At 16

In the months leading up to my wedding, I observed a sort of ritualistic catharsis by reading through old diaries.

The entries, as one would expect, were a riot of cringe, funny, angst and pain.

It felt a bit odd going through each one, almost as if I was an intruder bearing witness to the life playing out on the pages.

Because I was so different then, but still so Saaleha.

I ended each quasi-voyeuristic reading by tearing up the pages. 

I was letting go to make space for new things.

However, like any wannabe godplaying wordsmith, I took notes. 

I never wanted to forget what 16 was like. 

Even though I'd grown beyond the insecurities and other mental blocks, it was an age ripe with what was to come.

Here are some of those notes, with a little careful editing to preserve some semblance of pride.

(I'm not sure why I tend to refer to myself in the collective, perhaps I'm spreading the loaded responsibility of what I write across all my personalities.)

--

At 16 we're emo. 

Dramatic. 

Over the top. 

Histrionic, theatrical. 

We overuse metaphor - bunjee jumping, precipice, mach 3, ground zero, sans parachute, plummeting.
We overuse words - pain, rejection, unrequited, dramatic, therapy, voices in my head.

We begin with new years resolutions for the year 2000-

• lose weight
  
• read namaaz
  
• read quraan
  
• study hard
  
• be disciplined
  
• make an effort not to miss school or madressah
  
• be more assertive - as headgirl and in everyday life.
  
• be neat
  
• learn how to drive
  
• talk less and listen more
  
• 'be there' for my friends
  
• refrain from gossiping and passing bitchy comments
  
• look upon everything and everyone as beautiful in their own way
  
• smile more
  
• be more understanding
  
• learn how to cook
  
• drink 8 glasses - more if possible- of water daily
  
• start an exercise routine and stick to it
  
• build up my self confidence
  
• finehone my writing skills - start a thought journal
  
• remember that folks are just folks and people are rarely intentionally nasty or stuck up
  
• don't be judgemental
  
• compliment at least one person daily
  
• don't be a doormat
  
• get up earlier
  
• be more helpful and considerate
  
• don't litter- don't be part of the problem, become the solution
  
• set an example
  
• lighten up
  
• save the world!
  

---
Death shocks the young - we wrote of a friend's passing, the regret and the lessons learnt - to not hurt each other because life is indeed short and the Almighty knows best.

We had self-esteem issues - never thought we were good enough or deserved the best. 

We seemed to prefer fantasy, living in that dream world. 

We learnt not to underestimate ppl or pass judgements.

"I like to write in pencil, easier to erase"

We thrived on unrequited love, the chase, the longing
We used to listen to 5fm while we wrote in our diaries, pencilling in the name of a computer college advertised, because we weren't quite sure where we fitted.
We had a crush on a boy.

We tended to vacillate -I love him, I cant believe I ever liked him, and on and on.
We were superficial.
We were terrified about the future. and being friendless and nameless.
We realised we were on the continuous search for The One, the elusive ideal.
We used to write for an imaginary audience that we obviously tried very hard to impress.
We realised we wanted to write. Really write. We wanted to inspire awe, be glorious and spellbinding.
We thought we hadn't suffered enough to write brilliantly.
Our fear was that we would waste our talent.
We feared being ignored.
We thought we were manic-depressive.

We met someone at a party. We thought he was amazing. We were swept up in the moment. We forgot what he looked like and made up a picture in our head when we spoke to him over the phone. We learnt soon that evening-time was a witch who liked practical jokes.
We panicked when he put his hand on our thigh during the longest trip home.
We cringed and we wanted to die.
We were horrified when we learnt he didnt like poetry.

We were more attracted to boys who didnt show any interest in us.
We often wrote about suspected psychological disorders.

We liked writing because it immortalised the ephemeral.
We liked using words like ephemeral.

We thought often of the One.
We didnt want a mirror of ourselves - someone who reflected our faults, shortcomings or virtues. We didnt want perfection.

We made the 'first move', and it was thrilling and scary.

We loved the power, the fact that we could make things happen.

