The Month That Was

My Dearest Goodbuddy,

We’ve not spoken for some time, you and I, and I hope you’re well.
November’s already upon us I see... how time does fly. Anyhow, I must say that, as per usual, October was a good month for me. There were many rough patches but hey! Who am I to go around complaining? I’m here and I’m alive, which is a good point to start building happiness from. Let me give you the lowdown of the month that was.

I kicked the month off by attending rAge with t3h Munsh and Sleuth. We had a good time messing with the new tech, talking to the assortment of strange people there and ogling the booth babes. I enjoyed the expo more than I did last year but I did miss the larger anime and tabletop gaming stands they had then. It’s all good though. My PC is also happy because I picked up blue LED fans to pimp it out and now it looks like it would be at home at a drag race in Chatsworth. I’ve come to a point where I love my PC more than most members of my family; it’s prettier, it’s more intelligent and it gives me greater joy. Now, now, you don’t have to say it. I’m materialistic I know, but matter matters.

Meadow Leigh’s sister, Pie, came to visit from the Eastern Cape and I went on a picnic to the beautiful botanical gardens in Emmerentia with the two of them. They also visited me with banana bread over the course of her stay in Jozi. Now, you must know that I have a deep love for banana bread, to the point that I have dreams about it. Yes, I know it’s strange but I really can’t help it. Then my birthday came around and I was a ball of excitement. I’m the sort of person who just loves his birthday even if nothing terribly exciting happens because at least there’s cake. Now, I spent my 23rd birthday marking English assignments, which is not the most exciting thing to be doing on any given day, but there was chocolate cake to cheer me up and books from friends to look forward to reading. People who know me always buy me books for my birthday and I’m happy with that arrangement because I really don’t want much else. My grandmother buys my handkerchiefs though... and I'm still rather unsure what one does with them so I just give her a hug and take them. I did get one gift that deviated from the norm though, a new motherboard from Ed, Leigh and Pie. I mentioned to Ed how much I hate my motherboard at some point and he remembered. After getting the new motherboard the plan was to take the old one and piss on it but I sold it to some guy who thinks he’s a friend of mine instead. I hope it explodes when’s he’s sleeping and scares him. That’s all, just scare him. Not result in his house burning down with him in it or anything as gruesome and painful as that.

I did manage to celebrate turning 23 in style though. My friend Catharine has her birthday two weeks after mine and we decided to do a joint little shindig of a thing, that is to say we went bungee jumping! You heard right. To celebrate turning 23 we went and threw ourselves off of a 100 meter high platform suspended between two cooling towers. It was the craziest experience of my life. Your brain totally shuts down as you throw yourself off that platform and the ground comes rushing up to you. It’s just not normal. Then the rope goes taut and snaps you back up and your brain switches back on and you start screaming f*ck!!! At least that was what I was screaming. It really is just the best thing ever.

To celebrate surviving the jump we went to dinner and then to a strip club – which just happens to be one of the coolest places in the world, den of iniquity though it may be. Lots of naked women in one enclosed space are more fun than they rationally should be.

The next morning I went shopping for books with Meadow Leigh, hangover and all and I picked up Steven Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates for forty bucks! That just made my day.

After all that going down I had to sleep for a week and catch up on my reading, which is what I’ve been doing.

That’s my tale for today bud.

We’ll talk later. Keep well.

2 A.M.

It's 2 A.M. and I'm sitting here just surfing the interwebs because I can't go to sleep and I'm too tired to read my Erikson book... and I feel like an Amstel because they made it look so damn sexy on that ad on TV when I was watching Snakes on a Plane with my mom and sister. Sigh.

Anyhow, I'm 23!!! This is only setting in now. I should go out and do something 23-ish to celebrate, like get a job that pays me four times the amount of money my current job is or become a Saint and make a difference in the world... or I can go out and get smashed on Amstel and pink girly drinks (which I've come to love).

Okay, I'm really tired... but I'm 23 and I have a feeling that 23 is the turning point in mine, my family, friends and random homeless dudes' lives. Let's rock this.

Later.

