Falling in Love With Humanity

I Give My Beauty And My Youth To Men,  But My Wisdom, Experience, Time and Love To The Causes Of Humanity and ALL Life. For With Sacrifice Comes Balance, Awareness and Inner Peace.

I'm sad that people make something like falling in love seem so difficult. I'm a lummox, falling comes naturally to me - whether it's down a flight of stairs or into the heart of another human being. I'm not even speaking of romantic love, I'm simply referring to falling in love with your fellow man. I'm mean, petty, judgmental and probably cruel to many people - those I know and those I don't - but I find that I have an above average tolerance of people and their strange personalities because I seek to understand them and what they're about.

Imagine a world where everyone made some effort to get to know others on a less superficial level. That's the sort of world I'd like to inhabit, a place where people allow others to be as quirky or eccentric as long as those personality traits don't result in harm to others. In many parts of the world we have made a huge dent against issues like racism and many other prejudices but people still don't know what the person sitting next to them on a bus is about. I'm not saying know the lengths and depths of everyone you ever meet, all I'm saying is try a little harder to understand when an opportunity presents itself. Share some of yourself and listen to the other person a little more deeply than you usually do. Of course the world is filled with people who are douche bags, scum bags, lunatics and the rest of humanity's crummy lot so be careful about who you go and show a little extra kindness to . . . unless you are eloquent in several forms of the martial sort of arts, then you can afford to try get to the soft core of those scary looking big guys with the cold eyes.

Falling In Love Consists Merely In Uncorking The Imagination And Bottling The Common-Sense.

I like my space and things that are my own, I'm very territorial and slightly obsessive compulsive about my 'stuff' and I like that part of me, I find it to be rather quaint. So the last 3 months have been hard on me, what with life kicking me in the nuts for making stupid financial decisions (or failing to make decisions at all at times) and me having to move home after 3 years of living in my own space. Negotiating space with a strange mother, slob of a sister and bundle of energy of a 4-year old cousin has been difficult to say the least. But I've learned to become more social through it all and to understand life from their perspective: mom's just outright crazy and doesn't like things beyond her control in the house, even things that aren't her own; sis is just too cool to care about where she leaves her clothes, shoes or books, neatness is not something that adds to her life and cousin's just a kid who needs all of his toys scattered on the floor in front of him to have fun. I still consider moving back home a bad experience but I've opened myself to it a little more and when I'm not annoyed I love my family a little more.

To Love Deeply In One Direction Makes Us More Loving In All Others.

Human beings are rather exceptional creatures when we aren't killing each other and we all just want to be happy because we were programmed for Joy. We try and get to that state in the strangest, if not dumbest, of ways most of the time. But, of late, I really do love us a little more. I've tripped into that love and it's really squishy and nice.

Setting Fire to Life

Hello my furry friends,

First things first (never second): I love you guys! Each and every one of you. I love how beautiful, intelligent, patient and just generally awesome you are. I would like to marry each and every one of you guys and because I'm Xhosa-ish I can. I'll get cows and everything. It'll be nice.

Second things second (never first): I'm falling in love with this rag called life and I'm setting it on fire, arsonist that I am. My life pretty much sucks right now but God gave me amazing friends and some useful family members to help me on my journey to becoming the absolute best that I can be. If I'm going to set my life on fire I might as well do so with the best team available to me.

Phoenix Rising

Here's the bulletproof plan:

1. Land the epic librarian gig I've been gunning for all this time. I would be South Africa's best librarian. No question about it. Books, talking with and helping people are where it's (I'm not too sure what 'it' is) at for me. I am also interested in the Big Five literacy programmes that the City of Johannesburg's libraries host annually - that's my wheelhouse and all.

Jo'burg Libraries

2. Be money wise. The thing that always kicks me in the head all the time is that I am stupid with my money. I'm sad to admit that I'm too compulsive a creature and that I go too far in spending money on too many things that aren't important for progress in my life. That's not cool and I should stop it. Just stop it, Charlie. *the moving, wagging finger*

3. My new favourite real life hero is Pierre Spies. He's, like, so totally awesome hey. The man's just a tank whose life is on Wizard's Fire. He is the inspiration behind my new workout routine and health plan. This guy. He's rad-ical. I also want to buy a mountain bike and hit the off-road for that adventurous healthy sort of lifestyle.

Pierre Spies

4. I miss taking some time out, connecting with the 'verse and talking to the Big G. I should do more of that, more of the time. I miss You Big G, I miss our dialogue. Please forgive me for being silent for so long. I also miss C.S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft a lot. Those guys know God's heart very intimately.

