Category Archives: life

by

Defrost

pain-smoke-death

My heart screams. My brain finds no rest.

I have to speak out, and simultaneously I condemn any ridiculous arguments that attempt to justify harming even ONE human being in the process.
(i.e. It is absurd to assume that everyone nearing the fence in the Gaza strip is a Hamas terrorist?)

I see mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and loved ones in hellish agony. All of this has found echo in my head. Images of the affected in this progressive hate saga between Israelis & Palestinians continually interrupt my whole stream of consciousness when awake and asleep.

The future is for the young first, and only then it is for the rest of us. Alas, there is no future in this case. There is only hate and pain and segregation. Known also as Apartheid, this system forcefully singles out a group of people in the most demeaning, derogatory, insensitive, insulting and inhumane way. As is proven once more here, such systems are upheld by the powerful and the victims are depicted as the villains, who one has to be protected from at all cost, even by murder.

The world is mostly ruled by the old and stubborn who don’t waver from their stance and who continually garner support for what they think is the rightful cause, bending the ear of those who elected them.

When rulers bring war and destruction and hate instead of wisdom, love and peace, then you know they are the wrong leaders.

My roots reach deep into two countries: South Africa and Germany. Both have experienced the worst of humanity. The rainbow also doesn’t shine every day in our rainbow nation but the rainbow will forever be in our minds when we remember the atrocities of the past.

An answer can never be found in war, fences, concentration camps and human abuse.

Also, no answers are found when these leaders sit together because they will never agree as long as they insist on playing chess.

The solution lies with the young and innocent and the dreamers, thinkers and innovators.
They have to sit together and define what they want because the world belongs to them, and not to the warring, dead of conscience fanatics tainted with the brush of history, self-righteousness and other ills.

Analysing history, as we are known to do, should teach us how to deal with the future. Why don’t we get it?
All naysayers out there have a closer look at the miraculous, peaceful transformation of South Africa.

Where there is a will there is a way!

What is immediately required is a human bridge, an influx of support from all nations to stand with the oppressed, confused and petrified.

“Bring the future back to those who have lost it.”

I call on all in the world, young and old, to do this for those who suffer.

The promise of life only exists if you have a future.

“A denied future is dead life.”

Could any conscience live with such a thought any longer than a moment, let alone decades?

Let there be a human curtain made out of every living fabric that says: ‘Stop and change.’
Dismantle the barricades, the obstructions, the walls and fences and melt the ice of the frozen.

The time to forcefully exclude and deny has no space in the 21st century.

Here is an appeal to the big operators, profit-machines, life-changers, innovators and altruists and philanthropists, to dedicate a paragraph in a chapter of their book in their life to aid in solving this human catastrophe now. The affected parties can’t solve it: the UN can’t, and other nations can’t but the people of the world can. Some things are beyond governing bodies; they are in the individual hands of humanity across all and any divide.

This is an appeal to all the young and spirited and compassionate, — who cannot sleep another night just like I at 0230 this morning, — to create a tsunami, an avalanche, an eruption of change through their presence and their voice.

Let the airlines offer free tickets for this human cause. Let the food companies and all industries that make huge profits provide shelter and food for those heeding the cause.

Let it be a humanitarian evolution. Call it the Sunrise of Humanity. Let all nations congregate where weapons currently decide human fate. Let the flags of 190+ nations stare down any aggression from either side.

Will you shoot my flag?

May every soldier with a weapon become aware not only of the responsibility to his country/people but also the responsibility to humanity.

Could you bear the burden for the rest of your life of being a traitor to any one of them?

Let us be part of this movement lest we want to be judged for non-action when our conscience faces its last breath.

Do something. Anything. Everybody, do it. Make music, write, paint, go there…,we have to roll that drama over and bring those, who had the unimaginable happen in the life of their ancestors, to the realization of their inhumane actions. History is wagging a very irritated finger.

My old Zulu friend Jameson ‘Umkuhlu’ Mthembu speaks from deep within his wise soul when he says,

umkuhlu1

 

 

“Don’t put a fridge by your heart,”

 

 

 

…not for longer than a few hours or at most a day or two.

“Everyone:  your time is up,”

that is quite obvious to all and yourself.

One of the critical human lessons and actions towards progress is that you have to put ‘stuff’ behind you in order to move forward. — Do it!

It is time to defrost.

*Picture from AFP on http://www.spiegel.de

by

uncentered

Cloudman why are you waving at me?