We found out he liked another girl. She was pretty, funky and thin. For us this meant she was perfect, and better than us.
We liked his goofy laugh and smile, the dumb things he said, we admired his confidence.

We were afraid of commitment, afraid of solidifying things into concrete definition.
We didnt know if we were in love, only that we felt deeply.

We couldnt get over the fact that someone crushed back, that we were desirable.

Our last matric paper was Afrikaans. We were afraid of the changes that we'd see. 

We felt like we were losing something. We were afraid we'd never find friends like the ones we had.
"leave the sunshines of your past to face the fires of your futures" - something we wrote once.

Our weight was a 'heavy issue' - we intended all puns.
We realised we always fell for the goofiest, quirkiest characters.
For us, leaving school was like jumping off a very high cliff.

We learned that good can come from bad and that we learn from every life experience.

We were intrigued by the strange boy who'd come to the shop and stare at us.
We felt fat, unattractive, stupid and unfriendly.
We were whiney, yet we tried to inspire ourselves towards Better.
We realised we liked goofy quirky guys because they didnt intimidate us.
We were afraid of failing at varsity, of making the wrong friends or none at all, of losing ourselves.

We seemed to feel empty alot, We doubted whether we'd ever find the real thing.

We got our matric results - 4 As, 2Bs.
We got interviewed by Radio Islam because of this success.

Our insecurities concerned us. We wanted to be thin and pretty. We wanted fame and acknowledgement but were afraid of becoming conceited.
We didnt want to be a carbon copy, we didnt want mediocrity to swallow us.

---

Ennui Eyes

258.

That's how many blog posts I've pushed out since I got serious on this platform at the end of August 2005.

The sound the Most Prolific Blogger award makes is "whoosh-thik", as it clips me on the shoulder and soars past towards others worthier on my google reader.

Genesis

It was our Honours year. 2004.

Razina (now a perspicacious Fourth-Estater with the Financial Mail) and I (Jane-of-all-trades who does a bit of wordswork) skipped out of our Journalism Theory class, our heads full of Anton Harber-isms and this Blogging thing. 

Off to the post-grad computer labs to get in on the action and become the cyber-bastions of Truth, the wwwatchdogs of the State, the free voices giving voice to the voiceless, wadda wadda, all that stuff you write for the entrance applications.

The first blog I ever really got into was written by Reza in Canada. "Musing Over The Ontological Status of a Boiled Egg". With a title like that, sure, it's gonna grab me by my metaphorical cajones. It's defunct now, but you can still go through his archives. Brilliant stuff.

While setting up my blogger account, I stared at the hulking grey servers making fresh pasta of the data cables, and I thought, "Hmm...you know what, that looks a lot like electric spaghetti..."

I'm now a blogger!! k3wl!!

My first few posts were hardly the stuff of killer citizen journalism we were creaming ourselves over in class. A kitschy poem that rhymed (yeah, I used to do those) and a list of words I found interesting (I recall flocculent, being one of them). You could tell I was farting fairy dust at the time.

And blogging bored me. Mostly because no one read me (what did I know of link-baiting and comment-whoring then. I thought that if I built it, Google would make them come). So I left it to die a slow, stinky death.

The becoming.

Then this guy decided to turn his weekly Randeree-roundup email into a series of  blogposts. Suddenly, my blog was up on his link list, it was being read. I should've been elated right? Instead, I was horrified that friends and strangers would be reading the twaddle. I deleted everything, and put up a little spring-clean notice. It was time to decide what the blog should become. 

A space for me to write to keep the rust away.

And you know the rest

Personal observations. Me, without too much me. Rare bits of social commentary. Travel stories. Ad-jamming. Obscurities. Little things I do in Photoshop and InDesign. Fun with 419-ers. Monologues. Trying to be a bit clever and fancy with the words. Amusements. A real salmagundi, the phenotype of what it's like in my head sometimes.

Ennui eyes?

