another one that slipped pass spam-control

From: angela kennedy
Subject: HELLO
My dear, I am miss Melina from Juba, Sudan, single and 19 years old. After accessing your details in the internet site i copied out only your email address. Immediately after going through your information i made up my mind to contact you for long term relationship, and to be my financial manager because you are my choice of trust and i see nothing wrong with the choice that i have made in you. Now that i am in a state of absolute confusion I must let you know that my daddy was the Financial controller to the Common Wealth North African Region.
My parents died during the war in my country and i was able to escape and came to this senegal where my daddy’s money is. I am presently in refugee camp in Senegal. The following information is my purpose of choosing you. Before my daddy died he made me the beneficiary of the amount of 9 Million gbp£ in his account with Islamic Bank in Dakar, Senegal. I arrived Senegal without any pucket money left with me. from the refugee camp i went to Islamic bank and the banker in charge said that because of Senegal bank law that their bank cannot deduct any money from my daddy’s account to give to me until i appoint a foreign partner who will claim and receive the money according to the written agreement that my daddy signed with them. the money is my only hope in life. As soon as Islamic Bank transfers the money into your bank account you will come to senegal and take me to your country. If you cannot come to Senegal you will send down enough money from my money in your account for my journey to meet you in your country airport and you will be at your airport to welcome me.I want you to help me receive the amount and also be my financial and investment manager. i will be very glad to also have a detailed information about you.
Reply me only through my own email address: Melinasalman111@hotmail.com ONLY.
With all my Love
Miss Melina Salmanwith all my love

—–

From: Saaleha Bamjee
Date: 16 Jan 2008 16:49
Subject: re: HELLO
To: Melinasalman111@hotmail.com

My Dear Melina,

Let me start of by saying how pretty and quaint are those little emoticons you’ve included in your email to endear yourself to me.
At 19 and single, you sound like quite a catch. However, I’m straight and some serious commitment issues on my part will not allow for any long-term relationships. My therapist says it’s because I manifest nymphomanic tendencies and being with one person forever scares the f**k out of me (pun intended). The most I can offer you is a facebook friend invite and a good poke now and then.

You’re in a state of absolute confusion? Honey dear, so am I!! You see, my daddy used to be the Chief Treasurer of the Government Bank here in the Republic of Southern Africa. He fled the terrible and evil apartheid regime, and left behind 100million US dollars in a secret bank account in the Cayman Islands that can only be accessed by a Sudanese national who hails from Juba! My daddy’s quite clever and did this so that the 100million US dollars would remain far away from the grubby hands of the evil grubby-handed people he used to call his advisors. I received your email and was immediately concerned as I thought you had somehow found out about my father’s hidden wealth and were trying to swindle me. But I have a knack for reading people’s characters, and I can tell you’re an honest and God-fearing young woman who will prove to be my only hope in life! This is the miracle of Fate and God’s Hand.

We must act swiftly, without a seconds’ hesitance. I’ve not had pucket money for so so long. Send me all your personal details, including your credit card number with its expiry date and CVV number on the back. We require this to verify your identity, and facilitate the process of releasing the 100million US dollars.

I would not recommend you come to our airport as there’s been terrible stories about tourists being hijacked and forced to pledge allegiance to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, oh what the hell, we call him Zuma. Like that Yahoo! game where the frog shoots coloured balls at other coloured balls, only here the balls are very different.

With all my love,

Saaleha

Capsule Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

I knew that Journalist is a dirty word in Bob’stan.
But surreal, in all the ragged over-use of that word, is the only one that can describe the furtive act of scrawling “Graphic Designer” in the occupation field on the immigration card.

There are other things I learnt in Zim.

