(written 17 September 2009)
This Thursday night is the first mist. Clare drove us up the hill this evening after work. Something comforting about sitting in the passenger seat, listening to Beyonce, watching the mists slowly seep down into the traffic. Clare also listens to this other song called “Damn you’s a Sexy Bitch” which is about a guy who is trying to express how he feels about this girl that he’s met, except on the radio, they have made it “Damn you’s a sexy bmnnngn” which is just fucking stupid because the lyrics before that have nothing to do with trying to express how he feels about this girl that he’s just met while his mouth is full of broccoli. Clare and I also worked out that the radio station had recently spent R75000 on a new satellite dish that is tracking when I get into the car with Clare and she turns on the radio. The dish then notifies the producer for the show that he should cue Nickelback’s song about being a pussy mother fucker (actually the song is about how it might be prudent to consider each day as your last and therefore live it more fully – but it amounts to the same thing). And they spent R750000 on that? That’s just crazy.
Saturday, 10 May 2014
fpf?+16: El Friday fucking poem (feat. Llamas in Pajamas)
(written 24 September 2009)
I wish I was a ninja because how cool would it be to be a ninja? Nobody asks a ninja how much wood would a ninja chuck if a ninja could chuck wood. Also, ninjas can climb trees like nobody’s business.
I wish I was a ninja because how cool would it be to be a ninja? Nobody asks a ninja how much wood would a ninja chuck if a ninja could chuck wood. Also, ninjas can climb trees like nobody’s business.
fpf?+17: Plenty! Yeah sure - fuck - like Bugs Bunny with carrots.
(written 1 October 2009)
Nothing really. Shit. It’s like there wasn’t really anything – I mean it was a week, and pretty much it rained. I remember that I can play jellyfish with babies. Is that important? Wendy Birt has come to visit and that is extraordinary because she wears jeans nicely. We are having a party tonight – maybe you have forgotten how to dance to “Where is my Mind”. We can help with that. Perhaps the caipirinha will help, although a school caipirinha can completely strip an entire cow in 2 minutes flat, which is pretty fucking hardcore. Maybe it’s a capibara that can do the a cow in 2 minutes… Today I remembered that Vincent and I played Chewbacca and ObiWon together.
Nothing really. Shit. It’s like there wasn’t really anything – I mean it was a week, and pretty much it rained. I remember that I can play jellyfish with babies. Is that important? Wendy Birt has come to visit and that is extraordinary because she wears jeans nicely. We are having a party tonight – maybe you have forgotten how to dance to “Where is my Mind”. We can help with that. Perhaps the caipirinha will help, although a school caipirinha can completely strip an entire cow in 2 minutes flat, which is pretty fucking hardcore. Maybe it’s a capibara that can do the a cow in 2 minutes… Today I remembered that Vincent and I played Chewbacca and ObiWon together.
fpf?+18: I am not a Zombie - I'm your brother!
(written 16 October 2009)
Jesus:
I saw a guy who was dressed as Jesus. Full on kaftan, sandals, nice auburn pussy-beard, and soft wavey hair down to his shoulders. This was down around the university, so I’m guessing the guy is a student, and now I’m not really one to talk about dressing badly when you’re 22, but jesus. Then I thought wait – just hold on one goldarn minute here bub: Maybe this guy is a drama student and he’s playing Jesus in JCS or something – but then I saw he was carrying a bag, so that was that idea… because as every drama student knows: you don’t need a bag to express yourself. Maybe he wants to become like a popular guy around campus – but 1st year marketing would have taught him that you can’t piggy-back on a bigger brand: “Hey there goes… um what’s his name? The Jesus guy.” You can never go wrong wasting your time studying marketing kids.
