Category Archives: writing

gertrude stein – from “the mother of us all”

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“Yes, but what is man, what are men, what are they? I do not say that they haven’t kind hearts, if I fall down in a faint, they will rush to pick me up, if my house is on fire, they will rush in to put the fire out and help me, yes they have kind hearts but they are afraid, afraid, they are afraid, they are afraid. They fear women, they fear each other, they fear their neighbor, they fear other countries and then they hearten themselves in their fear by crowding together and following each other, and when they crowd together and follow each other they are brutes, like animals who stampede, and so they have written in the name male into the United States constitution, because they are afraid of black men because they are afraid of women, because they are afraid afraid. Men are afraid.”

“And women.”

“Ah women often have not any sense of danger, after all a hen screams pitifully when she sees an eagle but she is only afraid for her children, men are afraid for themselves, that is the real difference between men and women.”

“But Susan B, why do you not say these things out loud?”

“I say they are afraid, but if I were to tell them so their kindness would turn to hate. Yes the Quakers are right, they are not afraid because they do not fight, they do not fight.”

“But Susan B. you fight and you are not afraid.”

“I fight and I am not afraid, I fight but I am not afraid.”

“And you will win.”

“Win what, win what?”

the clock struck

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My earliest childhood memory is of my second birthday.

It’s a sunny winter afternoon. The dry grass smells stubbly and brown. The pelargoniums smell interesting too. I know what they are called because Nana always shouts at me when I pick the glowing red flowers. The slasto paving is warm and there are stripy lizards that scuttle away.

Mommy has made me a Hickory Dickory Dock cake, and set it on the outside table (which is white moulded asbestos/concrete in the shape of a faux slice through a tree trunk…I remember this well because it was around for several years). Standing next to the table, I am only able to see the side of the cake. Pink and white marshmallows encircle it, magically turned into mice with little cardboard ears and liquorice bootlace tails, and when I am picked up to blow out the candles, the clock’s face on top of the cake is made from liquorice too, and glacé cherries. The liquorice doesn’t taste very nice. I like the cherries.

Yes please, thank you very much, Nana. I say it after her because if I don’t she won’t give me what I want. Don’t put your feet on the table. No. That’s very naughty. If you do it again Nana will smack you. The threat makes me dissolve into tears. The frustration! I’m learning about manners. Manners are annoying.

I feel very big. I have a brand new baby sister, a month and a bit old. She is in a navy blue vinyl pram nearby. If I pull myself up on the side of it, I can juuust see over into her tiny, swaddled world.

Pelargoniums. Photo by Rosemary Lombard

olive schreiner – life’s gifts

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Olive Schreiner

I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift – in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, ‘Choose!’

And the woman waited long: and she said, ‘Freedom!’

And Life said, ‘Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, “Love,” I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand.’

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

shabbir banoobhai on steve biko, julius malema and corruption

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“I knew Steve Biko,” I say again, thinking no one has heard me.

“We heard you the first time,” you reply. “So you knew Steve Biko – who is dead. We are looking for someone who knows Julius Malema – who is alive. The dead are of no use to budding entrepreneurs – except if you are inheriting from them.”

“Malema thinks only of himself,” I say. “Steve Biko thought of everyone except himself.”

“That’s why he is dead – and you are poor,” you reply. “The good disciple mirrors the master. So before you become a disciple, choose the right master.”

“What about the master?” I ask. “Can the master be good, if his disciples are poor?”

“Ah!” you say. “That’s a trick-question. If you give me some silver coins I might answer that.”

“Where will a poor man find silver coins to pay to learn whether his master is poor if he is poor?” I ask.

“Why does a poor man ask such a question when he cannot afford to know the answer?” you say.

“On reflection, I may be able to help you,” I say. “I may already be Malema’s disciple. The Imam at my mosque says we are all corrupt if we do not fight corruption.”

“I don’t have time to help you resolve your confusion,” you say.

“I prefer to confuse my enemies; not my friends.”

~ Shabbir Banoobhai
(thanks to Mphutlane wa Bofelo for sharing this on Facebook)

laure: the true whore as muse

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“Avoid contact with all people in whom there is no possible resonance with what touches you most deeply and toward whom you have obligations of “kindness,” of “politeness.”- Laure, Collected writings

Although she wrote little and published almost nothing, Colette Peignot, a.k.a. Laure, is one of the more fascinating and intense women writers of the past century. Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris described her as “one of the most vehement existences [that] ever lived, one of the most conflicted.” They summarized her volatile personality as “[e]ager for affection and for disaster, oscillating between extreme audacity and the most dreadful anguish, as inconceivable on a scale of real beings as a mythical being, she tore herself on the thorns with which she surrounded herself until becoming nothing but a wound, never allowing herself to be confined by anything or anyone.” In other words, Laure was the epitome of what Bataille would dub the “sovereign” individual.

Read more HERE.

Ella Joyce Buckley – Sister

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From the new album, Blood Finds No Sea. Find out more and buy the album here.

whisper your sister
faceless
turning blisters
this parade itself
has a white wind of listlessness

I am missing a grave
I am missing a grave

a messy curve of skin
missing the link from within
a messy curve of skin
missing the link from within
in

now go
go beyond the veil
go beyond the veil
go beyond the grail

listen
this morning my name meant nothing to me
my heart pulled this thing from me
my god from its hinge
saw me
and could it be

we are apart in a part of a persisting sea
we have a curve in the earth within an endless weave
i must tell her we are
she is
within with me
i will
at once
let the bird fly away

sister i must tell you
that it will end in ease
we will build our hearts against the sea
we will carefully repeat the links
and let it be

become each other
somehow
we are slaves
we were missing for days

a messy curve of skin
missing the link from within
a messy curve of skin
missing the link from within
in

whisper your sisters
faceless
turning blisters
this melancholy has a white wind of listlessness

whisper your sisters
faceless
turning blisters
this melancholy is just a white wind of listlessness

Ella – vocals / casio va 10 / electric guitar / acoustic guitar / loops / alpine zither / synthetics / percussion / foleys / effects

Ross Campbell – percussion

Righard Kapp – electric guitar

Gene Kierman – french horn

on chaos, creation and destruction

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From Principia Discordia:

CONVENTIONAL CHAOS – GREYFACE

In the year 1166 B.C., a malcontented hunchbrain by the name of Greyface got it into his head that the universe was as humorless as he, and he began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of Serious Order. “Look at all the order around you,” he said. And from that, he deluded honest men to believe that reality was a straightjacket affair and not the happy romance as men had known it.

It is not presently understood why men were so gullible at that particular time, for absolutely no one thought to observe all the disorder around them and conclude just the opposite. But anyway, Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own.

The unfortunate result of this is that mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes for a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now.

It is called THE CURSE OF GREYFACE.

Bullshit makes
the flowers grow
& that’s beautiful.

Photo: Motlatsi Khosi

THE CURSE OF GREYFACE AND THE INTRODUCTION OF NEGATIVISM

To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also be willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder.

The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division.

POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable.

Seek the Sacred Chao – therein you will find the foolishness of all ORDER/DISORDER. They are the same!

Read the whole text of POEE’s “Principia Discordia” here.