My First Proper Article!!!

Pulling a Rabbit Out of My Hat

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

- Nelson Mandela (quoting from Marianne Williamson’s Return to Love)

With Nelson Mandela Day having just passed I’ve decided to take advice from Boston Legal’s Denny Crane and pull a rabbit out of my hat in order to wow the jury, by which I mean you, dear Reader of a writer fascinated by the dust bunnies under his bed. My aims for this piece are rather ambitious, given that I don’t want it to be overlong. They are as follows: introducing myself (only in my second post, forgive the rudeness) and my column (Lost in the Cosmos), doing something good for change instead of whining, promoting the awesomeness of fantasy and science fiction while I’m at it and, lastly, having a great time doing it. That ladies and gentlemen is my rabbit, which I will now proceed to pull out of my woolly hat.

My name is Nyameko Charles Siboto and I am a bookworm.

When I tell people this they assume that I just read any book that comes my way and in this they are mistaken. I consider myself well-read but I’m actually not when you take into account how much reading material exists in the multiverse! Then again, no one is well-read under those conditions. I am a fan of mythology, horror, superhero graphic novels, fantasy and science fiction. It is in these genres that I am well-read and that I revel. I’m especially a fan of fantasy as I believe that the genre is steeped in great beauty, especially the works of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien. I study Literature at the University of Johannesburg and I work there as a tutor, a job that I love immensely (don’t tell my colleagues). People say that I’m an agreeable fellow for the most part but I have days during which I am full of nonsense and annoy people by repeatedly poking them. My dream is to own a beautiful house with a magical garden outside and inside it is filled with books, comfortable armchairs, roaring fireplaces and the pantries (many of these) are filled to bursting with scrumptious food. That is to say, I want to live like a hobbit.

Peter Kreeft, one of the beautiful minds of our time in my opinion, said something along the lines of living life like poetry in one of his talks. I’m sure I don’t know what he means but it’s one of those statements that haunt my thoughts and it refuses to be exorcised. I suspect that it has something to do with my fascination with great beauty, whether it is aesthetic (the beauty of a Helen of Troy) or spiritual (the beauty of a Mother Teresa) and I endeavour to make my life beautiful in all that I do.

That is Charles, to some extent, and it is my hope that we may get to know one another better as we explore the stars and a medieval past that never was together in this column. I would like to be the Virgil and Beatrice to your Dante as I lead you on this epic journey.

Take my hand and hold on tight, we are about to find ourselves Lost in the Cosmos.

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,
how would men believe and adore, and persevere for
many generations the remembrance of the city of God!”

- Emerson

This quote says almost everything that I would like to achieve with this column. Lost in the Cosmos wants to show that fantasy and sci-fi are very much like religion and science, their goal is to speculate on the mysteries of the universe and to ask the great questions that have ever haunted human beings from the first time they emerged from their caves and looked upon the tall trees of the great forests, the vast oceans, the majestic sun, the moon and the fiery stars and stood there in fear and trembling, faced with the sense of the numinous. Fantasy and sci-fi show us that the universe, the little portion that we know of it, is howling with holy wildness and that we are part of something substantially bigger than we ordinarily think.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to it; a rabbit being pulled from a woolly hat!

We as South Africans have the bad tendency to whine about everything that goes wrong in this great country of ours instead of going out and doing something good to change the situation. I beg you to go out and to make the remainder of this year a Nelson Mandela one, in honour of the great man and also simply to do something for someone else. To paraphrase Emerson, to leave the world having made one life breathe easier is to have succeeded as a human being. So no matter how small your contribution, it does make a difference. I am going out to Cotlands to play with the children and read to them on my off days to do my little bit for change… and to prostitute fantasy and sci-fi to the younger generation, nerdy whore that I am. :)

Brain Explosion

Greetings Reader of a slightly OCD writer,

Say, is it just me or is there just too much happening on our beloved interwebs?