A Human State of Affairs

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” Said that the Cat.
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Being a human person is such a silly, amusing and tragic state of affairs – all these things all at once. When I am not being a tremendously busy person, that is, a person tremendously busy chasing his own tail like a dog, it occurs to me that I suffer from schizophrenia in all areas of my life. My being a human person is a sort of schizophrenia all in itself. I am an amphibian of a creature, half animal and half spirit and these two sides are always in opposition to each other it seems. Usually I try and ignore my spiritual half and walk around like I am merely a highly evolved animal. This is okay for a while but I have been cursed (or so it would seem) with a love for the works of two very great men who always manage to tug at my spiritual strings; Professor J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. It doesn’t help that my good friend Dean introduced me to Dr Peter Kreeft, a contemporary philosopher who loves these two writers even more than I do and gives so much more insight to their works than I could ever have managed to discover on my own. I have mentioned what a slow learner I am many times in this blog, it takes me thrice as long to learn something that other people grasp immediately. By this I don’t mean that I’m stupid but simply that I grasp an idea quickly and then that knowledge evaporates and then I have to start again and repeat the whole process until the knowledge sticks to my brain. My brain glue, in other words, is of the cheap sort. As a result of my slow learning I find myself living in circular ruins – I always come back to where I started. I feel like Roland Deschain, doomed to always find myself back in that same old desert where it all began, following after the man in black as he flees across what seems to be the apotheosis of all deserts. I’m not so sure whether this is a good thing or not anymore. I usually think of myself as making progress as I try again, fail again and (I always hope) fail better. Anyway, I digress. Going back to what I was saying before; after being in contact with the works of the aforementioned geniuses I always find my way back to my spiritual self and realise that there is so much more to life than meets the eye. I find myself thinking of how scared I am of spending an eternity in hell and what a reality it is at the rate my life is going – I find myself face to face with my mortality.

The Road So Far

Past,
Future;
They all merge into this present moment
I’m a dude on the road –
I dare to disturb the universe
Within these pages
There are snippets and snatches
Of a life lived

- Charles Siboto


Hi there goodbuddy,

Navigating these circular ruins is proving to be more difficult than I imagined it would be and I’m having a hard time getting over my quarter-life crisis. I feel that I should be doing more with my life but I’m not sure what I actually mean by 'more'. I don’t feel like I’m really living at all to be honest. I’m not enjoying my work and studies as much as I did about two years ago and I feel slightly distanced from my friends and family. They all seem to be so much more alive than I am; they have problems that they care about solving and they’re all in ‘touch’ with their lives. When they’re happy they actually really look happy and when they’re in the doldrums they look pathetic... but pathetic in that way depressed people should look, you know. I, on the other hand, just feel murky. There are people out there whose lives are in total ruin and, in my darker moments, I think that even they have it better, they at least have ruins to work with. I just don’t have a clue what I’m doing! I’m neither coming nor going, nothing happens, it’s like I’m stuck in Beckett’s non-story, Waiting for Godot.

Usually I’m the first person to tell you how amazing life is and how much magic there is to be found if one takes some time to look around but that magic can turn out to be black magic at times – one million megatons of destruction. So all I’m saying is to be careful and always prepared for them (that mysterious bunch that I’m pretty sure are The Laughing Men Co.) dropping the bomb rather than not. I’m grateful for the fact that my life has been fairly pleasant up to this point but as a human being I get to whine about everything and nothing once in a while because ultimately I’m an ungrateful little bastard.

Don’t worry, though, it’s not all doom and gloom, I have that nastiest of diseases known as indefatigable optimism and even in my darkest hours I wear a little smile on my face and have the not-at-all-naive belief that the best is yet to come. I have no clue what I am to do about my quarter-life crisis other than to work harder at my studies (which I’m not actually in the mood to do to tell you the truth) and to kick off my Goodbuddies book drive. It’s Springing and I want to enjoy some sun without some stupid voice in the back of my head whispering that I’m an epic failure. They (these people again!) say that one foot up and one foot down is the way to London town... or some such... and right now London town seems as good a destination as any. Some of my favourite Poets lived there and they have the Thames in which to kill oneself if the business of living becomes too much to bear.

With great consideration I’ll choose the path to follow
I’ll pick up my sadness, madness and new-found gladness
And together we’ll walk down that winding path
Singing our tuneless song into the sunset
- Charles Siboto

Attack of the Bloodthirsty Couch: Zombies of Doom

Dear Constant reader of a writer in peril,

Here I am again, still trying to escape the circular ruins with only minimal success. It’s been a few months since the bloodthirsty couch sent its arachnid minions after me and I’ve only just survived wave after wave of their attacks by the enamel of my teeth, until now that is... . Instead of just outright killing me the damned creatures enjoy torturing me and seeing me writhe in pain.

