Current Read

I went out during lunch with the intention of buying a pair of shoes, that mission was quickly abandoned when I walked past the Exclusive Books. I bought myself Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and I could hardly contain myself as I started reading it at Steers whilst waiting for my burger and chips.
This is going to be one of those that I can hardly pull myself from; I can feel it in my fingers.  

The Word: Gaiety

Dictionary definition: the state of being gay or cheerful; gay spirits.

Origins: 1625–35;  < French gaieté,  equivalent to gai gay + -té -ty

Use in a sentence: The gaieties of the New Year season.

Synonyms:  merriment, mirth, glee, jollity, joyousness

Narrative Text: The Loft

On a mildly warm autumn morning, the sun shone through the large bare wood panelled windows that wrapped themselves immodestly around two of the four walls that made up his large open plan loft apartment. The white walls wore black and white framed pictures of different sizes which portrayed New York skylines, Johannesburg streets, Spanish matadors, Kenyan Masai and a host of other things I didn’t know much about. A few dramatically abstract canvass paintings sat loud and proud on the floor and leaned nonchalantly against the windows. I threw a glance at the expansive ceilings that had three big medieval light fixtures stuck onto them, drew two deep breaths and decided to get up. I lifted myself off of the bed and the cold grey concrete floor jumped up to meet my feet. Standing up, I walked about the space taking in the furnishings that adorned the place. Sporadic and clean and white with tiny throws of colour in the form of cushions, vases, pashminas tossed casually on the sofa and of cause the paintings on the floor. Just off the entrance lay the kitchen area, all stainless steel appliances, lacquered white cupboards, black painted wooden open shelving which carried on it teal, orange and white mismatched bowls and cups and plates and canisters and other things required for the functionality of a kitchen. Just off the kitchen was the only door inside this big room, I concluded that beyond it lay the bathroom and decided not to go through it.

I stopped for a moment and looked aimlessly around, when I noticed the balcony on the other side of one of the windows. I steadied myself towards it and on my way lost focus when I found a hand written note placed on a small study desk weighed down by a heavy pearl coloured rock which served as a paper weight, “make yourself at home,” it read “I’m just meeting a client, please don’t leave. I’ll bring some coffee back with me. Xoxo.” I sat on the chair beside of desk and took it all in and a smile grew slowly on my face. 

With the steady rise of the sun the balcony beckoned for my presence and I ran out onto it. Opening the wide glass doors that made up part of the windows, the noise of people and cars going about their business in the street below was a harsh invasion of the silence on the inside. Although I was some way away from the ground level, on the eighth floor to be exact, I heard people’s laughter and small bits of their conversations. There was a distant sound made by sort of heavy machinery, taxi’s hooting, loud kwaito music coming from the building that stood in front of me and on it, three men on scaffolding were putting black and grey stripes onto that building and although it would ordinarily have not been possible, the heavy wind that blew encouraged my nostrils to take in the paint fumes. These combined with the smell of the sun presented a unique sensation to my senses.

Having adequately absorbed the balcony and all it had to offer I walked back into the flat and for the first time since my arrival I saw his personal pictures in wooden frames placed in a cluster on a small coffee table just of the door that took me out onto the veranda. These were pictures of himself with others, himself with two young girls, a dog, a woman with the two young girls, the woman on her own, two other women, a man with an older lady and a few others. My mind got to thinking about who these people could be, I gave them names and provided them each with a role they played in his life then resolved to pay it no further mind. I was getting bored and mind restless so I walked back to the bed and lay back down when all of a sudden I heard a key turn in the door, I got up and stared impatiently to see who it would be. The key was yanked out the key hole and the door knob turned slowly and then the door flung open and there he was in all his awkward, sophisticated self. He smiled and I smiled back.     

Angelou Corner: The Detached

It's amazing how closely I can relate to this woman and her body of work. Every month, through this blog I expose myself to a piece of her poetry and every month I see bits of me and the struggles i'm currently enduring through it. 

I know that soon i'm going to have gone through to large a chunk of Maya's work to continue the Angelou Corner and at that point i'm going to have to focus my attention onto a different poet, but till then i hope both you and I can find refuge in this great writer's words. 

We die, 
Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets, 
Stranglers to our outstretched necks, 
Stranglers, who neither care nor
care to know that
DEATH IS INTERNAL.

We pray, 
Savoring sweet the teethed lies, 
Bellying the grounds before alien gods, 
Gods, who neither know nor
wish to know that
HELL IS INTERNAL.

We love, 
Rubbing the nakednesses with gloved hands, 
Inverting our mouths in tongued kisses, 
Kisses that neither touch nor
care to touch if
LOVE IS INTERNAL. 

Fave Five: Lana Da Poet!

OK, I know I’m utterly obsessed with Lana Del Rey and her music and I’ve always from the first time I heard it considered it to be poetic. I have recently come to love her intros and outros to songs. I only get to hear these when watching the music videos as a large chunk of them are not encompassed on her albums, they delight me and get me thinking about the reinvention of poetry.

When I was younger, every Tom Dick and Harry street-smart enough to rock a bandanna used to praise the poetic qualities contained within Tu-Pac’s music. To this day I still fail to see this poetic genius.  I for one think when equated to the Franks, Janelles and Lanas of today, Pac fails to compare (queue the average black person hurling insults at my tastes). In all honesty though, lyrics such as “More than an adversary I'm very quick, I'm ready to hit 'em with this gift, I'm equipped to kick” come second when placed against Lana’s lyrics from songs such as ‘Carmen’ and ‘This is What Makes Us Girls’ to name but a few.

Any who, this post was not intended to diminish Pac’s body of work, or any other artist for that matter… I just wanted those of you who have never been privy to Del Rey’s work to experience first-hand its wonder.
Here is a list of my Fave three snippets from Lana Del Rey intros and outros. I felt it would be a tad disingenuous to list five intros and outros as I honestly am obsessed with just these three, so you’ll excuse this month’s fave five…

Hope you like it either way!

3.            Outro from National Anthem

“And I remember when I met him, it was so clear that he was the only one for me. We both knew it, right away. And as the years went on, things got more difficult - we were faced with more challenges. I begged him to stay. Try to remember what we had at the beginning.

He was charismatic, magnetic, electric and everybody knew it. When he walked in every woman’s head turned, everyone stood up to talk to him. He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn’t contain himself. I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him. And in that way, I understood him and I loved him.

I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.

And I still love him. I love him.”

2.            Outro from Ride
Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, and finally I did on the open road.
We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art.
Live fast. Die young. Be wild. And have fun.
I believe in the country America used to be.
I believe in the person I want to become.
I believe in the freedom of the open road.
And my motto is the same as ever:
"I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself I ride, I just ride."
Who are you?
Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them?
I have. I am fucking crazy.
But I am free.

               

1.            Intro from Ride
“I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.
At night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them.
Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour, and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times.
I was a singer - not a very popular one,
I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.
But I didn't really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have home.
They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head.
I was always an unusual girl.
My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean...
And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying...
Because I was born to be the other woman.
I belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.
Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.”

If this isn't poetry, I clearly have no concept of what poetry is…