ashtrays on aeroplanes

one of the many things that make absolutely no sense.

not even just to me.

we discussed it in our central aisle collection of tightly-packed-together chairs, the kind that only have a bent knee's worth of actual leg room.

the kind that you have to put upright so the person behind you can eat properly off their tray sized foldout table.

it makes no sense because you aren't supposed to smoke on planes, or anywhere really.

there is a sign that says so, emphatically, on both the inside of the door, and on the paper towel bin under the unflatteringly fluorescent-lit bathroom mirror.

above the automatic tap and the miniature sink whose plug hole i can't operate.

but for some reason, there is still a little matchbox-sized ashtray in the foldout toilet door, with a clearly printed image of a burning cigarette, in neat thick bold black lines.

this makes no sense to me.

what could this conveniently shoulder-height-while-sitting-on-toilet ashtray possibly be used for, other than to stub out prohibited cigarettes?

gum disposal?

it makes me think how little sense the entire aeroplane setup makes- another conundrum being the sometimes missing thirteenth aisle.

because even though the aisle after the twelfth aisle is called the fourteenth aisle it's still actually the thirteenth aisle.

basic consecutive numbering logic.

no sense.

at all.

that and the repeated screenings of airline safety videos featuring an annoyingly catchy marketing jingle and misplaced manchester united football player characters.

maybe it's just like that, maybe long distance air travel will never really make sense to anyone who doesn't understand the intricacies of aeronautical engineering and physics.

(me)

i'm inclined to think that the entire concept of travelling to a completely different continent on the other side of the world in the space of one day is actually so ridiculous, that little things like paradoxical ashtrays are understandably overlooked.

unless you're stuck in a badly lit bathroom with swollen feet, on sticky floors, on a few hours sleep, and you'll find anything else to look at.

besides the oddly-placed almost full-length toilet-facing mirror in front of you.

burnt rice

i planned it in my head, but didn't really think about it.

the rice would cook on a low heat for twenty minutes. and then i would take it off the heat for five minutes so it could steam.

but there was a problem.

the problem was that i forgot something. the fact that i am completely incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.

"simultaneously" is not an adjective i have often been associated with.

so instead of standing by the stove-edge, being somewhat involved in the rice-cooking process, I was about two metres away, on my laptop.

absorbed.

absolutely distracted.

i thought giving the rice the assigned twenty minutes was all i needed to do. i didn't think twice about what would be glaringly obvious to any normal person.

the simple and common-sense fact of life that leaving things alone on a hot stove is never a good idea.

never.

ever.

so once again, i learnt the hard way.

i burnt the rice. well, technically, half the rice.

and not only a little bit. the bottom of the pot is so thick-tar-black that i'm going to have to soak it overnight with water and vim before i can even try to get rid of the rice-shaped singes.

half the rice i could have eaten as lunch tomorrow is inside a plastic bag, in another plastic bag, in the bin.

and i can't help but laugh at myself, because the truth is, this realization has been coming for a while.

i've been saying things that bypass my neocortex and go straight from the beer-soaked part of my brain into the space outside my mouth.

often.

i've said things, out loud, that i've had no control over, it's like the entire processing unit responsible for common sense and rationality has been infected with stupid.

and it's funny.

it's funny because i tell people that i have a degree, and a postgraduate diploma. i'm even studying for another postgraduate qualification, that will probably lead to pursuing another.

i've mistakenly thought of these qualifications as safeguards against stupidity, that they disqualify me from being a dumbass.

i've been convinced that reading about existentialism and postcolonial psychopathology actually has some semblance of relevance to basic daily functioning.

but it doesn't. i'm either saying inane, ill-considered things, or i'm saying things that no one responds to because they have no idea what i'm talking about.

it's also funny because i'm writing about it. the very process that completely distracted me from focusing on what was important in the present in the first place, and caused me to stink out the kitchen with burnt.

it's hilarious, actually, because i've come to a sobering realization, after denying it for a long time, pretending that it wasn't true.

but the truth is i really am just a fucking idiot.

title tracks

i've started to pay itunes a lot more attention lately.

and find myself inexplicably drawn to certain songs.

it makes me wonder if there is a formula for creating infinitely re-playable ones.

is it a combination of complexity, familiarity or just nostalgic association?

or is it just a matter of chance, a matter of luck/fate after leaving it up to the mysterious algorithm that silently governs the "shuffle songs" selector?

either way, i've enjoyed making these aural re-discoveries.

listening to the songs that got me through pre-dawn morning highway drives to a job i despised.

(untitled by interpol)

songs that remind me of lying on a beach with nothing better to do than daydream and develop vague evenings plans around eating. and drinking asian whiskey with mixers. in buckets. again.