A few nights ago I woke up with a start at the sound something scratching at my window. Now, you should know that I’m a fan of cheesy B-grade horror movies and one thing I’ve learned from them is that you do not head towards danger because you will end up either dead or serving as a host for some alien parasite. Also, I’m the token black guy who gets killed first if he’s stupid enough to go anywhere near the danger. Being the survivor that I am I decided to just stay put and see what happens next. I sat up in my bed for five nerve-wrecking minutes and nothing happened... maybe it was a stray cat or something. Eventually I fell asleep again and pretty much forgot about the incident until the following evening when I woke up to the sound of voices at my window. With my heart beating a tattoo onto my chest I got out of bed as quietly as I could and grabbed the empty bottle of wine next to my bookcase and crawled towards the window. The voices outside turned out to be a couple of lunatics just having a merry ol’ chat on my porch in the middle of the night! I switched on my light and they left. Then I started thinking of the previous night’s incident and wondered whether they are connected. My brain is groggy at the best of times so expecting it to make complex connections at the dead of night was really just me expecting too much from the poor bastard and so eventually I gave up and went back to bed.

The previous paragraph has very little to do with what the rest of this post is going to be about now that I think about it... but it does serve the purpose of letting you know what the state of my mind has been for the last few months.

Some time ago our geyser burst and the guy who came to fix it didn’t put the ceiling cover back on in the bathroom and every time I go to the loo I have to stare into the inky blackness of the space above the ceiling and wonder what my bloodthirsty couch’s arachnid minions are cooking up. I can hear them crawling around in the space above the ceiling in the dead of night and I’m scared for my life. I’ve not been sleeping for almost two weeks now! I sit up at night, drinking copious amounts of coffee, with a screwdriver within reach just in case they try something. I’ve even taken to pushing furniture against my door in an attempt to barricade my room.

The sounds are getting louder every night and this has led me to believe that the spiders in the ceiling are more like the head crabs from the Half-Life games and that they’re dragging people into the ceiling through the opening in the bathroom and turning them into zombies to ensure my doom. I have to invest in a shotgun and a chainsaw before their zombie army is ready for attack.

Pray for me my dearest reader, for I very much doubt that I’ll live thought the coming week.

Cupboard Person of the Week

I have a strange desire to snatch up interesting people I come across and keep them in my cupboard. I don’t know why... It might be one of my sociopathic tendencies that I must find a way to deal with or that I’m simply as mad as a hatter. Don’t worry though; my cupboard is rather comfortable as far as cupboards go and I promise not to harm the individuals who catch my eye. I figure that I might as well dedicate some space to the wonderful and wobbly people that I come across and tell their stories, by which I actually mean what I think of them. So first up is the lovely:

Emanuela de Paula

Other than the fact that she is a very beautiful woman, Brazilian (very fitting for a beautiful woman) she just seems so bubbly and fun to be around. She looks good in a swimsuit, and I assume out of one, but what really catches my eye is her laughing. When she laughs her whole face lights up with Joy and it makes me laugh, her laughter is contagious like a dangerous disease. This is the main source of her beauty I think. Joy is beautiful no matter who it affects. Mother Teresa looks beautiful in pictures even though she is a wrinkly old woman because she is in the presence of Joy. People who are labelled as ugly instantly transform into a vision of beauty when they experience Joy. Ms (I don’t think she’s married) de Paula can stay in my cupboard to remind me that Joy is beautiful. She should hang out with Mother Teresa to show that beauty is more a matter of what’s in your heart than what you look like.

My June/July Reading List

Thus he [Fingolfin] came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Great masters of old,
You'd be amazed by twenty-first century machinery
'though you invented time travel
That modern science has yet to match
I find myself spirited away by words
That are ages old
- Charles Siboto, A Life Lived

The critics say that epics have died out
With Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods,
I’ll not believe it.
- Elizabeth Barret Browning, Aurora Leigh

Dear reader of a writer who spends more time reading than he does writing (and even more time haunting bookshops than he does reading),

I must warn you from the outset that there be dragons here and an assortment of other beasties hell-bent on devouring you and, alas, there are not many heroes to slay these monsters. The world has forgotten the old tales and brave kings of men are no more. All those royal houses have fallen into ruin. But fear not because I have in my possession a machine that will allow us to transcend time and space, so that, my comrade in ancient lore, we may go where we will and forget about my evil couch and its arachnid minions that are pursuing me without relent for the time being.

Winter’s icy tentacles have reached our southern shores and the masses visiting us from all over the world are taking shelter in our country’s soccer stadia to view the world’s largest soccer spectacle. This is all good and well but we will not have too much time to poke fun at them because the remainder of June and the whole of July will be a very busy period for us, what with so many worlds to visit.

