nauseatalgic (i like this word, i think i'll keep it)

I swear, I will not post any more of these nausea-talgics and time capsule things again.

---

from: capsule@forbes.net
to: saaleha@gmail.com
date: 17 November 2008 16:00
subject: greetings from 2005

Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved for a year in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit http://www.forbes.com/capsule

Here is the text of your message:

hey there dollie,

Hope this finds you well, smiling and happy.

are you married to your soul mate yet?

what's been happening since we last left?
right now, i'm sitting in Paula's home office, messing around on the internet when i really should be making headway with the investigative journalism conference logistics.

the currents in my life>
-*-the one that got away
-**-unclassifiable
-***-a distant friendly distraction
-****-the blind date (who i'll be chatting to this Friday)

i wonder which of these have stuck around.

I hope you've made some progress with your writing and all the big dreams that you've had at the tender age of 22 have translated into a little reality.

mwah and hugs

your past Self-

Saaleha

(how long is your hair now? and have you lost all the weight? more importantly-do you have your driving license and a car?)

--------------------

Hey there littler Saaleha,

Good Lord, weren't you the über bubblygum back then, with alphabet-case issues, and your head full of boys.

Thank the Almighty you don't 'dollie' and 'mwah' that often anymore. 

Well, lil ditzy Sal, none of those okes are of any weight to you now. 

But, you'll be pleased to hear that you have indeed married your soulmate, a boy from the 'ville, would you bloody believe it. Of the ghaam too, despite all your protestations that you'd never get with one of the People of The Cook Book.

You've also been with the company through three other Investigative Journalism conferences, and while you don't handle logistics anymore, you still mess around on the net when you should be making headway with other things. You're also thinking that a bit of R&D is as good as some R&R and may find yourself in a different kind of workspace next year.

You lost the weight. Then you gained the weight. Then you lost some more. Then you got that happy stomach and funtastic forearms and now you're planning on going back to gym. Tomorrow.

The hair is short. You've never had it so short. They even shaved off some from your neck. But that's also because you Bhamjee's lean towards the hirsute, rocking the bad moon rising and all.

Yes, you drive and you have a Chevy Aveo that your husband won't acknowledge because it isn't german-made. He also thinks it's a big blue shelf in the garage. You drove off to work one morning, with his spectacles, garage-card and cd flying off the roof and making violent kissie-kissie with the tar. He got most of his stuff back and had to cancel the card. You're kinda sure he still loves you.

Ah the writing. Let's not talk too much about the writing. You were more confident back then. But you have been accepted for a MA programme in 2010. We'll talk then.

And the big dreams, well, you're living one of them, and you're pretty much on track on the trek. You just need to be a bit more zenlike about things. 

Calm. 

Focused. 

Like Water.

You're  still clumsy. I know you didn't ask but you should know anyway.

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.

---

Day 4, 5 and 6

I was born on the fifth of Ramadaan. 

A friday much like yesterday, except for the faint chill of winter that threads through June air.

I always forget my islamic calendar birthday, and had to be reminded by my mother.

Once I hit fast#3, the days become one huge amalgamated mass of light and dark, with only the numbered chapters of the Quran and the tear-away days on our Ramadaan calendar providing any sense of where I really am.

However, this is not exclusive to Ramadaan. Just a few weeks ago, I misplaced a whole day. I have no idea what I did with Tuesday, August 26. Any information you might have regarding the missing hours can be forwarded via email to me.

The quiet still shrouds me, amplifying all those ugly, scraggly bits of character I need to do away with. If only a metaphysical Verimark existed, and I could pick up a nifty flaw and fluff-remover along with some Bio-slim (as this month of abstention does nothing for a body that's stubborn and clingy). 

The community website ramadaan.co.za features a really good series by Mariam Mahomed titled Ramadan Bootcamp. A post on forgiveness pulled a string in me, and I began to think on all those whom I had stomped on and the ones who muddied me.

I believe it's a feature of only-child syndrome to want to be loved by everyone all the time (other solo brats feel free to disagree). 