(she drove me to daytime television by funeral for a friend)

songs that will always make me feel exactly the same sense of deep pit-of-stomach-excitement mixed with fear, sleepiness and disorientation that i did while waking up to sunrises on overnight buses somewhere in bolivia/peru.

(the entire boc maxima album by boards of canada)

it's music that i'll always associate with certain people, memories and less than well-considered decisions.

mostly because i think i've always felt this way about music. it's just not enough for me to be able to hear it a few times and feel a vague sense of enjoyment.

to me, the real value of music lies in the details, the complex arrangements of sounds, lyrics, and melodies that combine to create an incomprehensible and intriguing tightness.

it's the kind of music i don't find often, and a preference i don't share with many people i know.

but it's comforting to know it will be impossible to ever listen to it all. and thanks to the internet there is a lifetime of it waiting to be discovered, via both legitimate and underhand means.

and besides, i still have three have a nice life albums to get through.

albums which are definitely going to take several repeat listens to even vaguely comprehend.

fall leaves fall

i've started studying again.

and this time, it's not a short online writing course, but a three-year-long correspondence degree.

BA honours in english, through UNISA.

it's something that i've been wanting to do for a long time, and right now, its forcing me to read a lot of information that i consciously avoided in my undergraduate degree.

historical and literary overviews about medieval english, and analyses of thousand year old literature that i never thought i'd be interested in are suddenly relevant.

surprisingly, i now even have the motivation and purpose to actually read all the poetry anthologies that i bought in first year.

heavy ones, and ones that looked small, but were deceptively dense and small typed.

with the help of footnotes, some old english poems even make sense.

still inextricably bound to unchanging human experience.

while browsing through the other thousand pages of the new penguin book of english verse, i also came across some other poems, by emily bronte, written in the 1800s.

an especially apt one called "remembrance".

it reminded me that my delayed and intense reading habits haven't only been the result of renewed interest, but also a convenient way to distract me from recent traumatic events.

unlike the narrator in the poem, the loss has not been immediate to me in particular, but the deaths of two people i spent time with at various stages of my life has been enough to make me very sad.

not so much sad for myself, but for the people who have been broken by their departure, both the result of tragic motor accidents.

both their lives were cut short so prematurely, one just before a very significant part of her life, and it's made me reconsider things, especially the concept of age.

in another poem, untitled, bronte also speaks about the change of seasons, the shift from autumn to winter, most visible by the death of flowers and the falling of leaves.

there are only a few trees in my neighbourhood that make the slow change from "fall" to winter in various shades of yellow and red, like the ones outside the bank building opposite brooklyn mall in fehrsen street.

but they are enough to make me think that this cycle of semi-death and rebirth, so visible around us in plants and weather at the change of seasons, doesn't really apply to humans.

we shed epithelial cells, we lose hair and regrow our fingernails, but i don't think we get to have the same tactile, mass-scale shedding, loss, and regrowth, like deciduous trees do.

when we fall, we fall forever.

which makes me think that growing old, despite its associations with potential incapacitation, illness and frustration, is really a privilege.

when i grow up

in my second last year of high school, i counted down the days until school would be over.

in detail.

i remember actually making the effort to count the exact number of days left, besides holidays.

in history class, where paying no attention wasn't really noticed, since we only copied down transparencies anyway.

i imagine i numbered the days using my A5 diary, a book that received infinitely more of my attention than any teacher did, judging by the drawings on every page, and the meticulously recorded details of my daily activities.

which were often coloured in with milky pen, or fitted in next to haphazardly glued-in pictures from magazines.

i think the number of days came to about just less than three hundred, about two hundred and eighty.

just less than a year of my life.

looking back it seems sad, not that i was bored in high school, because i definitely wasn't the only one, but because i actually thought that leaving school would be the ultimate high point of my life.

i didn't even give a second thought to the fact that going away to university, moving to another city, having to actually make an effort to get a degree, would be a challenge of its own.

and never mind the time after that, when life wouldn't have discernible end-points, no break-up days or last day of exams.

to some extent, i think it's because i watched so many movies and series about high school experiences, the kind portrayed in so many "coming-of-age" movies that i watched, obliviously.

and because i listened intently to pop punk anthems about getting out of town, moving on to better things, and escaping four years of entrenched social hierarchy.

i remember even reading an interview with the bassist of blink 182 at the time, and feeling relieved when he said something like "life gets better after high school".

and it did, in many ways, but it scares me that i internalized this idea of escape, and related it to my own life, even though i grew up very far away from football games, cheerleaders and small town america.

so now, when i watch series like freaks and geeks, which unknowingly aired on NBC during my first year of high school, i wish that i'd been able to watch it instead.

even though i find it almost painful to see, the more honest and genuine depiction of "high school life", with all the excessive boredom, angst and trying to fit in, somewhere.

