About Comments

Good morning, gentle readers all!

Thank you for the responses to my blog posts, both online and off. They really mean a lot to me. It helps to know that I'm not alone -- that I'm not just talking to myself in a vacuum.

I just have one request though: please, if you leave a comment, could you sign in or do something else to identify yourselves? I would dearly love to know who I'm having a conversation with... Who actually reads this, you know?

That's it for now. I hope today is a brilliant day for you all!

When I get low...

I need to talk to someone. Not about anything specific. I am in such a messed up space that I don't know who to talk to, though...

So I figured out what's possibly the number one reason I struggle to write on my blog. It's the same problem I have with relating to people. I am scared to death of opening up myself to anybody.

That said, I'm trying to be different. To be better than my prior self. And so, without any further ado...

I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel pathetic and lonely and I want -- need -- to talk to somebody, but I am too depressed and anxious and shy to initiate conversation. That little voice telling me I'm a stupid burden is VERY loud tonight. I know I need to say something to someone, but right now I honestly can't process emotion well enough to even figure out who would care enough to chat with me.

Yes, I am experiencing self pity, low self esteem, and sadness. No, it's not voluntary. If I could choose to feel otherwise, I would. I am trying to see past this mountain of fucked up emotions to where I need to be cooking dinner, having a bath, and getting ready for work tomorrow... Instead, I burned my food because I couldn't manage to get up and save it in time, I broke my favourite wooden spoon, and I honestly can't scrape together any enthusiasm for the tepid half-bath which is all our geyser is capable of.

All I want to do right now is lie in bed until I pass out from low blood sugar. Unconsciousness is kind of like sleep, right?

Depression is so fucked up.

If you have the spoons, I sure would appreciate a few kind words.

On creativity and narcissism

It makes me anxious to put something out there in the world. I lose control of it. It takes on a life and reality of its own. It is as if I both birth and lose a child. Not to mention the anxiety of having to face people who might find this mindspawn and come knocking on your metaphorical or literal door.

It also worried me that most of my ideas feel like they're not creative at all, just mix ups of stereotypes and ideals. Then a part of me went "Well, isn't that about 98% of creativity anyway?".  And I do think I have some thoughts worth writing down, so I'm just going to have to lean into the discomfort and get over the fact that writing is an incredibly narcissistic act. I have spent all of my rational life cultivating a rich inner world, so I might as well share some of it with you.

(Thank you to that friend who told me in your drunken sweary way that I must do this! You know who you are.)

So I might be ranting a lot more here. For now, I'm out. Gotta go paint my nails and go shopping. It's lunchtime and it's still pretty fucking chilly out, so 'twere best done sooner than later. I'll be back...

Stupid avoidant personality bullshit

I am so fucked. I'm freaking out and I don't know what to do. Because our house power (literally!) burned out last night, I was running late for going to the clinic and then my boss called when I was on the bus to the clinic and I panicked and lied to her and she saw me and she knows I lied and I'm probably going to lose my job now and I'm so fucked.

I shouldn't even be posting this here because it's my own stupid fault and my problem and nobody else can deal with this. I just want to run away or end it all so that I can't fuck up any more. I don't know what's going to happen when I get to work later but it's probably going to be horrible and I'm already preparing myself for unemployment. I'm scared.

I don't know where else to turn

I need to talk to somebody about my depression. Right now I can't talk to my wife because a fuck up caused partly by my muddled thinking (due to depression) has caused a big bad fight between us. I can also not talk to my girlfriend because she's already ill and also I can't exactly tell her that I feel suicidal since it's a trigger for her due to her stepfather having committed suicide not even a year ago. I vaguely recall this topic coming up between us before, but right now the act of recalling memories feels much like swimming across the Atlantic if that great ocean was filled with syrup or glue or something. So I don't know how she will react if I bring this up.

Anyway, what is the point of telling anybody else? "I'm depressed and want to kill myself so that I stop hurting the ones I love." What do you say to something like that, anyway? "Oh. Yeah, don't kill yourself. There there, it'll be okay." Whoop de fucking do. I feel better already. <sarcasm mark>

So now I'm sitting on the bathroom floor hiding from everyone so that I don't dehydrate from all the crying.

I don't know who among my friends I can reach out to, either. I'm usually the one supporting then through their troubles, so I have no handle on who could even begin to handle the load of my depression without them cracking up too.

I don't even have any pets I could cuddle to help me feel better. So yeah, now I'm pretty much stuck between a toilet bowl and a black void I want to jump into to escape being me.

On slavery and the Bible

This post grew out of a recent comment thread on a certain social network. Without any ado, hereunder the full text of my final response:

"Yes, let's not cherry pick at slavery alone. There are many better arguments against God and the Bible. Compared to all the other sins we can chalk up on the scoreboard, slavery is a minor point. Let's see now...