For a large part of my lived life thus far, the thought of someone not falling in step with that line refused to compute. And with that, I lived selfishly, doing what I had to do to get what I want, with little cognisance of the sharp words I'd utter or the disappointments I'd cause. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise..." were frequent and familiar. I'd give you a smiley face and some story of how I'm just so caught up in myself to be aware of what I've really done. All would be forgiven, because, well, I'm me, and everybody likes me.

But it happens, that one day, someone actually is not able to stomach you, and it sickens you to your bowels, because really that's never happened before (or maybe you were just so caught up in that little monarchy in your head, that you never noticed). That experience was enough to allow for a long-overdue growth-spurt of maturity. And you begin to think on who's really forgiven you. 

It would not make any sense to go back to every single person you've wronged for all your time on earth. What would you say that wouldn't rattle with empty? "Look, I've just had an epiphany. I've been really ugly to you. I know I asked for you to forgive me, but will you really forgive me, because I'm being sincere this time around."

You can't expect people to hand out their heartfelt maafs on your demand. They have a right to withold it for as long as their soul will allow. All you can offer is your honesty and prove by your subsequent actions that you truly are regretful. 

As for those for whom you penned great epics of wrath and rage for, it's all kind of laughable really. You would not be who you are today were it not for some reptile who forced you to walk on another path. While you need not cut out your heart for canapés, know that hate makes you brittle.

I visited my family in Azaadville today; with all their quirks and crazies, they keep me grounded. Reading salaah next to my grandmother, I found it hard to suppress a smile when she made her takbeer aloud and proceeded to recite her prayers just above that of an audible whisper. She's been praying like that for so long, I don't think He minds anymore. This is the woman who raised me, more mother than grandmother, I'm blessed to have three I can call Mummy (the recent addition of sg33k's). My grandmother laments my weight gain and pushes sweets on me, all in the same breath. The ways of the old sometimes grate on the young, but in that exercise of patience, lies great reward. 

My uncle had a tumour removed from his bladder two days ago. He's caught in that horrid limbo of waiting on his results. Some of you reading this may have met him, and for others who've not; know that he is a father, a husband, a son, a brother, an uncle. At a time where our prostrations are just that little bit more extended, and we're inwardly clamouring for the Almighty's approval, remember him, and all those who are not in their best of states, in your prayers.

Jelly and Ifthaar are inextricably linked for me. Whobbling wonderfulness, I lose at least twenty years whenever I'm shlurping some.

cremations and the blue-footed booby that arose thereof

Despite having done the following for most of my life; drinking things warmed in the microwave, eating kool-aid straight out of the packet, using a roll-on anti-perspirant daily, a couple of weeks ago, I managed to hit a quarter century.

However, it was a birthday spent mostly in bed (I wish I could do a giggley-wink-wink here, but I was merely whiney, miserable and sickly with flu et al.), followed by two weeks of corporeal rebellion.

How predictable that epiphanies would come bouncing along wearing their "Stick with the winners" badges as I approached the eve of ageing.

It's been a while since my last cigarette. Note 'last'. I can say this with an almost arrogant certainty, "I will never smoke again."

I did not find some aspect of God. A fractured personality did not suddenly develop moral fortitude and stage its coup while I slept. I just didn't want to any more.

There was something about my habit that lingered with each dissipating exhalation.
The blues and greys were the rising detritus of past demolitions. Ugly things that diminished me and built me up so long ago, they might as well have not existed. And yet I still held this thing to my lips.

I smoked because I wanted to see. I smoked because I wanted to feel. I smoked because people didn't expect me to.
I smoked because I liked it.

