in Generation Y that just pisses me off. We care about ourselves and nothing more. We care about clothes and music and movies and things that are replaceable, but we care nothing about the next generation. Everybody campaigns for climate change and global warming and saving the rhinos, but in the end we do nothing. We buy the R10 bag at Woolworths. We throw money at problems that require action.

And that is why I did not want to meet my friend. Everytime I see him, I have the feeling he judges me for studying, for working hard to get my degree. I don't go to Soweto on Fridays in a taxi because I don't feel like it. Not because I am afraid to. I don't get wasted and drive because I like to live. I don't read Nietzsche or Marx or whomever is cool to the coolkids because I don't care to. I live the life I want the way I want, so please, person, stop thinking your eccentricities make you interesting to anyone but yourself. A cliché can only survive for so long. Go hang around with your coolkid tjommas and live your coolkid life and spend it trying to be some Jay-Jays clad ideal.

I voted.If nothing changes, that is ok. If something does, that is fine to. I don't go around chaining myself to trees and recycling my toilet paper, but this is a start. If this generation just set their mind to it, I am pretty sure we could collectively save the world. We could all wear tiaras and capes. But if the mememe of it all does not change, neither will the world.



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Rock Paper Scissors

from here

Hope you had a happy day. 

If not, I hope this cheers you up a little.

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Wertewelten 2010

This is a story I wrote for a competition in 2010. You might recognise yourself in some of it.

Here is the link to the pdf.
Wertewelten 

Let me know what you think.
I would change it now. Perhaps I have become desensitised. Perhaps the break-in made me not see people anymore.  Perhaps I saw the one beggar boy on the corner of the N4 and Duncan get in a truck with other people and driving away happily. You know the one, the crying one. With him it seems like an act to me.

There are two other boys near the university. They made these boards where they cut a square hole in the cardboard and wrote YouTube over it. They can have my money. Even though it makes me wonder how street urchins know about YouTube.


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i ♥ you

To some people it comes very easily to say that they love someone. It seems natural to them to slip the three words in at the end of a phone conversation or when saying goodbye. The other day I was standing in the queue at Pick 'n Pay and observed a woman and her daughter telling the dad that they were going to another shop while he was paying and that they would meet him somewhere afterwards. When they had almost left the store, the girl and the mother both turned around and told the father that they loved him. And he then said : " I love you too my darlings." and smiled.

It was weird to me: they would be seeing each other in a few minutes. I think saying that one loves someone is a big deal. It is a commitment to that person. It is telling them that you give them a piece of your heart. Just like that. They can have it.

So saying it too often to me steals its significance. Perhaps others feel that one has to say it often to affirm the love one feels. And one has to hear it often to be secure of the other's devotion. Or that a child needs to hear it frequently to feel safe and, well, loved. I don't know. I can understand how this family wanted to make sure each one knew they were loved. I can understand how my friend always tells her sisters she loves them because she has lost others close to her. I can understand why my mother says it. I can understand saying ILY. But I cannot understand the feeling, because to me there are different types of love. The way family loves is different from friends, which in turn is different from passionate love.

Humans are obsessed with love. We sing about it. We write poetry about it. We devote entire oeuvres to a feeling that cannot be defined equally for each. We love to ♥.

Maybe I cannot understand it because I cannot box it in and store it away in my mind. Perhaps I cannot understand it because as often as it is true, it is also a lie.

Je t'aime. Te amo. Ek is lief vir jou. Ich liebe dich. I love you. Hmm.

It does not matter how many languages I learn, I cannot say it.
Which does not mean that I don't.



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Lessons Learned

Family

My grandmother has come for a visit. I do love her, but after about 500000 cups of tea and her mood swings, I start to despise her. Misery and pessimism seep into the air you breathe when she sits down. You feel disheartened. If she is what I'll end up as, why live at all? If this is the reward for living, what is the point? There is no dying happily, embraced by your better half. There is no pain-free end. Life is not celluloid.

I have to remind myself : she is 82 ( I think). I should be nice. I should kill her with kindness. By becoming so old, she deserves my respect. I am nothing without her. But it irritates me to have to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself, out of fear of offending her. The old are fragile. Do not try to change them. You cannot teach an old dog new tricks. 

