Beginnings and Endings (Part 2)

December(ish), 2012
Lake Merrit
Oakland, California

Almost 2 years ago, I entered an empty room with off-white walls and a view of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge. It was a new beginning. A completely new start. I knew 3 people in the city and carried my entire life in two suitcases and an overstuffed carry-on.  There is something poignant about gathering a life into suitcases and an overstuffed carry-on, and leaving behind no traces of yourself.

I did it again 5 months ago. Up and left. Erasing myself and creating myself again. This time in match-box studio apartment in front of a lake. I own a bookshelf, a desk and a chair. The bed is twice handed down. Both past owners work where I work. If it could speak, I would ask it to be quiet. There is enough space for me and my two-suitcase life in my studio. I don't own any living things. It feels like home. When I was home (in South Africa) and I imagined home, this was what I imagined. 

I guess I am one for beginnings and endings. Middles are fine too -  life has more middles than beginning and endings, I guess.  I don’t dislike them. There is nothing like a new home, though, or a newly old home. A beginning and ending. I want to call it freedom. But that word has too many meanings in the U.S.

People are amazing. I have met many, and I have learnt how to make insta-friends. When you leave somewhere and end up somewhere else, far from anything you know, you make insta-friends. You meet people, become intimate real quick,  and next thing you know you are family. You cling onto each other because for some reason, its important to care for people and, to be cared for. Even if its just occasionally getting together to laugh about how smart people can get so quickly dumb when they speak about people who come from where you come from. Or sitting in the park trying to figure out why boys treat us like Michelle, the extra child of Destiny, when it is obvious that we are Beyonce, the golden-child. 

I have been willing myself, over the last few weeks, to be awed by my fortune here. Maybe its self-indulgent. My aim was to document this short and amazing moment in my short  life - and how unimaginable it was 7 years ago. How impossible. I don't want to take it for granted. But I also don’t want to make an it-gets-better-as-evidenced-by-my-awesome-life-I-love-myself-and-you-should-love-me-too video. Feel free to move on to something else. There must be something else more important on the internet.

Questions and 3am thoughts

About 3am - Monday February 21 2011
Washington Heights
New York City

1. Snow is ugly. And it is unpleasant. Why are you dreaming of a white christmas? 
2. Go-go boys are cute. But why do they always leave an oily residue on my fingers? 
3. You will never meet a nice boy at the club. Go home and watch a rom-com. 
4. Grey sweatpants are always ugly. 
5. Bhuti, why are you trying to sit next to me in the subway? And why are your thighs all up in my grill? Can you not press your knees together and look straight ahead like everyone else? 
6. Facebook is addictive. But at least I'm not on crack.

How to Survive Travel to Foreign Territories

A Concise List

1. Never catch feelings in a foreign country. 

1.1. If you catch feelings, surrender them at the airport. Leave them with half-drunken bottles of water, too-large for hand-luggage hand creams, seeds, agricultural products, meat products, and folded-up pamphlets of places you will never visit. 

1.1.1. If that fails, remember to forget his name - like the taste of the water, the smell of the airport, and the name of that place you happened upon drunk, or lost. The name of that place with the dancing lights and balmy wind; with that music that filled with your lungs; the salt-water and sunblock smell. The name of that place that found a new world inside you; that made you feel free. That place you will never visit again. Forget him like your forgot that name. Let him exist as an outline, or a blur, a rush of excitement, a there-thing. Not a here-thing. You are here now, not there. Get busy at work. 

1.1.1.1. If that fails, brace yourself for a slow death. Count the words in his messages. Count your words. Open a ledger. Balance his words against yours. Measure the distance between your "Hello" and his "Good Night"; your xx and his <3; his "Message Read" and your "Message Received". Measure the heat of his virtual kisses, the intensity of his longing. Measure the distance between dreams and realities. Measure every thing.

1.1.1.1.1. Realize the truth of the measurements one night. Drink red wine tinged with the salt of your travel-love tears. Play Hoobastank, Coldplay, John Legend in quick succession. Fall asleep on the couch.

1.1.1.1.1.1. Pour silence into your phone. Aim it upwards or in the direction of his city or at a picture of his face. Channel all the silence you can muster. Let him be overwhelmed by a tsunami of silence. Write a blank text message to him. Don't send it. Let him ache for your attentions. Deny him them. (Wonder if he is doing the same thing, or whether he noticed). Tell your friends how useless he is. (Know that he is not . Just human, and far). Concede nothing. Delete his number.

1.1.1.1.1.1.1. Forget him for months.

1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1. Remember him one night, drunk, and wonder what the fuck you were doing catching feelings in a foreign country. You were being ridiculous. Rookie Error. Never again. 

Do it again.

2. Pack lots of underwear - repeating underwear is undignified.

Khona

Where is my love?

Please return it

To where you found it.

I want it to return

To me from that place

Bring it back,

bring it back,

I want it back.

I have been loving this video because it is a conversation. New York Ball Scene gays with bo mme ba Lesotho are chatting about Ndebele art and Sarafina through Kwaito beats and Salif Keita's haunting wailing. These are just my associations, I am sure different people see/hear different things. 

As always, I am late to the party. I am sure others have finished writing about how awesome all of everything in this video is. I discovered the translation late. (Sometimes I purposefully fail to listen to the words of songs I love. I have been disappointed too many times - looking at you Beyonce.)

I also missed the poignancy of this song.  You wouldn't think that they are mourning a bandmember, a mother, a child, and a lover. You wouldn't think it is a song about death. It seems to be.

I guess it makes sense that it is as upbeat as it is tragic. Because we are a singing people. When we are happy we sing, when we are sad, we sing. When we are hungry or tired or bored, we sing.

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