Recent Events.

Spatchcock.

Rediscovering.

"Well that is that and this is this.
Will you tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed,
when the ocean met the sky.
You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye.
When the earth folded in on itself.
And said "Good luck, for your sake I hope heaven and hell
are really there, but I wouldn't hold my breath."
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?"

Memory #287

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When I was younger (early adolescence) we went on holiday with family friends of ours; a British family whose parents seemed to get on with my parents on an equally friendly level. It seems that you reach a certain point in your life when if you can find anyone you can stomach for more than an hour, they’re quite a keeper. If they come complete with a wife or husband that your partner can get along with and kids that your kids can play with, regardless of age difference; LOCK THEM DOWN. For any family friendly activity from here on out. Even as a child I could tell that these were friends that may come and go (our families’ have not kept contact in later years) but I believe that both parental camps were satisfied with what was being offered, with regards to good, decent, filler friendship.

My father came to know the husband/father from work (as you do). They were both in their respective air forces and the British family was living in South Africa for a little while as the father was working on a project of sorts with my Dad. … This could be false information. I didn’t really pay attention. You never do.

Both father/husbands were away for work at this particular point and so only the wives/mothers and their respective children were to go away together. There was already a peculiar mood to the whole situation. Going away with just my mother and brother was confusing for me. And then there was this family that I didn’t really know. This absence of fathers laid another level of strange on the already odd circumstances. Our family holidays 
had been, up to this point, pretty consistent place-wise and while we would visit extended family or friends at our holiday destination, it was usually only us. Further, my Dad had always been the ringleader of sorts of your little family unit and so in my mind we seemed at a bit of a loss. Fragmented. Looking back on it, it was as if I was experiencing a broken home. It was awkward.

The peculiarity was heightened as we went to St Lucia; a little estuary on the beach that I had never gone to and was never frequented as a holiday destination by anyone in our family. Compared to the breezy, sunny beaches and panoramic views of Jeffrey’s or St Francis Bay (our family holiday haunts), St Lucia was enclosed with lush vegetation and its air hung with humidity, coating the whole holiday with a distinct mugginess. We stayed at a queer little resort, confined within itself, centred around a murky public pool and an unimpressive clubhouse. It was flat. No perspective. The world was right in front of you. The muted green and white bungalows (cabins? chalets?) were non-descript and had pubic hair in the bleak drawers of the little, bunk-bed rooms.

My brother (two years older) and I of course got to hang out with their children; a sister at an age smack-bang in the middle of my brother and I, and her much younger brother, possibly four years or so. (It is still unbelievable to me how the brackets of age affect you so much at that age. They were important qualifying factors with regards to the structuring of life and were, to me, very often deal-breakers). The girl was tall and skinny, like an elongated British noodle, with her thick hair cut into a short, jutted bob. The boy was pale with blond, blond hair and large, round, frighteningly unstable blue eyes. They were nice. Family friends always are. We swam in the pool and ran around the dense resort, filling our days as children do. (I remember a particular modelling show we put on for ourselves, parading barefoot along the grass, flinging our sarongs this way and that.) I recall the feeling of being in a country not my own. One where vegetation is abundant and city life lies far, far away. One where a sense of danger exists outside the resort walls, the reason as to why we were cloistered inside. What I don’t remember is the beach, even though we’d always been a very beach orientated family. Apart from one blustery hour spent on a vague outline of a strand, the entire holiday seems to have occurred within the resort’s fences. And with only these children. I have faint smears of memory when it comes to our mothers, sitting by the pool in bikinis; laughing, looking beautiful and middle-aged. But that is all. They were unimportant at this time.

One day my brother and I went over to their - I have no recollection of their names - chalet(cottage? cabana?). It was bigger and better than ours. More modern. I put this down to them being British. I am sure we had gone before and definitely after, but this is my only memory of the house itself.

They made tea. It was an overcast day and the clouds hung low throughout the jungle-like resort, trapping us in its confines. The older sister was making it. I don’t recall how I had come to accept a cup as I had, to my knowledge, not had tea before this occasion. If I think logically, it seems difficult to get through twelve or so years of life without a cup of tea passing my lips, but if it had, it never left an impression.

-       Milk in before or after water?

-       Um…

I was at a loss. I didn’t know. I felt uneducated and ignorant in this clearly long-lived, very ordinary ritual for this family. I left her to make my tea however she recommended.

I don’t remember drinking the damn thing. A smear of a sip rests in my mind but no recollections of if I felt it was too hot, too sweet, too milky or just right. I guess there was a sense of comfort. But the rain outside (it was raining by this time) would have caused any warm drink consumed inside to taste doubly good. I guess it didn’t blow my mind. But it wasn’t unenjoyable.

The rest of the holiday is a complete and utter blur, with no other glimpses of what occurred in the time we were there. The peculiar atmosphere of it, however, is not uncommon in my life now. A mugginess. A certain anxiety.

Ever since I began drinking tea when I was about twenty years old, and then only properly when I was about twenty-two, this memory has begun realising itself in my mind. It was the day I started questioning why I was not a tea-drinker. These odd reservations crystallized in conversations with friends about Rooibos soaked dummies, milky Five Roses as a young child and tea in bed on cold school mornings. I would cock my head and smile knowingly, while actually furrowing with confusion. I had none of these memories.

