What a year! Took up a challenge and here I am, at the end of its first year. Another lesson to be taken, that things often seem intimidating but you'll never know your capacity for endurance and overcoming if you don't disregard the overwhelming and just decide to do.
Also, it's not December 31 so I've little reason for being overly sentimental about the year that has passed. I have yet to celebrate (which is not actually synonymous for partying in my case) my birthday for the year 2012. That will happen soon though, as soon as November third.
Yesterday I borrowed a bunch of sombre books from the library. I've never read Wuthering Heights, so that'll be crossed off of my to-read list. I also took out biographies on Sylvia Plath and The Bell Jar written by Plath herself. Spent a great deal over the weekend dissecting the literature of Toni Morrison and Shakespeare - literature has so much depth, I wish more people would take the time to engage with it at a level deeper than mere surface reading. I specifically looked at issues of gender and black identity. Fun. I'll blog more extensively upon these in the very near-near future.
:-)
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Three of my favourite things at the moment:
Anne Carson's The Glass Essay,
and subsequent literature of Lorna Dee Cervantes.
Love. Love. Love. Learning, inspire/d, women. Joy.
"For most of history,
Anonymous was a woman." ~ Virginia Woolf
Monday, 18 June 2012
The reflection of read things
Andrew Blackman, author of On the Holloway Road, invited bloggers to write a post for his blog in his absence, from all communication for a month, I responded and he reciprocated.
That's the long and short of it. He liked my contribution and it has since been published on his site, HERE.
My contribution is obviously going to be about what I love most, reading and books so, my read reflection for The God of Small Things, now one of my favourite novels, is up on Andrew's site. Check it out! Pick up the novel, too, you'll love it. It's an enchanting read, if, or rather, when you get the gist of Roy's beautiful and plentiful meanings in the narrative.
It was a lovely blogging experience, hoping to do more of 'em in the future!
That's the long and short of it. He liked my contribution and it has since been published on his site, HERE.
My contribution is obviously going to be about what I love most, reading and books so, my read reflection for The God of Small Things, now one of my favourite novels, is up on Andrew's site. Check it out! Pick up the novel, too, you'll love it. It's an enchanting read, if, or rather, when you get the gist of Roy's beautiful and plentiful meanings in the narrative.
It was a lovely blogging experience, hoping to do more of 'em in the future!
Monday, 11 June 2012
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Something enters your life.
And for the very brief moments you shared, you were drawn nearer to them
and yet, you never received near than enough to completely know them. Or to be taken by them. You decide to take each moment as it comes
until you reach the inevitable end as you notice things drawing to a
close. Most of the time, everything is
almost predictable; you are never blown away or shocked by the unravelling of
events. The time has come and it is
nearly over. And you don’t even see it
coming but they draw you so close, so intimately, that you’re holding your
breath because you’re in that deep. You
feel that all things are about to explode and implode heavily upon your life,
or moment. Then they release you. Suddenly.
Your mind and body remains shaken, as you try to make sense of it. As you try to weave together some sense. Attempting to tie together the bundles of loose
ends but your hands are shaking too much for any coherence to develop. You realise throughout that you’ve been given
the bare minimum of details only so that they could pull you hither, but you
knew nothing at all, really. In
hindsight, you realise now – it was just one chapter of enticement after the
other. That most of it was
fabricated. Delusions. And you were unknowingly invited to travel
along. Journeying in the mind of an
unstable person, someone who grew unsettled by an obsession that, if thought about
rationally, never derived from romantic love.
A concert of jazz and classical tunes to fool all the more, kept being
played, over and over. And now that it is all over, you’re yearning for so much more.
That’s exactly how I felt when I had finished reading South of
the Border, West of the Sun (1992; 1998) by Haruki Murakami. This passage sums up for me everything I feel
Murakami was getting at and hoping to achieve from the reader:
‘Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no
one there to see it. The rain strikes
the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don’t know it is raining’ (p. 213).
The novel reads average throughout, until the very last few
pages when the events that had happened begin to make sense, or you realise how
they don’t make any sense. When you’re
drawn into the protagonist's final thoughts, and you’re slowly developing a
sense of how his mind works, his untied thoughts. You read the final sentence and it hits that
all along you’ve missed out on the clues that came clothed in the writer’s
manner of foreshadowing tales that never reached closure; you don't catch on until the very end that the writer made nothing of them. The
loose ends. The untied beginnings. This could very well have
been Murakami’s precise intention.