It could be due to my current frustrations career-wise, that I find this blogging thing iffy and blehsome of late. I'm easily annoyed at people who poo-poo ponitificate all over the place (and I've used that term in conversation with at least two friends so far). I'm irritated by the judgements I see cast, the idiocy that gets the approved sticker from quality control and an undiscerning audience. I can't stand the sheer amount of inane convoluted verbiage (and I use that word ironically) that's out there. 

I don't want to feed into this.

I wasn't always like this. This critical, this angsty.

So I guess, I'm saying I'm just tired and a little jaded.

And maybe I need to eat more soya beans.

Really giving (Blog Action Day 2008)

I give the man at the robot some of my loose change. He has albinism, and I feel sorry for him, imagining what it must be like to have grown up so, to have people glance at you curiously and quickly look away.

I give another man at the robot some of my loose change. He has an awful burn scar that's eaten up half of his head. I feel sorry for him, because I can see that he's 'not all there' and that it is probably hard for him to get work.

I give a child at the robot some of my loose change. He's holding his blind mother's hand and I feel sorry for him, knowing that he'll graduate from a school on the pavement, and know nothing beyond the cars that pass him, and the people who give him money.

I give a woman at the robot some of my loose change. Her child is tied papoose-style on her back, and I feel sorry for them. While her child is lulled to sleep by the lullaby of hooting taxis and worn brake pads, my baby niece has a tastefully decorated nursery and a colourful hanging mobile to stimulate her impressionable mind.

These are transactions right? I give them money, and they sell me a bit of windowlene for my soul, something I can use to polish off the guilt, rewards in the next world.

But while this sounds like a classic win-win, it's not a real solution, this swapping of something tangible for fickle abstracts.

I give, You take - not sustainable. Yet it has its place, when the space between us goes much much further than just my hand reaching out of my car window to drop some bread money in yours.

But the belly cries louder than the brain.

When your milestone for the day is to find enough food so that your children don't die from a slow starvation, education and development (and sustainability) become big useless words that can't be eaten.

And so poverty extends beyond the corporeal, it entrenches itself in the mind. And like weeds given a small chance, they flourish, forming the incubator ready for the birth of the demonchild - Crime (and that's subject for another Blog Action Day).

I come back to 'sustainability', that somewhat diluted word that's been draped and displayed by consultants and development specialists at many a conference and symposiusm.

Bring on the food grants and food gardens, feed families so that they can start moving up on Maslow's pyramid. But don't let it end at the stomach. 

Shift focus to the schools, training colleges and centres for entrepreneurs. 

But this need not be a government mandate solely. 

We can all somehow contribute and feed momentum into this.

I know of one way we can give so that, like the catchy jingle, it keeps on giving.

"Ibn ‘Umar reported: ‘Umar acquired land in Khaibar. He came to Allah’s Apostle (saw) and sought his advice in regard to it. He said: “Allah’s Messenger,  I have acquired land in Khaibar. I have never acquired more valuable for me than this, so what do you command I do with it?  Thereupon the Prophet (saw) said:  If you like, you may keep the corpus  intact and give its produce as Sadaqah. So ‘Umar gave it as Sadaqah declaring that the property must not be sold or inherited or given away as a gift. And ‘Umar devoted it to the poor, to the nearest of kin, to the emancipation of slaves, to wayfarers/guests,  and in the way of Allah.-Sahih Muslim"

According to the National Awqaf Foundation of South Africa, this hadith led to the establishment of the Waqf system. A Waqf can be anything from property to money to a food garden. The core endowment remains, while the earnings/produce/resources get distributed/utilised.

I believe this concept has universal and secular appeal. Goverments and NGOs work together to form central trusts where the endowments can be managed. Everyone gets involved in the solution.

What do you think? 

Pie in the sky or a slice for everyone?

The Ultimate Choose-Your-Own-Adventure storyboard

What's your story?


The inkblots were sourced via a google image search.

Do I have to pay extra for that?

Just a bit of lavatorial-silly-ha-ha. Phonecam-snapped while stuck in traffic.

Slogan reads; "WE WOULD LOVE TO HANDLE YOUR PACKAGE"