kagablog

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine
I have been eating poetry

it’s the ultimate game –
the game for a lifetime –
if this…
if that…
if only…
but no matter the permutations,
no matter how clever your play,
it always comes down to this:
house wins
you lose

i saw you again the other night

as i looked over my shoulder
across the blurred faces of the audience
at the high school concert
my eyes went straight to you
sitting up in the gallery

your eyes were just as deep-set and dark
as i remembered
but you wore your hair a little longer
than when you were alive
and it looked good on you

the woman in front of you
leaned over to her companion
and i saw the lower part of the face,
the mouth and jaw…

my heartbeat slowed
as i expelled my held breath –
of course, like every other time,
it wasn’t you after all

Schrödinger’s cat sat on his favourite Persian mat
absent-mindedly watching a Foucault’s pendulum swinging
as he pondered the trajectory of mathematics
from Pythagoras’ theorem to Euclid’s Elements.
He washed his paws with thoughtful tongue,
then yawned: ‘I suppose it’s all relative’.
Curling himself into a Möbius strip
in a golden patch of sunlight
he fell into contented sleep
and dreamt of Pavlov’s dog.

Until the man you love has slapped you to the floor you just don’t know what it takes to get up and start picking up the dropped stitches of your life. But getting up is not always the smart option. The second blow is much harder, causing a plug of mucus and blood to shoot out of her right nostril. Right nostril. Means he’s using his left hand. ‘Always the gentleman,’ she thinks, and an irrational giggle bubbles up in her throat.

Still, it is enough to buckle her knees and make her fall down helplessly, stupidly; hitting her head on the floor. She gets up again, more slowly and warily this time, and suddenly both of the boys are in the room. They are in their pajamas, their hair dishevelled and their faces showing uncomprehending panic. Both are crying and screaming: ‘No, Daddy, no, please don’t hit Mummy!’ He backs off a little; nostrils flaring, breath coming fast and his eyes slightly unfocused. His mouth curls as he says, ‘You’re scaring the children. Go and wash your face, you stupid bitch.’

She walks to the bathroom like an automaton, flashes of the blow exploding behind her eyes in a womb-red starburst. At a sound behind she turns quickly to see Peter lurching down the passage towards her. She shrinks back against the wall as he thrusts his face close to hers and hisses, ‘Always have to make a scene, don’t you? Fucking drama queen!’ She feels his spittle on her face and smells his breath, rank with brandy and venom. She drops her eyes and holds the gagging down until she hears their bedroom door slam, then she stumbles into the bathroom and throws up into the basin until her diaphragm aches and there is nothing left but dry retching.

She rinses her mouth and face with cold water and only then looks up into the mirror. The side of her face shows a faint handprint, and her right eye is starting to swell. Her jaw hurts, but her teeth all feel firm. She’s washed all the blood from her nostril, but it still feels congested. Theo’s face appears behind hers, eyes still and dark in his pale face. Luke is clinging to his leg, his small face contorted as he cries soundlessly. ‘Oh, my boys, I’m so sorry,’ she says, crouching down to put her arms around both of them. Theo stands stiffly, but she can feel him trembling. Luke flings his arms around her neck, nearly choking her as she breathes in his warm smell and the saltiness of sweat and tears.

He clings to her like an orphaned chimpanzee as she carries him to bed, Theo following silently behind. Soothing words and a back rub soon has Luke breathing peacefully, but she can feel Theo’s eyes on her in the duskiness of their nightlight. She sits down on his bed and reaches out to smooth his hair, but he turns his face away towards the wall. ‘Sometimes grown-ups fight,’ she whispers. ‘Remember when you and Michael had that fight at school and the next day you were friends again?’
He nods slightly, then shakes his head.
‘It’s not the same,’ he says, the anger in his voice muffled by his pillow.

A breeze is picking up outside, relieving the pressing heat of the day. In the moonlight the Karoo koppies, so dull by day, look almost beautiful. The grass is cool underfoot as she walks down to the stream where the tall poplars are whispering. A bat suddenly swoops down low over her; she startles and ducks involuntarily. Behind her she hears a soft thud as a ripe pear falls down. ‘Help me,’ she asks, looking up into the sky. ‘Grant me strength, please.’ All she sees is the great expanse of night sky and the stars twinkling coldly, immeasurably far away. She doesn’t think that anyone has heard. From across the stream a donkey starts to bray loudly and abruptly. The sounds are like great gut-tearing sobs. She briskly rubs the goose bumps from her arms and turns back home.