No, you can't. But hell, the world evolves. Even if you don't like it, you must acknowledge that you cannot stay stuck in a mindset not suited to a modern era.

My grandmother proves you can. Many people seem to not want to adapt to any change. I presume it is out of fear. The young can face hardship. The young can suffer for longer. However, when you are old, how much more can you take? How many more aches? How many disappointments? 

I forget that you were young once. I forget that you were me, 60 years ago. 

Then I look at you again. Sunken skin. Match-stick legs. A slight hunch. Crooked hands. Two holes in the bottom row of teeth. You almost died last year. I thought you would. 

We are driving and I have been disappointed in you for 200 km. I feel you are not a movie-grandmother. I believe you do not try to feel anything positive any more. I feel you have forgotten what happiness is. 

A hand is touching my shoulder. A peeled slice of apple lies in your hands, reaching in between the two front seats. That is all I need to forgive you for being like this now. That is all I need to acknowledge your own suffering: it must be hard not to be able to remember where you placed your toothbrush. Or that you should pack warm clothes. Or that we just had tea.  

Ouma. Moenie worry nie. Eintlik weet ek jy's meer as wat jy nou wys. 

 

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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Lessons Learned

happy birthday carol

I'm part of couchsurfing ( if you don't know what it is, check out their website here and join in :) and a few weeks ago I received a message from a young man in Brazil, Walter, who asked me and many other around the world to send him a short video with the message "Happy Birthday" for his girlfriend Carol.

Check out the result here:

Even though I look slightly spastic, I am quite happy about sharing a moment with so many people from around the world :)

Pretoria Tea Party

Today is such a rainy day that I procrastinated successfully and made myself an enormous pot of tea. Pity its heat did not reach my feet.

My grandmother showed me how to make tea since she drinks about 10 litres of the stuff per day. My urinary tract is cleansed every time I visit her because of all the tea I have to drink. I like the ritual of
tea: making it, sitting together and chatting or enjoying it while watching Oprah. When you visit people, they always offer a cup of tea. Such a friendly thing, tea.

So, here is Ouma's way of brewing the perfect cup:
Firstly boil your kettle. Only boil as much water as you'll need.
When your kettle has clicked to signal that it is done, add some hot water to your tea pot to warm it up. Swish the water around a bit until the pot feels warm. Throw the water out.
Take your teabags and stuff them into your pot. Pour hot water on them. Wait a couple of minutes.
Enjoy.

My mom just brought me another cup of tea. Vanilla with honey. Lovely :)

via geekologie

for the people who can't get the ratio right

via lovemademedoit

true story

via pitchfork

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Lessons Learned

Don't forget to breathe

Left arm, right arm, breathe. Left arm, right arm, breathe.
There is nothing else. Just me and the water. The repetitive motion of being half submerged and half above the water makes me forget that there is a life that I should be living and things I should be doing.

Every time I come up for air, I can briefly hear techno beats and weights falling and people pounding on the imaginary pavement of the treadmill and people battling uphill and people trying to be ideal.
Every time I am submerged, there is nothing but the water.

People tend to paddle through the pool for a lap or two and then leave, thinking they did something. Perhaps they just cannot swim. I prefer lying on my back and just kicking, kicking, kicking. Kicking underwater. None of that juvenile splashing. I am a slow torpedo heading nowhere. Lane for lane. A sail boat without a captain. Just me and my thoughts, and after a while, just me and nothingness.

In water I do not exist really. There is no countdown, telling me I have to suffer for another 15.34 minutes. There is no machine asking about my age and my weight. There are no other people. There are no annoying "That's Not My Name" remixes. I like that. I like gliding without purpose. I like floating without destination. I like not feeling tired of SuperSport 1.

I would like to be a killer whale. No one to hunt me since I would do the hunting. And I'd be in the water forever. Even in death I would just breathe one last time and sink away. Moreover, I could stay submerged for a lot longer. And I would be a lot more powerful. Those sharks would have nothing on me. Come on, Great White. I see you at the end of the pool. You can't hurt me. I am a killer bigger than you are.

As a killer whale, I would never have to be nice to anyone. I would never have to worry about their feelings. I would just go around killing seals and porpoises and being all gangster.

I just like water. There is nothing threatening about it. Except having to drink it.