I have fond memories of burning tobacco.
There were conversations with good friends that stretched over sunsets, ashtrays and hours.
There were the liftclub cigarettes, the packs that belonged to everyone and no one, the ones we prayed over, hoping we didn't stink of the guilt when we got home to our families.
A solitary indulgence sometimes, I'd take to quiet heights with views of the city and myself; the roof of the archi building at Wits, Great Hall stairs, the balcony of my boss' house when we still had offices there.
I can still taste the menthol of a slow Craven A, the best after a meal at Muchacho's while driving down the Brixton Hill towards Auckland Park that one day in 2003.
There was the cigarette in my cousin's garden on the morning of my wedding; everything was damp from the rain, and so sharp, I could cut with the leaves.

My last cigarette was dispatched without any ritual; the end stubbed out among a billion other crutches in the communal ashtray of our office smoking room. I walked back to the office, without a word to anyone.

And that was it really.

I don't wish to glorify something that has the potential to harm you. I lived through my grandfather's struggle to breathe. A chain smoker, who had to stop because of a bullet that grazed his lung during a robbery he stumbled upon. After decades of reaching into his pocket for the next one, he quit just like that. The damage was already done. It was a few years after that, when he needed two oxygen machines, because he just couldn't do it on his own. Something so basic, done without active thought, and yet there he was, aware every second that those humming machines were the gatekeepers of his mortality.

I should've known better. And I did, but I smoked anyway. There's this quote from Gregory David Robert's Shantaram that I often pull out, something along the lines of, "I smoked in those days, because like all people who smoked, I wanted to die as much as I wanted to live."
And maybe I was caught up in something I didn't quite understand. But you get on in years, and if you're lucky, you learn from what you've lost and your world becomes that much easier to navigate.

This is not a 'come walk with me, I have seen the light' post.
People smoke for different reasons. People quit for different reasons. Some people never smoke at all. But one thing I do know, we all have our crutches. I know I'm still leaning on a few.

when good bloggers go Mac...

Your mother may have warned you about sudden blindness and hair-growth on your palms, but for the first time, I present you with the effects of excessive blogging:



When we're not winning Miss Congeniality contests, we also like to go a bit pop-art:



But we're really just a couple of normal freaks.



Thanks to Concerned MJ and the Ever-Great Waseem for a grand Saturday spent mall-ratting. Honourable mentions to Mak and Jauhara for dropping by. I hope to meet up with the rest of you KZN-lot the next time I'm tripping down.

I'd blog about the annual Autostyle Motorshow, but as was twittered, I'm all doof-doofed out. How some people can spend bazillions on car sound for three seconds of brain-liquidising bass-pumping is just beyond me.

However if y'all into the vroom-vroom, the husband did take lots of pretty pictures. He'll have them up on the site (www.autostyle.co.za) faster than you can say tyre-naaier.

Binte Eidris

There's a garage in my head bursting its bricks with bent Popoids, Scalextric racetracks to anywhere, Polaroid cameras, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines and books about The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Talk-Back Tracy and a magnetic chess set are stacked on top of the Dinosaur! magazines I'd collect years later (every fortnight) along with the photographs of leapfrogging at Zoo Lake Sunday picnics.

Eighteen years later and this is all I feel I have of Daddy; these the only things palpable; toys and gadgets, and a father seen through the curtains drawn by a five-year-old.
I can still scribble a stick-people nuclear family gathered in the garden of a house with mattress-spring smoke pouring out of the crooked chimney.

I wish I knew more of my father, beyond the crayon renderings of a child. Six-and-a-half-years with him and Daddy was this fantastic bearer of amazing things; a doll that repeated everything you said when you pressed a glowing red heart on its palm and a little sewing machine that really stitched. Daddy was fun and hugs and there and all things magic until he started getting sick.

And when he got sick, I got scared. Daddy was strange, quiet and convulsing on the floor of the kitchen at the house in Azaadville.
This is all I knew. Happy, then not. Things are that simple to a child.
And when he passed away on that Boxing Day in 1989, the world suddenly got a whole lot more complex.