Claiming equality because everyone is equally unworthy of grace and forgiveness misses the point. We are all equally worthy of existence because we share an existence on a tiny speck of wet dust in a universe so vast that we cannot comprehend the size of it but for the abstraction of advanced mathematics. That's what makes us brothers, not that none of us are "worthy" in the eyes of a being whose existence is asserted by certain Church-sanctioned ancients. Not to mention that the splinter of crimes against humanity in even the worst type of human's eye is microscopic compared to the astronomical beam, nay, forest in the eye of the being who (by all accounts) ironically arrogates to itself the right to judge everyone else. Israelites are fond of acting like they are have been made to suffer because they are the only ones whose god exists, but fail to address the fact that their "promised land" was obtained on the orders of a supposedly-loving god who ordered them to butcher each and every man, woman and child in a land grab exponentially bigger than anything in their history.

The Bible posits the existence of and supposedly reflects the character of the Judaeo-Christian god. That is still fine, many holy books do likewise with their own notions of a divine being. Unfortunately, the character of the god of the Bible is portrayed as being a deity who is capricious, fickle, cruel, xenophobic, patriarchal, homophobic, misogynistic, genocidal, hypocritical, racist and generally bigoted being guilty of the worst sort of war crimes known to man. If you can genuinely love a god who would condemn you to everlasting damnation and suffering because you fail to believe and jump through certain ritual and spiritual hoops, that speaks much better of you than of said god. If we have any absolute moral responsibility in life, it is not to become like God but to become morally superior to God."

FIN.

Lost: Packed lunch, and bits of my soul

This morning, I finally had something of a personal breakthrough as pertains taking my writing seriously. I would use all my odd hurry-up-and-wait moments, those instances where one has moments of downtime while scripts or maintenance jobs ran, to input my scribblings and scraps of poetry, prose, insights and ramblings, scattered about my notebooks of the last half-dozen or so years. So I packed every single one of my notebooks, except not into my (full) backpack. Instead, I decided to use  a special lunch bag given me some months before. Some promotional thing, whose chief attraction for purposes of notebook storage was that it was exactly the right size.

You can probably spot where this goes wrong.

I arrived at work and noted its absence, but believed myself to have forgotten it at home. I remember wondering if my lunch would go off for being left outside the fridge.

I looked for it when I got home. My room was still locked. The lunch bag was not there. Neither was it in the rest of the apartment, not even after 27 consecutive searches.

I am seldom given to fanciful language, but I feel as if a chunk of my soul had been ripped out.

Keats or somebody, asked what a poem of his meant, said: "When I wrote that poem, God and I knew what it meant. Now only God knows."

My poems are snapshots of moments and mind states gone by. They were written by a different person in a different time and place. Irreproducible and priceless to me, trash to anyone else. Who steals my purse steals trash, but who steals my words robs me of bits of my past. I had all but forgotten how it feels like to be numb yet raw. Hello again....

The bag is a teal-ish promotional item from some garage chain. The notebooks are A5 96-page ruled notebooks in spiral bound and stitched flavours. There's one A6 item with a Winnie the Pooh sticker on the back. If you're reading this and if you use public (road) transport in Cape Town's southern suburbs, and believes you might have found something... please get in touch. A reward is not out of the question. If you can't mail me, please leave a comment below.

Dinner tonight: chocolate covered in chocolatey chocolate sauce. With vodka and grapefruit juice. And a banana. Judge not.

Apology for a birthday wishlist

Those of you that know me, know that I struggle to ask for what I need. The reasons behind that deserve a whole 'nother blag post by their lonesome, so I won't go into that. What is important is that this here piece represents my trying another way. I am going to put my wishes out there, even if I am the only one who ever reads it. Some of it, I can only grant / realise myself. (The rest of you can also peek.) 

If the universe is listening, though, and if it truly matters which words we surround ourselves with:

I do not ask but speak my truth
if I dream true and selflessly
my dreams will soon reality be.

Without overthinking it, here's the list in no particular order:

• A bicycle, and resultant exercise. Because I need to both get to work and get/stay in shape, because I can't perform impact exercise, and rollerblades aren't practical in Winter.
• A roof over our heads, come September. We've got to move out and house hunting has been a farce of lazy half-assed work from rental agents, misnamed advertisements (a garden flat on the owner's property is NOT a "Semi-detached house!), and simple bad upkeep. (Protip: Musty smell = asthmatic HELL.)
• Regular massages. For somebody that's always urging others to make work of this, I've treated myself rather poorly thus far. Touch isn't just fun, it's essential.
• Less insecurity, more self appreciation. More self discipline hopefully an outcome here. Someone wonderful recently confirmed this for me -- If I believe that I am worthy of love and belonging, and deserve good things, I will work hard to give myself what I want and need.
• A meditation space. Because right now, my life and environment pretty much completely lacks a tranquil space. I don't need to explain the problem there, do I?
• A swimming pool to use on a regular basis. Partly for exercise as per above, partly because I am a water baby and going too long without regular full bodily immersion makes me feel sad and disassociated (from myself and reality).
• A distraction-free writing space. Possibly overlapping with meditation space. My head is overfull of ideas and words that need out. I am unable to not write, and not realising this need in my life is causing major emotional overload.
• New seeing-eye spectacles. My current pair is over 2 years old now. The constant eye strain and headaches just aren't funny any more. I am seriously considering switching to the blind interface on my work computer, and have already done so on my Droidlet.
• A publisher. For the steamy romance novel that I'm working on, and its successors. Somebody wrote "What you do when procrastinating is what you should be doing for the rest of your life". Well... suffice it to say that I have nimble fingers and an eloquent tongue.

