Memory #864

I was at an ambiguous teen age when I fell in deep infatuation with a boy who worked at Look and Listen.

His name..? I forget. If I ever knew. Infatuation has no need for silly pleasantries.
aIt was a Sunday afternoon when my best friend and I decided to hang out at Rosebank mall. No boys to meet, no movies to watch, no real money to spend... After dawdling indifferently in clothing shops, slouching on steps stuffing movie popcorn into our mouths and slurping on a skinny with wings cappucino freezo from Seattle Coffee Shop (I felt adult when I bought coffee there, adult and COOL) we were at a bit of a loss. The entire day seemed a bit of a failure. We were unstimulated, we were bored, we were teen-aged. The last option was to go to Look & Listen, the cd shop of the moment and... Well no, that was the whole plan. 
aAnyway, so we looked. And then we brought our cds up to the counter to listen. Now, please note that my music taste far surpassed my impressionable (definition POP: 'easily influenced because of a lack of critical ability') teenage ears. By this time I was already serenading myself with the likes of... the likes of... I don't know what I'm more worried about; that the only bands that come to mind are The Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, or that I will actually remember what I was listening to at this stage and it will be even more embarrassing... Matchbox 20! That was one. And Our Lady Peace, another! Ah, the angst, the beauty, the shrill lead singer.
aYes. So I brought up an Our Lady Peace album to the counter, ready to subtly blow my nubile mind, when... Nice. Bloke. I thought. Doesn't matter what he looked like really, that wasn't the point. And I couldn't really describe him other than, really nice looking. He was just attractive. To me. And sort of un-South African, while being completely South African at the same time. He had a crudely fashioned white sticker stuck to the side of his face. "What's that?" "I'm Nelly!" (He was very, very white.)

I was instantly hooked. 

a"Oh, Our Lady Peace. Do you know that this one song is about the guitarist's father who got cancer blah blah blah..." (This fact was to be retold about 5 times in the upcoming week.) He liked my music. He had made me laugh 3.5 times in 2 minutes. And he had a sticker on his face clearly satirizing a hip-hop artist that I thought was a fool. I immediately began picturing us at the movies holding hands. (Naivete: check.) It only got better when I asked him for other music suggestions (I just may already have had all the albums I asked for) and we spoke about... Well, I can't do the conversation any justice due to my brittle memory. I just know that I laughed for about 15 straight minutes.

And then my Mom came to pick us up.

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For that next week I was besotted. I convinced my brother to take me to Rosebank the next Sunday for a 'bonding session'. I dressed nice. I remember the little flutterings in my chest when I saw that he was working again. I feigned nonchalance. I watched him from a distance, his face fading in and out behind cd racks and cardboard cut-outs. Him. Him. Him. Just being every sort of person I could ever want. I brought up another cd to the counter, trembling with nerves and excitement and the all-too-real fear that he may look at me with no recognition. I could stand indifference, even dislike. But that he may look at me as if for the first time, with the blankness of no recollection... I couldn't handle it. But he saw me and smiled. And I smiled. And I talked. And he talked. And I laughed (oh how I laughed!). And I pictured us at an amusement park sharing an ice cream (I was an imaginative kid).

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"I'm here with my brother. We do this all the time. Sort of a Sibling Sunday." Was what I was saying when my brother walked up to us with a smirk and dropped in, "Oh, so it's you who she's dragged me here to see." ... ... ... ...

This precise moment was when I decided not to ever let my brother in on secrets in the car ride over to anywhere.

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After an evening (of Counting Crows and the like) that would have been satisfying only to my unseasoned mind, I bid adieu, flushed with love and filled with deranged fantasies of how this could only move forward.

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I returned in two Sundays time (I think I was in a play or something), only to find his co-worker friend at the counter. (Side Bar: His friend, in his own right, was very cool, and probably, looking back, who I would be attracted to now.) Disappointedly placing my cd down on the counter, I asked where -blank- was. And with each word tearing my overblown infatuation into pieces he told me that he had quit and wasn't working there anymore. ... Deadening. Was how I would describe it. I damned bad timing and rued how yet another very possible prospect of love just... wasn't. I listened sadly to my shitty for as long as I thought I needed to, to get away with seeming as if that was what I was actually there to do, before I walked out, and out.

a

He stayed with me a couple of weeks. I kept hoping I would run into him on a roof at a house party in the middle of town or something, both escaping from the chaos of people, champagne in hand and hair whipping in the summer wind (romantic comedies fucked me up good, I get it). But I didn't. Obviously.

And so I forgot. As you do.

... A detail that I almost neglected to remember: When his friend told me he wasn't working there anymore he added, "He doesn't need the money anyway, he gets enough from his father." I remember furrowing my brow at this and not knowing how to respond. I didn't, and still don't, know if this friend was being uncomplimentary or jealous or simply honest. I blocked out this one sentence until about three minutes before I thought I was finished writing this. Maybe because I just didn't remember. Or maybe because I hated how it bent my perfectly formed image out of shape. I couldn't risk a chip in the already crumbling amphora of my infatuation. My like was fickle, my love even more so.

I'm afraid it still is.

Lost Memories.

 

 

 

 

I found this note in a little wire-bound yellow notepad last night. Even though it's obviously my handwriting I have no recollection of when I scribbled it; whether it was in the midst of sleep or not, whether I was referring to real or theoretical dreams, whether it was six or eighteen months ago. I like it though. I wonder what else I've forgotten.