Now, I'm scant months away from becoming a wife. I need Daddy now more than ever. But it's a funny sort of longing, seeing as I never knew the man behind the Daddy-mien. Any suggestion of what our interactions would've been like can only be nebulous. Would we have got along as adults? Would I have grown to share his ideals? What were his ideals? I know he never missed salaah, even towards his end he'd offer prayer five times daily from his bed, his eyelids closing in submission for each sajdah his body could not perform. I know he was easy-going and had an ear for every stranger's problems. I know he read Robert Ludlum. I know he loved gadgets. I know little things, but I'll never know a lot of things.

Verily we belong to God and to God we return.

passive agression and its practical application

Commune-living fast deflates the bubble of stoicism.
There lived amongst us one who seemed to consume anything that intersected with her marauding path. Some of it hearsay, most of it confirmed testimony; no consumable was safe.
I too had not escaped unscathed. But for many of the incidents, I did not feel the confrontation worth the effort.
Until I opened the grocery cupboard to find a measly trickle of concentrate pooling at the bottom of the Oros bottle, just enough to give a glass of water a pathetic jaundiced hue.
Still reeling from that discovery, I opened the fridge to find that all the margarine had been used, with nothing but feeble streaks clinging to the sides of the container.
This act of utter inconsideration and disgusting show of bad manners prompted me to action.

"Notes:
I assume it was the tokoloshe that used up all my Oros. I don't mind, since I'm sure the little fucker gets thirsty too.
However, it's only good etiquette to replace what you use or at the very least, inform the owner so that she may purchase more Oros, so that herself and other tokoloshes also have the pleasure of enjoying a refreshing drink.
Hugs,
Saaleha

Sidenote:
The Marvel of the Mysteriously Minimising Margarine. More tokoloshes at work?
Please forward your theories to me."

This exercise in passive aggression yielded a 50% return in that the margarine was replaced by one of the house-mates.
However, it was not the one with the locust bent who 'fessed up and the Oros issue was never resolved.
The marauder has since moved out.
Perhaps now the other housemates will consider it safe to liberate their groceries from their bedrooms.

the i-do to-do list

1. de-gelatine mindset.
2. un-selfish the markers of only-child syndrome.
3. manage time to time manage.
4. balance gaga with pragmatics.
5. re-discover my strengths.
6. acknowledge my short-comings.
7. re-look organised chaos (it's not going to be just my world any longer)

testosterone soap opera

It was that of every great narrative, there-in the dichotomies of human experience; good and evil, light and dark, adversity and triumph.


Stories where they threaded; protagonists on the precipice, the victorious who rise from the ashes of their seeming defeat, the underdog, the powerful and arrogant, brothers in arms.
All of whom were smacked by those moments of utter futility, where even the brief marriage of hand on hand could mean the difference between pride and its death, where to grasp the tensile rope for support is to turn the battle on its flank.

This is where gods are made and leveled.


There was the bitterness of being close enough to take Victory by her shoulder, only to have no witness of referee to your triumph. But as it is in the Great Plot that guides this through, Good will always prevail.
It is with every tale that there are those who are loved beyond fallibility and those who incite the fevered choirs of "You Suck! You Suck!" when they dare to displace heroes.
And as it is with all the stories of our times, there will always be the ebullient adulation of one or a mass who will erupt in the greatness of the moment when the right man holds up the leather and gold, for all to witness, "I am a champion!"

Almost there

boy reads blog.
girl meets boy.
a billion stars and the conversations between.
where do you see us in a few years?
right there, he said, pointing.

ever after

A harbinger.

Those singular moments of plural possibility...* **

...sometimes visit upon us when we're at our most unreceptive.

We shall refer to him as Significant-Geek or sg33k for brevity. This is what I call him when I'm trying to be cute or ironic. That or "Hey Pumpkin, you're Smashing!" Which is as emo as we get.

Sg33k's an interesting fella. Incredibly talented and hard-working, he's so focused it makes me sick. Because I'm as batty and scatter-thunk as they come. If I had a second's worth of his drive, I'd be on book four and a half.