***

She wakes to the sound of whispering outside the bedroom door. As she strains to make sense of the sounds, flashes of memory from the previous night jolt her upright. Peter lies sprawled across the bed, still fully dressed, breathing stertorously. The door swings open slowly and Theo enters first, carrying a tray with great concentration. Luke pushes past him and leaps into her lap, shouting ‘Happy birthday, Mummy, happy, happy!’ Peter jerks awake and assesses the situation through bloodshot eyes. Mumbling something, he makes his way unsteadily to the bathroom.

‘Happy birthday, Mom,’ says Theo. ‘I made breakfast for you.’
‘I helped! I picked the flowers!’ Luke adds indignantly.
‘Thank you, my darlings,’ she says. ‘It looks lovely.’
The toast had been burnt and scraped and thickly smeared with butter. She takes an enthusiastic bite under their watchful eyes. ‘Mmm-mmm,’ she manages before taking a big sip of mahogany-coloured tea. It is lukewarm and very sweet.
‘I used two bags,’ Theo says uncertainly.
‘It’s just perfect,’ she smiles. ‘And look at the beautiful flowers!’
Luke had picked daisies, kakiebos and a few ragged hibiscus; the stems all of different lengths, they’d been stuck haphazardly into a jam jar.

‘And look what else I got!’ Luke dashes into the passage and returns with an ice-cream container. He thrusts it close to her face. ‘A zillion grasshops!’ he announces triumphantly. She recoils from the sight of the insects swarming over each other and the scraping sounds of their futile efforts to scramble up the sides of the container.
‘That’s nice, sweetheart,’ she says faintly, ‘but I think you should put them back.’
Luke pulls a stubborn face.
‘I’ll help you,’ Theo says quickly. ‘Come, mom wants to get dressed.’
He gives her a conspiratorial look over his shoulder as he ushers Luke out, and she mouths ‘Thank you’ at him.

Peter steps from the shower, billowing steam. ‘Jesus,’ he says as he catches sight of her face in the mirror.
‘I can patch it,’ she says, ‘but you’ll have to cancel Camille’s and the babysitter.’
‘But I booked a table two months ago,’ he says wheedlingly. ‘And you’ve always wanted to go there. I did it especially for you.’
‘I’m not going, Peter,’ says Olivia. ‘Not now, and not like this.’ She dries her face and looks at him in the mirror, her eye throbbing. ‘We can rather take the boys to the Spur.’
‘I’ll stop drinking,’ he mutters. He swallows hard and then starts to cry. She turns, and he leans heavily against her, the basin cold against her lower back.
‘God help me,’ he sobs. ‘I don’t know what gets into me.’
She looks up at the ceiling as she strokes his wet hair. ‘Shh…’ she says. ‘Shh…’

***

Her mother phones just after lunchtime.
‘And how is the birthday girl?’ she asks indulgently.
‘I’m just fine, Ma. It’s a lovely day here. Think I’ve got a few new wrinkles, though.’
‘Nonsense,’ her mother tuts. ‘All set for tonight? I’m so glad you’re getting out for a change, and that you finally have a chance to wear that beautiful dress.’
Olivia detects a movement at the end of the passage. Their bedroom door is opening stealthily. She takes a deep breath.
‘Actually, we’ve had to cancel. The babysitter has flu.’
She holds the phone away from her ear for her mother’s protesting wail. ‘Oh no, darling!
If you’d let me know earlier I could have driven over and spent the night.’
‘Ma, it’s fine, really. We’re taking the boys to the Spur. They’ll love it.’
Her mother sighs. ‘Well, make sure that you take a rain check on Camille’s. And tell Peter to drive carefully. Watch out for kudu.’
‘Yes, Ma.’
‘I can hear your eyes rolling! Happy birthday, darling. God bless.’

***

Luke is riding horsy on the back of the vinyl-covered banquette. He proudly clutches his new balloon, hastily procured when the first one popped, causing a torrent of grief.
Theo is intently colouring a picture of a cute Native American boy on horseback, taking great pains with the rainbow plumage of the headdress. Olivia smiles at them, then says,
‘They’ll be getting tired soon. We should go.’
Peter motions to the waiter. ‘There’s just one more thing,’ he says.

Suddenly the table is surrounded by waiters and kitchen staff, smiling and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the accompaniment of Stevie Wonder. A spotty waiter with a bobbing Adam’s apple carefully places a sundae glass full of chocolate mousse and viciously whipped cream in front of her. A cake candle and a sparkler have been stuck into it. Theo and Luke are transfixed by the hissing, darting stars of light.