This was my first Murakami read (thank you to Taahir, who was kind enough to lend me his copy - it's his favourite Murakami read, by the way). I am quite eager to measure this novel to his
other works. Riding on the feeling that swept across my
literary heart as I traced the ending lines, a fan could have been born.
Read this interview by the Paris Review with Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182, conducted by John Wray about his fiction and self, about the characters he writes and their positioning. It's all very telling. I read it after reading this novel and it is rather revealing, adds an appreciation of sorts for some of the things I happened to overlook. There's no mention of the novel I reflected on, though, but you get a pretty good idea of Murakami's literary work and style of writing. What is striking from this interview are the similarities in characteristics between the writer and his protagonist in South of the Border, West of the Sun. Enjoy!
Read this interview by the Paris Review with Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182, conducted by John Wray about his fiction and self, about the characters he writes and their positioning. It's all very telling. I read it after reading this novel and it is rather revealing, adds an appreciation of sorts for some of the things I happened to overlook. There's no mention of the novel I reflected on, though, but you get a pretty good idea of Murakami's literary work and style of writing. What is striking from this interview are the similarities in characteristics between the writer and his protagonist in South of the Border, West of the Sun. Enjoy!
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
So you want to be a writer
by Charles Bukowski
He starts off by saying, "if it doesn't come bursting out of you/ in spite of everything,/ don't do it."
It reads like a warning label, almost. Cautions you against diving into the writing world. The world of a writer who writes about things that don't exist, who may or may not be penning her own life onto pages for innumerable strangers to feed off of. That world. Where you have to tap into your innermost to create something that you will probably edit a million times over and still not be satisfied with its outcome; you eventually abandon the piece of work because you could not deal with it any longer. The world where you doubt your capabilities most of the time and no matter the amount of compliments you receive regarding your prized pieces of writing you're still not fully convinced that you're 'cut out for this'.
It's not the easiest walk-in-the-park vocation to be consumed by. I always maintain, whether to askers or to myself, that if I had a choice I would not write. I do it because I don't know how not to.
So, "unless being still would/ drive you to madness or/ suicide or murder,/ don't do it./ unless the sun inside you is/ burning your gut,/ don't do it..."
He starts off by saying, "if it doesn't come bursting out of you/ in spite of everything,/ don't do it."
It reads like a warning label, almost. Cautions you against diving into the writing world. The world of a writer who writes about things that don't exist, who may or may not be penning her own life onto pages for innumerable strangers to feed off of. That world. Where you have to tap into your innermost to create something that you will probably edit a million times over and still not be satisfied with its outcome; you eventually abandon the piece of work because you could not deal with it any longer. The world where you doubt your capabilities most of the time and no matter the amount of compliments you receive regarding your prized pieces of writing you're still not fully convinced that you're 'cut out for this'.
It's not the easiest walk-in-the-park vocation to be consumed by. I always maintain, whether to askers or to myself, that if I had a choice I would not write. I do it because I don't know how not to.
So, "unless being still would/ drive you to madness or/ suicide or murder,/ don't do it./ unless the sun inside you is/ burning your gut,/ don't do it..."
Saturday, 12 May 2012
Questions for Inequality
Questions for Inequality
The above link takes you to a submission, written by me, for the online magazine, ITCH.
Read and enjoy, comment if you must.
The above link takes you to a submission, written by me, for the online magazine, ITCH.
Read and enjoy, comment if you must.
Friday, 4 May 2012
White Lies
by Stanley Motjuwadi
Humming Maggie.
Hit by a virus,
the Caucasian Craze,
sees horror in the mirror
Frantic and dutifully
she corrodes a sooty face,
braves a hot iron comb
on a shrubby scalp;
I look on.
I know pure white,
a white heart,
white, peace, ultimate virtue.
Angels are white
angels are good.
Me I'm black,
black as sin stuffed in a snuff-tin.
Lord, I've been brainwhitewashed.
But for Heaven's sake God,
just let me be,
Under cover of my darkness
let me crusade.
On a canvas stretching from here
to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha,
I'll daub a white devil.
Let me teach black truth.
That dark clouds aren't a sign of doom,
but hope. Rain. Life.
Let me unleash a volty bolt of black,
so all around may know right.
________
Upon reading this piece line for line it's easy to detect the essence of what the writer is conveying. Simply put: that he wants to re-teach the old stereotype that has been ingrained in our minds and hearts that white is pure and black represents everything that is not. Lies poignantly built up to the crescendo of declaration of truth in the last stanza.
