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Blog – Page 3 – Poems, Pictures & Prose by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

Writing Notes from 2015

I wanted 2016 to be the year I stop using the phrase, “Sorry, I’m running late.”

But here it is. Decomposing deadlines and backlogs remain my bane, my breath is still too short to catch up with my legs.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been waking up with a door creaking in my throat, the hinges whistling. It sets my day to a discordant music. I am living between coughs; mostly unproductive hacks shuddering me from one task to the next. It appears to be seasonal allergies, the worst I’ve had. My medication promises clarity. Everything we know is changing. It doesn’t rain when it should, people bleed when they shouldn’t. We are living between tragedies.

#AmIWriting

2015 was not my best writing year. I did not submit much prose work to any call for entries, except for a short piece of fiction I can now safely assume did not meet with success. As for my novel project, I am exactly where I was last year this time – at a sketchy outline phase.

The year was not a complete write-off though.
Two revisited poems, The Phone Call and Grandpa, were published in the 2015 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology and Ons Klyntji respectively.
I braved it and sought out a new audience for my work on Instagram and started a somewhat anonymous fiction blog which received a bit of media attention. It was a year for learning and some of the most useful insights came from being a preliminary reader and whittler for Writivism 2015‘s West African entries. After reading 123 short stories from that region alone and settling on 19 for the judges to consider, one develops some sense of what makes a story successful.
The invitation to attend the Ba re e ne re Literature Festival in Maseru was an uncontested 2015 highlight – ignited minds in a soothing setting talking craft and politics, making connections, feeling like you’re part of a bigger story, it was a heady weekend.

My 2015 Writing Lessons

  • Don’t take it personally. Revisit. Edit. Submit. Revisit. Edit. Submit.
  • Be brave. If you can’t be brave, become someone else until you are.
  • At some point you have to got to stop worrying about what people will think. Their offence has nothing to do with you.
  • The first paragraph you write is almost always superfluous. Edit to start strong.
  • Stories are commutes. They start at one place and end somewhere else.
  • A story must manufacture change. Either in your protagonist or in the reader after having read it.
  • Stories don’t have to be about big things.
  • Stories don’t have to be written with big words.
  • Writers are lucky in that their worst lives are their best material.
  • Poetry is hard. But it is always worth it.
  • Read. Read. Read.
  • Write. Write. Write.
  • Reading writing advice is a bit like taking too many vitamins. All you’ll end up with is very expensive urine.

Camera Collectanea: Shine Strong High Tea, Beautiful Things and Paper Cameras

Good Housekeeping’s Pantene Shine Strong High Tea|27 August 2015

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When an invite to Good Housekeeping’s Pantene Shine Strong High Tea dropped into my inbox, I cleared my schedule. I never pass on cake and a cuppa.

It wasn’t all carbs and crumbs at the lyrical Shepstone Gardens though. Proceeds from the the High Tea benefited Sisters4Sisters, a community-based non-profit who, among other aims, works towards empowering women in abusive situations. The event’s overarching theme was one of unapologetic strength. SA Fashion Week founder and director, Lucilla Booyzen welcomed us as confidants, sharing her story of a life designed by dreams and drive.

Unless I’m bound to by blood or emotional bondage, I unfollow people on Instagram who regularly post motivational masturbation and obvious life affirmations overlaid on bokeh backgrounds. Therefore, I’m not generally appreciative of inspirational woowoo, but listening to Booyzen, and the other speakers, I felt a current drill through me. Maybe it was the glycaemic load from the milktart cupcake I’d just inhaled. Maybe it was the realisation that I could in fact rewrite my life script anytime I wanted to. My take-home (along with the sexy Tupperware in the goodie bag) was the recognition that my own strengths lie in being resilient and re-inventive.

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Coffee Worship

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Camera-shaped Box with Moo MiniCard slot

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I still receive queries about the Moo MiniCard holders I designed a few years ago. I don’t sell them but I have made the template freely available for anyone who wants to make their own (click here for that and more information). I’ve now taken the original design and adapted it to form a camera-shaped box large enough to fit a memory stick. It’s a fun and personable way for me to deliver work to ShootCake clients.

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Notes to the Unconceived #3

Missives to the children I am yet to bear.

I don’t know what social media will be like when you’re old enough to set up your own profiles. I have a utopian vision of the entire infrastructure imploding, with only true and intimate connections surviving the fallout. I am not totally averse to the connected world that brought me your father and so many dear friends. It’s that as I get older, I crave the pure silence of the canyons and the wadis where the stillness is so thick and encompassing, one is able to hear all of time whisper to the soul. I try to seek out that silence by way of meditation; in washing dishes, in games of Freecell, in disconnecting from news feeds and online chatter. In that quiet, all my thinking expands and boomerangs. I find pause. I learn to listen.

You must always be able to hear yourself.

And when I do plug into the lives of others, I proffer the acknowledgements allowed for by the platform; liking, commenting, hearting, in all the ways we have to say, “Yes, you are here. I  have noticed you in this crowd.” We share and we receive. We hear and we want to be heard. In that lies a trial. For with the beautiful and benign, there will also lurk the reptilian-minded urge to police each other, to want to dictate to others what they should believe and what they should care about. It’s seductive and when it’s done, you will feel like a giant tramping across the countryside, admiring the deep impressions created in your wake. But I’d rather you not be the kind of person who gets told, “ooh, looks like you were awarded all the tenders God issued when divine judgement was being outsourced.”

It’s important that you have strong opinions; about justice, mercy and the well-being of others. I pray that you are never gagged by fear, that you always speak straight from your heart. And when you do, I want you to ask yourself the following questions before you share that passion on social media;

Am I speaking from a place of sincerity? Have I really listened to myself?
What is the intention behind this update?
Am I posting this to further a cause or to influence the perception others have of me?
Will what I have to say effect change?
Am I adding anything new to the existing discourse?
Am I shouting into the crowd when I could be whispering into the ear of the person this is directed at?
Who will be affected by what I have to say?
Is there even the tiniest chance that my words will be received as being unfair or unkind?
If I were to step away from my device for an hour, and then return to it, will I still want to say this?

If these interrogations leave you uncertain, seek out the silence. Consider your place in the universe as a human being. Calculate the value of that opinion. Listen.

2014 | The Retrospective

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Koh Samui sunrise, 4th December 2014

 

This year, in no particular order:

  • I wrote a few pieces I was happy with.
  • I learnt how to swim.
  • Our family lost two patriarchs. The spaces they’ve left behind are canyons.
  • I was pregnant for a little while. I was sad about losing the person I could have become but thankful that hope survives.
  • I graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University.
  • A short story I wrote won the 2014 Writivism award in Uganda.
  • I’m beginning to feel a bit like I know what I’m doing.
  • We traveled (and are still travelling) through Southeast Asia. Here be the instagrams.
  • I have seen some really beautiful things.
  • There were two months out of this year where I kind of just plodded along.
  • I dyed my hair a shade of blond.
  • I lost weight and picked it all up again during those two months of non-presence. But I’m okay with that. Health is still the end goal.
  • I sold the car I’ve been driving ever since I got my license.
  • I am better at accepting criticism.
  • I have found the book I want to write.