‘Make a wish, Mummy,’ Theo says quietly. He looks at her with dark, compelling eyes.
‘Make a good wish.’
Olivia looks around the table at her family. Three pairs of eyes are fixed on her.
Peter’s show hope, and a shadow of fear.
Theo’s are deep pools, the flame of the candle leaping in his pupils.
Luke’s eyes are feverish with excitement. He jumps up and down, clapping his hands and crows, ‘And you can’t tell anyone!’

She closes her eyes and leans forward to blow out the flame.

the blind woman on the train sings
‘turn my eyes away from worthless things, oh lord,
let me live through thee
allelujah’
she holds on to her guide as they shuffle forward
on worn soles, harmonising in resigned rhythm
my fellow commuters turn their eyes away
from her hollow eye sockets
no one digs into their pockets
my purse yields only a R2 coin and some coppers
that clatter into the empty enamel cup
a petty offering to assuage my guilt
at taking my sight, albeit it short, for granted
the guide dips two small curtsies from the knee
and taps her plastic toy tambourine across her heart
to thank me
in shame I turn my eyes away
allelujah, lord,
allelujah

die roetswart kraaie swiep en draai
teen die fatale blou lug,
hul koggelende gekras
’n atonale lied begelei deur die wind
wat oker patrone in die koringland waai
weerskant die voetpad na nêrens

die enkele geweerskoot
laat hulle uitmekaar vlie,
die vlerkgeklap soos ’n skielike bui reën
dan stilte en ’n dampie rook
en die swael reuk van buskruit

die man se kobalt oë word vaal
terwyl die karmosyn roos in sy bors helder blom en sprei
die kraaie hervat hul spiraal
wat ál laer swiep en draai
swiep en draai

Re-flex, 1983
Paul Fishman

We got the message
I heard it on the airwaves
The politicians
Are now DJ’s

The broadcast was spreading
Station to station
Like an infection
Across the nation

Well you know you can’t stop it
When they start to play
You’re gonna get out the way

The politics of dancing
The politics of ooh feeling good
The politics of moving, aha
Is this message understood

We’re under pressure
Yes we’re counting on you
That what you say
Is what you do

It’s in the papers
It’s on your TV news
Oh, the application
Is just a point of view

The politics of dancing
The politics of ooh feeling good
The politics of moving, aha
Is this message understood

I never got into porn. In both literature and image I’ve always found anticipation and suggestion more erotic than graphic depiction.
Despite personal preference, however, there is no escaping the ubiquitous multi-media assault of tits and ass, abs and buns, or the strenuous exhortations of women’s magazines (that fertile breeding ground of misogyny) to pole-dance your relationship back to happiness, which leaves one cowering in the corner of the dressing room as you regard your own flesh with fear and loathing in the harsh mirror of reality.
Celibate and single for a year, a month, three weeks and two-and-a-half days (but who’s counting – it’s by choice, OK), I looked at the himbo pics on kagablog with a sense of recognition.
Real bodies. Tangible, living flesh with taste and smell and texture. Vulnerable as my own; wanting human touch.
Memory stirred and realisation dawned: it is the unique imperfections that you come to love; the feel of flesh on flesh and breath to breath, not the gleaming pecs and poreless perfection of a photoshopped replicant.
Plucked and shaved and bleached and buffed (sounds sickeningly sacrificial, doesn’t it? To be laid [excuse the pun] on the altar of Synthetica?) to within an inch of being human, are these bodies you could love? Admire, maybe. Desire, I suppose. Fuck? Sure…
Fucking a perfect body is like eating sushi: fashionable, expensive, overrated; leaving you craving something more.
Making love to a real body is like eating a homemade stew: rich, spicy, tender, and satisfying.
Stand aside, metrosexuals. You, too, gym johnnies, poseurs, lotharios and narcissists.
Let the real men through.

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

John Maynard Keynes,

when i drove away
from our life together
you were all I could see
in my rear-view mirror
but as I gathered speed
and turned a corner
you became a speck
then nothing
i pull the lever for the reservoir
and watch jets of water
blur dust and salt and birdshit
on my windscreen
with decisive sweeps the wiper blades
reveal a future
clear as glass

Philip Francois Lintvelt
9 January 1971 – 17 October 2005

The dead and buried
become trees
who lift up their arms
to call the deaf.
With their long fingers
and green tongues
they divulge the secrets
of the Earth’s heart.

