Unsung Hero's

My Heart is the most tenacious creature I've ever encountered. It's not an organ you know, it doesn't just beat. It smiles, and it breathes, and it laughs and cries itself to sleep - it loves and hates, it throws itself against its cage - it fights against all odds, every time you think it's dead. It gets thrown against a wall, and trampled all over...and still gets back up, dusts itself down, and flings itself over the next great cliff. No matter how many times it gets cut up, it somehow manages to mend back together and bounce on to the next adventure - it lives!

And I live in awe of this Heart of mine. Yet again, it's taught me that nothing is too great to overcome: if you just have the will. 

For the first time in a long while, I've realised that I'm ok. I'm not a shell, or a hive of unanswerable questions. I'm not a bundle of brittle nerves and raw-wounds. I can think of all the things that once hurt me, and smile. Because a broken heart has nothing more to fear. And once it's learnt how to fix itself...it's just about invincible. 

Appreciate your little tenacious creatures dear readers of the world, they're your unsung hero's.

Black Tuesday

I haven't been able to log in here for a while - as my contemporary in the blogging world, Sadiyya Sheik suggested, it probably has something to do with the new awesome layout: nothing is perfect. (Might I add, you probably want to check out her blog! The Last Tether). So, anyway, my blogging powers have returned, at just the right time - or wrong, depending on the way you look at it.


Today is Tuesday the 22nd November 2011, the day the Secrecy Bill was waved through, the day we wave farewell to our young democracy of 17 years...


When I first heard about this, I thought to myself, "Now, I'm not a law student, but I know enough to gather that a bill has to be passed by legislature ( parliament/congress) first, and then (usually) approved by the executive branch of government."
I thought that there was still a chance that the bill wouldn't grow into a statute or act. I know, a lot of people would call me naive and a lot of people would laugh at my baseless optimism in the leaders of our country...a lot of people would be saying under their breaths, or with contempt, "you fool." 
And maybe I was. Maybe I was a fool for being a stalwart crusader for the hope that possibly the people 'at the top' had enough honesty in them to lock away their avarice...


Did all those Apartheid hero's fight and suffer and in many cases, die, in vain? Is the democracy they so valiantly gave their all for, the democracy that 17 years ago was so celebrated, already gasping out it's last breaths? Translucency should prevail in a democracy - it is how everyone has a say in what goes on, it is how citizens monitor their elected government, it is how a governing body stays in check...


I lived in the foolish hope, that South African politicians still had enough of the original democratic governments' character, to do the right thing - and ensure that, that is all this Secrecy Bill remained: a Bill.


But my hope was delusive. And our politicians and 'public servants' have no understanding of the fact that, a "Democracy without transparency is not democracy, it's just an empty word". 

"Our deepest fear, is not that we are inadequate..."

It's not exactly a memory. Or a feeling. It's sort of a mental film strip that keeps playing over and over and over again in my head...usually at the most unlikely moments. It's sort of sweet nostalgia I guess. Not a pining for what once was, but a wondering over whether it will ever come around again. But that's the enigma of Life...I think. Or maybe I'm just hoping, hoping that if I don't hold Life to it, it can't disappoint me. So I pretend to be nonchalant - Maybe it will, maybe it won't. And if it doesn't, I could just say that I wasn't really holding my breath for it anyway.

It's like you know, that chill that creeps into your bones on a cold winters day. Even when I'm out in the sunshine, it will sneak up on me, and give me frost bite...a memory. I think the reason I hold onto those memories is because I don't believe that I'm ever going to be able to make new ones that could ever replace them. It seems like quite a masochistic thing to think, I know. But, if I admit it, and now that I've started writing, I guess this is a confession of sorts...I'm not afraid of the dark any more. I used to be terrified of it, because it always felt as if I wasn't alone in it; as if there was always someone else there with me, even when there wasn't. I'm not afraid of the dark. I realised I'm more afraid, of being alone. 

Do you believe in Fairies?

This is an inspired blog (ok, especially inspired). I just watched Finding Neverland, and it just reaffirmed my belief that Peter Pan was one of the greatest stories of all time. More important to me was the inspiration behind it. It only proved to me, that in my tumble-down-chocolate-flavoured-candy-coloured existence, I was doing something right. See, my philosophy is made up of two parts:

1.  It's not where you're at. It's who you're with.
2. The journey is more important than the destination.

I scheme if you can wrap your head (and your attitude) around those two notions, you'll be ok. Because every curve ball will turn into a game, and you'll realise that every person you meet, no matter who, is another character in the greatest play of all. You'll learn to glance at the future and live in the now, savour every step that takes you there and remember every detail that you leave behind. People will turn into living, breathing, laughing, tear-capable beings instead of commodities that you trade in at every fuel-stop in your life, on the way to wherever it is you ultimately hope to reach - because if you don't realise this, once you get wherever it is you hope to eventually get, and you find you're all alone, suddenly, it doesn't seem so worth it all any more. How you get there is more important that where you're going, and if you don't have the right company, no expedition will be worthwhile. 