There was a time when I loved the internet more than I love my mother, I lived and breathed for it. But something has changed... it scares me now. Maybe it's because I've grown older and thus am not as charmed by it as I was in the past. It just seems so chaotic that all I can do at times is stare at my homepage on my computer screen for a few minutes before closing the browser, the thought of surfing being too daunting. Everything I do online seems rather pointless most of the time and it's messing with everything else in my life. I have a bunch of Facebook friends I don't know, I can't watch TV anymore, I don't read as much as I used to, my blogs don't get the attention they deserve and I just feel uncomfortable online.

Being on the internet is like being in a house and knowing there's a dirty sock in the vicinity and that you can't put it in the laundry basket because, like cutting off a hydra's head, every time you do two more pop up to take its place. This is the thing that makes me think I'm just being anal. Chaos, after all, is a part of the internet's charm. Not knowing what you could find as you surf is exciting, it makes one feel as though one had fallen headfirst down the rabbit hole.

OCD aside, the content available online is quite overwhelming and that can be a bad thing as it results in people spending valuable time trying to keep up with the latest thingymabob.

Maybe, then, being out of the loop's not such a bad thing when it's all said and done.

Take care when you're online, Reader, there be dragons of the vilest sort here.

A Bitter Truth or Two

'Like people, animals
will become frightened and likely
do whatever you say if you
whip them enough'

- Lemony Snicket

I like Lemony Snicket, he's not the sort of writer who attempts to make you feel that the world's a better place than it is. Instead he goes out of his way to paint you a picture of the world so bleak it makes your soul wither. I've been feeling down of late - emotional woes and whatnot - and I thought a trip down to Exclusive Books's winter sale with good friends would cheer me up. Spending money I don't have on books has a strangely pleasant effect on me, it makes the world seem like a happier place.

Little did I know that Mr Snicket would be waiting for me with a bitter truth or two concerning this wondrous thing some call life. It cheers me to know that I shouldn't expect more than horseradish from life and that crossing mountains in search of wisdom's a waste of time. His book, Horseradish's a non-self-help book that's charming in its approach to not improving your life in any way whatsoever. I love it :)

Sometimes bleak literature's good for the soul, paradoxically so. Thank you for ruining my life in order to make a little better Mr Snicket.

'Sometimes even in the most
unfortunate of lives there
will occur a moment or
two of good fortune'

- Lemony Snicket

The Big Purge

Take all my vicious words
And turn them into something good
Take all my preconceptions
And let the truth be understood

Take all my prized possessions
Leave only what I need
Take all my pieces of doubt
And let me be what's underneath

- Courage, Orianthi ft. Lacey

Dear reader of a blogger who has lost his way,

I woke up the other day, as I’m prone to do at times, to find that it was May and that I’ve no money! I’m supposed to be responsible and awesome this year but I spent almost a whole month drinking, smoking (yes, me!) and eating junk food. I’ve not been home in a while, I smell funny, my face is swollen and my hand hurts from repeatedly punching a dude (yes, me, punching a dude!). Do I regret all the crap that’s been going down most of April? Not so much, most of it was loads of fun but it was out of control and I need to reign myself in, especially when it comes to spending my money on random crap when there are bills to be paid.

It is near the end of May now and I’m still stuck in that abyss of financial ruin that I managed to walk into in a manner that Erikson’s sappers would refer to as ‘wide-eyed stupid’. I’ve received many text messages with threats that a number financial institutions (which kindly paid for my varsity fees, books, rent and my... er... beer) have enlisted the services of Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a chopper to blow up my house – which is not actually mine. The plan, thus, is to lay low for the next two months, stay out of everyone’s way. It also helps that it’s the winter season and that the chill affords me an excuse to stay home, catch up on my reading and dream of the wonders of gaming once I acquire finances to build an uber-PC in the summer.

Later Days :)

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.

Final Crisis

I want it. Now! That is all.

The Church's Badassery

'To go against the Church is to go against God.'

