He is going to be a dad

He told me he is going to be a dad. I paced the room in silence. I paced the room in silent excitement. I paced the room, all the while going backwards to a time when we were kids. Now he is having one and all I can say as the emotion spills over both sides of the phone is that I am going to be an aunt. He is not of my blood, but he might as well be. I love a child that is still in the making. Funny how that works.

The bravest writer I know

I ran into a lady I had once taken a writing class with. Before even a hello, she asked me what I thought of the shades of grey poo, need I say more. I did add that I am jealous, perhaps a step above jealous. The kind of jealous that looks down on jealous, with its nose up high. A horrible color on me but there I was completely cloaked in it wearing it without shame. In her case, it would not have killed her to have someone edit the sex book before filling her money room. I am pretty sure her money room is bigger than Scrooge McDuck’s. While she swims around deep in her coins in her money room as all rich folk do, a school of writers who clearly missed this class, lie awake choking on her inability to use the language correctly as well as her repetition and and and and.

I read through another writers work and it just doesn’t sit well with me. Perhaps it just doesn’t resonate. At this point I realize that he is brave. He strips off his clothes everyday to show the world more than most and invites a criticism that only creative’s attract.

Tell me my math is off I will open a book. Tell me that which I awaken everyday to do and the only thing that brings me happiness is terrible, well then you might as well rip from my body my beating heart and eat it.  Not that constructive criticism isn’t welcomed. We are all learning and growing, this is important. Also lets not forget our tastes differ and I am okay with that. I am not the kid on the playground who is going to try make best friends with all the others kids. But respect the fragility of the creative soul, give it air to breath. Every person who wakes up everyday to create in my books is brave as hell.

This land is my land, this land is also my land

Can I cook? The answer is an easy no.
Do I have patience? This answer is situation dependent.

It has been brought to my attention time and again that these two go hand in hand. They are like the fat kids that always lapse to the back of the race and have to fight each other for second last place. Or for the last twizzler.

By that definition alone it is confirmed that I don’t like candy or running and that I may or may not be competitive. Anyways enough introspection.

So as I was saying I hate hate hate cooking. The one I shared the womb with received that gene along with patience in every situation except when in traffic and dealing with asshole drivers. it is not that I am incapable, I can list some damn good dishes that I make better than most. Unfortunately I have very few witnesses as the desire to create strikes me once every blue moon, and it must be said that these creations are no longer limited to eggs on toast (it is possible to fuck this up)

A man told me today how his wife the caterer lives, breaths and eats food. I told him about the fire that burns in my soul to fight such urges to make anything. I like guys who can cook. I also like guys who can wash up and clean my house. Just kidding.

I just wanted to mention that I hate cooking and if I have to choose two things to forever live on I don’t have to think too hard.

Whiskey and salmon. I would be a healthy drunk it seems.
Game over.

5 steps forward

I have for some time wanted to write this piece.

Last night I was tossing and turning with this on my mind, unable to sleep until I heeded the call of my computer to write what I have felt for awhile needs to be written.

I do have political blood running through my veins but I do mostly like to avoid politics, yet this piece has been like a child constantly pulling at my jersey crying out to be heard.

I am aware no country is without their issues I feel strongly about implementing certain systems that would send the country in a positive direction. No system that moves away from the long standing policies that are currently in place should be implemented without a period of change.

With any change a period of unrest is brought along side. So when change is necessary this should be taken into consideration.

Social budgets – population control

As far as I can see 15.3 million people registered for social grants this year alone. Children make up 10.3 million of this number. Social grants are vital as they ensure the survival of the poorer population. The grant hands out the amount of R260 per month for every child under the age of 15 years.

My issue is that this does not discourage families from having fewer children not to mention that this number is ridiculous.

What should be done is that families should be offered a larger amount for their first child and a smaller amount for their second and nothing passed their second. People need to be discouraged from having more children. This is not a system which should change automatically as it would not work. It should be given a date to be implemented. After that date new families applying for the grants should be listed under this new system and old families will continue on the old system eventually filtering out the old system. With the new system families will be given more money and because they will be discouraged from having less children, we will be moving forward in a more positive manner and actually be able through population control best support our people.

Accountability for fraud – Looking after current population

38 municipalities were under investigation for fraud after the service delivery issues were brought to light. We currently live in a country where we do not have any trust for our leaders. We know too well when it comes to money their actions are not in the best interests of the people. It is essential in order to best look after the current population, that their exists accountability for fraud.

Education of women and harsher punishment for rape and child abuse – protecting the future population.

It has been proven that in countries that women are educated they have chosen to make better decisions for themselves, one of them is to take control over their bodies, we often find in these instances that they chose to have children later in life.

Our country needs to take violence of women and children more seriously and instead of having a day too acknowledge these things and allowing rape and crisis centres to close, priority is given to ensure the survival of such places. It is also important that these crimes are given the harshest of punishment.

I constantly am angered that our president who has multiple wives has through his behavior, teaches a country that women are second rate citizens. His actions have no other outcome and its hard to change a perception that comes right from upstairs.

