"I have good reason to be content, 
for thank God I can read and
 perhaps understand Shakespeare 
           to his depths." 

                               — John Keats

Currently reading...

A collection of shorts by a short story writer I absolutely adore: Alice Munro (1996).  In addition, to aid in overcoming this immovable writer's stonewall (writing fiction's hard labour, I say, it's a sweating and a bleeding) I'm reading contemporary writers influenced by Munro, too:  Diving Belles by Lucy Wood (2012); This Isn't The Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You by Jon McGregor (2012).
I'm also reading Anne Sexton's posthumously published book of uncollected poems titled Words for Dr. Y (1997).

"What do any of us really know about love?"

To the left is an image of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981), a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, a book I randomly took out at the library and probably one of my better literary decisions made in a while, and for forever.  
These stories are economic and minimal yet delivered with awesome kick.  The tales contained in this Carver collection are of love-like situations, fragile structures, and memories you don't often hear or read about in fiction—they aren't very happy, the characters aren't either...they're delicate, relatable—and you (the reader) are there to witness it all.  You're there to witness the emptiness and how ordinary things can fall apart, and what's left there of, too. You get to witness the shatterable human condition, the noise.  There also lingers a heavy scent of danger and desperation threaded throughout the collection, and the repetition of survival inherent in all its scenes. 
My own writing style, or ambition rather, is to successfully package a hearty story using minimal technique and tool—I've learned that this is quite tricky to master in prose writing. So reading (short) stories by authors who gets it right fills me with such literary/writerly pleasure, fervour, inspiration, also anxiety, despondency, and so on; but mostly with appreciation for the art, for the toiling, for the crafting, for the honing, for the pushing against the tide that blocks.  

There are a few standout stories I deep-in-my-heart know I noted in some notebook to remember and to post about here; thing is, I cannot find the note anywhere, which is wholly annoying.  Therefore, this post is both published and under construction.  Almost in likeness to Carver's own cunning way of ending his shorts: slight, and selfishly, abridged.

The Pen's Manifesto

For every writer; for every creator.  
For every "other" pen.

This right here is my contribution to online magazine ITCH, a journal of creative expression.  The theme for this edition's publication is Manifestos. I decided to write one for every writer, for every creator, who inks and creates and has a sense of "otherness" about them.  And I think, inherently, we all feel like we've been cast to the margins at times in our lives (I could say, 'except the white male', but then even among that group exists persons who are outlawed due to their sexuality, or even by way of very bane ideas, like tastes in clothing or partner—because that is the make-up of our society, sadly).  That is also the beauty of existentialism; we're all in this together, yet so differently.

For those of us who choose to express our experiences through art, this manifesto I lend to you as a reminder to write/create not only from the margins etching closer to the centre (of YOUR whole entire being), but to write about and for those who are often left voiceless on the outskirts, sitting on the edge of the page.

Link to ITCH magazine publication:  The Pen's Manifesto

Here are a couple of quotes from the editorial team:

Chris Thurman, on What Good are Manifestos?, "Manifestos, I have realised while reflecting on this bold new issue of Itch, are manifestations of courage and conviction in a world of cowardice and compromise. Manifestos are evidence that artists and writers are proud of what they do, what they feel, and yes, what they believe."

Karina Magdalena Szczurek, In Our Virtual Hands, quoted a line from my very own, "And here I am, part of the kind of online creativity platform Qra and I had once dreamt of, working with others, who in the words of Lucinda de Leeuw are not afraid to “uncover the blank page” (“The Pen’s Manifesto”)."

"Almost everything now written and published and praised in the United States as verse isn't verse, let alone poetry.  It's just typing, or word processing.  As a matter of fact, it's usually just glib rhetoric or social resentment.  Just as almost everything that we now call criticism is in fact just journalism."

Whoa.

              — Harold Bloom, Paris Review interview.

T S Eliot, in 1922, prophesied April's cruelness.

(This was typed up within a couple of weeks since the event hence the past tense in some parts.)