– Rumi, 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet

i’ll wash and stack the dishes
and peg and fold the washing
like you taught me, mama
like your mother taught you

but I will not learn to stir a pinch of bitterness
into my morning cup
or to fold away joy at the back of a drawer
to only be displayed
on special occasions

As a little girl I had a huge Art Deco-style poster above my bed. Printed on thick brown paper, it depicted a square-jawed golden prince, determinedly invincible atop his fierce and loyal silver steed, one manly arm tenderly supporting a frail copper-green maiden seated side-saddle in front of him with her eyes demurely cast down. I would look at this image until I fell asleep, and to my impressionable young mind this was the romantic ideal personified.
I read voraciously from the time I got the hang of stringing letters, then words, then sentences together. In a book of fairy tales – the title alas long forgotten – I read a story about a magic mirror that would reveal the face of The One you were destined to love for all time, and another impossible ideal was added to my perception of romance.

Then came early teenagehood, and I turned to music to further my understanding of the ways of the world in general, and romance in particular. From my parents’ stock of tapes I unearthed an album by Françoise Hardy and was immediately smitten. When I grew up I would be just like her. I, too, would have long, straight, windswept hair with a too-long fringe that fell into my heavily-lashed eyes with their languid lids, while I’d sing with a pretty pale-pink pout: ‘Eef we are awnly fwiends, why do you keess me…awl night lonk?’

I would drive through the Sixties’ streets of Paris on a red Vespa to meet my lover at a sidewalk cafè with striped awnings and wrought-iron tables and chairs. Perhaps there would even be window boxes spilling over with bright geraniums, and supercilious fat French pigeons picking jadedly at baguette crusts and camembert rinds. Ah, yes, it was a detailed fantasy, and I spent many happy hours perfecting it, but the face of my fabulous lover was always indistinct, shrouded in shadow.

These fond musings were followed by a couple of longstanding and serious relationships in my late teens and early twenties, interspersed with some briefer and more frivolous encounters, during each of which I adopted a new persona. In my late twenties, craving certainty, I consulted a psychic who told me that I had found a soul mate, but must seek my ‘twin flame’ – he who burns as bright as I. Apparently I had found this magical person once before in a lifetime as a Native American, and had lived my happiest life thus far. Heedlessly I forged ahead with a marriage that produced two beautiful sons and caused much heartache and despair on the winding, rocky, and inevitable road to divorce.

For a while I assumed the role of cynical romantic, that most sad and doomed of creatures, affecting a black wardrobe, a sad-eyed, self-deprecating smile, and a propensity for alcohol.

For the first time in my life since the age of seventeen I was officially single. Of course there were tears, but there was laughter too. I moved to a new town, reconnected with old friends, caught up with family, branched into a new career, took up running, read many books, and found the time and courage to put pen to paper.

Recently I read a novel* based on the theories of quantum mechanics. In laymen’s terms, as far as I was able to comprehend it, quantum theory posits infinite possibilities – the so-called wave function. Somewhat like a PlayStation game, as soon as one option or possible outcome is chosen, the wave function collapses, rendering the other possibilities null and void. In the novel an energy converter is developed, creating such a strong energy field from negative matter that the wave function does not collapse, allowing for multiple universes and lives – past, present and future – to co-exist simultaneously.
This concept was immediately appealing and curiously reassuring to me: perhaps there does exist a parallel universe in which I am paddling a canoe fashioned out of green branches and doe skin across a glass-clear lake with the autumn colours of maple trees and the blues of snow-peaked mountains reflected in it; my papoose strapped securely to my breast and my twin flame close behind me as we row in unison to our womb-like teepee where we are as one, as a world.

* Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey

… who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

kahlil gibran - the prophet

sticks and stones might break your bones
but words can fucking kill you

you lie like a rug,
erstwhile sweet lover mine

your lies were so white
they blinded me
your honeyed words so smooth
they rolled off your tongue with ease
and caught in my throat
your hold was so strong and so sure
it ensnared me
then I got wise, baby
but how it hurt
when I opened my eyes

some like to travel light –
they favour speed and ease of movement
they may think you ponderous and slow,
but wherever you go
you’re home

i’m gon spit an polish dis scuffed lil ole heart a mine
yessiree till it shine
glue my soul back on an clamp it tight
till it fit right
like dem boots were made fo walkin
dis heart be made fo lovin
an dat’s just what it gon do
cos one a dese days
dis heart gon be
right over you