Sg33k's also a challenge (not challenged. Although when he laughs sometimes, he has that special person look...) And I know that when he reads over that, he's going to say "bleh". That's just the kind of guy he is. A guy who says "bleh" a lot. And a guy who reads blogs. Sometimes this blog. That's kinda how we met. But I won't go into that. He's not into mush and sentiment, but he did get me my very own domain to which I gush, "You had me at www...".

So as I was saying...
singular moments blah blah
...sometimes visit upon us when we're at our most unreceptive.

'Quite smoking dammit', 'Get off facebook', 'You know, he just may be the One'; those missives hit you like hailstones in the highveld, chipping and denting, indelibly.

It only takes that moment for volumes within you to displace in eureka-fashion, sans, we hope, the running through the streets of Syracuse naked.

I've just had that moment.

And it's terrifying. Because even though the possibilities are vast and unmeasurable, it's like continental drift. The pieces can go anywhere, but back.

And now I've gone and blogged it.

There's no such thing as The One. But there is The One you choose.

And yeah, I guess I've chosen.

Bleh.




*alternative post title "the yin, the yang, and everything after" -credits to Bobby Dentist.
**oops... didn't mean to disable comments...

The blog of Small Things

*Been stewing for a while. and no, I'm not about to go buy a Kenny G music-to-slit-your-wrists-by Special Holiday edition. This is pure self-indulgence. Insert disclaimer of choice here.*

“Welcome to the pity party. So pleased you could join us. We have trays of masochism and punch so good you’ll cry. Should you be so inclined, a selection of razors and blades are laid out on a table near the DJ box, individually wrapped for your protection. Please enjoy yourselves, but not too much. Hope you have a wretched evening.”

I left the park last weekend. Packed the accumulation of a year into stackable cardboard boxes and took the highway to the East Rand, where I will now spend most of my weekends.

*mandatory benoni girl joke*

Q. What do you call a Benoni girl in a white tracksuit

A. The bride

Moving’s never easy. When you’re strapped for space, you suddenly realize just how much of all that you value is clutter. Books get heavier, cds stack up awkwardly, jackets bulk up, hard-drives hulk like museum dinosaurs.

One of those weekends too, where tragedy laid a pall over my family when my uncle and aunt met with an accident on their way to Port Shepstone. My aunt lost the baby she’d been carrying for the last 7 months. Both her and my uncle had to have one of their hands amputated. I’ve never been good with grief. Losing the people you care about around you makes you no expert. I never know what to say, except when I think of my own bereavement and all I can say is, “`it’s hard, and you will feel self-pity. You will bargain with your God, and you will be angry. That is what it was like for me until the resolve to accept sets in. You’ll become too tired to be angry. Its time to resign yourself, because ‘Why’ sometimes remains one of those questions to which the answers will not leave you satisfied.” I stopped asking ‘Why’ a long time ago.

--

I feel like-

I’m being strained through a colander.

Like I’m being forced to spread and separate, until I’m only reconstituted Saaleha.

With Work, with Home, with Study and Family issues, I’m being stretched.

I’m walking around; static mess, this field of scratchy unintelligible sound drowning out my clarity, slaving me to disorganization, inefficiency, procrastination.

My eyeballs are lubricated with seeded strawberry juice, the insides of my eyelids lined with a fine grade of sandpaper.

It doesn’t help that I haven’t been to gym in two/three months. The monthly bank debit glares at me disapprovingly, judging me, poking breadsticks at the extra-Saal.

I also had a pimple on my chin, so large it deserved a christening and its own facebook profile.

I was heavy inside. The kind of heavy that has you choked up. The kind of heavy that makes you a gut bag of lachrymal fluid filled up till the skin stretches and shimmies. One muscle twitch and you’re bleeding salt all over yourself.

And I sat there looking at my phone, scrolling through my phonebook and not knowing who to call.

So many friends. So many big-hearted, kind, beautiful people. So many I love, so many I would die for. Why, when I fill up with heavy, am I so uncomfortable and reluctant to ask them for their ears?

And when I do choose to share, I’m left feeling like someone sneaked up behind me and pulled down my pants.