A Memorable Weekend Quote.

"I had a jol in retrospect." 
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 - Heard outside Tokyo Star, Greenside.

Youtube Day.

I want the whole lot of Foals to live in my pants.

Flower of Love.

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Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was,
  Had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet,
  Seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
  Struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
  With some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the
  Kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
  That verdant and enamelled mead.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
  The suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as
  They opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned me,
  Who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
  On the threshold of the House of Fame

I had sat within that marble circle where the
  Oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
  Lyre's strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
  The poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,
  Clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtime, when the apple-blossoms
  Brush the burnished bosom of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
  Have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion,
  Known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
  We two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
  The canker-worm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
  Petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you- ah! what
  Else had I a boy to do,-
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the
  Silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
  When once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death a
  Silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for
  The blind-worm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of
  Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God's
  Own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
  Argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems,
  And, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle
  Better than the poet's crown of bays.

Oscar Wilde

Perception is Everything.

That's it really. Because it is.
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...
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I was making a cup of tea. There was a choice of mugs.
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None of my favourite mugs were there. In the cupboard. This upset me.
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There was one that I liked the shape of. But its rim was quite thick, making the actual mug-space seem quite little. 
And I wanted a big cup of tea. 
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It was also branded with the new logo of a coffee shop I used to work at. This gave me flutterings of anxiety 
in my chest. 
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I said to myself, "This cup is the same as other cups. I could probably pour out its water and fill another 'better' 
cup and it will be the same if not very similar volume. I could just not look at the logo. It is all my perception."
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But I got another cup out of the dishwasher and washed it. 
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Because perception is everything.

Fig Cheese Cracker.

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All you need really.

An Ode to Lack of Sleep Hangover Tea.

How pearly and unassuming your milky veneer
Which coats the clarity and sustenance I seek.
Your vapour whets my upper lip in anticipation
For your warm, charitable kiss.
The sweet leaves of your awakening embrace,
Dispel my murkiness
And allow for my continuation.

Goodbyes.

Reasons to like new friends:
1. You don't know much about them.
2. You can learn.

Thursday Loveliness. OR.

I just met a man at the traffic light trying to sell me a gigantic wooden clock and a USB. After some 'no thank yous', 
a couple declarations of love and the repeated use of a specific word I couldn't quite hear, I put down my music just 
in time for him to say, "Pretty, I love you. I know you don't love me but maybe one day you can give me your pussy." ... 
a
On that note, here's the greatest love song of all time.





Sheeeeeiit, it just tears me up. Maybe I'll swing by that traffic light on the way back home...

Memory #192

I must have been about ten years old. When I had a friend called Jessica Kim. 
a
A tiny Asian girl with long dark hair and a little mole near her mouth. Bad accent... She was new. We met at school. Both of us products of globalisation; picked up as if by pinched fingers from our home countries and plopped into an International school in the Middle East. I have no recollection of the beginning of the friendship, I was young. But flashes of house slippers and visiting her family's apartment in the city remain strong. I lived in a house in the suburbs and so the inner city (Haifa? Tel Aviv? I don't remember...) where she lived was daunting, made even more so when we went roller-skating down the streets. My childish mind questioned the safety. We may have had Burger King.
a
Bad accent... I remember her ruining my surprise farewell that another friend was throwing for me when I was leaving to come back 'home'. Sitting on the kitchen table struggling to speak with her on the landline, it was clearly obvious that the surprise was now anything but... But I kept up the facade for the people around me, never letting on that I knew and gasping wide-eyed when the streamers came down. But that's another day and another memory, involving my first horrific 'slow-dance' (of which my father took an equally horrific photograph). 
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One blurry day I was sitting in the back of one of my parent's cars, in the middle seat, squeezed inbetween a few of my friends, Jessica to my right. We were speaking of nothing... Maybe of the indiscreet party. I remember her face looking up at mine - she was so small that I picture myself as an ungraceful galumph next to her. She was asking a question, something along the lines of "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). She was squeezed right up against me and her one hand was on my back I guess and the other she was rubbing on my chest, in circular motions. Asking: "Hey, aren't you going? You are hey? Aren't you? Aren't you?" (bad accent). And I was staring back at her with restricted shocked eyes and a pinched mouth and I couldn't say a thing. All I could think was... "What are you doing touching my boobs???" 
a
Okay, so let's be honest, my 'boobs' were up in the air at this point. I was 10 for pete's sake. So boobs, baby nipples, air, whatever. But I was aware of my 'female' body. (My nipples tingle just writing about this.) I was aware that another female was touching it; touching me. And it was obvious that she was not aware of what she was doing, or how she was making me feel. It was... weird. Potentially uncomfortable, or embarrassing. But the little people-pleaser that I was just kept her mouth shut and went with it, letting Jessica's petite hand feel up my pre-pubescent chest, rubbing her hand over and over and over and all over while I stared, stunned, down at her face.
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...
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I have no idea where she is now; in the world, in her life. I can't even find her on facebook (gasp, no really). But if I ever do, I hope she'd be happy, or at least relatively amused, that she took me to second base for the first time. 
One love Kim.

Mayakovsky.

My heart’s aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

 I love you, I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing

like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

 Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest
oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Frank O'Hara

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.
a
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."
a


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.
a
                             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.

a

                                      Guaranteed to rain on your brain, 

                                      'til you're moanin' with seratonin.

a

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.