a fairytale blogmother

once upon a time, there lived a young girl in a small, peanut-shaped country in the heart of africa. she didn't speak much but she observed her surroundings with a disarming intensity. the girl swallowed sentences regardless of social etiquette: the back of kellogs boxes in the mornings, eyes squinted at pages under late-afternoon shadows, open books next to plates of food at the dinner table...

a good deal of her childhood was spent with a family of seven, five of whom were children bursting with creativity. sadly, the children and their parents kept moving further and further away from the young girl's home. first to a different suburb, then a different city, next a different country, until the little people (who had significantly grown) were living on different continents.

one day, the young girl (you might call her a young woman now) met one of the children of this dear family (you might call her a young woman now) in a cafe at the southernmost tip of africa. they spoke at length and were surprised by the convergences of their seperate life stories: feminism, thoughts on spirituality, an avidity for writing, a passion for social change.

after the young girl/woman left the conversation and the cafe, she felt alive. the world seemed full of possibilities and her head was full of ideas. her hands were buzzing with energy and her heart felt like it was taking up more space in her chest.

a little while later, the young girl/woman came across a pink-and-white-delight. it was love at first sight. as she read, she could taste every single word on her tongue. she could feel the vibrations of each thought as it danced in her mind. she was amazed that this inspirational writing came from a real live human being, a creative child who grew to be, among other things, a faiytale blogmother. she is the reason this blog exists.

why s/he must write

imagine what would happen if every wo/man in the world told the truth about his/her life. from the little, seemingly inconsequential truths ("i get giddy when i see heart-shaped mocha foam") to larger truths ("i am a survivor of gender-based violence").

in the past five years, i have written as a student of anthropology. while there is some space for the 'I' in reflexive ethnographies, it is expectedly limited. the strictures of academic writing constrain an outpouring of the self.

i am tentatively beginning to write in more fluid, creative ways to free my academically asphyxiated mind.

i am trying to speak from the heart. it is both harder and easier than i thought.

i have mulled over this entry for (six) months because i keep asking myself why - why this urge to write? what lies behind this instinctive sharing of fragmentary truths with any searchers who serendipitously stumble on this screen-space? (long sentence!)

i write because i can't not write. hardly eloquent, but it is what my heart murmurs. for now.

'suddenly i see'

a whispy white cloth shrouds the cable-car corner of table mountain, poetically censoring the preponderance of tourists in the city. the cloud beckons me to pull out a notebook and pen on oranje street. crossing the entrance to engen, a car almost drives into my thoughts as i scribble about this city, that cloud.

i see...pink vespa...tattooed skin...wire-and-beaded dragonflies...purple all-stars paired with the skinniest skinny jeans over un-skinny thighs. a man sitting on the sidewalk randomly shouts "happy lady!" to me and we exchange greetings. i smile thinking about what My Good Friends would say of this encounter and my mood today: "on sooooome 'suddenly i see'!"

i won't lie. i am enamoured by cape town. as i write, i feel particularly nostalgic. milan kundera reflects on the root of this word, nostaligia: 'nostos' means return, 'algos' means suffering. nostalgia is suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. i leave the city in seven days. why is there a longing to return before i depart?

with the lens of a lover about to leave her beloved, i aim to write every last day; to write about living, loving and leaving the mother city. writing the city gives me a heightened awareness of is sights and i want to savour every last view that i may have taken for granted.

walking towards buitenkant street, i see the words 'we all share the same sun' chalked under a bridge. i pass a corner that leads me towards my doorstep. here, almost every day, i step over cardboard boxes that provide nightly shelters for people on the pavement opposite parliament. and i wonder if ministers notice - let alone discuss - the citizens that sit, sleep and live in front of their unseeing eyes.

good evening, cape town. six days to go.

(fieldnotes, 19 november)

hello world