--

ok. all done now.

Beeg deranged smile. :)

I didn't break it!

<----

I'm annoyed.
At Facebook.
No, its not the random poking. I quite like getting poked. Sometimes, I even poke back.
But that's a whole other blog.
I'm annoyed at Facebook for passing a groundless diagnosis about the state of my ticker.
If you're Facebooked - here's an exercise. Fiddle around with your relationship status on the edit profile page. Switch from 'single' to 'in a relationship' and back.
Pay careful attention to the little icon that appears next to your profile news-feed item.
If you're listed as single, the little heart goes achey-breaky.
Remove your single status for whatever reason, and suddenly, miraculously, Facebook channels the power of whatever Holy Spirit to 'heal' your shattered vital organ.
WTF is that? This warped normative construct of emotional balance, that if you're not with someone, you're obviously damaged.

5 things

As if to reiterate the incestuous cast/cast of the blogosphere posited here, I've being tagged by both dreamlife and Taz to list "5 things people don't know about you".

I've already quantified my weirdness.

But seriously, what don't you (you: the blog-hopper/the phantom commentateur/the one who googles hentai spaghetti) know about me? Are we (personal bloggers) not the over-revealers in this sphere that we'd otherwise avoid eye-contact with out there in the supra-http?
What more do you need to know?
Here I write my vices, the way my heart shatters and beats, the things I eat, the places I lose myself in, the people I can't digest, the dreams that are just that eyelash-breadth out of reach, mortal quirks that amuse and the consistencies of the polyfilla that holds me in.
I blog, ergo sum.

But despite this, I guess there'll always be 5 things more things you didn't know about me until now:

1. I can do cartwheels, and sometimes I spin down the office corridor on palms and feet when I work late.
2. I enjoy my vices.
3. I am as vain as I am insecure.
4. Once when I was around 9, I karaoked (sp?) to Jailhouse Rock in front of a crowd of strangers at the Rand Easter Show.
5. There are 7 things you'll never know about me. (because my mum reads this blog too)
   

I tag the fat kid who always gets picked last.

voices from behind

Composed: Wednesday, January 4, 2006,
Delivered: Monday, March 5, 2007

Dear FutureMe,
Unless he's in your life, he better be out of your head.

It's the feeling you get when you come across an old diary. You wonder what foreign tongue dribbled its ink in slashes and dashes here; the ascenders and descenders wiggling in sanskrit-samba on the page. You hold the paper within sticking distance of your contact lenses, as if mere proximity will decipher this marriage of rambling thought and tactility. And this for the next page and each page after.
Strange, the stranger one becomes as years tack off.
Invite a you from every year to a party, expect the room to spin with the eclectic meld of personality and characters.

And it was like this when an email from the past dropped into my gmail.
Saaleha circa early 2006.
Evidently, this chick had some issues at the time.
And when I read what "I" wrote back then, one of the voices in my head riposted, "eh?".
And the others guffawed when the memory-dam breached. "Oh. that."
(Embarrassed silence amplified in the little-monarchy-in-my-head)

And the fifty-cent epiphany:
The things we lose sleep over now, are the things we won't dream about in the future.
All will come to pass, even the issues that look set to fail us.

capsule roadtrip (mafikeng)

There’s something about a 300km stretch of tar.

Something about the road that pulls at you to start pulling together.

And that’s what happens on the N14 from Krugersdorp, all the way through to Ventersdorp and the R503 pass Coligny and Lichtenburg on the route to Mafikeng.

You pull together.

Just me, Duritz and De La Rocha (who screams in an oracle of irony, “Fuck the police,” just as I drive pass a hoot of speed cops on the roadside.)

Just me and a long way ahead

The Aveo chews kilometres at a rate she never dreamt when her rubber smacked the streets of the city. But out here, her voice breaks, and she croons like a lounge singer to her audience of enquiring sunflowers who could not tear their faces away.