And that's me for now. Speak soon!

We, the creators

There is a new humanity coming. We no longer need governments and media corporations to mediate the connection of the individual to humanity as a whole. We, the people, can now all observe the erstwhile mediators and see them for the obstructionist censors they are.

If the film industry collapsed tomorrow, would we lack entertainment? If the recording industry closed up shop today, would we be without music? Don't be absurd. What I believe we will see is an explosion of creativity the likes of which the world has never seen before.

If you want change, do it yourself.

Hello boys and girls (and greetings to the few grownups among you). I have a few things on my chest. If you can't handle it, tough. It's about time I did a "friend" cull anyway. If you disagree with me, unfriend me and save me the trouble.

Save species X. For fuck's sakes. Yes, we are haemorrhaging species like there's no tomorrow. This is indescribably horrible; biodiversity is irreplaceable. Do you know what, though? The poachers are not online. Neither are the corrupt immigration and parks officials who turn a blind eye in return for a greased palm. No amount of petitions will change the fact that bad people make lots of money selling our natural resources to foreign buyers. (Wait, that sounds like our government.)

Do you know how you stop poachers? You and some friends all buy guns (only automatic rifles and up need apply). You go into the bush and go shoot these bad people. All power is based on a threat of force. If the bad people will not listen to threats and you don't apply the force, then the threats are meaningless.

Save our resources. Of course I want to save the resources. It's too bad, however, that our government seems to be doing exactly what the poachers are doing: Selling off our natural resources to the highest international bidder. Our country is being fleeced by the very public servants we elected into power to stop this from happening. It's the banking system all over again... instead of robbing banks, the syndicates got smart and bought the banks. Do you know what happens when you put the fox in charge of the henhouse? Subprime mortgage crisis. Stock market crash. Recession. Fracking. Poaching. Telkom, Eskom, killing off the Scorpions... the list goes on. The fact of the matter is that there is something very wrong with this country and nobody worth listening to has the balls to call politicians on their shit. If you want to save our resources, go camp on top of them with a whole bunch of others and take force multipliers -- think "lots of potential violence". If you're unwilling to do violence upon someone's person to stop this from happening, you're not committed enough. Same goes for species conservationism.

What is the purpose of a government, when it comes right down to it? A government is a corporation which should maintain the local monopoly on violence. When someone threatens you with violence, it is the job of the government and its representatives to stop them before it happens. In the real world, however, we hire private individuals to protect us because the government seems to actively encourage violence against its own citizens, against the very people who got them into power. If you have a contract with ADT or a similar company, why not take that amount off your taxes? It makes sense -- if the the government's anti-violence services had not failed you, you would not need to hire somebody else.

Do you know what we need? We need geeks in Parliament. Not in the peanut gallery, either -- right in the middle of the floor. Geeks have excellent bullshit filters. Whenever a politician makes a statement which is evasive, dissembling or otherwise obfuscatory, the Parliament geek's job would be to say something along the lines of "Yes, but what does that actually mean?"

The easiest thing in the world is to complicate; the hardest is to simplify. If a politician is unable to boil down a complex issue so ANY of their constituents can understand it, they are a failure. Pure and simple. The entire point of representative democracy, after all, is to make the democratic process accessible to each and every voter in the country. Holding a rally and making a speech does not qualify as making democracy accessible. Ask most of the attendees at a party rally about the issues raised; I will bet my bottom ZA dollar that not one in ten can provide you with a succinct summary of the politico's speech. They can probably tell you about the dancers and the pap & vleis (porridge and meat) they got for free. Do you know what this is called? Bread and circuses. The Romans knew about this too -- you could go work out your frustration vicariously by watching the gladiators for a tenth of an unskilled worker's daily wage, and you got free bread. You go home fed and calmer.

Do you know what has changed since then? That's right -- the unskilled workers live in worse conditions than they did two thousand years ago. Rome had running water for everyone; we cannot even claim that.

Change happens in individuals before it happens in society. If you let other people take action on your behalf, nothing will ever change. If the internet has taught us anything, it is that we are many. Take ten minutes every day to do something revolutionary. That, I believe, will change the world.