He entices us with a story-telling verse in the first stanza, of Maggie. We all know Maggie. She's the woman who has taken to assimilating to the white aesthetic that has become the universal imprint for what belies beauty. Maggie doesn't enjoy her own image, as she sits before the mirror - she prods and adds to her to change that image, to look more (white) beautiful. Stanley does little as this is played out before him, except look on in disdain and perhaps, overcome with an unplaced sadness that will not allow him to say anything.
Stanley speaks for every one who is cast under this shadow of their blackness being ill-defined; who wishes to restore the dignity of a self that fights the daily battles of notions that are hard to die, to re-establish all of that and for the world to see the beauty that lies in darkness too. To tame, re-take, and to reclaim it all.
F. Fanon makes mention of this conditioned evil too, in Black Skin, White Masks (I mention this book a wholly lot, because it is the truth) - it's that inherent burden that every black-wearing skinned person wants to shed. Trayvon Martin took this burden to his grave with a shot to the chest, only because he was wearing black skin. So, maybe we should add Florida to Stanley's line of, "On a canvas stretching from here to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha, I'll daub a white devil." And, some would argue Spar too, in the light of Jessica Leandra's racial slurs spewed at a black-skinned man who might not have been "a sign of doom" as she had feared.
This is a brief, surface interpretation of this text and I'm hoping that with the traces I've just laid out you will re-read the poem and make your own findings and draw ideological nuances from it - and perhaps, share them with me.
Humming Maggie.
Hit by a virus,
the Caucasian Craze,
sees horror in the mirror
Frantic and dutifully
she corrodes a sooty face,
braves a hot iron comb
on a shrubby scalp;
I look on.
I know pure white,
a white heart,
white, peace, ultimate virtue.
Angels are white
angels are good.
Me I'm black,
black as sin stuffed in a snuff-tin.
Lord, I've been brainwhitewashed.
But for Heaven's sake God,
just let me be,
Under cover of my darkness
let me crusade.
On a canvas stretching from here
to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha,
I'll daub a white devil.
Let me teach black truth.
That dark clouds aren't a sign of doom,
but hope. Rain. Life.
Let me unleash a volty bolt of black,
so all around may know right.
________
Upon reading this piece line for line it's easy to detect the essence of what the writer is conveying. Simply put: that he wants to re-teach the old stereotype that has been ingrained in our minds and hearts that white is pure and black represents everything that is not. Lies poignantly built up to the crescendo of declaration of truth in the last stanza.
He entices us with a story-telling verse in the first stanza, of Maggie. We all know Maggie. She's the woman who has taken to assimilating to the white aesthetic that has become the universal imprint for what belies beauty. Maggie doesn't enjoy her own image, as she sits before the mirror - she prods and adds to her to change that image, to look more (white) beautiful. Stanley does little as this is played out before him, except look on in disdain and perhaps, overcome with an unplaced sadness that will not allow him to say anything.
Stanley speaks for every one who is cast under this shadow of their blackness being ill-defined; who wishes to restore the dignity of a self that fights the daily battles of notions that are hard to die, to re-establish all of that and for the world to see the beauty that lies in darkness too. To tame, re-take, and to reclaim it all.
F. Fanon makes mention of this conditioned evil too, in Black Skin, White Masks (I mention this book a wholly lot, because it is the truth) - it's that inherent burden that every black-wearing skinned person wants to shed. Trayvon Martin took this burden to his grave with a shot to the chest, only because he was wearing black skin. So, maybe we should add Florida to Stanley's line of, "On a canvas stretching from here to Dallas, Memphis, Belsen, Golgotha, I'll daub a white devil." And, some would argue Spar too, in the light of Jessica Leandra's racial slurs spewed at a black-skinned man who might not have been "a sign of doom" as she had feared.
This is a brief, surface interpretation of this text and I'm hoping that with the traces I've just laid out you will re-read the poem and make your own findings and draw ideological nuances from it - and perhaps, share them with me.
Monday, 16 April 2012
Wrote this to 'Fix You' by Coldplay
Just played the song and pen and paper happened...
When you try your best, but that smile summoned from a deep-seated place within is all that lays on the surface. You're wearing your best one, dressed up and ready to cheer up those around you with what's really an empty, feigned happiness. When your eyes are stinging from shedding so many tears and from your soul receiving no rest. Because, even when you're tired, so tired that all you want to do is lay your head down, to sleep, but you can not. And your body pains and it's weary, your mind is lacklustre and your speech is forced.
You need fixing.