  • I found that I could call on the power of GraySkull and prise a lift-door open with my bare hands after a power-cut had me stuck somewhere between the third floor of the hotel and oblivion.
  • You will not find a single coin-operated vending machine anywhere in the country. The Zim$100 000 note is the smallest denomination accepted by Zimbabweans (correct at time of blog). It’s also the first currency I’ve ever seen with an expiry date. The stupid tourist in me was overtaken by the novelty of being given Zim$3.5 million in lieu of ZAR30. But you spend millions in seconds, and all you have to show for it is the corny photograph you took of the notes spilling across your palms.
  • I ate what looked like fish fillets and tomato chutney. I now know that crocodile tastes something like chicken, but not quite.
  • Mosi oa tunya. Indeed it does. And it’s the smoke that leaves you soaked and in awe of the sheer tenacity of water that cleaves through the earth to assert its path.
  • The sunset over the Zambezi is perfect. That’s it. Perfect. Not even a bunch of Indian guys yelling Hindi across international borders to their Babhis over their cellphones could mar the incredible all-encompassing ‘Perfect’ of the moment. And after over-hearing the ‘baw majaa’ comment to Bhabi, I know they thought so too.

Some visuals here.

waxing on tetris world-views and a puddle of snowman

– Plummeting tetrominoes bring to mind a [simplistic] notion that all of Life is falling pieces.
And the business of living is little more than packing those streaming shapes to fit, along with knowing when to leave gaps for the unexpected.
When you’re dealt the I’s and O’s, it’s lull-time into the static of complacency (much like when Life goes according to seeming plan), and it’s only when the S’s and Z’s come down in chunks, that you pull out the strategies and consider contingencies.
And despite Freddy Mercury wanting to, it’s not a game you can play indefinitely.

—

“Frosty the Snowman
Knew the sun was hot that day
So he said let’s run
And we’ll have some fun
Now before I melt away”
It’s one of the saddest songs I know and it speaks to the transient and ephemeral. Google the lyrics and you will find within them the melody of; passion, spirit, the magic of belief, hope and defiance.
If Muslims had wakes, this is the song I’d want them to play.
Yes, I’m cheese&tinsel like that.

shadow of another that once was

I am ambivalence.

marianna qi
* Age: 27
* Gender: Female
* Astrological Sign: Libra
* Zodiac Year: Sheep
* Occupation: hedonist

About Me
i am marianna. that is all. that is all.

Your people want to make a statue in your honor. What will it be made out of and what victory will it commemorate?
paper, for the ink.

Interests
* all things outside myself.

Favorite Movies
* the one where the boy loves the girl and she dies at the end

Favorite Music
* the song of the spheres

Favorite Books
* the one where the girl loves the boy who loves a boy

The edges smudge.

20070323
i do not need the salt of his indifference for flavour.
—-
if i must take the sharpness of that razor – the cut of his devotion to things other than me – and slice away at the home i find in him, the sweet he offers me, the softness i pull from him, will i still find enough to cover my raw exposure?
—-
but this is. love.

20070316
There is home in your arms, but there is hope in his eyes.

20070206
as paper-tissue to fire, fidelity blackens to smoke and nothing.
from whisper to shreds.

his voice folds concrete origami.

20070103
lonely makes you stupid
“is it so wrong to – just – want – to – feel?
even if he is impassive.
i feel enough for the both of us.”

it’s only a matter of seconds slicing back.
before she comes down in pieces.

20061211
simpler ways to cry.
For each a time there is only the pain, of having him and not. The wet of a kiss that becomes a tear in the dark, the way you felt you could absorb the soft-strong home you found in his arms, in the cotton crease of his shirt, and the warm of his scent, now sandpaper-coarse against your cheek and the assault of vinegar on your nostrils.

you must not break, but yet you take;
only what he is willing to give, which is nothing, when he is the only one who stands to receive.

20061130
she stinks of dreams
she wakes to his smile/
he’ll never love you i tell her/
she reads too much/
too much syntax, too much nuance, too much tone/
tells me his silence speaks volumes/
fuck that sister, you’re delusional [and trite]

you’ve got your marbles tripping up pedestrians.

she could be high/
the way she smiles/
i can even hear the shit she’s playing in her head/
fucking goofy bop-bop-happy-finger click thing she’s doing/
did you hear me when i said he’ll never love you?/
he spreads that smile like marmalade.

and he’s got you as stupid as jam.

20061021
facets
I step on your masks, grind them down to talc when you are with me, but for one cemented.

20061017
random acts of comment.
paper-weight soulmate,

“feathers have more staying power”
speaks the bitterness of once

sole mate dead-weight.