5. Work harder. Work smarter. I'm the laziest person I know and it's my lethargy that's been the source of many a failure of mine. I'm also pretty dumb about how I work. I've no plan of attack; I just wing it, which ain't too efficient or sensible. This is one of the important tasks to get done.

6. Read more. A book a week keeps the ignorance away. I want to expand my reading material to more than comic books, graphic novels, horror, fantasy and sci-fi novels. I'm going to annihilate the 101 Books to Read Before You Die list this year. Bam! Just like that. Better and smarter Charlie, always a hit at upper crust parties.

7. Game more. I miss gaming and tech so much that my soul actually hurts. Gaming is to me what boobs (lol) are to awesomeness - essential dammit! I have so many titles to catch up with: replay Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 in preparation for Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, Deus Ex: Human Evolution and many other titles beside.

8. Get my driver's licence. This one has been a thorn in my side for some time and it's time to be a road warrior and just do it once and for all. Get it out of the way as they say. Also, there's the fact that bitches love being driven around in cars and stuff.

9. Be adventurous and tick off exciting things on the impromptu (we'll pretend I know what that means) bucket list: surfing, sky diving, banging dirty hippies with ginger dreadlocks, climbing a mountain - any one will do - and winning fights against annoying assholes.

10. Finally, do some good for change. I'm a fan of literacy programmes so I'll do something selfless along those lines.

Okay. That's the list, give or give a few more items. Other than Pierre Spies, and a host of others, I'm being my own hero. No cape, no tights or cool Bat toys - just me.

Thank you for sticking around and indulging me my little speech. I ask only that you join me in forging (I like that word - and know what it means) an alliance of everyday heroes that set the 'verse alight by being super awesome at living our lives.

Fire Dragon

Also, happy Chinese New Year for tomorrow.

Cupboard Person of the er... Year

“The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in 
life.” - Sir Hugh Walpole

I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

It’s too early to make this person my Cupboard Person of the Year, I know, since the year has just kicked off but she will be a highlight no matter what else happens to me this year. So here we go: the beautiful and charming Nthabiseng Monyane.

Life is wonderfully wobbly and all sorts of wibbly and I love it for that very reason. You can never be too sure of what to expect from it. It gives you Joy and sunshine at times and grief and thunderstorms at others. That’s just the way it goes.

Once in a while, though, someone amazing happens and her beautiful soul enters into your life and throws your whole rhythm out of balance by exploding her galaxy into your soulstuff. It’s a beautiful moment that I wish I could capture and bottle. That’s not the way God’s multiverse works though and all I can do is hold my breath and enjoy the beauty of the moment. I can also write about it a little.

Life in its wonderfully wobbly proportions is sneaky like a ninja kitten and introduced me to Nthabi-chan as Asia – someone who left a comment on a post on this here blog a few years back. Of course I didn’t think anything of it back then, since I didn’t expect that we would be meeting at any point. I lack all sorts of foresight I guess. She was, to my mind, just another wonderful mind trawling the interwebscape. I didn’t think of her as an actual human person with hopes, wishes, dreams, feelings, boobs, cute lazy eyes and chutzpah.

And then she moved to Jozi and got in touch and we started chatting on BBM, plotting clandestine meetings in dark corners where groping might occur. We just hit it off like two red headed stepchildren (to quote my friend, Grant). Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day and they almost unravelled because of fresh fog fuckery on my side of things but we circumvented all of that and met for a drink last Friday. Needless to say that the meeting went well... Okay, I lie, the meeting was freakin’ amazing! This woman just made it into my headspace without any effort and it was one of the highlights of my life.

Plans were plot and schemes were scam for the meeting day...

I am grateful to the hooded and cloaked powers that be that I met Nthabi-chan and I look forward to at least a lifetime of shared experiences.

Welcome to the Beanbag my Lady Love, I hope you enjoy it here :)

Cupboard Person of the Week

"I am not brushing a cow's teeth Walter, you know I have real work to do... right?"

- Astrid

Astrid, Asterisk, Astro, Asteroid, Astringent, Aspirin or whatever you want to call her, I love this woman! She's exactly my type of girl: beautiful, intelligent and plays some minor, but crucial (at times), role in an awesome television series. What more do you want from a woman? All the scrubby guys will be chasing after the female lead, who you really don't want to date when you take some time to think about it. She always has too much emotional baggage and can probably kick your ass! That's just not cool. Astrid on the other hand is just plain awesome and lovable.

Here are some more Astrid fun facts: She graduated from Haverford College with a B.A. in Music and Linguistics and a minor in Computer Science, having taken computers apart since six years old.

I'm in love. Sigh.

P.S. I should find out what the actress' name is but I really don't care. To me she's Astrid.

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.