Let’s start off by revisiting Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian - an old friend in a new hardcover jacket. This is a tale that brings Dracula, that old villain, into the one place that bookworms feel safest. Yes, you guessed it, our beloved and dusty libraries. It turns out that, like us, Vlad enjoys collecting books and building an extensive library of human (and not-so-human) thought when he is not busy impaling or ‘necking’ people. So the next time you’re reading on the fourth floor of the library and think you’re alone bear this information in mind. I would recommend a garlic clove or two in your pocket, as unfashionable as it may be.

Make sure you are holding on tight, my dear companion, because our next stop is Middle-earth and Eärendil, most renowned of mariners, has agreed to let us sail with him on his great ship, Vingilot. You must remember that the world has changed after the Fourth Age and only by sailing in one of Cirdan’s ships can one reach the distant past. It’s impossible to grow weary of Professor Tolkien’s Middle-earth and its people throughout the ages. The stories that enthral me the most though are those of the elder days; stories of the Elves and their hopeless war against Morgoth and the stories of the tall Men of Númenor and their downfall. I have managed to get my grubby hands on Professor Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2 and The Lays of Beleriand to supplement my copy of The Silmarillion so there is quite a bit more of the elder days to be explored. Also, John Howe’s cover illustration of Fingolfin’s challenge to Morgoth for The Lays of Beleriand is just breathtaking. If ever a movie of The Silmarillion was made this would be the scene I would most look forward to. No other Elven-king of old was more valiant than Fingolfin and reading this scene always brings tears to my eyes.

To keep us entertained as we hop from one world to the next I’ve picked up two books of short stories: Stephen King’s Just After Sunset (which I find is safest read just after sunrise) and Legends II (edited by Robert Silverberg), an anthology of fantasy stories by some of the biggest names in the genre. I’ve already read a few of the stories and some of them are very good. Let it not be said that I take you on long adventures without some form of entertainment when we’re on the ‘road’, as it were. I can see by the look on your face that you’re thinking that I’ve not taken your stomach into account but there’s no need to fret because the Elves from Middle-earth were kind enough to give us some lembas for the journey that lies ahead.

Goodness! How time does fly when one is on a flying ship. We have reached our final destination it seems: Robert Jordan’s world of The Wheel of Time, and this, I am ashamed to admit, is my first visit. As is usual with me, I am very excited to start exploring a new world, so I will linger here and see the sights.

When we get back home another new writer will be awaiting me, a certain Mr Greg Isles who was recommended to me by my dear friend, Lady Leigh of the Meadows. My first expedition into this man’s mind is titled Blood Memory, which I think just sounds wonderfully delicious. Hey, come now, don’t you dare judge me on what I find delicious or don’t! Now go away, I have things to do.

Until next time,
Have a wonderful winter season :)

On Being Blue

Dear reader of a mad writer,

I'm told that there is a man who appeared on Oprah quite a while back because he is blue and not very happy about it. I've not seen this man and I'm not going to bother Googling him because although my little post was inspired by what I heard about him it has nothing to do with him directly. He must have very good reasons for not enjoying being blue and that is his business.

If I were to turn blue, on the other hand, by painless means I hope, I would totally rock it! The very first thing I would do is buy myself an Armani suit (I'll sell my sister or something) and dress like Dr Manhattan (in the scenes in which he is dressed that is). I'd even go as far as tattooing the hydrogen symbol he has onto my forehead. The most important thing my being blue will do for me is make me a circus star. Some people might find it degrading to be paraded like some kind of freak but I would approach my role in as dignified a manner as possible. Everyone who has a sense of wonder loves the circus and I would be proud of touring with a circus because I'm blue - which will be the only talent I have because I can't juggle or anything awesome like that.

For the reader who has not figured this out yet, I'm a bit of a nerd so I'd be a big hit at comic, sci-fi or game conventions. I could go to these events 'dressed' as Dr Manhattan, a very tall smurf or a Na'vi. The possibilities, although not endless, are exotic to say the least.

I'm the sort of person who likes to be different from others so being blue would allow me to escape all the stereotypes I encounter as a black person and people would be forced to come up with new stereotypes especially for me. I can imagine it, a few stupid dudes just hanging about and one says: "You know, I really hate that blue guy! He is just such a cold bastard." Stupid things like that would make my day I tell you.

What would be the most exciting though is being blue and racist! I'll run around telling people that they are inferior to me and that I am special because there is only one (two if you count the Oprah dude I guess) of my kind. That would probably result in my butt being kicked though, which is no fun I've heard from people who've had it happen to them.

