heeelz

This morning I decided to come to work (I do it from a coffee shop ) in my black 50-something-inch heels. I had been admiring these heels for a while, in my room in my parents' house. How they make me feel tall, and sassy, and Beyonce. How well they work with the choreography from Her video for 'Grown Woman', the one from a live performance in Paris (there are different versions - that one is my favourite).

On a whim, I threw the shoes on and got in the car (I did not bring a sensible back-up pair). More dangerous than drag, I am just wearing (men's) jeans and a tee. And you know how butch, how straight-acting, how manly and indifferent-to-fashion I look in my jeans and a tee.

I am not sure why I am here like this (story of my life). I think it had something to do with how much of a waste these shoes are in my closet. Maybe it is  to challenge myself to reflect on whether/how I navigate spaces differently; can I move in Bloemfontein like I move in San Francisco or Cape Town? Do I move in the mall  like I move downtown? Questions of physical safety aside, how does someone else's gaze shape the ways in which I can use the thing that is most intimately mine to use - my body?

Sidenote: Judith Butler dropping truths about Gender

Here I am. Vaguely aware of the waiters gathered at the waiters station, the respectable  couple at the table behind me, the shop assistants whose cackles I only heard once my back was turned (people are terribly polite in Bloemfontein). I am acutely aware of old fears and anxieties and have discovered new ones (what if I fall? what if I meet someone I know?  what if everyone can tell that I don't really know how to walk in heels? What if they laugh at me not because they are blind to the demands of their genders, but because my fashion choices are TERRIBLE?)

Anyways. Here I am, serving you keletso-realness. Scared and anxious on the inside, but on the outside, smizing and werqing like  its Mimosa Mall Fashion Week up in this betch.

As you were.

Love Handles

I noticed today
in the mirror,
while forgiving
my rogue body-parts
for arriving
in the night
like extended family
with too-large suitcases

that if I turn away
and gaze back
and squint seductively,
it looks like I swallowed
a sexy clothes-hanger
which is now lodged
right-way-up
just above my waist.

It makes for fine handles
to hold onto
for the loving

of myself

"My vice - my secret pin which I should never reveal and never write down on a piece of paper like this - was getting in the last word. I didn't intend to trouble other people, only to enlighten them. On the majority of Mondays and Sundays and Thursdays and Wednesdays, and some other days of the week, I felt closer to the truth than most other people...

Granted: this conviction of mine had the potential to create bitterness. But silence, and compliance, any form or type of submission, were antithetical to the mission of a taxi poet. I preferred that others submit, instead, to the crackle of whatever truth flowed through me like the sparks at Parker's house in Belthorn Estate where they electrocuted many a sliding-door man who had slid away from financial morality. It was even possible that torturers, and truth seekers, and transport poets were united in pursuit of this strange crackle."

-- Imraan Coovadia, The Institute for Taxi Poetry, 2012

There's a whole world outside this. Shut outside. Kept out. Shutting this in... Don't stay inside and let your arteries harden, like theirs... What I'm asking you to look out for is - a moral sclerosis. Moral sclerosis. Hardening of the heart, narrowing of the mind; while the dividends go up. The thing that makes them distribute free blankets in the location in winter, while refusing to pay wages people could live on. Smugness. Among us, you can't be too young to pick it up. It sets in pretty quick. More widespread than bilharzia in the rivers, and a damned sight harder to cure.

 It's a hundred per cent endemic in places like this Donnybrook Country and Sporting Club, and in all the suburbs that you're likely to choose from to live in. Just don't be too sure they're healthy, our nice clean suburbs for whites only.

 - and your children. If you have babies... don't worry too much about who kisses them - it's what they'll tell them later that infects. It's what being nicely brought up will make of them that you've got to watch out for...

Nadine Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World. 1966

This book was banned by the Apartheid government for 10 years beginning in 1975. That's how you know to read it.

"Tears are very close to my eyes," says Bhonco, son of Ximiya. "Not for pain... no... I do not cry because of pain. I cry because of beautiful things."

And he cries often. Sometimes just a sniffle.Or a single tear down his cheek. As a result he carries a white handkerchief all the time, especially these days when peace has returned to the land and there is enough happiness to go around. It is shared like pinches of snuff. Rivers of salt. They furrow the aged face.

Zakes Mda, The Heart of Redness

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell

Leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
--Marty McConnel

e·phem·er·a

əˈfem(ə)rə
noun
things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.

Four foldable side tables that I put together to use as a desk
One wooden chair
One wooden coat rack
One box-spring and mattress
One inflatable mattress
One bookshelf
Six porcelain bowls
One pot
One frying pan
One kettle
Two wine glasses
Four glass jars
One wooden spoon
Four forks, four spoons, 4 teaspoons, 2 knives

I will be giving them away over the next two weeks. Let me know if you want to give them a new life in your home.

It gets better

Your time is coming
Arm yourself with love
Spend your kindness in the mirror
Read
Make your own family
Plan your escape
Dream
Leave an unkind friend
Spend tears wisely
Spill tears recklessly
Listen to the saddest song
Hope

Your time is coming
Struggle will make you beautiful
We are waiting for you

Beginnings and Endings

I love beginnings and endings. I am rushing towards one now, so I have come back to this place to share banal things with you, internet. I know you are almost at capacity , but just like the people who give you pictures and pictures of cats, I don't care. It's not about you.

I found this entry that I made on the first day I was in the United States of America. I was young, skinny, and full of hope. Now I am youngish, fatish and full of complaints about the world.

After about 30 hours of travelling I have arrived at our hotel. My first impression of Miami is that its like Durban except cars come at you from your blind spot (left-hand side) and they seem bigger than usual. There is a giant American flag flying at the top of a giant flagpole across the street from my window. 

I just had a bottomless soup and salad for $7 at a place called "Chilli's" in Bayside Market Place. The first helping could have fed a small family for 2 days. The fat could have fuelled a small car from Bloemfontein to Thaba Nchu.  

This morning when I ordered coffee from Starbucks (like in the movies), after asking for a small coffee, the lady behind the counter repeated my order to me as "tall coffee". "Excuse me ma'am," I excused myself (a little bleary from the long flight) "I ordered a small coffee". 

"Sir, our small is our tall" she shot back.

I'm supposed to share my hotel room with someone. I hope he is hot and gay, but either would be fine.

This has nothing to do with anything I wrote

Looking back at this moment, it is clear that this woman, having detected the sureness of a foreigner with a too-fast metabolism, tried to warn me about the fatsplosion that was to visit my then dainty hips. Alas, I did not hear her. There are also hints in here about the rest of my stay - giant American flags, hotties, gays, bottomless (or bottomful) things, etc. For later posts.