life does not die. art does not die. joburg will not die. a tribute to the life of lesley perkes @LesPersonas

Posted on by

Life does not die. From Lesley's 'The Troyeville Bedtime Story' Tumblr. http://troyevillebedtimestory.tumblr.com/

Life does not die. From Lesley’s ‘The Troyeville Bedtime Story’ Tumblr.http://troyevillebedtimestory.tumblr.com/

Lesley Perkes, Joburg’s and Art’s fiercest warrior, has left Troyeville. In the only way she ever would.

But life does not die. Art does not die. And Lesley’s art and life certainly never will. And Joburg never will; because Lesley would never let it. All we can do is continue her work, her energy, her passion, her life, her chutzpah.

When I messaged her after hearing about the cancer and told her I was devastated, she responded: “Don’t be devastated. I’m going to be fine.” Her strength, humour, indefatigable idealistic realism and feistiness implore us to respond to this in the same spirit.

Sleep well, Lesley. You are the Troyeville Bedtime Story, and we will read you like all good oral traditions to generations to come.

Much love to you, Les,
to Chili, Marta, Sonja, the sisters, the Joburg family

Screen Shot 2015-02-13 at 09.12.27

From: https://germainedelarch.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/life-does-not-die-art-does-not-die-joburg-will-not-die-a-tribute-to-the-life-of-lesley-perkes-lespersonas/

Pink brain blues

Posted on by

Sarah Ditum's avatarSarah Ditum

Blue brain, pink brain – a graphic from My Life: I am Leo Blue brain, pink brain – a graphic from My Life: I Am Leo

My girl is eight years old. She is clever and kind and tall and strong and funny and stubborn and beautiful – well of course I think all of these things, because she’s my daughter and I love her. “Am I girly-girl or a tomboy?” she asks sometimes, and I can never tell from the way she asks which of them she wants to be: she knows that to be a girly-girl is to belong (she has learned from experience that getting “girly” right will be rewarded and protect her from certain kinds of sanction), but she knows too that “boy” things are laudable and tomboyishness has a cachet that girliness does not. Anyway, the answer is always the same: “You’re you, darling. Whatever you like is right for you.” With her long treacle-coloured hair and…

View original post 1,047 more words

debbie pryor – sometimes the day

Posted on by

Sometimes the day
just caves in on you
like you were porous
made of sand

you woke
steady as rock
you showered
you dressed
you stared off into the distance
whilst the coffee sipped your sleepiness
away

you dropped the kids
at school
you weaved from this lane
to that
hoping to escape
the modern day slow moving
tragedy of traffic

but you were forced to sit
in your luxurious alcove
where your miserly wits look out
at the others
in theirs
the place where eyes
lives
compare

and then I saw him
I don’t know him well
but i do know
that his baby died
suddenly
long before he was five

and there he was
sitting like all others
obedient in their lanes
abiding by the rules
of another day

nobody would know by looking
what he has had taken away

So the day caves in on you
like you were made of dust
because no amount of tears
or empathy
can fill some holes
in those around us.

matthew 6: 22 – 34

Posted on by

The Lamp of the Body

22“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

24“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.

Do Not Worry

25Therefore, I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?27“Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? 28Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin, 29yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won’t he much more clothe you, you of little faith? 31“Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ 32For the Gentiles seek after all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.

34Therefore don’t be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day’s own evil is sufficient.”

a year since phillip seymour hoffman’s death: addiction & #againststigma

Posted on by

It’s been a year, on the 5th February, that Phillip Seymour Hoffman and a friend of mine succumbed to addiction. A reminder of the continuous fight #againststigma

Here is the piece I wrote a year ago, more pertinent with each passing day:
https://germainedelarch.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/philip-seymour-hoffmans-addiction-and-death-and-our-culture-of-stigma-and-hypocrisy

And here is the call to action to join the fight #againststigma. Please join me.
https://germainedelarch.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/taking-the-anonymous-out-of-addiction-mental-illness-photographic-project-in-recovery-the-face-of-addictionmental-illness/

terribly real

Posted on by
-- Emilie Autumn, "The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls".