Jesus:
I saw a guy who was dressed as Jesus. Full on kaftan, sandals, nice auburn pussy-beard, and soft wavey hair down to his shoulders. This was down around the university, so I’m guessing the guy is a student, and now I’m not really one to talk about dressing badly when you’re 22, but jesus. Then I thought wait – just hold on one goldarn minute here bub: Maybe this guy is a drama student and he’s playing Jesus in JCS or something – but then I saw he was carrying a bag, so that was that idea… because as every drama student knows: you don’t need a bag to express yourself. Maybe he wants to become like a popular guy around campus – but 1st year marketing would have taught him that you can’t piggy-back on a bigger brand: “Hey there goes… um what’s his name? The Jesus guy.” You can never go wrong wasting your time studying marketing kids.
fpf?+20: I smashed a 73 inch plasma screen over my maker's head last night in an effort to reach the one I love.
(written 30 October 2009)
Sick:
I would have taken the suppository if it would have made a difference.
My life has been occluded, like the moon curving inexorably into the moon-sized spot of shade from the earth, by sickness this past week. I finished a whole bottle of antibiotics to no effect, and now I have another, and I went for a B12 shot (see section on "poetry" below) and I have Sinutab boxes enough to build a little fort for my Indians...
And finally this morning I feel in my ear, nose & throat, that I may be getting better. Jeeeesus.
Sick:
I would have taken the suppository if it would have made a difference.
My life has been occluded, like the moon curving inexorably into the moon-sized spot of shade from the earth, by sickness this past week. I finished a whole bottle of antibiotics to no effect, and now I have another, and I went for a B12 shot (see section on "poetry" below) and I have Sinutab boxes enough to build a little fort for my Indians...
And finally this morning I feel in my ear, nose & throat, that I may be getting better. Jeeeesus.
Thursday, 19 December 2013
My father's voice
When I was 14 I was first mistaken, by my voice, for my father.
Every 3 or 4 years we would travel to Portugal to visit with family of my mother’s. We loved them - my father loved them especially - treasured them each very much. The father, my godmother, their children - 4 boys, one older than the next - his brothers, her mother, and his mother. One wore strong shoes and woollen skirts. One wore his hair neatly combed. One played Patience and kept a cigarette burning in her elegant apartment. One wore a back-brace for many years and always beat me a football. One was a bit of a playboy who took us out to their seaside flat, and a nightclub. One competed in the Paris to Dakar rally. My mother’s aunt had married a Portuguese man who was in the port business with her family. Her son’s wife was my godmother, and her name was Conceicao - con, say, sow, with the syllables shortened when you say it through: co’-se-sow. It is the most beautiful name I know. It’s the slash of a sword parting the mist. It’s the sway of ships returning to harbour from over the seven seas. It’s gone in an instant. She sat and smoked in a Louis XVI armchair with embroidered yellow upholstery, and she was the most elegant lady I had ever seen.
We had just arrived at the house. The house in Portugal is not a house – it is a palace. It has a staircase descending into the weekday rooms and kitchen that the family used. It has an entirely separate lounge with a fireplace, and an adjacent kitchen with a long stone table, which were only used for Christmas dinner. At the end of the hallway is a lounge lined with bookshelves, with divans around a fireplace, which I only ever went in once. It even has a chapel in the middle of the house which I discovered one day after having visited the house at least twice before: I opened a door on the upstairs landing and walked into the choir gallery and looked down into a chapel – complete with a bank of votive candles, pews, and an altar and a crucifix. I know that my godmother got married in this chapel, and at Christmas we had midnight mass there. The house has blushing pink exterior walls, and square-cut granite stones packed tightly together to pave the driveway and the courtyards. There is a fountain at the end of the driveway, beneath an ancient tree, with leaves, and nuts.
We had just arrived at the house. I think I called down the staircase from the upstairs landing. I think I was looking for everyone – I said “Hello” - or probably Conceicao called hello from downstairs and I replied, and she said, in her lovely voice that curled around the L, “Alan!” – and I said no, it’s me, Tom.