i think it would have given me a different perspective, and not the constructed and hyperreal view of life that i'm trying to disregard now that i think i know better.

which i don't think i actually do, especially because, three years after being capped in front of a hall full of people on a stage by a black-caped man i'll never recognise, i still don't have it all figured out.

at least my music taste has expanded to include more complex rhythms than three-chord guitar though, and i'm listening to solo projects like fever ray.

and her take on growing up.

the one life end-point i don't know if i'll ever get to.

the elements in-between

i've been watching a lot of lie to me.

and i'm surprised.

usually i'm not into crime scene investigation series, or any series involving the FBI, red-haired-man-with-sunglasses one-liners or any kind of jurisdiction.

but seeing the lead role played by tim roth- a.k.a pumpkin from the diner shoot-out scene in pulp fiction- gives this series just that little bit more acting credibility, for me.

and i enjoy the frequent inclusion of famous lying faces.

i've actually never been more interested in micro-expressions and lying before, something that i'm now more aware of, and hoping to make second nature in my subconscious experience of expressions.

scratching your ear?

you're lying.

mouth shrug?

yes, lying.

and quite unexpectedly, this facial movement exposure has now also contributed to my own analytical appreciation of photographs.

like the ones i went to see at the pretoria art museum last week, current host of the "south african photography: 1950-2010" exhibition.

a collection of pre and post struggle pictures from the south african political past, everything from ANC rallies, sophiatown shutdown and even sartorialist- style, black-and-white street snaps of township ladies in skirts and 1950s cat-eye shades.

and some others that i recognized, from years of post-apartheid high school history lessons, and a year as a history researcher.

including the world renowned sam nzima shot of mbuyiswa makhubu carrying a bullet-hit and bleeding hector pieterson to some kind of help after the june 1976 soweto uprising police shootout, with his sister antoinette sithole holding her hands hands up next to him, in a gesture that i saw as "pushing away" or defiance.

and even though i'd seen this photo many times, in textbooks, online, and in blown-up poster size, i'd never seen the other two nzima photographs before, from the same day, the same time.

the photos next to the iconic one, juxtaposed on gallery poster board.

the one where antoinette is throwing her head back and screaming, with other people running behind them, looking desperate, shocked and fearful.

or the one where makhubu is trying to get pieterson into the back of a car, the place where the photo caption says he took his last breath.

i'd never had this kind of wider-angle perspective on this incident before, being previously and unfortunately numbed by over-exposure and desensitization to a past i didn't exist in, and only saw from a mediated perspective.

but this time i bit down on my finger as i looked at the three photographs in succession, denying the warm emotional swell behind my eyelids.

and when i looked at the iconic nzime shot again, i realized something.

i'd always interpreted makhubu's facial expression, taught, with mouth stretched sideways to a grimace, as blind determination.

but when i looked closer at his eyes, i realized that it isn't only determination that shows on his face at all.

it's despair.

some visitor

last night there was a bird in my room.

at first i didn't think it was one, not being able to make sense of the frrt-frrt flutter of noise against thick, curtain material.

half awake, and slowly becoming more aware of the noise, i hoped it was just leaves rustling, or something outside of the window.

but there are no more leaves outside my bedroom anymore, as i mentioned in the blog post before.

and with further frrt-frrt's coming from the corner of my room, where the line of light from the nearby street light meets the curtain edge, i suddenly realized it was moving.

there was something alive, and trying to escape, from my room.

not usually being scared of small animals, i thought i would turn off the lights, catch it, and release it out the window.

but when i managed to stumble, groggily, to the light switch by my door on the opposite side of the room, i became too scared to even try.

i could hardly even tell what kind of animal it was when the lights were on. i could only make out something brown, alive, with a feather-tail bobbing behind my electric guitar stand.

yes, a bird.

for a moment it almost felt like an edgar allen poe kind of experience, except not as weird, dark and creepy as the raven.

but instead of sitting down and facing the bird in my bedroom like he did, i got someone else to open the windows and curtains, to ensure an obvious escape route.

behind a closed chamber door.

i slept in the other room.

the only evidence of the mystery bird's escape in the morning was a few misplaced decorations/toys from my headboard ledge and printer's tray.

it seems ridiculous that i could have been so scared of such a small and obviously terrified bird while indoors, when outdoors i'm fascinated by them.

maybe it's just the timing, not being able to handle a trapped living creature in my room half-awake at night, the same way my brother must have felt when a bat was circling his room while he lay in bed.

or when my grandmother woke up with another bat on the pillow next to her head.

i laughed when i heard these stories before, but now i understand.

being exposed to even the smallest wild creature can be terrifying enough, nevermind when they're panicked and unpredictable and you're alone with them in a confined space.