I went to go see Priest with Ms J. on Friday and it was so much better than I expected. Then again my expectations were based purely on the theatrical poster; I’d not seen a trailer or heard anything about it beforehand. I actually thought it was based on the Thief video game series. It’s actually, rather loosely, based on a graphic novel series though. Ms J. said let’s go see it and the Beanbag was game.

Now, I rarely like movies (or any other entertainment media) that are set in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic future because, to quote my friend, Dave (referring to Fallout 3), “[they] depress me”. Such movies have to be really good for me to put up with and Priest, though it’s not an excellent movie as such, was fun to watch. It has a villain simply referred to as Black Hat in the credits dammit! That’s total badassery. Also, there’s an army of crazy, animalistic vampires (who have no eyes) on a train, hell-bent on the destruction of a totalitarian city run by the Church. The manner in which the Church runs the city is brutal and I’d not like to live there. They do have awesome warrior priests that kick some vampire ass though. You can never go wrong with Holy men and women opening a can righteous ass whupping.

There’s a lot to be said about the big, bad Church... the Big BC as I fondly know it. I’ve always been intrigued by the Church’s rather violent history back in the day (as my tutlings refer to anything that happened more than a decade ago). Rome was badass I tell you! All the ways with which they came up with to kill people would sicken many a serial killer today. On warm summer days I sit on the grass under my favourite tree and wonder what the meeting was like when a handful of respectable Elders of the Church got together and agreed that boiling a guy was the way forward. I can just see them all nodding solemnly in agreement at the suggestion. I’d put my house... wait I don’t have one... I’d put my awesome four-year-old cousin, Lennie, down on a bet that the guy to put that option on the table was one of those Rasputin types that no one seems to know is crazy even though he looks freakin’ crazy!

Maybe I’m just not good at being a Christian but what was up with all that violence!? Am I misreading my Bible? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Jesus is naught but a sweet, gentle lamb. Lord no! He is also a fierce lion that fights for love’s cause, but why did they have to get all creative about torturing and killing people? I’d go with just hanging them or something simple. Even stoning is a quite excessive for my tastes.

Let me end off by playing devil's advocate and directing you to some of the Church's atrocities throughout history.

P.S. The moral of this story is don't mess with warrior priests or the Church, they will kick your ass... and the boil you alive.

Heaven's Magic Machine

This is the magical scene that will play out in Heaven as I awake from death, as though it were a dream:

‘“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?’ [Gandalf] said.
But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.’
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

I’m sitting here pretending to be marking first year English assignments but because I suffer from ADD (or whatever they call it these days) I can’t pay attention to another string of words that make no sense to anyone in the universe or any of the infinite ones parallel to ours – not even the person who wrote them. Unlike J.R.R. Tolkien my mind does not conjure up hobbits when faced with the deadly dull task of marking, mine wanders to random things instead, like whether or not there will be magic in Heaven. The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings have me convinced that there will be tonnes of it.

What sort of magic will it be though?

To use Terry Goodkind’s terms, will it be additive or subtractive? Will it be the sort of magic worked not by our souls but worked on our souls as Peter Kreeft puts it? Will it be the charming magic of animated Disney movies that sees dishes washing themselves and beautiful Princesses aroused from eternal slumber by true love’s kiss? I’m secretly hoping for dragons and centaurs. I’d love to have tea with a majestic dragon, assuming dragons care for tea that is. Imagine how big a dragon’s tea cup must be!

I went to see Thor some time back and if Heaven’s anything like Branagh’s vision of Asgard I’d be quite chuffed; all the best parts of a fantasy medieval setting merged with futuristic technology that has no side effects like pollution. It would have to be bigger than Asgard though, so as to accommodate my dragons. I’m a big fan of flashy and destructive sorcery I must say: Wizard’s fire, the fiery tempests in Dragon Age, crazy chain lightning and such. I doubt there’s place for destructive magic in Heaven though, especially since I’m referring to post-apocalyptic Heaven, when Satan and all his crazy minions have been smote down by Heaven’s awesome Secret Fire-wielding host and the Flame Imperishable has been sent to burn at the centre of the universe(s) forever and ever. Amen.

