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.

On our way home

We are
creased commuters, squashed between mama and the silent man with the itch in his side. After-robot! Now we can nurse life back into a tingly leg.

We are
drivers with our windows open and the radio up, we'll chance metal against our temples because the air con's broke and it's a long wait at a dead robot at 5.30pm on a weekday.

We are
the man selling sunglasses at the corner. And the one selling mangoes. And the one selling clothes hangers. And the one selling a massive neon bouncing ball.

We are
the lady selling chances to numb your guilt.

We are
the one giving her money, thinking her child seems too old to be carried. "Look, his legs dangle past her knee," we mutter while fishing in the ashtray for the car-guard's change.

We are
taxi drivers, battered emperors of the tacky tarmac. Don't be so insolent as to believe you have any right of way over us.

We are
12 year olds at the roadside, wielding spark plugs for just one shot for glass to rain. Just one chance. One cellphone. This is the difference between today and tomorrow for me.

We are
the people who shoot them. Thieving bastards deserve it. Damn, he looked older when he smashed my windscreen.

----

You may have heard/read this in the news. Crime has made something ugly of us all, the victims and the perpetrators. See how the lines are blurring.

something from the archives

I sometimes find that a writers block can be eroded by going back to a random notation from the past. I'm hopping this one will unhinge something.

"Oblivious to the greater social ramification, Ling and Charles Curr, named their newborn 'Wan'."
-'Good Intentions' from Cheaper Than A Moleskine (Jan 13, 2006)

Do those who are that shade of moral-grey, also scare you more than barefaced thieves and murderers?

Jane and the magic kiddie-stop beans.

"There are indications from clinical studies that the mild antimineralocorticoid properties of the Magic Kiddie-Stop Beans result in a mild antimineralocorticoid effect," Jane carefully read aloud from the tome.
"Anti-mineral-o-corti-coid," she mouthed with all the slow-nooooo effect of a Zee TV daytime soapie rani lunging at her son who was about to drink the poisoned lassi meant for her mother-in-law.
Were they saying the properties of a substance that suppressed the secretion or opposed the action of mineralocoritcoids, would result in the suppression of the secretion or the opposition of the action of the mineralocorticoids?
Jane's left eyeball was suddenly spiked by a spear of blinding pain.
All she wanted to know was if the little beans would make her bloated, grumpy or suicidal.
Reading the little booklet that was packaged with the magic kiddie-stop beans made her feel bloated, grumpy and suicidal.
Dros Pirenone and Ethin Ylestradiol sounded like her eastern-european neighbours who led an alternative lifestyle and had just adopted a two-year old nepalese child.
Too many syllables. Too many acutes. Too many thromboembolic disorders. Too many scary sounding things she didn't understand that related to parts of her body that sounded rather important to have without the complications of itis, emia, oma, opia or esis.
Jane reached that point of confusion where the only thing that made pure and perfect sense was to go shopping for a new pair of shoes and a breastpump.

Party like it's 1429

You bought a pack of cigarettes on January 2, took one look at the treadmill queue on January 3 and haven't returned to gym since, you thought negative thoughts, you coveted your neighbour's wife, you ate carbs after 7pm for the last four days, you blogcrastinated on company time, you still haven't smsed/emailed your best friend from high school, you're still on facebook and just added your 256th food fight application, you're not reading more or eating less, you still fall asleep in front of the TV and wake up after four snooze cycles, you're not any more self-actualised than you were on December 31st last year.

But hey, yesterday (or today, so much for ummah unity) marks (-ed) the first day of the Islamic new year 1429. Resolution re-run.

And if you still stuff up, there's Chinese new year on February 7, Hola Mohalla on March 14, Nowruz around March 20, Bahá'í new year on March 21, Balinese new year on March 30, Assyrian new year on April 1, Punjabi new year on April 13, Thai, Nepali, Bengali, Tamil and Cambodian new year around mid-April, Rosh Hashanah after sunset on October 29 and Gujarati new year on October 29.

Here's to personal progress.

Eish, lyk is this a treatise on twang? Yah neh?

Do you find that you sometimes subconsciously emulate the tonal inflections of the people you speak to?