When you don't want to tread around your words and build up metaphors to get them to comprehend your plight and you choose to rather be quiet, to be still about it. Anxiety is building up in your bloodstream, like iron, and you feel it in climbing into your bones, it's escalating, reaching a crescendo until it collapses to a melancholic state - something they'd call 'depression' in some far away clinic. You've learnt to deal with these bouts of overwhelming underwhelming feelings, they're familiar to you now, natural, they're all part of the package.
When you've got the support of dear loved ones but still, in the trenches of your being, it's not enough.
You need fixing.
When new friends awkwardly fumble about when they learn about your humanness. When they assume a tequila shot or many lined up will resolve the unsettling in the pit of your stomach and all you can do is spew its contents from your gut when it fails, again, to solve anything. When you know about and know of others, many others, who are walking the same, winding and dusty roads as you - you realise the prevalence of it all. What has befallen us? Tears stain our faces. It could be worse. We could be apathetic.
When you try your best, but that smile summoned from a deep-seated place within is all that lays on the surface. You're wearing your best one, dressed up and ready to cheer up those around you with what's really an empty, feigned happiness. When your eyes are stinging from shedding so many tears and from your soul receiving no rest. Because, even when you're tired, so tired that all you want to do is lay your head down, to sleep, but you can not. And your body pains and it's weary, your mind is lacklustre and your speech is forced.
You need fixing.
When you don't want to tread around your words and build up metaphors to get them to comprehend your plight and you choose to rather be quiet, to be still about it. Anxiety is building up in your bloodstream, like iron, and you feel it in climbing into your bones, it's escalating, reaching a crescendo until it collapses to a melancholic state - something they'd call 'depression' in some far away clinic. You've learnt to deal with these bouts of overwhelming underwhelming feelings, they're familiar to you now, natural, they're all part of the package.
When you've got the support of dear loved ones but still, in the trenches of your being, it's not enough.
You need fixing.
When new friends awkwardly fumble about when they learn about your humanness. When they assume a tequila shot or many lined up will resolve the unsettling in the pit of your stomach and all you can do is spew its contents from your gut when it fails, again, to solve anything. When you know about and know of others, many others, who are walking the same, winding and dusty roads as you - you realise the prevalence of it all. What has befallen us? Tears stain our faces. It could be worse. We could be apathetic.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
"Nothing common...
about this mountain and concrete agreement/ You seem to know me well, but not well enough to dodge the awkwardness/ I sometimes find myself scratching at dirty surfaces to understand this a little better/ But then I always come up with my palms empty and desolate and/ More vagueness than before because then, it seems we've started all over again/ Back to when we knew nothing at all about life and the philosophies beckoning at our front doors..."
---Poetry, from a recent free-write
---Poetry, from a recent free-write
Wisdom via The Richest Man in Babylon
A quaint little book, words largely printed and thinly bound – easy to read, quick to finish but vast amounts of lessons to be absorbed. This is not a review courtesy of me and my blog, just my willingness to impart with you some of the very basic insight from George Clason's work.
I've been passing along the book to the people in my life, whether they would away with more sense and purpose for their cents, is their doing. I'm always eager to share what I learn and know – Maya Angelou says, "What you learn, teach" – but there's only so much I can do on my part.
Continue reading and prosper your thinking:
I've been passing along the book to the people in my life, whether they would away with more sense and purpose for their cents, is their doing. I'm always eager to share what I learn and know – Maya Angelou says, "What you learn, teach" – but there's only so much I can do on my part.
Continue reading and prosper your thinking:
- Firstly, know that wealth is a power that – many things are possible with it.
- Save and let your savings earn more for you – this is a very basic rule, overlooked especially with my generation where instant gratification is king.
- You will fail at business endeavours & investments but try again. Remain determined.
- Something that encompasses all aspects of life: opportunity wastes no time – set a task and see it through.
- Again. Save.
- Build your own fortune.
- If that latest gadget is not an emergency, put if off until you're able to afford it without having to incur debt.
- Budget. I'm a dismal failure at this.
- Put more interest in your work, concentrate upon your task and put more persistence in your efforts. And that goes for whatever you do.
- You won't get rich by gambling.
- When lending/borrowing ascertain that the purpose is wise and the ambition honourable.
- Better a little caution than a great regret. Another of my miserable failures, I'm prone to impulsive extravagance which I later rue but this is not about me, so...
- Your debts are your enemies, pay them don't avoid them.
If that's not possible I hope that what I have summarised here will be to your benefit somewhat.
Take care...
of your money.
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