Is there something I don’t see?

cloudman

I am nothing

I am clueless

I am lost

 

No cheque in the post

Fruitless attempts to summit my life, oh yes

Contempt with insanity’s grin

 

Decades have rolled on

Overgrown now the paths I once ventured

Blinded and stuck on some, —  far too long

Sometimes it really feels that I’m done

 

Now, time is called the ‘aftermath’

That little left should be made to last

Create the antecedent of tomorrow

Leave out today’s horror,

relegate that to the past

 

Nothing: is all that matters

Clueless: the more the better

Lost: is the prize not the cost

 

by

died it 

He believed, then doubted, then died it

 
Creativity was his door to become more

Poetry and prose were the tears that he cried,

  and he toiled with the question:

What was it all for?

 

Doubt was the dust

  infiltrating even his purest intention

Now he lies spent like rain in the grass,

  tears on a tissue, lipstick on a glass

Not even the universe affords him attention

 

He always believed too much,

  and proof was never important as such

If he liked it, he deemed it to be true,

  even if experts were cleverer and knew

 

His world, perhaps, was slightly askew

 

Belief was like a train:

Up front the idea, creditability and fame

…so far so good

Followed by wagons of responsibilities,

  too many to name

…that was the drudge

Suddenly a yardstick emerged

  with which he was judged (his ideas)

 

Yes, he believed a lot

But, certainly didn’t want to be put on the spot

  for that which he called ‘the smoke from his pot’

It wasn’t religion or philosophy or such,

  they were ideas,

  life’s attempts at art with a smudge

 

Believing was more like following a trail

Not weighing each thought or step on a scale

T'was an indication of an approximate direction,

  and was prone to frequent correction

 

Believing and doubting were forever composing,

One minute blissfully flying over harmonies crest,

  euphorically losing control in the zest

and then,

  crashing into the trough of Wagner’s gloomiest best

He was cog and engine in a perpetually opposing quest

 

Shattered belief, triumphant doubt,

  sometimes one or the other acted out

A farmer of conflict, a dreamer of hope,

  ever the next wave of life should puzzle it out

 

Liberally sown by doubt the seeds of conflict abound

That’s why believing in dreams is so very allowed

But,
 
  dreams are also the food 

  which conflict gobbles to sprout

  and once it has grown

  it smothers the dreams

  so they lose the belief in their own

 

If life was nurtured by believing in dreams,

  no matter how irrational they seemed

and doubt destroys them with such might

  undoubdetly, he thought, he had just died
by

truth, honesty, fear 

I fear the brutality of truth,
  its uncompromising honesty
  and undeniable existence

Selected for slaughter
  I am summonsed by its prophecy

Then it gashes into me with razor like fangs

Sometimes I think I have become its parody

Laid on a butcher block,
  my private thoughts
  are hacked by the invincibility of truth’s shock
The fresh blood of my ignorant existence 
  squirting denial onto the mirror
  that reflects the lie I lived since my birth

Impaled by the truth

The living flesh of my deceived soul
  stabbed with an edged knife
  splits open into wound like a cleft
Exposed now, the raw, oozing me reads: 
  “there, the truth, you see.”

Truth is like fresh blood:
  hot and sticky in its honesty, 
  and unforgettably red.

I fear it,
  yet I want to know it like I know about death
An intimate hatred to past events
  burns in my breath
Inescapably true and insensitive that truth may be,
  tortured, agonizing and upset, I still wish to see

Truth knows not diplomacy nor does it care
  Its words are whiplashes castigating any pretense

Sentenced to truth, even death would be less intense
  Even armed with a dictionary of swords
  no mortal will ever ably defend

Truth doesn’t blurb or make a scene
  it confronts me naked, ugly, sore and mean
It's the sadistic crusader
  silently wielding its honesty
  boiling my being to scream

Behind every frontage the truth can be seen,
  hidden only from the mind in delusional dream

I fear the honesty of truth
  Bitter, vile, — sweet and beautiful

The truth cuts me in two:
  One piece, the truth, is my book
  The other, the lie, is the way that I look
by

96-hour days

I mean you read a lot. A hell of a lot.

One copy of yourself should be dedicated to reading 24-hours a day and provide feedback to yourself. It should then populate that infinite dormant memory in your head, indexing everything and getting on with it, ploughing through all that is readable and available, at thought-speed, — forget about sluggish light-speed, we have very (much) surpassed that.

You see a lot too. Maybe even more than you read. But, don’t underestimate the written word. With reading also comes seeing.