The phenomenon of 'twanging' (the word itself is a souf-efrikanism I believe) is best explained by the action of adapting your natural accent to mimic the one of the person you're addressing.
Twangers are derided by their critics for aspiring to sound more 'upper-class' than the dictates of their social status [squared] quo, with commentary running along the line of "Why you talking like a white?".

So far, thirteen years of democracy in SA is just a band-aid on the schismic gashes left by the idea that each racial group be left to develop along a path set by white supremacists. With that as our baggage and legacy, our fully heterogeneous society makes up a chorus so varied and rich, that South African Accent in itself is a misnomer. Our voices bump up against each other everywhere. It's this huge conversation, and here and there, we encounter the Twang.

I twang. And I only realised it after I listened to an interview I recorded. It was with gag-disbelief that I heard my voice outside itself, "Yawh, That's true."
I said "Yawh", the way most white south africans would.
Not "Yah", the way most indian south africans would.
It wasn't a conscious act. At no point, did I commit to thinking, "Ok, I'm interviewing the woman the Sunday Times billed as South Africa's richest. I can't show my 'jaat'* here."
And it's not just 'talking White'. I've since noticed I adjust not only to accent, but also nuance, pace and cadence of the people I speak to, more so when it's a situation that requires engagement and earnest concentration.

My mother twangs too, though she'll deny it. And when she speaks to elderly indian women, she lapses into indian-aunty talk (when every fourth word is 'shame', regardless of the positive nature of what's heard. E.g: Your husband bought a new car? Shame, that's so nice, shame. Your daughter's engagement is on Saturday, shame, you must be so happy.)
I've heard friends and work colleagues twang. And I do not believe that anyone of them do it with purposeful intent.

When we converse with someone face-to-face, we mirror their body-language. When they sit with their legs crossed, we tend towards crossing our legs. Apparently, we do this to create a sense of empathy with the other and establish common denominators to smooth the interaction.
Perhaps this holds true for twanging. Some subliminal notion that if we sound like the people we want to engage, we create commonality?

I welcome your thoughts.



*gujarati for caste or social standing

Of shivering loins and heaving dirtypillows...

S: how do u write sex though? dont want it to be all smarmy
S2: true
you dont want it porno
nor do you want it mush
or a weird combination i call "morno"
S: yeh...i hav no clue...all this writing...im outa my league
S2: which is kinda like mills and boons
S2: a mix of mush and porno, but where you're saying "more? noooooooooooo"

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...

Tuesday tchotchkes

- Getting the mobile and macbook acquainted. Involved some power-googling, breaking out the blue-teeth and a bit of gentle persuasion in the form of scripting but it's obvious to anyone who'll see, they are soul-mates.

- Sky-tripping, road-running, contiki yippie ka yay. The Munshi's and I will bring a lil mzansi into the european equation, come June 25. Details to follow as soon as that pesky schengen gets sorted.

- Crazy housemate got evicted. No, seriously, ta-na-nas, as in medically certified (that, and 'They' were out to get her). Too much manic paranoia and there were whispers she'd been stealing the cheese. Big misunderstanding since I was the thieving so and so. That fact aside, some arcane incident involving tupperware and fruit juice proved to be the proverbials that led to a massive showdown in the communal lounge. I kinda miss her though. I didn't mind her exploding teabags in the microwave and she had that endearing quality of batty that made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world.

- Kewl words I'm looping until they just sound stupid - kaizen, ukase, argot.

rush hour

the world comes together at twilight;
day seaming shut, sun bleeding into a pool at the edges, and the gentle assertiveness of the stars.
but the traffic makes us forget.
overcome by lightshows from the other amnesiacs, the mind spills over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.

Red robot, our evening star.
brake light, clutch, brake, stop, de-gear.

and for a moment, look out the window and the soul breathes.

and coughs.
your spirit-kin gripping dirty cardboard, calling out for God to bless you.
your wet-soap eyes slip through, you can't afford the awkward connection, and your pupils find a point just beyond the lazy bum who cracks your heart a little before you steel it once again.
and there, is the little girl.
with the whole wide world speeding around her, their minds spilling over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.
And she looks to the moon, her cardboard held high, a waving fan, brushing against the stars she is, jumping up, flapping wings, chasing at the fireflies above.
something almost pulls, come out and play.
almost.

Green robot.
clutch, accelerator.
Go.