And when and how I started drinking it, was also without occasion. It happened gradually, haltingly. I took a cup when offered but never made my own, never lusted after it. A strong memory of a male friend visiting me in high school and asking for tea has never left me, as he scolded me for not stirring it adequately. Of course I didn’t know what I was doing. An intelligent girl so unschooled in this domestic nicety. I still found tea average; sometimes good, sometimes nice, sometimes bland. I guess I just never really got it. But my affection grew with small instances; a cup with a lover in bed, milky tea made special the only way Lauren can, the burst of sweetness when dousing a slice of cake, and every spill that has accompanied every cup (I have never made it through one cup of tea without splashing it about, particularly on myself). My love grew with the morning-after cup, which inspired me to write this little sonnet to the Ceylon:

(to follow, I've lost it in a notebook)

And now, most mornings I wake up to tea and desire for it when upset, uncomfortable, cold or lonely. Or happy and content. Or bored. There is no prescribed time for my tea. Tea is what I offer and what I hope you will. What I readily choose over another alcoholic drink late at night. Stumble Drunk Home Tea. Stumble Home Drunk Tea. What I drink at home when I want to curb hunger pangs or when I want to settle my stomach or fall asleep. It is no longer black tea that drives me but green, camomile, earl grey… I have even been known to dabble with the red fruits.

And yet… And yet and yet. I think I could still give or take tea. I’ve gone without it before. After the first few days of habit wane I don’t think much of it. I feel almost treacherous saying this, as if I am betraying Almighty Tea, but it really is just a replacement isn’t it? For something I want and am not feeling at that moment; warmth, comfort, love, food. It has simply become a practice, a routine. And now since I’ve realised this I look at each cup with scrutiny. Do I really need you? I ask it quietly. Or are you but a vice? I peer into it. I critically swirl it around my mouth. I enjoy it. Or don’t. Is it but a matter of course; a consumerist habit fuelled by lovely images and stories of mothers and love? Is it dependency? Or is it a beautiful comfort that I should hold dear?

I really don’t know. And I don’t particularly care to. This story wasn’t about tea.

Graduation Day.

The Genius Of The Crowd

There is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average

human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it

and the best at hate are those who preach love

and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god

those who preach peace do not have peace

those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers

beware the knowers

beware those who are always reading books

beware those who either detest poverty

or are proud of it

beware those quick to praise

for they need praise in return

beware those who are quick to censor

they are afraid of what they do not know

beware those who seek constant crowds for

they are nothing alone

beware the average man the average woman

beware their love, their love is average

seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred

there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you

to kill anybody

not wanting solitude

not understanding solitude

they will attempt to destroy anything

that differs from their own

not being able to create art

they will not understand art

they will consider their failure as creators

only as a failure of the world

not being able to love fully

they will believe your love incomplete

and then they will hate you

and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond

like a knife

like a mountain

like a tiger

like hemlock

their finest art

Charles Bukowski

Salad Days.

"I would comb the dry hair of mangos."
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"We used to shit in the garden so the neighbours would think we had pets."
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"I'd find broken dolls in the bomb shelters our family homes surrounded."
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"In the summer we would make meat masks."

You Are Tired (I Think)

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.
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Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)
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You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.
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But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And I knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.
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Ah, come with me!
I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I’ll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.
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e.e. cummings

When in doubt, empty the magazine.

So my dad attended a little shindig last Friday, a reunion for anyone who has ever flown faster than the speed of sound. He explained it: "They're gona line 
up some nice Gripens on the runway and, and they're gona fly one or two right by us, like 
Bbbrrrrrrrrrr, and then we're all gona have a cocktail and TALK NONSENSE."
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INT. Runway Warehouse - LATE EVENING
Two middle-aged men are standing next to a plastic tablecloth
covered snacks table, facing outwards, holding half-empty 
(half-full?) highball glasses of flattening beer, warmed by 
grizzly man hands. One of the men every now and then chews a 
cocktail weiner on a stick from the nearby table.
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                             ONE MAN
                Remember that time we flew 
                faster than the speed of sound?

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS #328

They weren't not in love. It's just that the subject, as such, never really came up. 

It kind of loomed over them like a blissfully stupid cloud. The love cloud.

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                                      Guaranteed to rain on your brain, 

                                      'til you're moanin' with seratonin.

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Maybe what was happening was that they were in love with the idea of being in 

love. But that's still love, right? Instead of loving each other, they loved an idea. 

An aspiration. A wish. The other person was more or less of an afterthought. 

Somewhat expendable, or at the very least, interchangeable.

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                                    I love that you make me feel like I'm in love. 

                                    You, on the other hand, I can take or leave.

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Of course, it was just a matter of time before the truth of each other, the hard fact 

of their unique selfness, their one-of-a-kind snow-flakiness, became unavoidable.

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                                   I may be a broken toy, but you are a 

                                  Chinese crib factory that uses lead paint.

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Saying goodbye in these circumstances is always very awkward.

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                                 "I just had your car towed." 

                                "That's okay, those Flip videos I 

                                 said I erased are now on the internet."

Nelspruit Memories.

I like how this aerial view off a precipice in Nelspruit sort of looks like fake shrubbery on an architectural model. 
Or... something else.