— Emilie Autumn, “The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls”.

“Studies show:
Intelligent girls are more depressed
Because they know
What the world is really like
Don’t think for a beat it makes it better
When you sit her down and tell her
Everything’s gonna be all right
She knows in society she either is
A devil or an angel with no in-between
She speaks in the third person
So she can forget that she’s me.”

flex

Posted on by
This is an innarestin juxtaposition of two potent symbols: the butterfly represents change and the cobweb, stasis. Robert Pirsig talks of two primary forms of value, static and dynamic. It's the tension between them that produces change and then cements it, in art, society, basically anything ..

This is an innarestin juxtaposition of two potent symbols: the butterfly represents change and the cobweb, stasis. Robert Pirsig talks of two primary forms of value, static and dynamic. It’s the tension between them that produces change and then cements it, in art, society, basically anything ..

anne sexton – a story for rose on the midnight flight to boston

Posted on by

annesextonUntil tonight they were separate specialties, different stories, the best of their own worst.

Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first story. Someday, I promised her, I’ll be someone going somewhere, and we plotted it in the humdrum school for proper girls. The next April the plane bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned and fear blew down my throat, that last profane gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor, sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.

Maybe, Rose, there is always another story, better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.

Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy’s story, the April night of the civilian air crash and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper, the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.

This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds. And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. Special tonight because I made her into a story that I grew to know and savor. A reason to worry, Rose, when you fix an old death like that, and outliving the impact, to find you’ve pretended.

We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat. I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.

so, happy in cape town?

Posted on by

ORIGINAL  (threw up in my mouth a little):

DETOURNEMENT (all that is basically changed is the soundtrack):

We want to thank you for flying with us
We know you coulda stayed home, just cried and cussed
May all your guns go off if it’s time to bust
May all they tanks have time to rust
They got the armies turning bullets into gold
They got the hookers turning tricks in the cold
And every time the police kicks in the door
An angel gas brake dips in the O
And even if a d-boy flips him a O
It ain’t enough to buy shit anymore
Sleep in the doorway, piss on the floor
Look in the sky, wait for missiles to show
It’s finna blow cause
They got the TV, we got the truth
They own the judges and we got the proof
We got hella people, they got helicopters
They got the bombs and we got the, we got the

Don’t talk about it
It won’t show
Be about it
It’s ’bout to blow

I just spit the dope lines, I don’t snort ’em
Tell the boss to call police to escort him
You don’t write all them lies, you just quote ’em
Get offline, plug in to this modem
No, you can’t out-vote ’em
The rules is still golden
Only jewels we holding is if we guarding our scrotum
If you press your ear to the turf that is stolen
You can hear the sound of limitations exploding
Please sir, may we have another portion?
We’re children of the beast that dodged the abortion
Neck placed firm ‘tween the floor and the Florsheim
We’ll shut your shit down, don’t call it extortion
Caution — we’re coming for your head
So call the Feds and get files to shred
Every textbook read said bring you the bread
But guess what we got you instead?

Let’s keep it banging like a shotgun
We in a war before we fought one
Now if you’re tired of working so they can play
A common enemy, we got one
Now keep it banging like a shotgun
We in a war before we fought one
Now if you’re tired of working from day to day
A common enemy, we got one

kyla pasha – poem on a paper aeroplane floated across the border

Posted on by

Dancing

She danced all night and suddenly
it was all about being
loved like a woman ought
and I thought I would die
of gin and adoration, I thought
if only I could freeze this dance
into a loop, carve it out of whitefaced
time and paste it into a sea of brown,
if only the earth permitted the holding
of hands across borders, heroes and grandchildren
would be born, but it was just a Berlin night
with the earth still spinning drunk off her axis,
that if it weren’t for fucking gravity, she could fucking
love the sun again.

—

More of Kyla Pasha’s poems from High Noon and the Body HERE.