When all is said and done, being blue is awesome if you have the right outlook :D

Peace.

At it Again

Dear Constant Reader of a writer in peril,

My bloodthirsty couch is at it again, it wants to kill me. I cannot say too much at this moment because I am busy fleeing for my life. I know of a hideout in the slums of Rosettenville that might provide some cover. I will tell you more of what has been happening in the past month when I get there.

In the meantime pray for me.

New Year’s Resolutions: The Circular Ruins

He wanted to dream a man; he wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose him on reality.

After nine or ten nights he understood with a certain bitterness that he could expect nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. The former group, although worthy of love and affection, could not ascend to the level of individuals; the latter pre-existed to a slightly greater degree.

Not to be a man, to be a projection of another man's dreams–what an incomparable humiliation, what madness!

For what had happened many centuries before was repeating itself. The ruins of the sanctuary of the god of Fire were destroyed by fire.
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

- Jorge-Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

- Albert Einstein


Dear Constant reader of a sporadic writer,

Here we are, a few days into 2010 and many of us are still sticking to our resolutions to lose weight, save money and to spend more time with our families. With schools having just opened many parents are having sleepless nights over finances and semi-independent university students, such as myself, have had one or two nervous breakdowns worrying about registration fees. All-in-all it’s the usual January buzz where people are recovering from crazy holiday spending and realising that we are in deep financial doo-doo. Life goes on though and the ol’ blue ball we live on keeps on spinning, not as a result of money, sex or Hollywood’s version of love but by the grace of God. (How exactly He goes about it a few physicists might be able to tell you because I have no clue.)

I’m very happy to be alive and, as far as I can make out, healthy. I’m not a good person or anything cool like that but I’m sure God is still keeping His eye on me and watching out for me. The plan is to finally escape the circular ruins this year, you know, those pitfalls that too many of us fall into. We all make really cool resolutions to be better people and to save the Earth from that terrible scourge known as global warming for which we are responsible. But, alas, by March many of us have sunk back into misery, sloth, spitefulness and we refuse, kicking and screaming, to just shut up and be happy. We find ourselves in those dreadful circular ruins again.

My approach to life this year is that of a child, to take each day as it comes and to be an everyday hero :) I don’t plan to save the world, I’m not getting a six-pack like Ryk Neethling’s and I don’t have a devious scheme to become a billionaire like Warren Buffet. The plan is simply to be happy.

I plan to read more books and not only fiction, horror, fantasy and sci-fi but other genres in order to expand my horizons. I might even go as far as giving Danielle Steele a try... or not.

Ice-cream! I definitely have to eat more of that, because it makes me absolutely happy. I’m thinking that once a week will do.

God loves trees and He really went all out in making many of them and so I’ll lie under as many as I can. I will be a hobbit. What I should do is lie under trees, reading good books whilst eating ice-cream!

I have to put effort into my book drive this year and actually make it work. I might even get a few sponsors to back me up. Keep an eye out for this one.

I really must stop watching stupid things like South Park on my PC! My brain will rot and start leaking out of my nostrils if I don’t watch out, seriously. Anyone know any good Jewish comedians I can go see?

I’m falling into the bad habit of collecting video games but never getting around to playing them, which is bad, bad, bad! Play more video games Charlie and enjoy the nonsense out of them.

Last year I was a total douche bag of a friend and so this year I plan to be better.

Another thing I’ve been rubbish at is relationships so this year I’m working on being a good boyfriend and to move away from being too self-centred. It’s good to have someone other than myself to think about and whose feelings to take into consideration. Thank you for being in my life Lil’ Girl, I’m absolutely mad about you :)

My little sister has finally made it to High School and it’s about time I’m nicer to her because it’s a heroic thing to do. I can’t be too nice though because as an older brother it’s my job to be a little mean.

I definitely have to call my grandparents more often than I do now. I love those two people desperately and must speak with them more.

Having a crazy family is hard but I must spend more time with them. A little madness has never done anyone I know any harm.

This is a weird one but I have to buy myself a colouring book because being a kid is cool and it’s fun to sit with my cousin Lennie and be rock stars with crayons.

I was planning this one last year and never got around to doing it but I must buy myself a yo-yo and re-master it because it will make all the girls swoon over me.

Last and by no means least is to just sit at Jesus’ feet and be happy.

P.S. I’ll also spend more time blogging than I do on Facebook :)

P.P.S. I pray everyone I know and don’t know has a wonderful life and that joy finds those who refuse to accept happiness and punches them in the face.