There is so much out there that you actually don’t have to think ever again. It’s all been said and it’s all been thought. And what remains, surely, is in a pipeline somewhere to be revealed shortly (on Netflix or some blog or in a pub).

And, the more I read and see, truly I feel, the dumber I get. Why? Because in some way by having all this input I don’t have any output anymore. I do, but it’s others’ thoughts, words and ideas.

I clearly know that I have to extend my 24-hour day. I have to create parallel days and still manage everything even if it is four-fold now. But, I don’t want to be a manager. No, shit no! I want to be involved in every little bit of those multiple 24-hour days, and I also want to get on with other stuff that interests me. I want to spend hours flying, soaring in the air, 3k feet above the ground, or landing in my neighbor farmers backyard on a penny for a cup of Wienermischung Arabica coffee. I want to immerse myself in music and play it and compose. I want to travel to every remote and beautiful corner of this magnificent continent called Africa in my Land Cruiser. I have a love affair with Africa and another one with another one. I have to create, split, multiply and slice the time I have available.

I literally have to drag myself away from the latest doing, reading and seeing, — which I am blatantly honest about, is all extremely enjoyable, — back into my chambers, close the door behind me and open the one in front of me. The one that opens into my world from my mind. You see, here goes another 24-hour day.

My function in life, — having come to this astounding realization of the ninety-six hour day requirement, — is not to write more initially. We have agreed that there is too much already for the twenty-four hour limited human being.

We have to find ways to condense time, expand time, multiply time, fornicate time, forget time, — ignore it, any which way, — and get more done in the moment of life we have so we can absorb, digest, create more and become infinitely more of ourself.

What other point could there conceivably be to continue with life once such a revelation has shone upon us, but to invent new methods and aspire to hitherto unknown heights of accomplishing the impossible?

Do you really want to slip back into your twenty-four hour drudge-day which practically gives you perhaps two hours to do your stuff, instead of figuring out some multi-parallel reality?

Fine, go for it. You won’t find me in that asylum.

Yes, there are schools of thought that we should do one thing and one thing only at a time in order to do them properly. (utter rubbish loser talk) Admittely, I have tried and I have made a mess of it. My first novel, a fictional memoir called ‘beyond Cloudia,’ touches on the subject. And, there are always those ‘I told you so’ encouraging cheer leaders. Instead of getting multiple things done, nothing was finished, except the bottle of red wine or the J, in the end. That however is no sentence not to try again, more evolved, and with better or more Jwine. I don’t smoke so there is no J in my wine.

The current steam locomotive of progress has become terribly, frustratingly slow and this has watered the seed for further exploration into the matter of parallel 24-hour days, or, at least one ninty-six hour day to start with.

Very few things, if any, have ever worked the first time around. How many rockets have gone up in smoke? Right. We have to start somewhere.

I think we have to be blind movers sometimes, believing that our movement gets us there, although we can’t see it, or explain the logic behind our (absurd) behavior .

 

 

 

by

Candle and flame

 

DSC_0186

Mostly, 
 when the flame goes out 
 the candle is left.

Maybe, once upon, it flickered
 and burned bright.
 Its reflection casting life
  onto the screen as I write.
 Like the sun it shone wherever I was.

Perhaps it had its own soul?
 Not a soul we humans understand.
 Of a beauty that mesmerized,
 it was so grand.
 Not a composition of science, 
  oxygen and chemistry.
 A soul of burning mystery.

And then I left it alone, 
 ignored and forgot it.
 Or,
 I extinguished it 
  with a thoughtless breath.
 Cruel, you could say.
 It was so motile and alive.
 Blue, transparent, deep orange,
  dark and light.
 Shaped like a hand,
  as if reaching out to somewhere —
  to a place we can’t see.
 An x-dinguished gesture axed the flame.
 The candle's journey abruptly finished.

Were there conversations with the candle?
 Flaming or not?
 Dialog or monolog?

 Probably, but rarely.

 I told it my story
  and asked it to publish my wishes.
 I did, — but only in recent oratory.

I put my hopes into the flame.
 Then I watched it write,
  with the tip of its light,
  onto the backdrop of the eternal night.
 I blew it out,
  letting the white smoke add its credentials
  and reshape the message to the essentials.
 Quickly I lit it again,
  so the flame could rise from the dead
  and proceed
  with the next message instead.

My message was sent.
 Should I remain?
 Am I waiting in vain?
 Some of my candle is left,
  but what happened to its flame?