The thing about experiencing a car crash is how quick your thoughts are driven to the idea that your flesh will eventually turn to ash, or dust, or whatever.  The combination and collision of metal, tar road, a rainy day, and when the sun had not yet had its opportunity to adorn your day, is...it's quite the situation.  For the nights that follow you are reminded of a mortality that you long put to sleep.
Now, my accident was nothing close to a near-death experience, hell I got out of the car and circled it a few times, looking at my wristwatch, thinking absolutely nothing, but building up an inward frenzy.  I did not nearly die, no.  My only hindrance post was not being able to commence the asana practices I had recently picked up again.  But the event was my first (and prayerfully, last) serious car accident.  I've never spent nights in a hospital due to illness or some other misfortune, so this was my closest experience to chucking deuces to Life.

And when you're prone to depression most incidents are immensely and intensely experienced.  You quickly and easily find yourself on a path back to a solemness and a contemplative disposition.  The malady crawls into bed with you to remind you of other beloveds who experienced the same fate, fatally.

But you also learn to look at those who love and care for you with new eyes.  Your responses to the banal are less affected.  You remember to laugh more often.  To dance with abandon.  To love with expression.

Those who have lent me support have sown a bed of eternal gratitude in my heart for themselves; it's true: not everybody is capable of lending you their light when your hour has fallen to darkness.  I appreciate and I cherish, and I never forget.

I have always been a kind of fearless driver on the roads, I hope this incident (of April 3rd) will not tarnish that spirit; only time will tell (I'll be car-less for some time).  For now though, I'm just grateful to the Great I Am, for lessons, and for this water—my life.

True to Eliot's word—for the rest of April, and for every Wednesday since the day—my sailing has been anything but smooth.

South African short stories: and other excuses

Another draft I'm dragging to life.

I read these, not to completion, in January.  I am not about to make any excuses for why this is, (time is one of them) so, moving on.  The pic I took before knowing this fact; the plan was to read them and write up a read reflection, alas.  My memory from what I did manage to read is rather hazy, but I did note down a few thoughts on a couple of the short stories, to follow after the jump.  

From left to right: 16 Stories (an anthology of short stories by South African writers), edited by Clive Millar (1976); The Joke, Milan Kundera (1967); Six Fang Marks and a Tetanus Shot, Richard de Nooy, (2007).

Some of the shorts I enjoyed:

• Sponono, by Alan Paton

Sponono is a light-hearted read with an underlying sentiment.  In (mis)communication, loyalty and a kind of friendship that's more about a unspoken bond than it is about time-spent together.

• The Coffin, by Uys Krige

The Coffin is what short stories are generally made of.  No deep-running plot, but there is a story threaded that keeps you bound, the characters are peculiar, but they are portrayed in an endearing manner—the reader latches onto them.  Also, although the plot is thin, and maybe also shallow, there is an outcome already created that you must see through.

• Lost and Found, by Stuart Cloete

A story of moral fibre, I would say.  A young boy who acts out of love.  His close observers see him as "mad", which so often happens.  Society's tendency to name-call/shame as soon as someone veers outside of normativity never gets old.  The young fellow is drawn to animals, the "lost", and the vulnerable, and he seems to understand their language.  I like how Cloete only shows the boy's endearing seat of behaviour much later in the story, so you're left to read and guess through the obscurities.  Again, the dynamics of a short story was wonderfully met here.

• Through the Tunnel, by Doris Lessing

What a gripping story.  This is a moral-of-the-story type.  Its mild action keeps the reader's imagination reeling line after line.  Here the protagonist is a young boy, too, out at sea, out to discover not only the depths of the waters, but his own proficiency, endurance, fight and hunger to fulfill his agency of pride. Almost a coming-of-age story, yes! that's exactly it.

And of course, the anthology would not have been complete without a couple of Herman Charles Bosman shorts.  I enjoy reading his works.  I personally own a copy of Mafeking Road: and Other Stories (1947), an anthology of shorts romantically told by the imaginative and humorous Oom Schalk Lourens as narrator of the tales.

Some day, I will, definitely, return to that local library and borrow the Kundera and de Nooy  (grew up in SA, now lives in Amsterdam) reads, and I will return here, definitely, and boast about it.  I've been terrible at finishing books this year.  There are about a dozen of stop-starts to get through.  Will I ever...?