Reinstating the death penalty – Getting rid of the rotten population

Very importantly if not just as a deterrent, the death penalty needs to be reinstated. I am sick of those defending its absence with a heavy conscious thinking of those that might be wrongly put to death. Surely we need to consider the greater good. We have a large amount of the population who are rotten to the core and yes it is possible through corrective measures that some of these people may be rehabilitated through prison programs yet there are some crimes that show such darkness I find it hard to believe light could or ever has existed in that person. For example the rape of a baby.

Okay I have gotten that off my chest, take it, leave it……

There is something in the water

Her body language was quite revealing. Her face an open book. The story it told did not impress, it intended only to pour more petrol on the open fire.

Leaning towards the seated women, her face wrinkled around her sharp tongue. Her shoulders hunched inward. Her dress stuck to her elderly body. The smell of disgust leaking out of her every pore.

Words bouncing between them, back and forth. Unable to add my own as involvement in such a situation is not my tea of choice.

The other lady, being looked down on in more then one way. Curls bouncing with a shaking head and square glasses balancing on the tip of her nose she proceeded to hold her sword up high and not let her blood be split. But she might as well be holding her hands up as the sword sits at her throat. She knows this movie, she has clearly watched it a million times.

I held my wallet in my hand as my turn to pay came.

When asked what had happened the cashier explained she was from Zimbabwe. Not something her paler black skin could hide. I look up just in time to catch the zulu lady, with a handful of threats limping out the door.

Xenophobia is not just a word, it lives and breaths

Dreaming of a seat by the fireplace

I opened the door and announced to the room ‘Cut my hair right off and give me a tattoo’

The man with the scissors looked up as well as his client. They looked at each other and then back at me ‘Who did you break up with’

Once when the moon is blue, we meet someone or go somewhere and we feel altered, sometimes we don’t even know why or how but we know we are different in some way.

The world is interesting in that some things are so clear they could easily have been predicted but we move in the chosen direction hoping we might be mistaken all the while knowing we cannot be.

I didn’t get my hair chopped off back in that little shop in Dublin but I did return with a tattoo on my wrist. I guess it made how I felt about being where I was more real and more permanent and no longer something that just lives inside of me, but something that now lives on me. Isn’t that one of the reasons we change our appearance to bring what we feel on the inside to the outside.

No more tattoos for now and I won’t be cutting my hair either. For now I’m going in search of my cabin in the woods for some fresh air, with a pile of books the size of my house. There I will see in the distance people chasing butterflies and I will be happy to see them happy, I might even laugh at their hippy clothes.

The god wall

There are many things that leave the human mind in a state of blank but two in particular have always intrigued me.

One- what I like to call the god wall. Use your imagination to take you backwards to a world before the one you know. You will use what ever you allow yourself to lean on. If you are religious the countless stories of the bible taking you back to the garden. A person of science, you will follow a different road backwards. Yet try think about how it all came to be. What have you got, exactly- nothing.

I remember a night or two before a philosophy class I sat down to write a theory. I am a lady of many theories. I get to class and what are we studying that day- a more complex and in depth version of what it was I had written. It could be said that I tapped into a universal consciousness. What is that, you ask. Imagine a great mass of water that we all sip from. A collection of knowledge that every mind has the ability to access, subconsciously of course.

Based on the idea of the above, the second mind ‘blanker’ which keeps me up at night.
-We stand on the shoulders of giants-
This is a well know saying in philosophy. It refers to the ‘fact’ that original thinking does not exist. One cannot think of something that has not already been thought of. I heard recently that when writing do not try be original, take any idea even if it has been done before and make it your own. I suppose in a way making something your own is original but I would like to come up with an idea never before thought up.

These are questions and issues to which there are no answers or solutions.

Next to the roses

She said she owed nothing and owned nothing until she was 36.

I see her once a year, I am in good health. You put the pieces together as to where I am.

I am telling her about my adventure last year. She tells how over twenty years ago she traveled the world. I don’t know a single person who would not like to try on a pair of her shoes.

I know someone who was still saving their money well into their 90ies. I was young, but still the thought crossed my mind as to what exactly they were saving for.

Sometimes we spend too much of our lives thinking about our lives and preparing for our lives that the fact that we are currently in our lives escapes us.

End of a circle

‘What are you congratulating me for’ she asked me. ‘Well, you are soon to be married’ I said surprised by her very matter of a fact tone. The power of the mighty drink to pull from us our darkest truths was revealed in her response –

‘Dooms day is how I see it’

I know a lady who married her husband after going on one date with him. She loves the story of how her brother told her he thought she was more intelligent than that. They were married for over 40 years, before he died. Happily most of the time, although marriage is not easy she told me.

Sometimes we just know, and in the same breath sometimes we just don’t- these are the times we should be listening to ourselves more closely because deep down we are predicting a miserable outcome. Surely we are also doing the other person a disservice as it is a great probability that if we are not to be with them, someone else will and most likely this other person will not doubt as you do.

I am on the marriage fence I have been sitting comfortably there for a long time. As far as I can see neither side grows very green grass. This is completely subjective as I do know many who are very happily married also do not misunderstand me, commitment would come to me as easily as breathing but when it comes to marriage, I’m not sold.

Tinted glass

I made my work space writing friendly last night. My place is rather small so what I actually mean is that my whole house has been recreated to best assist my mind in the process that is writing my book. Visual stimulation is so important. Perhaps I am a happy victim of the placebo effect. But all the same I do not care how you made the cake I am definitely going to have a piece.