20060731
He looks like you. Only softer.

20060727
that night
I wear the sweater you bought me.
The one you grip and read like braille the night you ask if i’ve ever been this close to anyone. No, i say, lying and telling the truth as i look into those eyes that never linger.
I want to say I love, I want to, but all i thrust is Like, I like you, I like you, but I feel the other pushing its way and I’m afraid of what it means for ‘us’.
I’m so close to you. I want to be closer.
I want to look into your eyes, see myself twice reflected, but i’ve lost you in your moment.
I lose you forever.

20060213
she spoke to me once of feeling bereft
She told me once that a heart could really break. That it was not something poets imagined, that it was the truest most painful thing she had ever, ever felt.
She asked me what she was to do with him, when he’d become everything and nothing to her.
I knew of what she spoke. I knew of friendly eyes and sweet sweet smiles.
She asked me, she asked God, why was he put inside her, when he was never meant to stay?

20060119
slipping
He disappears in acts. A histrionic ghost. And a wisp whispers; SHE doesn’t want me. and I? Muted it seems were my self-flagellations. the whip whispered, and he never felt the sound.

20060110
non-recycleable
your post-it note declarations linger like yesterday’s toast and tea.
i-love-you-my-soul-other
finds its nest at the bottom of a magpies hoarde.
litter me with your litanies;
i shall not want,
the bread crumbs of your fevered libido,
you’ve become disposable.

20060109
distance is close
reckless am i. to hold you to this road to anywhere. where i fill your ears and mouth. and you fill mine. with wicked wicked words of pious lust. and distance closes skin and lips to bruise from your red nouns and my liquid verbs.

20060105
placation
My love would be true if it weren’t for him fucking around.

He kissed me.
That was the unravelling.

the postcards i never sent

I fell in love with you
in Paris.
At the foot of that tower,
over the cityscape.
the steps at Montmarte.
The man outside the postcard shop
played our song.
and it was the first time i heard it.

I fell in love with you
in Florence,
There were sunsets over bridges,
a river in every town,
and an artist in Rome,
who may have been
you in your thousandth lifetime.

I fell in love with you
in Jungfrau,
the snow melting into
poems on my palms,
while the mountains stood
stubborn as you sometimes do.

I fell in love with you
in Amsterdam,
Tracing Sunflowers and a mad genius
with my senses,
Dodging bicycles and clouds,
laughing at things you said
miles ago.

Miles ago.

I look back at you miles ago.

whisper by breath,
praying the missives of a child,
catching the wind in the net of my fingers,
pushing my supplications to meld with the air.
Blowing away this spirit bolus to find you.

I fell in love with you.
In the Piazzas, Platze and Pleins,
up the stairs of millenia and down the slopes of
a warm hill in Beaujolais.

I fell in love with you.

Miles ago.

testosterone soap opera

It was that of every great narrative, there-in the dichotomies of human experience; good and evil, light and dark, adversity and triumph.

DSC01431
Stories where they threaded; protagonists on the precipice, the victorious who rise from the ashes of their seeming defeat, the underdog, the powerful and arrogant, brothers in arms.
All of whom were smacked by those moments of utter futility, where even the brief marriage of hand on hand could mean the difference between pride and its death, where to grasp the tensile rope for support is to turn the battle on its flank.

DSC01386This is where gods are made and leveled.

DSC01430
DSC01415There was the bitterness of being close enough to take Victory by her shoulder, only to have no witness of referee to your triumph. But as it is in the Great Plot that guides this through, Good will always prevail.
It is with every tale that there are those who are loved beyond fallibility and those who incite the fevered choirs of “You Suck! You Suck!” when they dare to displace heroes.
And as it is with all the stories of our times, there will always be the ebullient adulation of one or a mass who will erupt in the greatness of the moment when the right man holds up the leather and gold, for all to witness, “I am a champion!”

DSC01449

capsule mthatha (a really little pill)

DSC00042
O.R Tambo International Airport – 6.15am.
Take-off for Mthatha in a Jetstream 4100, one of those R/C looking propeller planes.
(Blah photograph but I do like the Munsch-colours. We all begin in blood.)
DSC00099The tallest building in town.
Mthatha
smells like: damp wood.
tastes like: sweet veld grass.
sounds like: unhurried deliberation.
feels like: the place you would go, to listen to the wind.