Post-script:
Recently my father sent me a letter that he received on my behalf in 1987 (at about the same time as the story about me saying Hello in my father’s voice) - the 12th of April - from my godmother. It is a small, cream-coloured piece of paper, folded in the middle. At the top right, in a narrow Blackletter is the sending address: Quinta da Fonteireira, Bellas. Fonteireira is the house with the Christmas kitchen and the chapel and the embroidered chair and the apartment with the ashtray and the cards arranged neatly on the green felt-covered table. And Bellas is the town that in previous centuries was subject to the Quinta.
The letter begins: “Dear Tom, I am sorry to only write now,...” Her children had been ill: Antonio had an emergency appendectomy on the 23rd of March, and Fred had a spontaneous pneumothorax on the 25th - my birthday. She hopes this excuses her, and I wish I could say to her that of course it does. She prayed for me on my birthday, and thanked God for me being such a good boy, and sends love to my mother, my father, and my sister.
The letter is signed with an oval C, running on to a quick line representing the crisply cut vowels that follow.
Every 3 or 4 years we would travel to Portugal to visit with family of my mother’s. We loved them - my father loved them especially - treasured them each very much. The father, my godmother, their children - 4 boys, one older than the next - his brothers, her mother, and his mother. One wore strong shoes and woollen skirts. One wore his hair neatly combed. One played Patience and kept a cigarette burning in her elegant apartment. One wore a back-brace for many years and always beat me a football. One was a bit of a playboy who took us out to their seaside flat, and a nightclub. One competed in the Paris to Dakar rally. My mother’s aunt had married a Portuguese man who was in the port business with her family. Her son’s wife was my godmother, and her name was Conceicao - con, say, sow, with the syllables shortened when you say it through: co’-se-sow. It is the most beautiful name I know. It’s the slash of a sword parting the mist. It’s the sway of ships returning to harbour from over the seven seas. It’s gone in an instant. She sat and smoked in a Louis XVI armchair with embroidered yellow upholstery, and she was the most elegant lady I had ever seen.
We had just arrived at the house. The house in Portugal is not a house – it is a palace. It has a staircase descending into the weekday rooms and kitchen that the family used. It has an entirely separate lounge with a fireplace, and an adjacent kitchen with a long stone table, which were only used for Christmas dinner. At the end of the hallway is a lounge lined with bookshelves, with divans around a fireplace, which I only ever went in once. It even has a chapel in the middle of the house which I discovered one day after having visited the house at least twice before: I opened a door on the upstairs landing and walked into the choir gallery and looked down into a chapel – complete with a bank of votive candles, pews, and an altar and a crucifix. I know that my godmother got married in this chapel, and at Christmas we had midnight mass there. The house has blushing pink exterior walls, and square-cut granite stones packed tightly together to pave the driveway and the courtyards. There is a fountain at the end of the driveway, beneath an ancient tree, with leaves, and nuts.
We had just arrived at the house. I think I called down the staircase from the upstairs landing. I think I was looking for everyone – I said “Hello” - or probably Conceicao called hello from downstairs and I replied, and she said, in her lovely voice that curled around the L, “Alan!” – and I said no, it’s me, Tom.
Post-script:
Recently my father sent me a letter that he received on my behalf in 1987 (at about the same time as the story about me saying Hello in my father’s voice) - the 12th of April - from my godmother. It is a small, cream-coloured piece of paper, folded in the middle. At the top right, in a narrow Blackletter is the sending address: Quinta da Fonteireira, Bellas. Fonteireira is the house with the Christmas kitchen and the chapel and the embroidered chair and the apartment with the ashtray and the cards arranged neatly on the green felt-covered table. And Bellas is the town that in previous centuries was subject to the Quinta.
The letter begins: “Dear Tom, I am sorry to only write now,...” Her children had been ill: Antonio had an emergency appendectomy on the 23rd of March, and Fred had a spontaneous pneumothorax on the 25th - my birthday. She hopes this excuses her, and I wish I could say to her that of course it does. She prayed for me on my birthday, and thanked God for me being such a good boy, and sends love to my mother, my father, and my sister.
The letter is signed with an oval C, running on to a quick line representing the crisply cut vowels that follow.