Fortune Cookie No1

Dear World (and Loyal Followers),


Another one of my insomnia-fused nights. This one, is induced by a good feeling though, instead of the horrible-stone-heavy-gut-wrenching one of the past few months.
"And so, it ends" (my rather tragic sounding post in August) wasn't really the end. Boy, am I glad.
It just proves, I think, that sincerity can go a long way...and true friendships never really die. Sometimes all that's needed is honesty, and a little bit of humbling - Oh, I was definitely humbled. 
So, just remember that. Remember that you're never too big, or too little, to say that five lettered, two-syllable word. And remember too, that mean it when you say it - that's the magic of it, the reason why it works - the wholeheartedness. You've got to say it with your heart, and not half of your heart either.
Some friendships are just too precious to turn your back on. Never forget that. Life's like an ocean, with all it's tempestuous moods and moments, scary inhabitants and beautiful wonderlands: drop a gem in the ocean and chances are you won't ever find it again...rather clench your fist and hold on to it tight; sometimes you might slip up, sometimes it might slide, but never, let it go. 


Fortune cookie says, "Live like Pi."
You have to figure that one out on your own <smile>.

3 Bags Full

I spent my day singing "Ba Ba Black Sheep" and "Humpty Dumpty" in exaggerated tones. This was because one of the kids at school kept crying all the time, so I was put on babysitting duty, involuntary, because she decided that I wasn't allowed more than 30cm away from her. It was cute seeing the little kid's (we'll call her Pip) face light up every time, but somewhere in between my one hundredth go at "have you any wool?" and "all the kings horses", the little voice in my head asked, really? Are you really doing this? Forever? NO! I just about mentally shouted at it, causing me to waver in my all-too-lively rendition, which caused Pip's bottom lip to quiver all too dangerously and made me clap my hands on my face and exclaim, "couldn't put humpty together again!" in my most sugared-up voice EVER (like I'd been stuffing my face with hard candy for the past three days). She beamed and clapped and squealed in delight...and a tiny bit inside me flickered and died.
I don't think that's a good sign.

Dear Mother Nature, I'm so sorry we raped you.

I hear SA has like upped the world population to 7 billion? Damn, China you let me down! Imagine that huh (to be honest though, I always thought that we'd hit the 7 billion mark long ago, despite what statistics say - I don't really tend to always trust them). I'm having one kid, let it be known -that's my contribution to SAVING THE WORLD and by association, Penguins.


Also, I found myself reading rubbish recently: silly hogwash romantic novels - that usually make me want to throw up (actually they still do), but in addition, I find myself smiling at the absurdity of how everything just magically happens to fall together at the exact time that they're supposed to. These are the reason why girls fall hopelessly 'in love' and end up getting their hearts broken a hundred times. Waste of paper - waste of trees. Write less drivel and SAVE THE WORLD! (we'll have more oxygen for the 7 billion plus inhabitants). Plus future generations won't be as stupid as this one is turning out to be (apologies to those who aren't characters out of a bad zombi movie), because they'll be reading meaningful literature and not foggy little romances about nothing and the end of fashionable society. (I do enjoy the classics much though, those are important. There's more to them than pathetic swooning and hot flushes).

And have you noticed how much of food people throw away a day? I hate to sing the same old dreary song, but REALLY, PEOPLE IN SOMALIA WOULD KILL FOR YOUR TRASH. That's not even an exaggeration you know. It sickens me, to see the amount of perfectly good food that gets tossed in the rubbish, because nobody's bothered to finish their lunch, or even fruit that's simply bruised, or candy! Candy would be like...it would be like GOLD in Somalia (red meat would be platinum I scheme - I saw this huge-ass-massive-scary looking bull at the farm, so scary I wasn't willing to go more than five metres near it, even though there was a gate between us, and I swear my first thought was, "Yoh, imagine if we sent that thing to Somalia!" those people would be on it like a bees on a hive). But see, it's amazing, disgusting actually, that nobody around here thinks how lucky they are to be eating a gob of steak, or munching on their so loathed broccoli (Silver). Even I started eating things I hated, simply because Mum put them on the table, and I remembered that people on that end of the world would probably punch the lights out of their own parents to get even half the portion I have. Sick to the gut. We live in a world of greed, where everyone wants more, but increasingly as of late, there's so much less to give.

We keep taking out more than we can replenish. You know what that's essentially called? Stealing. When you take something and don't return it, you're stealing. In essence, we're stealing away our own futures and that of the next generation too.

*Sigh*

Anyway folks, I'm out for now. Sleep well. Don't moan about your peas, read less trash and try to curb your urge to produce a family the size of a mini soccer team. The crux of the matter, SAVE THE damn WORLD! We have nowhere else to go if we finish off this one.