I should expect a behind-the-scenes sort of magic then I guess, only a little more overt than can be glimpsed in Nature. God is a big fan of espionage after all, what with Him always working His magic from the least likely of places and in a most covert manner. Take for an example in The Lord of the Rings He doesn’t make so much as a peeping sound but in which His presence makes all the difference.

Heaven’s magic is, no doubt, rooted in beauty – the lofty beauty of an Elvish Princess like Lúthien that captures the hearts of admirers the world over but can only be won by the most noble of beings, and yet it is a beauty as humble and accessible as a Samwise Gamgee of the Shire. Beauty alone is not enough though, for it to be truly magical it must be accompanied by truth, wisdom and all that good stuff.

Arcane arts like necromancy are out of the picture then; zombies, as cool as they may seem, are only a mockery of real life after all. Such arts are of a lower type of magic, not that of creation (or sub-creation).

I would venture to say that the purpose of magic is not to be seen but to be experienced. Real magic feeds a deep human need for wonder. It speaks to us as though we are children exploring the world and looking at everything in it with awe. Scientists experience the universe’s magic as they set out to unravel its mysteries and theists (the real ones) encounter this magic in their unshakable faith.

In the Middle-Ages it was said that God wrote two books, the Bible and Nature. The world in which we live is a magic making machine and many of us don’t even notice it. Nature is God speaking to us of love, beauty, perfection, imperfection, death and many other such lessons beside. The universe, as such, is a picture of what the magic of Heaven will be like, the sort of magic whose presence is never noted but whose absence is immediately apparent.

Cupboard Person of the Week

‘Mane of Chaos. Anomander Rake. Lord of the black-skinned Tiste Andii, who has looked down on a hundred thousand winters, who has tasted the blood of dragons, who leads the last of his kind, seated in the Throne of Sorrow and a kingdom tragic and fey – a kingdom with no land to call its own.’

This one has been a long time in coming.

The man is too cool for words to contain. He jumps out at you from Steven Erikson’s pages and grabs you by the throat as he considers whether or not to slay you with his sword, Dragnipur. This guy is one of the sons of Mother Dark (from whom he broke away), he can veer into a giant black dragon because in the distant past he drank the blood of dragons and just hung out in their realm for a while you know, because that’s how cool people roll. That’s not even his most impressive qualities, a few other people in Erikson’s world of the Malazan can do some of that stuff (one of his brothers for instance); the guy made an awesome sword, named it Vengeance and when he found that the Elder god, Draconus, had a cooler sword, Dragnipur, he romanced the guy’s daughter, teamed up with her to slay her dad, took his sword and the broke up with her. This is a super simplified version of the events that took place but it captures the badassery of Rake. Why is Dragnipur so cool you ask? All who are slain by it are drawn into a realm inside it where they have to join a line of chained souls dragging a giant wagon for eternity!

If you’re this awesome where would you live? In a fortress on a floating mass of rock named Moon’s Spawn of course.

The only thing worth saying about Rake is that every man, woman and child should just shut up and bask in his awesomeness. I want to be like him when I grow up.

Recovery

I feel like Eminem probably felt when he sat down to pen the songs for his Recovery album; I feel all sorts of bleh but I'm on the road to bigger and better things methinks.

The last two months have been all about me going through an involuntary purge of all the crap in my life, getting closer to my friends, eating junk food, meditating, drinking too much, exercising, falling in and out of love, being very broke and all sorts of other cool stuff that are probably not all that great for my health. All-in-all it's been one of those experiences that feel like you drank too much the previous night and puked all over your shoes but you're like, 'Fuck that shit, I had a great time'. You know that feeling right? Life throws all sorts of crap in your path but you take the blows like a soldier and keep living your life as best you can.

What would be cool is if I had a chainsaw and I was allowed to run around with it cutting through all the stupid stuff in my life and coming out on the other side covered in their 'blood'. I'd like that and would probably not take a shower for a while.

With that wonderful and not-at-all wibbly image I leave you to go and do something more useful with your life :) See you next week.