And while Aveo is seduced by the way she’s been allowed to stretch out on this country route, the mind of a lone driver charts its own course, looking forward, back and where I’m at.

And on that road to Mafikeng, one realises that there’s lots to pull together.

So between the RATM and Counting Crows, old risks are weighed up against each other, their consequences lined up like dominoes arranged to form the face of Elvis.
A finger nudge, tik tik tik tik….
I count the number of times on one hand. I will nudge again.

The edges of some parts of the road looked like they’d been masticated by a tar-monster on a bulimic binge. It was only suddenly, when static washed out Duritz telling me that Richard Manuel is dead, and the rooibos-bred voice on the traffic station floods out my speakers, that I wonder if I entered an alternate dimension when I passed that roadside stall selling “Tamaties!!!*”
I drive on with my fingers melted securely to the steering wheel, generating reservations about the innocence of the seed bars I ate earlier. The traffic voice stops its loop about the backup on the N1 and the trouble with the traffic lights near Booysens. Duritz displaces the weird energy left behind by the strange intrusion, “And what brings me down now is love, Cause I can never get enough.” Sing on man. I pull together.

Priced to go...

I park at a garage rest stop where the signs proclaim the toilets to be clean. I order a cup of coffee at the take-away. “Percolated?” they ask which confirm my suspicions that I’d entered into the bizzarro space-time continuum at the padstaal* with the histrionic tomatoes.
“Yah, that’s fine,” I say, hearing the crackly jingle, “Ricoffy, fresh percolated taste” ricochet in my head disturbingly. I wonder when they’ll start calling it filter coffee in these parts.
What I receive tastes like ditchwater that’s been strained through two layers of dirty dishcloths and nuked for good measure.
So much for percolated I think as I empty the blasphemous abomination out onto the lawn. It’s so vile, I forget about any ants encountering the liquid and mutating.

And I’m on the road again, carding my thoughts, making neat piles of things as I pass a small dam, its water reflecting scatters of the sun, so pretty and sparkly.

The drive is longer still and I start thinking about the people in my life especially the one whose eyes crinkle up at the corners when they smile and the thought of whom leaves me with a warmth and tenderness I can not title.

I pull together until the sign ahead reads Mafikeng.
The woman at the guest house offers to take me to the halaal steers. Those questionable seed bars ingested earlier were about as substantial as eating clouds.
She can see I’m hungry enough to devour anything in an unladylike manner.

Every sentence out of her fastens to a close with a ribbon of “mm” or “aah”. The next day I find this to be a general idiosyncrasy of town’s inhabitants. It’s such a distinctive “mm” conveying agreement and consideration in just that one sound, Mmabatho*.

In the afternoon I pensivate my route back to the city.

There’s just something about a 300km stretch of tar.
It pulls at you to pull together.

---

*tomatoes
*roadside stall
*an area part of Mafikeng.

The Aveo gets its cherry popped

Before your mouth even begins to mould itself to prepare for the ejection of the phrase “women drivers!”, this was not my fault. My indicators were on, clearly doing its blinkety-blink-blink-tock-tock-tock. I was in the turning-lane when suddenly the truck next to me inched menacingly-portentously closer to my side mirror, and looked just about ready to process me into tinned-saaleha. Admittedly chick-panicked, I swerved and climbed onto the pavement, scraped my left-front tyre and twisted the rim. Fortunately, the rest of the car escaped unscathed. And thus was my first Incident With Car.

notes from the first 2K7 weekending

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Boxing Day (for Daddy)

One more year has passed
With him insubstantial,
Buried under now seventeen anniversaries of resignation,
And the mantra Allah Has A Plan
And there's a damn good reason why
I was given six nothing years
To know of the man

Who I see everyday
In my eyes
My nose of too much character
My dented chin.

One more year has passed,
With him substantial,
Buried under now seventeen anniversaries of definition,
And the slow steady work of
Walking through smoke of when
I was given six nebulous years
To know of the man

More with death than with life
And the spaces between
Who left me with Ludlums,
And a Bob Marley tie.